The dust from Shindo's "Tremoring Earth" hung in the stagnant air of the industrial sector like a shroud of pulverized bone.
Sherlock Sheets stood with his back against the rusted hull of a massive, dead furnace, the metallic scent of oxidized iron filling his lungs. Ahead of him, the semi-circle of nearly forty students tightened. Their boots crunched on the gravel—a rhythmic, predatory sound that signaled the start of a coordinated execution.
At the center stood a tall boy from Seijin Academy, his hands glowing with a low, orange thermal energy. To his right, a girl from a minor school held a high-pressure water nozzle integrated into her support gauntlets. Behind them, a student with twin Tesla-coil rods strapped to his forearms crackled with a jagged, blue electricity.
"We've watched your tapes, UA," the boy with the heat Quirk sneered, his palms beginning to hiss as the temperature around him spiked. "The Paper Magician. You're the brains, aren't you? The one who thinks he can calculate his way out of a slaughter."
The girl with the water nozzle stepped forward, her gaze icy. "We didn't just stumble upon you, Sheets. We planned for this.
Ketsubutsu, Seijin, and four other academies... we formed a temporary coalition with one objective: to dismantle Class 1-A, one 'prodigy' at a time. And we decided to start with the most fragile link in your chain."
"You're the boy with the paper," the electric student added, a spark jumping from his rod to the damp concrete. "It's a versatile Quirk, sure. In a controlled gym, you look like a god.
But here? In the real world? Paper burns. Paper gets wet. Paper conducts the very lightning that will stop your heart. We are the 'Anti-Paper' specifically grouped to ensure you don't make it to the second round."
Sherlock didn't flinch. He adjusted his high collar, his emerald eyes scanning the group with a terrifying, clinical stillness. He wasn't looking at their faces; he was looking at their centers of gravity, the heat signatures of their Quirk activation points, and the structural integrity of the debris around them.
"An 'Anti-Paper' unit," Sherlock mused, his voice cutting through the hum of their gathered powers like a cold scalpel. "It's a fascinating sociological phenomenon. You've traded your individual potential for a collective grudge. You've spent months studying the public records of the Sports Festival, analyzing the 'Pulp Princess's son' as if I were a static equation in a textbook."
He raised his hands, his fingerless gloves flexing as the blue neural lines began to pulse with a steady, rhythmic light.
"You saw my paper burn under Todoroki's flames. You saw it tear under raw physical force. You've built your entire strategy on the 'obvious' weaknesses of cellulose. You think you've found the flaws in the foundation."
He took a slow step forward, the gravel grinding beneath his boot.
"But you've made a fatal error in your blueprints. You assume that the paper I manifest is the same paper you find in a library. You think it's just wood pulp and hope. You've prepared for a librarian... but you're standing in front of an Magician."
"Enough talk! He's trying to stall!" the Seijin student roared. "Burn him out! Drown him! Fry him!"
The assault was instantaneous and overwhelming. The boy unleashed a twin stream of concentrated thermal energy—a 500°C blast designed to vaporize anything in its path. Simultaneously, the girl triggered her water cannon, a high-velocity jet meant to turn Sherlock's defense into a pulp. The electric student slammed his rods together, sending a jagged bolt of ten thousand volts screaming toward Sherlock's chest.
"Paper Art: Fortress Fold!"
Sherlock didn't just manifest a wall. He collapsed his hands inward, and from the seams of his duster and the reservoirs in his boots, thousands of sheets of Molecular Glaze Paper erupted.
The paper didn't just stack; it interlocked. In the span of a heartbeat, a massive, hexagonal dome encased Sherlock. The sheets were folded into complex, geometric patterns—triangles within hexagons—creating a structure that utilized the same principles as a beehive's honeycomb but with the density of a diamond.
The fire hit the dome. The water slammed into the sides. The electricity surged across the surface.
The attackers waited for the scream. They waited for the dome to blacken, melt, or short-circuit. But instead, the fire simply rolled off the glazed surface like sunbeams off a polished mirror. The water shattered upon impact, turning into a fine mist that did nothing to soften the structure. The electricity skittered across the outer shell, unable to find a path through the non-conductive, resin-heavy glaze Sherlock had engineered into the paper's very fibers.
Inside the dome, Sherlock's voice echoed, calm and detached, carrying a weight of mass and authority that chilled their blood.
"My paper is a composite material," Sherlock explained, his voice sounding as if it were coming from a tomb. "It is infused with the lipids and salts of my own metabolic processes, then compressed at the molecular level through the sheer tension of my neural link. It possesses a high-reflectivity glaze that dissipates thermal energy and a hydrophobic coating that rejects liquid saturation. And as for your electricity... pure cellulose is a natural insulator. I've simply perfected the math."
He paused, and the air inside the dome vibrated with a low, predatory hum.
"Ordinary paper burns. It gets wet. It falls apart. But I am the Paper Magician. And in my world, the medium does not break for the elements. The elements break for me."
"But I am not an ordinary boy with a Quirk. I am the Paper Magician. And in my world, the medium follows the Master."
"He's still in there! Break it down! Use raw force!" the students screamed, their voices cracking with a mix of panic and frustration.
Their "hard counters" had failed to leave even a scorch mark on the white fortress, and the sight of the unyielding dome was starting to wear down their morale.
Nearly twenty students charged at once, their bodies glowing or transforming as they aimed their physical-enhancement Quirks at the dome. Fists of hardened stone, elongated limbs like battering rams, and concussive kinetic blasts slammed into the paper structure. The sound was deafening—a series of wet, heavy thuds followed by the sharp crack of displaced air.
Inside the dark, quiet space of the dome, Sherlock felt the world shaking. He could feel the impact of every blow through the soles of his boots. Each hit was a drain on his focus, a steady pull on the energy he had left after his long night of secret training. His breathing was shallow, his eyes closed as he maintained the mental grip on the thousands of interlocking sheets.
They think a fortress is a place to hide, Sherlock thought, his jaw tightening. They don't realize that a fortress is just a weapon that hasn't moved yet.
The dome didn't just sit there. It unfolded.
The hexagonal plates detached with a sound like a deck of cards being shuffled by a giant.
They expanded outward with violent, explosive force, like a blooming metal flower made of a thousand razor blades. The sheer pressure of the unfolding acted as a kinetic shockwave, catching the charging students mid-stride and throwing them backward into the rubble and rusted machinery.
Sherlock stood in the center of the clearing as the paper settled into a wide, shimmering ring around him. His tan duster snapped in the sudden, artificial gale he had created. He looked at the scattered crowd, his eyes glowing with an intense, predatory light that made the nearest students stumble back in fear.
"You've seen how I defend," Sherlock said, his voice carrying effortlessly through the industrial yard. "Now, let's see if you can keep up with the Magician's hands."
He reached into his belt pouches and threw forty Molecular Glaze Cards into the air. They didn't tumble; they snapped into a perfect, rotating halo that spun around him like the rings of a lethal planet. With a sharp flick of his wrists, the blue lines on his gloves flared with light, and the cards blurred into motion.
They moved in chaotic, overlapping arcs that were impossible to track with the naked eye. To the attackers, it looked like forty streaks of white lightning were dancing through the air.
Clack! Clack-clack!
The sound of plastic shattering echoed through the yard. Sherlock wasn't aiming for their limbs or their faces—he was a surgeon of the exam. The cards struck the red targets on their chests, shoulders, and thighs with impossible precision.
"My target! It's gone!" one boy yelled, staring down at the broken plastic on his vest.
"He hit two of mine in one pass! I didn't even see him move!"
Sherlock didn't stay stationary. He kicked off the ground, stepping onto a hovering card that acted as a high-speed springboard. He blurred ten meters to the left, appearing like a ghost behind a group of three students who were trying to regroup. Before they could even gasp, he manifested a long, serrated ribbon of paper that lashed out like a whip, wrapping around their ankles and jerking them off their feet.
The yard was a whirlwind of white paper and desperate shouts. Sherlock moved through the chaos with a terrifying grace, always one step ahead, his cards returning to his hands only to be launched again in a never-ending cycle of elimination.
Despite his dominance, the weight of the previous day began to pull at Sherlock's limbs. His heart was a heavy, uneven drum against his ribs, and the edges of his vision were starting to fray. He had taken down thirty-five... thirty-six... but there were still those who refused to break.
One student—a boy who had been hiding behind a rusted boiler, watching the battle with narrow, calculating eyes—suddenly lunged. He didn't have a flashy Quirk. He didn't have fire or water. He threw a heavy, glass canister.
The canister shattered against the ground at Sherlock's feet, splashing a thick, viscous, black liquid across his boots and the hem of his long coat.
Sherlock froze.
The air immediately filled with a sharp, pungent stench that made his stomach churn.
"Oil," Sherlock whispered, his brow furrowing as he looked down.
The boy who threw it stood up, a jagged, triumphant grin on his face. "I'm not a hero candidate for nothing, UA! I've been waiting for you to use that fancy glaze! Resins, coatings, hydrophobic layers... they all have a solvent. And industrial-grade oil is the universal killer for your 'magic' paper!"
It was the one variable Sherlock couldn't fully calculate for in the heat of battle. The paper at his feet began to soften almost instantly. The rigid, diamond-like tension that made his paper stronger than steel began to dissolve into a limp, grey pulp. The cards in his halo started to wobble and dip, their aerodynamic edges fouled by the heavy oil vapor now hanging in the air.
The remaining students, seeing the "Magician" falter, began to rally. Their fear was replaced by a desperate, hungry energy.
"He's stuck! Look at his boots! He can't step on the cards if they're melting!"
Sherlock looked at the black sludge. He felt the cold touch of exhaustion creeping up his spine. He could feel the two forbidden Blood Paper cards resting in his inner pocket, their weight a constant temptation. They didn't care about oil. They didn't care about solvents. They were a path to an instant, bloody victory.
No, Sherlock thought, his teeth gritting so hard his jaw ached. As he know he can't use this as he is bit ready and could have a heartattack.
"You've found the hole in the armor," Sherlock admitted, his voice cold and steady despite the sweat stinging his eyes.
"Industrial oil. A clever trick for a clever student. But you've made one more mistake."
He looked up, and for the first time, his emerald eyes held a hint of genuine, dark amusement.
"You assumed that my paper was the only thing in this yard that could be dangerous."
Sherlock slammed his hands together in a heavy, echoing clap that sounded like a gunshot.
"Paper Art: Razor Cyclone - Inverse Rotation!"
Instead of sending the paper out to attack, he pulled every scrap of paper he had manifested into a tight, vertical spiral around his own body. Thousands of sheets began to spin at supersonic speeds, creating a localized vacuum of howling wind and shrieking paper.
The friction was immense. The glazed sheets rubbed against each other so fast they generated a wall of heat. The oil on his boots wasn't just blown away—it was atomized.
The intense heat of the spinning vortex dried the solvent before it could ever reach the core of his reserves.
The "Soggy Magician" vanished. In his place was a towering pillar of white, humming fury that reached toward the ceiling of the industrial hall.
"My paper might have a weakness," Sherlock's voice boomed from the heart of the storm, "but my spirit is a fortress you cannot burn!"
The cyclone expanded with a final, violent roar, a massive wave of white that cleared the entire clearing like a giant's broom. When the dust and paper finally settled, Sherlock stood alone in the center of a graveyard of broken targets. Around him, forty students lay on the ground, gasping for air, their spirits utterly crushed by the scale of the power they had just witnessed.
He was breathing in heavy, ragged gasps, his duster stained with oil and his hands shaking with the aftershocks of the Quirk output. But he was standing.
"Forty targets," Sherlock noted, his voice a ghost of its former self as he checked the tally on his arm. "The math is complete for this sector."
But then, the air was ripped apart by a distant, booming explosion—one that didn't carry the spicy scent of Bakugo's nitroglycerin. It was followed by a low, vibrating hum that Sherlock recognized instantly.
"Shoji... and Jirou," Sherlock whispered, his head snapping toward the mountain sector.
Without a second glance at the fallen, Sherlock stepped onto a fresh, clean card, his body swaying with fatigue as he surged toward the mountains. The Magician wasn't done yet. He had a debt to pay to the people who called him a friend.
Sherlock has held the line! He has cleared the path, but his classmates are in trouble.
[End of chapter]
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