The room was silent.
Not the kind of silence one found in the White Room—sterile, clinical, broken only by footsteps and the barked orders of instructors—but a silence of the world itself. Outside, distant sirens pulsed faintly. A car passed on wet asphalt three blocks away. Pipes hummed in the walls. This silence was organic, alive, unpolished.
Kiyotaka sat cross-legged on the bare floor of the apartment. The blinds filtered the orange glow of a streetlamp. His breathing was slow, even. He had sat like this for hours now, unmoving, as if still locked in one of the White Room's tests of endurance.
Something stirred inside him.
Not hunger. Not fatigue. He knew those intimately and could suppress them at will. This was something alien, something that did not belong—yet paradoxically, it fit. A pulse, faint but undeniable, reverberated through his body and mind. As if the very structure of who he was had been… recognized.
His fingers curled slightly against the floorboards. The sensation was sharp, precise. He let the silence settle again before standing. Smoothly, without wasted movement, he rose to his feet.
Testing. Verification. He could not trust sensations alone.
Physical Proof
He dropped to the floor. Push-ups—clean, precise, controlled. His muscles moved with liquid efficiency, his breath steady. He accelerated, doubled the pace, tripled it. His heart rate barely shifted. At one hundred, he stopped, not because of exhaustion but because the data was clear.
He moved into squats. Perfect balance. Then into a handstand, holding the position without tremor. He shifted his weight, walking forward on his hands, silent as a predator. He inverted back to standing, landing softly, without sound.
It wasn't normal.
He had always been fast, strong, controlled. White Room training had forced his body to peak efficiency. But this was beyond even that. Each motion carried no excess energy. His reflexes responded before conscious thought. His endurance had no sharp edges, no warning tremors of fatigue.
He reached for the survival kit, unzipped it, and retrieved the knife. Stainless steel, simple, sharp enough. He pressed the blade lightly across his palm. A shallow cut opened, blood beading. He watched.
The bleeding slowed too quickly. Stopped. He flexed the hand. No pain, no hindrance. Scar tissue would not even form. His tolerance to injury had always been high, but this was… different. More efficient.
Was it healing? Or simply optimization of clotting, skin resilience, nerve control? He noted the possibilities without conclusion.
Mental Proof
He sat back down, knife still in hand, and closed his eyes.
Equations flooded back instantly: calculus problems, statistical proofs, the works of Descartes and Nietzsche. He whispered them silently, line by line, flawless. He had been able to recall before, but not like this. There was no strain. No searching. Information surfaced instantly, ordered, pristine.
Memory drills. Forced memorization of books, passages, numbers under pressure. Now, they were accessible as though written directly into his mind.
He reconstructed a battle scenario from years ago—two opponents, knives, a confined space. He replayed it. His younger self dodging, countering, exploiting openings. Then he altered the scenario: what if the opponent feinted left? What if one had a hidden weapon? What if a third opponent entered from the blind spot?
His mind adapted instantly. Branching paths, probabilities, outcomes. Faster than before. Cleaner.
This was not just genius. It was enhancement. His intellect, his memory, his capacity for simulation—all sharpened.
And deeper still, something else: a framework. His thoughts aligned too smoothly. As if a hidden structure guided his reasoning, ensuring each path synergized with the next.
Powers.
The word intruded, clinical, precise.
He opened his eyes.
The Framework
The knowledge came unbidden. As though whispered, not in sound but in instinct. He understood things he had no reason to. Powers. Perks. Systems. A classification, cold and clear.
Training Montage. Growth Booster. Grab-Bag. Blank. Mental Barrier. Naturalized Foreigner. Words that did not belong to his world yet were now burned into his understanding.
He dissected them carefully, methodically.
Training Montage (Trump): effort became power. His training shaped abilities, codified them. His entire life in the White Room was no longer scars—it was foundation. Martial arts, endurance, pain tolerance, reflexes… each was crystallized as something beyond human. Passive, instinctive. A new truth: anything he trained could become more.
Growth Booster (Trump): a mechanism to accelerate growth. His own. Others', if he wished. Dangerous. A way to forge soldiers. Tools. Slaves. A way to replicate the White Room's purpose—but under his control.
Grab-Bag Trump: synergy without end. Train a power, gain a secondary one. Train that, gain another. Infinite progression. A spiral upward with no ceiling.
Blank: Thinkers could not touch him. No precognition, no clairvoyance, no intuitive reads. He was a blind spot, a hole in the fabric of prediction. In a world where information was power, this was absolute.
Mental Barrier: immunity. No intrusion, no manipulation, no illusion could bend his mind. He could not be controlled, deceived, compelled. His thoughts were his alone.
Naturalized Foreigner: immunity to the world's metaphysical restrictions. He was not of this place. Not of its rules. He was outside the system.
The conclusion settled. He was not simply enhanced. He was unbound.
Classification
He opened the drawer of the desk, retrieved paper and pen, and began writing. Not for vanity, but for order.
Brute: Peak physicality, healing, endurance. Brute 2, potentially higher.Mover: Reflexes, coordination, speed. Efficiency elevated to inhuman levels. Mover 2.Thinker: Genius intellect, memory, tactical simulation. Thinker 4–6 potential. With Blank, higher.Trump: Infinite growth, synergy, manipulation of others' powers. Trump X. Undefined.Striker/Changer (potential): If physical adaptations grew further. Undetermined.Master (theoretical): With Growth Booster, an army could be made. Dangerous.
He paused.
The classification was orderly, but insufficient. The system was designed for shards, not for him. He did not fit.
The PRT's cage of labels could not contain this.
The Realization
He set the pen down, leaned back in the chair, and stared at the ceiling.
This was no coincidence. Someone had placed him here. Someone had granted him this. Powers, identity, resources. The precision was too clean.
The White Room had tried to own him. His father had called him a masterpiece. A tool.
But now…
All that training, all that suffering, had crystallized into something greater. And it was not theirs. It was his.
For the first time, he felt something shift inside him. A flicker, faint but undeniable—an emotion. Not joy, not sorrow. Something sharper.
Freedom.
It lasted only a moment before he smothered it, returning to composure.
He rose, moved to the window, and drew the blinds aside. Brockton Bay sprawled before him. Streets broken, lights flickering, sirens in the distance. A rotten city. A city ruled by power.
The White Room had taught him one truth: strength determined survival. This world was no different. But unlike then, his strength was his own.
The awakening was not over. It had only begun.
And as he stared into the night, Kiyotaka understood one thing with absolute clarity:
He was no longer just Ayanokouji Kiyotaka.He was something else.An anomaly.
Unseen. Unbound. Limitless.