The morning air was like a wet shroud, heavy with the scent of industrial exhaust and the lingering, metallic tang of cold blood. Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi stood at the base of the bronze shield monument, his tan trench coat flapping slightly in the bitter wind. He looked tired, his eyes were sunken, and the lines around his mouth had deepened into permanent grooves of exhaustion.
He wasn't looking at the statue. He was looking at the ground.
"It's a lot of blood, Naomasa," a detective beside him said, scribbling notes on a digital pad. "High-pressure spray, based on the pattern on the bronze. Someone was pinned here. Pinned and then… ventilated almost."
Tsukauchi knelt, his gloved fingers hovering over a dark, frozen smear on the pavement. He tilted his head, his "Truth-Seeker" quirk buzzing at the back of his mind, though there was no one currently speaking to him. The crime scene itself was a lie he was trying to untangle.
"The trail starts here," Tsukauchi said, pointing to the base of the statue where the blood was thickest. "And then it just… stops. It looks like the body was dragged, or carried, toward that brick wall over there." He gestured toward a seemingly solid warehouse wall thirty feet away. "But the trail vanishes three feet before the masonry. No footprints. No additional spatter. Just a clean break."
"Maybe the person was picked up again by someone stronger, or it was some kind of quirk," another detective suggested, a younger man with a sharp, arrogant face. He kicked at a piece of loose gravel, his lip curling in a sneer as he looked at the surrounding neighbourhood. "Or maybe one of these 'variants' just ate the evidence. You know how they get in these districts. This whole place is a breeding ground for cannibalism. I bet if we started knocking down doors, we'd find the body in a stew pot."
A couple of other officers chuckled, the sound hollow and mean in the morning silence. "Yeah," one added, lighting a cigarette despite the crime scene tape. "They probably had a disagreement about who had more limbs and decided to settle it the old-fashioned way. Why are we even investigating this?"
Tsukauchi stood up slowly. The air around him seemed to drop several degrees. He turned his gaze on the officers, a gaze so steady and uncompromising that the laughter died in their throats.
"That's enough," Tsukauchi said, his voice a low, dangerous velvet. "The man who died here, or was injured here, is a human being under the protection of the law. This district is not a 'breeding ground', it is a community. If I hear one more derogatory remark about the residents of Osaka, you'll be stuck with deskwork filling out your own resignation. Am I clear?"
The detectives shifted uncomfortably, avoiding his eyes. "Clear, sir."
"Good." Tsukauchi turned back to the wall, his brow furrowed. "We are guests in this district. We treat the people here with the respect their status demands."
"Detective Tsukauchi! Over here!"
A new figure approached from the edge of the police cordon. He was a shorter man, but his presence was immediately commanding. He wore a standard officer's uniform, but his head was that of a ginger tabby cat, his ears twitching with alertness and his whiskers white against his fur.
"Officer Sansa," Tsukauchi said, a genuine, albeit small, spark of relief flickering in his tired eyes.
Sansa Tamakawa, a veteran officer of the Osaka force, stepped over the tape and offered a sharp salute. "Detective. I heard the Tokyo office sent their best to deal with the 'Aftermath' mess. I didn't think it would be you."
"I was… reassigned," Tsukauchi said vaguely. He turned to the other detectives. "This is Officer Sansa. He's a local legend in this district. He's close with the communities here and knows the geography better than any satellite. From this point on, he is our primary liaison."
Sansa nodded to the group, his feline eyes scanning the blood on the shield. "It's a grim sight, Naomasa. The neighbourhood is on edge. They saw a short figure that looked like a kid and some say they say him fighting some tall figure, but they left before the end since they didn't want to see an outcome or potentially become next."
"We need a sample of this blood," Tsukauchi ordered, gesturing to one of the technicians. "Run it against the national database."
Sansa watched the technician work. "I'll start talking to the shopkeepers. They won't speak to 'standard' suits, but they know me. I'll see if anyone saw where the body went before it hit that wall."
"Thank you, Sansa," Tsukauchi said.
As the officers began to disperse under Sansa's guidance, Tsukauchi walked to the edge of the park, looking out toward the distant skyline of central Osaka. Internally, he let out a long, heavy sigh that he couldn't show his men.
He didn't want to be in Osaka. He should have been in Musutafu. Ever since the "Asset Refinement" began and the Principal was placed under house arrest, Tsukauchi had been trying to pierce the Commission's veil. He had pressed too hard. He had asked the wrong questions to the wrong people.
And this was his reward. A new case to the Osaka field office, tasked with chasing the potential new villain group, Aftermath. He didn't mind it though, one member of that group he knew personally, and he was actually the only reason he believed there had to be some kind of mistake. The other familiar face was slightly older, and it belonged to Yoshi Abara, the boy he was chasing from the figure of Izuku Midoriya. And he didn't even want to think of Akira Furuhaya.
He hadn't been able to contact Nezu, hadn't been able to check on All Might's secret facility either.
He was a man of truth in a city built on secrets.
This is what I get for pressing the issue, he thought, his hand tightening on the brim of his hat.
He looked back at the bronze shield, at the clean, white light of the morning sun hitting the bloodstains. He felt a shiver of dread.
"Find the body," Tsukauchi whispered to the wind.
___
Masanori Kuroda sat in the principal's office of UA High School, his hands folded perfectly atop a desk of polished obsidian. The light from the panoramic window behind him cast his shadow long across the room, but the man himself remained bathed in a sterile, artificial glow. On his face was a smile, a masterpiece of social engineering. It was the "Standard Smile," curved at the exact angle to suggest warmth, stability, and authority.
But internally, Kuroda was a desert.
He was thinking about his life, or rather, the lack of one. He had spent forty years waiting for the "flood."
As a child, he had been told that as he grew older, the world would open up, that he would feel the surge of puberty, the sting of heartbreak, the heat of ambition. He had waited patiently, observing his peers as they wept over broken toys or cheered over high marks. He had mimicked them, practicing the tilt of a head or the wetness of an eye in his bedroom mirror, assuming that eventually, the internal sensation would catch up to the external performance.
It never did.
He remembered his younger days with a clinical detachment. When he failed a grade in middle school, his parents had been frantic, searching his face for shame or defiance. He felt neither. He simply thought it was inefficient to spend time on subjects that didn't provide a logical return. When he later excelled and graduated at the top of his class, the praise of his teachers felt like a gentle breeze against a stone wall. It was just data.
Relationships had been no different. He had dated girls, then boys, then both, searching for the "spark" that poets and musicians obsessed over. He found only the mechanical exchange of time and biology.
He would look at a partner's crying face and think it fascinating the ways in which people burst out in tears over such menial things, but he felt no urge to offer comfort. To him, the standard events of youth were like watching a play in a language he didn't speak. He understood the plot, but the music meant nothing.
When he entered the real world as a consultant for a high-stakes logistics firm, he realized his "blankness" was his greatest asset. He didn't have a side, he didn't have a heart to bleed. He saw the world as a sprawling strategy game. That was the only thing that brought a flicker of what might have been "interest", the architecture of systems. He loved quirks, not because they were "heroic," but because they were an individuality that spoke of the person. To him, a fire-breathing hero was just a localized combustion unit with specific fuel requirements.
The Hero Commission had headhunted him when he was thirty. They saw a brilliant strategist, he saw a bigger board. He found certain aspects of the work, the manipulation of public perception, the engineering of "accidents", vaguely entertaining. But even that was beginning to bore him.
He had set a goal, work his way to the absolute summit of the national infrastructure, and then, once he reached the peak, simply step away. Perhaps he would tear the whole thing down on his way out, just to see if the resulting collapse would finally provide the emotional "flood" he had been denied his whole life.
Being sent to UA to replace Nezu was a "sidequest." It was a delightful little diversion in the center of his grand game. And like any strategist, he found himself unable to ignore a "leak" in the system.
That leak was Kai Chisaki. Overhaul.
The Commission, in their infinite, bureaucratic stupidity, viewed the Shie Hassaikai leader as a secret asset, a way to manufacture control through the distribution of Quirk-Destroying bullets as well as some fountain of youth. To the Commission, he was an underground partner. To Kuroda, he was a massive loss of capital. He was a variable that the Commission couldn't fully control, and Kuroda hated sloppy mathematics.
He knew the select few in the President's office who were protecting Overhaul. He knew their passwords, their bank accounts, and their private shames. They were stupid, they were sentimental. They thought they were playing a game of power, but they were just toddlers playing with matches.
Kuroda tapped a stylus against a digital tablet. He was going to destroy Overhaul. Not because it was the "right" thing to do, he didn't believe in right or wrong, but because it would be a fun move to make against his own employers.
They couldn't call him out on it because they officially denied Overhaul's existence. He would burn their secret investment and they would have to thank him for it.
But he wouldn't send the Pros or at least not only pros. He wouldn't send the teachers who were already embittered by his leadership. No, he wanted to see the "reaction" of the children.
He wanted to send the students of Class 1-A and 1-B into the heart of a Yakuza nest. He wanted them to experience a success so brutal and high-stakes that it would fundamentally alter their psychology. He wanted to see if the "Hero Machine" could produce something as blank and efficient as himself.
Kuroda began to scroll through the roster of Class 1-A. His eyes were cold, his smile never wavering.
He looked at the name Katsuki Bakugo. He hovered over it for a second, then drew a sharp, digital line through it. Kuroda thought. Neuro-Somatic Severance. Unpredictable kinetic output. A hollow-point. Irrelevant for this mission.
He scrolled down to Shoto Todoroki. Another line. Too much external baggage. Probably connected to his father's expectation. He is a legacy act, not a refined asset.
He continued to cross out names, the loud ones, the weak ones, the ones whose hearts were still too soft even after all they had been through. He didn't want the kids who fought for justice. He wanted the ones who were desperate for a win in this Age.
He crossed out Eijiro Kirishima.
He crossed out Mina Ashido.
Kuroda leaned back, his eyes reflecting the blue light of the tablet. The "Standard Smile" remained fixed on his face, but his mind was already blocks away, calculating the vectors of a raid that would shatter the Shie Hassaikai and leave the Hero Commission scrambling to recover their secrets.
He wasn't loyal to the State. He wasn't loyal to the students. He was only loyal to the beautiful, cold logic of the game. And in his game, every hero was just a piece of wood, and every villain was just a space to be occupied.
He tapped a final few names, the chosen ones who would lead the charge into the underground. He didn't feel excitement. He didn't feel pride. He just felt the satisfaction of a clock ticking toward midnight. The sidequest was about to become the main event.