MORE CHAPTER ON PATREON
Monica left the warehouse with the final group.
Sato shouted for everyone to keep moving toward the cordon. Two officers supported Quillshear between them. Reinforcement sirens already sounded in the distance.
She should have stayed with the others.
But a trail of blood remained on the concrete.
Monica stopped. She looked toward the group, then toward the empty passage between the containers, and broke away before she could invent an excuse.
The trail led to the pier.
She saw the Nomu's remains first.
The separated parts lay across the concrete with terrifying precision, as though the monster had passed through an enormous surgical instrument. Then her gaze moved farther.
Nomura lay inside the shared pool of blood. One arm was gone. His side, back, and face had been opened by claws, and white bone showed through his temple. He looked impossibly small beside the thing he had killed.
Monica dropped to her knees.
— Hey. Don't close your eyes, do you hear me? Don't you dare die.
Shock and disbelief had frozen across her face. The disbelief was almost offensively misplaced. What other outcome had she expected?
She had seen the condition he was in when he went to face the mutant. She had heard the warning that it would tear him apart, yet she had still released her grip and allowed him to walk away from the evacuation route. How had it ever seemed acceptable to let that poor boy go alone? An exhausted sixteen-year-old hunted by a monster, who most likely did not even know that his father was dead.
It had been foolish to hope he would somehow return unharmed. It was even more foolish to feel surprised by the price of his victory now.
She touched his neck. The pulse was so weak that for several seconds her fingers found nothing.
— No. No, no, no. Not now.
She pressed both hands against the wound at his shoulder despite knowing the movement was useless. Blood flowed between her fingers. No tourniquet could compensate for this much damage.
TNO opened his surviving eye.
— The people... did they get out?
— Almost all of them. Sato is taking them to the cordon.
— Then the plan worked.
— Stop talking. Save your strength.
— Those are... mutually exclusive instructions.
Even now. Even without an arm, lying among pieces of his own flesh, he answered as though the situation were a minor inconvenience.
Monica wanted to order him to keep his eyes open, call for help, do anything professional. Instead, a short broken sound escaped her throat.
She realized she was crying.
— I'm afraid, — Monica admitted.
The words began spilling out, perhaps because in another minute he would no longer be able to hear them.
— I'm so tired. When they sent me from Osaka, I honestly thought it would be an ordinary assignment. A few interviews, checking reports, helping the locals, and then home. Then you appeared. The Nomura case, that market, the gas station... Every new location was supposed to provide answers, but it only created more questions. The port looked like one final routine inspection. I thought we would look around, speak with the workers, and finally understand what connected everything.
She glanced toward the sliced remains and the burning tanks in the distance.
— This stupid port. Until the last moment, I kept telling myself that at least nothing would happen here.
TNO remained silent.
— Then came the explosion. The screaming. I saw you in the water. You weren't moving, and I didn't even have time to think. I just jumped. When I pulled you out and saw your face for the first time...
Her breath caught.
— My heart skipped. You already looked dead. I thought that if I let you go for even a second, that would be it. And now I've found you in blood again, and I... I can't keep pretending I have everything under control.
Monica lowered her head. Tears fell onto his torn clothing.
— Why are you smiling? — she demanded with sudden anger. — What the hell is funny?
TNO truly was smiling.
Not because he had deceived her. Not because he had won, and not because another person's weakness amused him.
He simply could not remember the last time someone had been afraid not of him, but for him.
— I... won't die.
Monica clenched her teeth.
— Don't promise something you can't control.
— If I made you cry like this... — His smile became slightly more visible. — I simply can't die now.
Mite opened inside him.
The mixed blood on the pier trembled.
At first Monica thought wind had disturbed the pool. Then the crimson mass began to separate. TNO's own blood continued flowing down the incline, meaningless to the Quirk. The Nomu's darker blood gathered into narrow streams and moved in the opposite direction—against the slope, against the flow, against common sense.
Foreign blood climbed across the concrete and entered his open wounds. Only after its absorption did regeneration begin.
Monica did not recoil.
She could not.
She remained frozen with one hand on his shoulder as red rivers returned beneath her palms into another person's body.
The wound in his side closed first. The edges across his back joined and expelled broken fragments of claws. New tissue covered the exposed bone at his temple. Fingers straightened, tendons reconnected, and the torn ear slowly recovered its shape.
A second Quirk.
Not Snip Clip. Not the ability he claimed to have copied from her.
Something else.
Monica looked toward the missing arm.
Bone grew from the shoulder joint. Muscles, blood vessels, and black nerve fibers followed. The new limb did not match the old one. From the elbow down, its skin darkened to a deep violet-black and formed dense keratin plates. The hand remained human: five ordinary fingers, short nails, no claws.
A tribute extracted by regeneration from the Nomu's blood.
Or evidence of something else.
TNO closed the new hand. The joints answered with unfamiliar strength.
Monica asked no question. For perhaps the first time that night, the detective in her could not construct even an incorrect explanation.
TNO turned toward the Nomu's remains.
His secret remained intact.
Monica had witnessed regeneration, a second Quirk, and the mutation of the new arm. She had not seen the moment Tiger changed owners. That had happened in the emptiness between warehouse and pier, without witnesses or visible effects.
For now, let her believe copying was more complicated than he had admitted.
A partial truth was stronger than a direct lie.
He looked at her again.
— I think... you can call a doctor now.
Monica released a short, almost hysterical laugh through her tears and punched his intact shoulder.
— I hate you.
— No, you don't.
She did not answer.
— When the others arrive, tell them you killed it, — TNO said.
Monica did not immediately understand.
— What?
— Your Quirk cut the body. You managed the evacuation and reached the pier first. Tell them you caught up with the villain and finished the fight. I'll confirm it.
— But you did this.
— No one witnessed the final part.
She pulled back far enough to see his face.
— You're asking me to take your victory?
— I'm offering the system a story it can digest. A detective from Osaka destroyed a villain on Trigger and rescued a witness. Simple. Clean. No unnecessary questions.
In reality, it solved several problems at once. The police would receive an understandable victor with a badge and a verified history. Cameras would turn toward Monica. Sixteen-year-old Nomura would remain an injured witness who happened to be caught in the disaster—not a creature with multiple Quirks, a new arm, tiger ears, and a dismembered corpse at his feet.
A convenient way to smooth the sharpest edges of his story.
But that was not the only reason.
Monica had jumped into the water before knowing his name. She had supported his plan at the risk of her position, prevented the workers from fleeing too soon, and now sat inside his blood while continuing to check that he breathed. If anyone in this story deserved a reward, she had at least helped create the outcome.
— No, — Monica said.
— Think again.
— I have. I didn't kill it.
— Without you, I would have drowned long before reaching this pier.
— Rescuing the wounded is my job.
— And changing the evacuation against orders?
Monica frowned.
— I barely did anything. You designed the plan. You led the villain out of the warehouse. You fought it. I only did what I was supposed to do.
TNO studied her face.
So that was how she saw it. Everything she accomplished automatically became ordinary duty. Everything he did became heroism—as though an attractive face, several good decisions, and a dramatic victory erased the dozens of people holding the structure around him together.
— The system will sort it out, — Monica added. — There are witnesses, reports, camera footage. It will establish who did what. I don't need someone else's credit.
TNO exhaled quietly through his nose.
— Of course. The system will certainly sort it out.
She missed the mockery, or chose to ignore it.
— Promise you won't lie for me.
— All right, — he said. — The victory remains mine.
Later, that honesty would destroy her far more efficiently than any lie.
Dawn rose over Hosu Port. Fire painted the low clouds dirty orange. Sirens grew louder, and cameras were already gathering beyond the cordon. Very soon, someone would require culprits, convenient explanations, and a face to show the public.
Monica remained on her knees beside the person who should not have survived.
TNO looked at his new arm and understood that tonight he had taken more from Kyudai than another instrument.
He had taken the right to decide when he would die.
....
Reinforcements entered the port from two directions.
The white headlights of Ingenium's team appeared first on land. Several vehicles passed through the police cordon and stopped near the ruined warehouse. Heroes deployed before the cars fully stopped: some moved toward the evacuated workers, others toward burning tanks and damaged buildings. Ingenium himself took Sato's initial report and assigned teams without wasting time on a theatrical attempt to seize command.
A Coast Guard vessel approached from the sea. Gang Orca's heavy figure crossed onto the pier before the boat finished mooring. His team began searching the water, containers, and outer perimeter. No one could guarantee that the unknown mutant had been the only villain brought to the port.
TNO watched from his place on the concrete and, for several seconds, even forgot about the tail that refused to remain still.
Incredible. Until now, he had seen every one of these heroes on magazine covers, advertising screens, and television. There, they existed as neatly framed symbols: perfect angles, practiced voices, costumes untouched by soot. Now they stood a few dozen meters away, wet, exhausted, and entirely real. Ingenium was less polished and far more practical than he appeared in interviews. Even from a distance, Gang Orca truly did resemble a villain who had somehow been waved through the perimeter.
Only recently, TNO had thought of heroes as a narrow segment of society distinguished by useful Quirks. Meeting them made it considerably harder to ignore the people attached to those Quirks.
Aizawa was the last notable arrival.
He did not run toward the corpse or join the heroes. The moment he crossed the cordon, he found Tsukauchi coordinating police deployment beside the mobile command post.
— Where is Nomura Okutami? — Aizawa asked without greeting.
Tsukauchi did not immediately understand whom he meant. He looked past Aizawa toward burning tanks, medics beside covered bodies, and officers struggling to preserve a collapsing perimeter.
— You came all the way from that park, halfway across the city, to ask me about one teenager? Heroes are dead, an unidentified villain destroyed several sectors, and we still don't know whether he acted alone. Our preliminary theory is a catastrophic Trigger overdose, and I can't even confirm that yet.
— That is exactly why I'm asking, — Aizawa replied. — The inconsistency in Taiko's history led me to Nomura. Then came the market, the gas station, Okutami's death—and now the trail ends at the center of this disaster. That is not coincidence. Where is he?
Tsukauchi watched him for several seconds, trying to understand when a routine check of a student's file had become a personal hunt.
— Your priorities are strange tonight.
— Let me worry about my own priorities.
Tsukauchi pointed toward the pier where medics were gathering.
— If the statements aren't completely confused, the boy beside Kaniyashiki is Nomura. He helped evacuate the warehouse and killed the mutant.
Aizawa looked and stopped.
A teenager with most of Nomura's face sat on the concrete: black hair, purple eyes, dark stripes across the skin. Tiger ears twitched above his head, and a long tail moved nervously across the wet pier. His left arm looked as though it had been cast anew from violet-black horn.
Nothing tigerlike remained in the dismembered villain beside him. The striped fur had fallen away, the ears and tail had disappeared, and the claws had delaminated and crumbled with the keratin plates. Only heavy, laboratory-deformed flesh remained, stripped of the organizing principle that had once held it together.
To Aizawa, the contrast turned an oddity into a suspicion. The beast had lost its tiger traits while Nomura acquired them. It no longer looked like copying. It looked like a transfer.
The police currently explained it as a sudden collapse of the mutation when Trigger wore off, coinciding with the teenager copying the Quirk. The theory might even be correct. It was simply too convenient, and it failed to answer the most obvious question: why had the villain's mutation collapsed at the exact moment the same traits appeared on Nomura?
A copy should not deprive the original of what had been copied.
Aizawa had no evidence yet. Only a sequence of events, an absurd coincidence, and a teenager who had already lied about his own history. Nomura was either lying again or deliberately withholding the defining property of his Quirk.
Aizawa committed the lead to memory. Once the port stopped burning and the witnesses had been separated into hospital rooms and interview offices, he would reconstruct the changes in both bodies second by second—even if no one allowed him near Nomura tonight.
— Naturally, — Aizawa said flatly. — Why wouldn't he look like the villain he just killed?
He headed toward the pier.
By then TNO could sit without assistance. Mite had completed its primary work, but the foreign blood left heavy warmth beneath his skin. Tiger integrated far more crudely. The tail reacted to emotion, while the ears turned toward every sharp sound and added an irritating volume of detail to human hearing.
A police doctor approached first.
— What is your Quirk called?
— Copy. I reproduce another person's Quirk after contact.
Monica tensed almost imperceptibly.
TNO caught the movement and turned his eyes toward her for a moment.
He hesitated.
Calculation demanded that he remain silent. Monica was still a police detective, and nothing he told her could ever be taken back. She might listen, recoil, and report everything to her superiors. Within a few hours, TNO might regret ever allowing the idea to occur to him.
Yet she was the one who had pulled him from the water, remained beside him on the pier, and seen the impossible without calling the others. He had no proof that she could be trusted—only an instinct that stubbornly urged him to take the risk.
This time, TNO chose to trust both her and that instinct.
— Not here, — he said so quietly that the words were meant for her alone. — I'll tell you everything.
Monica watched him, trying to decide whether she had any right to believe him. She saw the blood crawling uphill again, the open wounds, and the new arm assembling beneath her hands. A single word from her would be enough to make the doctor ask an entirely different set of questions.
She remained silent.
All her life, Monica had trusted procedures, protocols, and the people required to follow them. For the first time, she chose to trust a particular person instead of the system. Not his explanation about copying—she could already feel how incomplete it was. Only his promise to tell her the truth later.
Until they spoke alone, she would not answer questions no one had asked her yet, and she would tell no one about the blood. If Nomura lied again, then she would decide for herself what belonged in the official report.
The doctor indicated the restored arm.
— Did it change after you copied the mutation?
— Yes. After I copied the villain's Quirk. I have no idea why it became like this. The tail and ears appeared at the same time.
— Pain? Numbness?
TNO flexed the violet-black fingers several times.
— No. It only feels unfamiliar.
— He did copy Snip Clip from me, — Monica said. — I saw him activate it before the final fight.
The words about the blood were already on the tip of her tongue. Monica stopped, remembering Nomura's nearly inaudible promise. The decision had been made.
— Determine the rest after a proper examination, — she finished.
Their eyes met in silence. Monica held his gaze for several moments, then looked away first and began watching the doctor with exaggerated concentration. Her lips tightened, her brows drew together, and the stern detective's mask returned to her face—too quickly and too deliberately to look natural.
TNO found it privately amusing. She looked rather cute just then.
Her gaze itself had changed. Inside the warehouse, she had watched him with professional distrust; on the pier, with almost animal fear. Now curiosity had entered it, along with something warmer that Monica herself did not yet seem to understand. At last, with walls no longer collapsing and bodies no longer being torn apart around them, he could distinguish the change.
His tail betrayed him with a twitch against the wet concrete. TNO immediately forced it still and pretended nothing had happened.
The doctor did not demand that a teenager explain a mechanism he might not understand himself. He recorded the statement, checked pupil response, and ordered a stretcher prepared.
Aizawa heard the end of the conversation.
— Nothing in Nomura's records explains a Quirk like that, — he said. — There are, however, enough gaps to show that someone worked very hard to create them.
TNO looked up.
— Aizawa-sensei.
The address stopped the hero more effectively than the tiger tail.
— Have we met?
— I know the teacher of UA's first-year hero class. It isn't classified information.
— You said it as though you've spoken to me before.
— Perhaps you simply have a memorable face.
Aizawa ignored the deflection.
— Why did your appearance change at the same time as Taiko Garaki's? Why does the trail from his biography lead to you? What happened at the market? And how does a teenager whose Quirk cannot be verified in official records appear at several crime scenes within a single day, then demonstrate multiple abilities?
TNO wanted to turn away. He could play the traumatized teenager, too exhausted and shocked to hear the questions, and let Monica and the medics remove the hero for him.
But he could no longer ignore that unhealthy interest.
Aizawa was not throwing out guesses. He had named the exact places where someone else's biography intersected with TNO's real life and arranged them in the correct order. The market. The gas station. Okutami. The port. The hero could not see the full picture yet, but he was tracing its edge, repeatedly stepping wherever the surface was thinnest.
Damn. Far too accurate.
TNO felt his tail stop moving.
Aizawa stepped close enough to activate Erasure. Red began entering his eyes.
The result of Erasure touching Oneself was impossible to predict. Tiger might partially deactivate, Mite might fall silent, and Snip Clip might vanish. More dangerous was the possibility that Aizawa would observe the restructuring itself and understand he was not looking at ordinary copying.
Their eyes met.
TNO did not look away. Instead, he raised his chin slightly and deliberately held the eye contact, accepting the activation of Erasure into the depths of his violet eyes.
Aizawa was accustomed to people averting their gaze at that moment. Some did it from the instinctive urge to hide from his reddening eyes; others acted as though breaking eye contact might interfere with Erasure. Even experienced villains usually betrayed themselves with a brief movement of the pupils.
Nomura looked at him differently.
There was no challenge in it. No panic. Only a frightening, deliberate attention, as though Nomura were observing not Aizawa's face but the Quirk beneath it. The violet eyes possessed a depth that should not have been there. For one instant, Aizawa had the impossible impression that the teenager could see straight through Erasure—its mechanism, its limits, and the man concealed behind it.
The sensation was absurd and entirely physical. Aizawa felt exposed, stripped of clothing and protection before a phenomenon he could not name. The incomprehensible threat did not come from Nomura's posture or his altered arm. It came from the confidence with which he allowed himself to be observed while somehow looking inward in return.
Instinct moved before reason.
Aizawa blinked. Erasure broke almost immediately after activation, and the redness drained from his eyes.
Something was wrong. He could not explain what.
— Enough, — Monica said.
Aizawa did not turn.
— Kaniyashiki, this concerns my investigation.
— He concerns my case and is under medical care.
— You just confirmed that you don't understand his Quirk.
— Which is precisely why you will not experiment with it on a pier.
Sato approached from the other side.
The sergeant's uniform was black with soot, and someone else's blood had dried across one sleeve. He stopped between Aizawa and the stretcher without acknowledging the difference in their status.
— That kid led the creature out of the warehouse while workers were still trapped inside. So consider this a very strong and not entirely optional recommendation: leave him alone. At least until the hospital. And show him a little more respect.
— Respect does not eliminate questions, — Aizawa replied coldly.
— The questions aren't going anywhere. Where were you, hero, while this horror was happening?
Aizawa's expression hardened.
— I was investigating the chain of events that brought me here.
— We were inside, — Sato cut him off. — If you want to explain your priorities, start with the workers he brought out. Then look at the bodies beneath those sheets and explain to their families why your first decision was to corner the person who kept that number from rising. You can't explain anything to the victims themselves. Their families will never see them again.
Monica turned toward him in surprise. Sato had treated Nomura with suspicion from the beginning, challenged his plan, and distrusted his motives. She had expected the sergeant to enforce procedure, not defend him with such fury.
Perhaps it was because Sato had watched the teenager walk against the evacuation with his own eyes. Some actions did not compel trust, but they made disrespect impossible.
Aizawa did not answer immediately. His gaze followed the sergeant's words despite himself: from the soot-covered workers to the sheeted bodies, then back to the teenager seated on the concrete.
The accusation was unfair. Aizawa had not been called to the port and could not have arrived sooner. He had been pursuing a different investigation that he considered no less important. But being technically unfair did not make Sato's words harmless.
Ever since discovering the inconsistency in Taiko's history, his attention had gradually narrowed to one person. The market reinforced the suspicion. The gas station reinforced it. Okutami's death and the port had settled into the same chosen picture. For the first time, Aizawa asked himself whether Nomura truly stood at the center of every event—or whether Aizawa had begun noticing only the details that led back to Nomura.
Perhaps he really was exaggerating the immediate danger because he could not tolerate gaps he was unable to explain.
The doubt did not erase the facts. The teenager had lied, his Quirk did not match the records, and the coincidences had become too numerous. But needing answers did not mean he had to corner Nomura here and now, on a wet pier between a doctor and the bodies of the dead.
— Perhaps I chose the wrong moment, — Aizawa said at last. — The questions remain.
It was a concession in timing, not direction. Even if Aizawa was exaggerating the immediate threat Nomura represented, the Quirk itself still demanded an explanation. Copying should not have stripped the villain of his mutation. The official records did not confirm that the teenager possessed any such ability, while his appearance had changed at the exact moment the villain's mutation collapsed. And no teenager should have looked into an active Erasure as though he understood it better than its owner did.
The doubt made Aizawa ease the pressure, but it did not make him abandon the trail. At the hospital, he would request the examination results, compare the changes in the remains with the changes in Nomura's body, and ask about the Quirk's mechanism again—this time without smoke, screaming, or a sergeant justifiably reminding him of the dead.
— The sergeant is right about at least one thing: Nomura is currently a patient, — the doctor cut in. — I see exhaustion, bruising, fresh scratches, and an unknown mutation that appeared minutes ago. Until we complete an examination, I forbid the use of suppression Quirks on him.
His gaze paused briefly on the teenager's temple. A small scar crossed it. The mark looked formed, but the tissue remained suspiciously fresh, as though the injury had closed moments ago. The doctor said nothing and mentally added it to the reasons not to conduct experiments on the pier.
Ingenium joined them after completing his initial deployment.
— Aizawa. I understand the need to investigate, but dozens of witnesses agree on one fact: this young man remained inside, organized a trap, and drew the villain away from the evacuation route. He is not attempting to flee. The interrogation can wait until the hospital.
— And if half his appearance disappears by then along with the current version of events?
— Then you ask your questions in the presence of counsel and a guardian, as required when dealing with a minor.
The radio on Ingenium's shoulder came alive before TNO could even thank him. A distant sector reported broken container seals and signs of movement between the storage rows. There was still no guarantee that the mutant had acted alone.
— My team will sweep the western side of the port, — Ingenium said. — Medical evacuation remains with the police and the coastal unit.
He gave TNO a brief nod and headed toward the vehicles within seconds. The other heroes from his agency moved with him, leaving the ruined warehouse behind and disappearing deeper among the containers.
So much for TNO's conversation with the famous Ingenium. He had managed to see the hero up close, receive his unexpected protection, and offer not one meaningful word in return. Then again, Ingenium clearly belonged to the sort of people who preferred to finish the job before exchanging pleasantries.
Gang Orca approached from the direction of the piers, his massive frame still gleaming with seawater. He surveyed the ruined warehouse and the mutant's dismembered remains, then stopped before the teenager seated on the concrete.
— Did you kill it? — he asked.
His coarse, almost villainous voice rolled across the pier and made the nearest police officers turn instinctively.
TNO looked up at him.
— I did.
The answer came too easily.
Gang Orca noted that admitting to the killing did not unsettle the teenager in the slightest. Nomura did not avert his eyes, attempt to justify himself, or hide behind provocative bravado. He treated the death casually, almost as though the act were already familiar to him.
As though he had killed before.
That proved nothing by itself. Perhaps the adrenaline simply had not released him yet, and the real shock would find him in a hospital room. Gang Orca kept the observation to himself and did not allow it to alter his expression.
Gang Orca studied the destruction again, as if measuring the answer against what victory had required.
— Good work, kid.
Coming from him, the praise sounded almost like a threat.
Up close, Gang Orca resembled a villain even more strongly than he did on television. Even his approval sounded as though TNO was about to be recruited or drowned. TNO liked him almost immediately.
— Plenty of people these days would not have done it, — he continued in the same rumbling voice. — They would have torn themselves apart trying to preserve the life of a villain who was still killing them and everyone around them. I would rather see a hero return home alive than die for someone who refused to stop.
He pointed one clawed finger toward the remains.
— Naturally, that does not apply to helpless small fry. There is no reason to kill someone you can restrain with your bare hands and deliver safely to the police. But that thing gave you a choice between its life and yours. You made the right choice.
— Do you often praise teenagers for killing? — TNO asked.
Several people nearby visibly tensed. Gang Orca merely inclined his massive head.
— I did not praise you for killing. I praised you for understanding the difference between necessity and convenience. Do not confuse them next time, and I will have no reason to revise my opinion.
TNO liked the answer more than the praise itself. Orca did not try to turn what happened into a beautiful heroic achievement, nor did he demand remorse he would never receive. He drew a boundary and left the responsibility on TNO's side of it.
The hero's gaze dropped to the striped tail sweeping restlessly across the concrete again.
— Did the mutation appear today?
— A few minutes ago.
— It shows. You are holding your shoulders as though your body has not learned where its center of gravity is. And your tail announces your thoughts before your face does.
The tail stopped immediately.
Gang Orca produced a low sound suspiciously close to a chuckle.
— Contact my agency when the doctors are finished with you. I employ enough people with mutation-type Quirks. We can teach you how to move without wrenching your spine every time you turn sharply. We might even give you some feline grace, since none seems to have arrived with the tail.
TNO looked down at the treacherous appendage.
— That almost sounds like an internship offer.
— If you learn to control the new body, we can discuss a hero internship as well.
— Can someone do that without attending an academy?
— An academy makes the road easier, but it does not own it, — Gang Orca replied. — Obtain official authorization to use your Quirk for hero work, register an internship with a licensed agency, and complete supervised training under a professional. With a provisional license, you can enter the field alongside heroes. Without one, you stay on the training grounds.
TNO was not exactly in a hurry to become a hero. The word came burdened with obligations, publicity, and far too many people who believed themselves entitled to judge his every decision.
As a cover, however, the plan was nearly perfect. Legal Quirk use, access to incident scenes, an official explanation for his constantly changing collection of abilities, and the support of a prominent agency. If society wanted to see a future hero when it looked at him, there was little benefit in correcting it too quickly.
— Is this still professional courtesy? — he asked.
— Only a suggestion, for now. Do not make me regret it.
— I'll try, Orca-sama.
TNO used the honorific without mockery. Possibly for the first time that night.
And just like that, he had gained not only a reason to see Gang Orca again, but a perfectly legal path to remain near him.
Gang Orca then turned toward the adults surrounding TNO.
— Now, would someone explain why the victor is not on a stretcher yet?
Sato turned toward the voice and faltered for a moment upon recognizing one of the country's strongest heroes. He straightened instinctively and spoke in a noticeably more restrained tone.
— Orca-sama... The medics are ready to move him, but they're waiting for police authorization. Eraser Head attempted to test his Quirk here. He's now agreed to postpone the questions until the hospital.
Gang Orca looked at Aizawa.
— You agreed?
— I acknowledged that I chose the wrong moment, — Aizawa replied. — That does not eliminate my suspicions. I still need to understand exactly what his Quirk does.
Gang Orca studied him for several seconds, then looked toward TNO.
— The answers aren't going anywhere. If you've decided to continue at the hospital, don't hold up the stretcher here.
— And he won't, — Tsukauchi confirmed calmly as he caught up. — Suspicion does not eliminate procedure. Nomura is currently an injured minor, a key witness, and the person whose actions allowed civilians to leave that warehouse. I also see no grounds to classify his use of a Quirk as unlawful. He acted under an immediate threat to life, in self-defense, and in defense of others. That is necessity, not assault. There are no grounds for arrest. There are grounds for protection.
He turned toward two officers.
— Escort the ambulance. Secure room, visitors only with investigative approval. Bag his clothing and blood samples as evidence. No Quirk testing until medical clearance.
The redness never returned to Aizawa's eyes.
Every side—police, medics, arriving heroes, Sato, and Monica—had effectively placed itself between him and TNO. Not because they trusted the teenager. Most felt precisely the opposite. But the person who had just saved dozens of lives and killed a Trigger-enhanced villain had earned a brief reprieve society usually called gratitude.
TNO had not asked any of them to interfere. That made it stranger to watch people from magazine covers and television screens form a living wall before him one after another: Ingenium invoked procedure, Gang Orca towered over everyone, Sato argued with a professional hero, and Monica stood closest of all.
Gratitude was an unfamiliar resource. Perhaps it was even more dangerous than fear. For one brief moment, it made him forget that every form of protection came with a price.
Aizawa stepped back.
He looked directly at TNO.
— At the hospital, I will begin with the same question.
— I look forward to it, — TNO replied.
It sounded almost polite.
The medics refused to let the conversation continue. They transferred TNO onto the stretcher, secured the straps, and covered him with a thermal blanket. The new arm remained above the silver material, too heavy and strange to conceal.
Monica walked beside the stretcher all the way to the ambulance. Before the doors closed, their eyes met once more. TNO said nothing. He merely gave the slightest nod, reminding her of his promise to explain everything later.
She answered with an equally brief nod.
The ambulance left the port escorted by two police vehicles.
Only after its red lights vanished behind the containers did Monica realize how badly her hands were shaking.
While Nomura remained nearby, she could monitor his breathing, argue with Aizawa, and keep unnecessary people away from him. Now there was nothing left to do, and her memory returned everything at once: the exposed bone at his temple, the missing arm, the Nomu's blood flowing uphill, and the smile of someone who should already have been dead by every reasonable law.
He had survived.
The relief frightened her almost as much as the regeneration she had witnessed.
Monica reviewed everything she had told the police. Nomura had helped organize the evacuation. He had copied Snip Clip. He had drawn the villain out of the warehouse and ended the fight on the pier. After copying the mutation, he had developed tiger traits and his arm had changed.
Every statement matched what she had seen.
She had merely omitted how foreign blood entered his body and assembled him again.
Every additional detail could produce a question, then another, followed by an isolation order, tests, and people who would stop seeing an injured teenager when they looked at Nomura. Monica told herself she was only waiting for the explanation he had promised. Somewhere deeper, she understood that she had already begun protecting him.
That was dangerous. Especially for a detective.
Yet the image before her was not an unknown Quirk user. It was a poor sixteen-year-old boy whom she had allowed to walk toward a monster, and who most likely still did not know that his father was dead.
A poor boy—and an extraordinarily brave one.
How much courage had it taken to stand against that monster for so long? First came the Molotov cocktail, its traces still burned across the mutant's ruined face. Then the warehouse plan, assembled with almost no time and no proper resources. Finally, he had chosen to draw the creature away from the evacuation himself, fully aware of what a single mistake would cost him.
And that was only what Monica had witnessed or reconstructed from the evidence. She had no idea what had happened before the port, how many times Nomura had already faced the creature, or how long he had continued resisting it alone.
Recklessness, desperation, and courage sometimes looked identical. Whatever had fueled his resolve, Nomura had kept rising in circumstances where most adults would have stopped trying long ago.
Several minutes later, fresh movement spread through the perimeter. Police officers stepped aside for an enormous rounded figure advancing toward the pier considerably faster than his build suggested possible.
— Where is Kaniyashiki? — called a voice familiar to most heroes. — I heard she ended up in the middle of this mess.
Fat Gum saw Monica before she could answer. Relief appeared on his face immediately and vanished just as quickly behind his customary smile.
— Alive, — he breathed as he stopped before her. — All in one piece?
— Mostly. And you do not need to examine me in the middle of the pier.
— If you can argue, you're definitely alive.
Monica rolled her eyes, but the tension in her shoulders visibly eased. Fat Gum briefly set one hand on her head, received an irritated swat across the wrist, and looked around.
— Where's the kid?
— Already on his way to the hospital, — Sato replied. — Nomura Okutami. He helped get the workers out, organized the trap, and drew the mutant away from the evacuation route.
Fat Gum looked toward the dismembered remains.
— He killed it?
— Yes, — Monica said, forcing her voice to remain level. — The villain kept attacking. We had no other way to stop him.
Not a word about the blood. Not a word about the second Quirk. Only the safe portion of the truth.
Fat Gum's smile faded.
— I won't pretend I like that outcome. A villain dying is rare in hero work, and it should remain rare. If someone can be subdued and delivered to the police alive, we have a duty to do it.
He examined the ruined warehouse and the claw marks across the concrete once more.
— But I wasn't here. I didn't stand in front of that creature, and I won't condemn the boy for a decision he was forced to make. From the look of things, he was given almost no choice.
Monica lowered her gaze.
— He couldn't have done it without us, — she said quietly. — But we couldn't have done it without him either. If Nomura hadn't drawn that creature out of the warehouse and kept it on the pier, the death toll would have been much higher.
— Then I'll thank him properly when I reach the hospital. For the people. And especially for the fact that you're standing here now.
For once, Monica found no sharp response.
— And when you get to the reports, call me first, — Fat Gum added.
— I am capable of writing my own report.
— I don't doubt it. That's why I'm asking you to call before someone decides to rewrite it for you.
A scream tore through the conversation.
It was not an order or a warning of another threat. It was the sound of someone whose final hope had just been taken away.
Sato, Fat Gum, Tsukauchi, Aizawa, and Monica turned at the same time.
Identification had begun beyond the inner cordon. A woman collapsed beside one of the covered bodies and repeated her son's name until her voice broke into a rasp. A man tried to hold a young woman who had recognized her older brother beneath the next sheet. Farther away, someone called for a sister while already knowing that no answer would come.
Grief moved across the pier in waves. Parents, children, siblings, and friends found the people they had come for—and lost them completely.
That night at Hosu port claimed seven civilians, two police officers, and three professional heroes.
Twelve people.
TNO had failed to save them. So had Monica, Sato, the arriving heroes, and the entire system she had always trusted. He had only prevented the number from rising higher.
Monica watched the people beside the covered bodies and felt her relief for one survivor mix with shame before the twelve dead. The victory on that pier was not a bright one. It barely deserved the word at all.
Somewhere beyond the containers, the ambulance carrying the teenager who had promised her the truth had already disappeared.
Monica remained between two facts: Nomura had saved many lives—and she still had no idea who he truly was.