Location: Gunga Mountain Airspace, HPSC Agency Stealth Transport Plane
WHIRRRRR.
Five thousand feet above the torn mountain peak, the rear cargo ramp of the sleek stealth plane lowered open against the wind.
Standing between six industrial-sized spools of braided carbon-fiber cable, Tsunagu Hakamada tugged the high denim collar of his hero suit up over his nose.
For the past few months, he had walked around Tokyo in a plain business suit answering to the name Tanaka while the rest of the world thought Best Jeanist was MIA or had a secret mission.
'I spent three whole weeks trying to write my own entrance lyrics on that legal pad,' Tsunagu thought, looking down through the clouds at the smoke rising from the breached Gunga cavern. 'No matter how many times I rhymed selvedge with justice, I couldn't come up with a melody that had even half the impact of X's track.'
Seven days ago, after watching him stare at a blank sheet of music paper for two hours during lunch, Kaito had finally taken pity on him and tossed a black audio drive onto his desk.
There weren't any vocals on the file Kaito gave him, yet the second Tsunagu plugged his headphones in and heard the violin and electric guitar kick in, his blood had started pumping faster than it had in ten years.
Reaching over to the sound-projection panel mounted along the underside of the cargo bay, Tsunagu flipped the master broadcast switch with his thumb.
CLICK.
[A/n: Cue "Fairy Tail Main Theme"]
A lone, soaring violin melody echoed straight out of the directional sky-speakers beneath the plane's belly, followed two seconds later by heavy Celtic bagpipes and a roaring electric guitar riff that rattled the clouds.
"Time to get back to work," Tsunagu murmured, stepping straight off the open metal ramp as all six giant cable spools rolled out into the sky behind him.
--<>--
Time: Few Seconds Ago
SPLAT.
Down inside the shattered upper corridor of the mansion, the last clone of Twice lost its shape and dissolved across the wooden floorboards.
Leaning heavily against the cracked plaster wall with two crimson feather-blades held in his hands, Hawks let out a shaky breath through his teeth.
"...I'm sorry, Jin," Hawks whispered to the empty hallway, wiping a smudge of dust from his cheek behind his cracked visor. "...I really tried to give you a way out."
BOOOOOOM!
Before Hawks could take a single step toward the broken window to regroup with the vanguard, the double doors at the end of the corridor blew straight off their hinges in a wave of blinding blue fire.
"Get away from him, you filthy rat!" Dabi roared, sprinting straight through the rolling blue flames with both scarred palms raised and superheated plasma pouring from his skin.
Seeing the wall of blue fire rushing down the narrow hallway at point-blank range, Hawks tried to kick off the floorboards, only for his exhausted legs to slip on the wet mud left behind by Twice's clone.
'Crap—I'm too close to dodge the blast wave!' Hawks thought, throwing his crossed arms up in front of his face as the blue heat singed the tips of his red wings.
"Burn to ash, birdie!" Dabi snarled, thrusting both blazing hands straight at Hawks's chest from four feet away.
🎵 DUN-DUN-DUN, DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN! 🎵
Right as the blue flames licked across Hawks's jacket sleeves, a deafening, heroic burst of electric guitars, drums, and bagpipes blasted straight down through the torn ceiling from the open sky above the mountain.
"...Huh?!" Dabi blinked, his turquoise eyes jerking upward toward the hole in the roof as the sudden, booming battle music threw off his aim by half an inch.
"...What the heck is that sound?!" Hawks gasped, looking up at the clouds in total bewilderment.
That half-second of hesitation was all it took.
WHOOSH!
Six massive industrial spools of carbon-fiber cable plummeted out of the sky like meteors, smashing straight through the remaining roof beams above the walkway.
Before Dabi could redirect his fire, dozens of thick, steel-braided denim threads wrapped securely around Hawks's waist and yanked him thirty feet backward down the hall without a single burn mark on his skin.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
At the exact same instant, three thousand strands of heavy carbon-fiber cable wove together in mid-air and slammed down between them like a solid iron curtain, blocking Dabi's blue flames completely and forcing the scarred villain to flip backward onto the balcony railing.
Dropping down from the sky onto a suspended web of criss-crossing cables, Best Jeanist landed gracefully in front of Hawks as the driving guitar melody echoed across the courtyard.
"...Apologies for the long absence, everyone," Tsunagu declared, raising one gloved hand as thousands of silver threads floated around his shoulders. "...As of twelve o'clock today, Best Jeanist is officially back on active duty!"
Crouching on the scorched iron railing across the walkway, Dabi stared at the Number Three Hero with his mouth hanging wide open, blue smoke curling from his trembling fingers.
"...Best Jeanist?!" Dabi choked out, his eyes darting wildly from Tsunagu's face back to Hawks standing unscathed behind him.
Realization hit Dabi like a bucket of ice water, making the staples along his cheeks pull tight as veins bulged across his forehead.
"...It was a fake corpse," Dabi hissed, glaring at Hawks with pure, murderous hatred. "...You never killed him at all, did you, Hawks?! From the day you walked into Kyushu, you were playing the whole Liberation Front for fools! The perimeter blackout, the hospital raid, Twice—all of it was you!"
Standing safely behind Tsunagu's back, Hawks wasn't even looking at Dabi anymore.
Pointing a gloved finger first at Tsunagu's spotless denim coat and then straight up at the clouds where the bagpipes and electric guitars were still blasting at full volume, Hawks stared at his fellow hero in utter disbelief.
"...Whoa, time out, Jeanist!" Hawks blurted out, his jaw dropping behind his tinted visor. "...How did you appear here? I thought you're still asleep?Second... did you seriously get your own theme song too? What's happening?!"
Keeping his sharp eyes locked on Dabi across the hall, Tsunagu adjusted his collar with two fingers.
"...My original lyrics about twenty-one-ounce selvedge weren't quite ready for studio recording," Tsunagu answered calmly over the soaring violin solo. "...But someone gave me an instrumental track from his private collection last week and wired it to our transport plane's speaker array. Rather invigorating, isn't it?"
"...What?! I don't understand" Hawks laughed in confusion but shaking his head as he drew two fresh crimson feather-blades from his wings and stepped up beside Tsunagu's left shoulder. "...Still, I owe you big time for the save. Since patch-face here is all by himself up on the walkway, what do you say we wrap him up before the chorus ends?"
"...My thoughts exactly, Hawks," Tsunagu replied, raising both hands as all six giant spools began spinning at high speed around the corridor walls.
--<>--
Location: Gunga Mountain Airspace, 2D Observation Skybox
Time: 12:12 PM
BEEP.
Inside the floating, transparent two-dimensional skybox suspended a thousand feet above the Gunga crater, Principal Nezu flipped his satellite phone shut and tucked it neatly into his waistcoat pocket.
"...That takes care of the faculty office in Musutafu," Nezu announced cheerfully to the forty-five costumed students crowded along the invisible glass floor.
Nezu informed everyone on U.A academy where he was and the situation the students were in.
Kneeling right at the front edge of the transparent floor with his hands pressed against the comic-shaded boundary, Izuku Midoriya wasn't even listening to the principal.
Down below their feet, the entire excavated valley of Gunga Mountain Villa was a full of colliding quirks.
"...Look at the size of that army," Midoriya breathed, his green eyes darting across the torn earth. "...When Cementoss ripped the cavern roof open, Midnight, Gang Orca, and Kamui Woods knocked out at least six hundred villains in the first ten seconds... yet it barely put a dent in their lines!"
Standing right beside Midoriya with his arms crossed, Shoto Todoroki frowned as a massive wall of jagged ice erupted across the western side of the crater below, clashing against Mount Lady and Fat Gum's vanguard squad.
"...Those aren't disorganized street criminals down there," Todoroki said quietly. "...Look at their uniforms and hand signals. They're split into four separate military regiments firing synchronized Quirk volleys on command."
"Even with four hundred Pro Heroes and sidekicks surrounding the ridge, fifty-four thousand people is way too many!" Itsuka Kendo said, gripping the edge of her knees as she watched a wave of three thousand liberation fighters push Wash and Crust's support unit back toward the pine trees. "If the pros get bogged down trading blows with ten thousand guys at a time, their stamina's gonna run out!"
"Wait... look at the giant concrete pillar in the dead center of the crater!" Mirio Togata called out, pointing a finger straight down through the floor between Midoriya and Katsuki Bakugo. "The pros aren't getting pushed back, they're intentionally pulling out of the middle!"
Pressing their faces closer to the clear floor, all forty-five students looked straight down at the center of the valley.
Rising a hundred feet out of the shattered mansion courtyard was a single, jagged spire of gray concrete left behind by Cementoss's opening quake.
Standing completely alone on the narrow tip of that stone spire was Kaito, his white suit and dark necktie fluttering gently in the mountain wind while over ten thousand Paranormal Liberation Front vanguard warriors surrounded the base of the pillar in a solid, roaring circle.
--<>--
"Look up on the rock! There's only one guy standing in the center!" a burly PLF squad commander with iron-plated forearms bellowed, pointing his broadsword up at the top of the concrete spire. "The rest of the heroes pulled back to the trees! Violet and Brown Regiments, form ranks and bring that pillar down!"
Down in the packed dirt below, however, dozens of rank-and-file liberation soldiers froze in their tracks as they squinted up through the smoke at the white suit and dark glasses.
"...W-wait a second, Commander!" a young villain with a lizard-tail Quirk stammered, his legs shaking so hard his knees knocked together. "...White suit, black tie, standing out in the open by himself... that's Hero X!"
"That's the guy from the Humarise broadcast who turned twenty-five bombs into street paint!" another fighter screamed, taking two steps backward into the man behind him. "And Re-Destro's officers said he crumpled Star and Stripe's cruise missiles into a paper ball! If he snaps his fingers, he's gonna turn all of us into sidewalk doodles!"
"Shut your mouths and hold your ground!" a senior PLF regiment captain roared from the back of an armored command truck, waving his rifle in the air. "I don't care what kind of trick Quirk he has! There's only one of him and over ten thousand of us standing in this plaza! Even All Might couldn't dodge ten thousand Quirks firing at the exact same second!"
Up on the narrow tip of the hundred-foot pillar, Kaito looked down at the sea of ten thousand trembling, shouting villains packed shoulder-to-shoulder across the valley floor.
Resting his left hand comfortably inside the pocket of his white slacks, he adjusted his glasses with two fingers of his right hand and let out a light, relaxed breath.
'Looks like Edgeshot and Midnight got all the pro squads clear from my attack radius,' Kaito noted, glancing out toward the forest ridges where the heroes had formed a wide outer perimeter. 'Guess the stage is all mine.'
Without crouching or bracing his knees, Kaito casually stepped his right foot off the edge of the hundred-foot stone spire onto the empty air.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
Walking down an invisible staircase of folded space, he descended smoothly to the crater floor and landed thirty yards in front of the front-line shields of the ten-thousand-man vanguard.
Right as the heel of his white leather shoe clicked against the dirt, the sky above Gunga Mountain Villa vibrated.
[A/N: Cue "New Type of Hero"]
🎵 Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. 🎵
A heavy, infectious bassline dropped straight out of the clouds, echoing off the torn canyon walls so loudly that the small puddles of water in the crater rippled in time with the beat.
Up inside the floating 2D skybox, Principal Nezu's furry white ears immediately perked up, and the principal began happily bobbing his head back and forth to the rhythm while holding his teacup.
"Oh, there's the bass drop!" Eijiro Kirishima yelled, slapping the transparent floor with both palms as a huge grin broke across his face. "He's playing his theme song again!"
Down on the western tree line of the crater, Pro Hero Midnight rested her hand on her hip and let out a breathless laugh as the upbeat music rolled across the battlefield.
"...Well, that's our cue to stay behind the yellow line, boys!" Midnight called out to the twenty sidekicks crouched behind her, curling her lips into an amused smirk. "...Nobody step into the center plaza unless you want to end up in a comic strip!"
--<>--
Ten thousand PLF fighters stared up at the booming sky in sheer panic as Kaito began walking slowly forward toward their shield wall.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
As the snare drum kicked in over the bassline, Kaito's slow walk shifted into an easy jog, and then into a dead sprint his left hand still tucked neatly inside his trouser pocket as he charged headfirst into ten thousand armed men completely alone.
"He's crazy! He's charging ten thousand of us on foot!" the iron-armed commander screamed at the top of his lungs. "Front three ranks, fire everything you have! Bury him!"
FWOOSH! CRACKLE! BOOM!
Three hundred emitter-type villains in the front row unleashed their Quirks in a single, synchronized wall of fireballs, acid sprays, lightning bolts, and jagged rock spikes aimed straight at Kaito's chest.
Running at full speed, Kaito didn't slow down by a single fraction of a second.
Right before the wall of fire and lightning hit his shoes, he raised his right hand at his hip.
SNAP.
SPLAT!
Fifty yards of roaring fireballs, acid, and lightning instantly flattened in mid-air, turning into a giant, translucent comic-book page covered in bright red and yellow 'BOOM!' and 'ZAP!' pop-art lettering.
Sprinting straight through the paper-thin sheet of ink, Kaito tore the flat drawing in half with his shoulders and landed right in the middle of the front rank!
WHAM!
Pivoting on his left heel without ever pulling his left hand out of his pocket, Kaito lashed his right leg out in a crisp, lightning-fast roundhouse kick that caught the iron-armed commander squarely under the chin, launching the two-ton brute backward like a bowling ball through twenty of his own men.
"Get him! Cut him down!" six sword-wielding villains roared, lunging inward from all sides to impale him at once.
Instead of jumping up into the air, Kaito snapped his fingers downward.
SNAP.
SWISH.
His entire body flattened into a two-dimensional white silhouette painted directly onto the floor, sliding effortlessly underneath the six clashing sword blades like a moving shadow before popping back into three-dimensional flesh right behind their backs!
SMACK! SMACK! CRACK!
Moving with the fluid, untouchable grace of a master martial artist dancing to his own music, Kaito spun between the crowded soldiers striking one man's chest plate,
BAAM.
Then vaulting off a giant mutant's shoulder, and using a single finger tap to redirect a charging rhino-villain's horn straight into an armored truck.
BOOM.
When a platoon of villains slammed their hands onto the ground to crush him between two forty-foot walls of solid granite, Kaito leaped lightly onto the side of the closing rock wall, ran straight up the vertical stone, and snapped his fingers on the snare beat
SNAP.
POP!
Both forty-foot walls of granite turned into a flood of thousands of colorful origami paper cranes that burst outward across the plaza, knocking two hundred soldiers flat onto their backs!
"AGHH!"
"CATH HIM!
"HE'S TOO SLIPPERY"
"DON'T GET TURN INTO A DRAWING!"
--<>--
Up in the floating 2D skybox, all forty-five U.A. students had their faces glued to the floor, their jaws hanging wide open as they watched the lone white figure tear through the center of the army like a hurricane of neon ink and martial arts.
"...Look at the way he moves!" Midoriya watched, his eyes darting wildly to keep track of Kaito's footwork. "... It's still the same. He's surrounded by ten thousand people firing Quirks from every single angle, and not a single drop of it has touched his coat..."
"Wait a second, I don't get it!" Kaminari shouted, grabbing his spiky yellow hair with both hands while Minoru Mineta nodded furiously beside him. "During the Humarise raid on TV, he turned whole buildings and bombs into graffiti in half a second! Why is he running around kicking guys in the face and folding them fifty at a time instead of just snapping the whole army flat at once?!"
"Are you seriously asking that, Kaminari?!" Sero laughed, slapping Kaminari on the back of the shoulder while pointing down at the flashing neon colors bursting across the crater in time with the music. "Listen to the beat! The song still has a whole minute left!"
"Yeah, you can't turn on your own global theme track and end the fight during the first verse!" Mina cheered, pumping both fists in the air as she danced along to the bassline on the glass floor. "He's styling on them because he's having fun!"
Standing beside Todoroki with his hands pressed hard against the invisible wall, Bakugo watched Kaito backflip off a villain's shield and snap a volley of thirty ice lances into a glowing rainbow mural across the ground.
"..." Bakugo.
--<>--
Down on the crater floor, the upbeat chorus of the track echoed off the cliffs as pure, unhinged terror finally broke the backs of the Paranormal Liberation Front regiments.
"Get away from him! He isn't human!" a Brown Regiment officer shrieked, dropping his spear as he watched Kaito casually step onto the blade of a swinging battle-axe, kick the wielder into a ditch, and snap his fingers.
SNAP.
WHOOSH!
A wave of magenta and cyan grid lines swept outward from Kaito's shoes across a three-hundred-yard radius.
Every single soldier caught inside the grid didn't bleed or break a bone.
Instead, five hundred charging fighters flattened upright into stiff, two-dimensional cardboard cutouts arranged in a long spiral across the area.
Reaching out with one finger as the chorus hit its peak, Kaito lightly tapped the forehead of the first cardboard cutout in the row.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!
Like a giant line of human dominoes, all five hundred flat cutouts tipped over in a cascading wave, knocking down another thousand soldiers behind them in a tangled, helpless pile!
"Fire your quirks! Don't let him get any closer to the stage!" Trumpet's voice bellowed through a megaphone from the rear command platform, his voice cracking with panic as two thousand reserve emitters combined their flames, wind blades, and laser beams into a single titanic tornado of destructive energy aimed straight at the center plaza.
Floating ten feet off the ground as the song entered its final fifteen-second bridge, Kaito looked at the incoming tornado of combined Quirks and smiled warmly.
Pulling his left hand out of his pocket for the very first time just to adjust the knot of his dark necktie, he raised his right hand high above his head.
SNAP.
THOOM!
A massive, kilometer-wide wave of geometric pop-art color exploded outward from his fingertips, sweeping across the entire central plaza from the front shield wall all the way to the base of the command stage in a single heartbeat.
The roaring tornado of combined Quirks along with every single one of the ten thousand vanguard soldiers standing in the center of the valley instantly lost their third dimension.
SPLAT.
Right on the final bass note of the song, the music cut out cleanly across the sky.
Where a ten-thousand-man army had been standing two minutes and fourteen seconds earlier, the entire central floor of the Gunga crater was now covered in a massive, hyper-detailed, colorful street-art mural painted flat across the bedrock.
Ten thousand living, breathing villains were stuck flat inside the painted stone, moving their cartoon eyes back and forth in bewildered silence.
Around the outer edges of the crater, the remaining PLF soldiers who had been standing two feet outside the blast zone dropped their weapons onto the dirt with loud clatters.
"M-monster!" one of the outer soldiers whimpered, scrambling backward on his hands and knees toward the Pro Heroes' containment line. "I surrender! Put the handcuffs on me, just keep me away from the guy! I don't want to be turned into a drawing!"
Up on the eastern ridge, Pro Heroes Edgeshot, Kamui Woods, and Yoroi Musha stood on the rocks, staring down at the kilometer-wide mural that had just erased the enemy's main army in two minutes flat.
"...Ten thousand combatants," Yoroi Musha whispered, "... He's too strong."
Edgeshot murmured, letting out a quiet breath behind his mask. "...That man is simply operating on a different plane of existence. He should be stronger than All Might."
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Stepping carefully around the edge of the massive ground mural in her sixty-foot giant form, Pro Hero Mount Lady stopped thirty yards away from Kaito, resting her hands on her hips as she looked down at the spotless hero and whistled loudly.
"Man, and here I thought my Canyon Cannon made a big mess!" Mount Lady called down, squinting at the thousands of painted faces covering the valley floor before giving Kaito a playful wink. "Leaving any bad guys for the rest of us, Hero X, or are you trying to hog the entire bonus check from the commission today?"
Looking up at the giant blonde heroine, Kaito couldn't help letting a fond, familiar smile cross his face.
"There are still countless villains here Mt. Lady. If you hurry over to the west tunnel entrance right now, all the NHA news helicopters are filming from that side make sure they get your good angle while you round up the stragglers!"
Mount Lady blinked twice, her giant mouth dropping slightly before she burst out laughing.
"...Hey, how the heck do you know which side is my good camera angle?!" Mount Lady laughed, giving him a mock salute with two giant fingers before turning toward the western tunnels. "...All right, I hear you, bossy! Save me a spot at the press conference!"
Watching her stomp off toward the cavern entrance to rejoin the assault team, Kaito brushed a tiny speck of dust off his suit and turned his gaze toward the other locations.
--<>--
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(9 Advanced Chapters)