The farewell dinner for the Nomura-Arasaka contract took place at a Yakiniku restaurant in Ginza that smelled of expensive.
It was Month 20 of Kaito's twenty-four-month Haken career plan.
Miki Kato was four beers into the evening, her pink Data-Link eyes glowing with an erratic rhythm.
She leaned across the table, waving a pair of metal tongs at Kaito. "You're really leaving, Arisaka-kun? We finally get the HPSC legacy audits back on track, and you're jumping ship for a Haken contract in Saitama? Just stay here. Tanaka-san is retiring in five years; you could have his cubicle."
Kenji Tanaka exhaled a long, focused cloud of carbon dioxide.
His Calculated Breath quirk made him look younger when he was working, but now, slumped over a plate of wagyu, he looked his age. "Let him go, Kato. The kid isn't an accountant. I watched him handle the Gunga files. He didn't just find the errors; he anticipated the system's failure before the data even hit the screen. He's a specialist. Tokyo is too small for him."
Kaito placed his chopsticks down. He had eaten 400 grams of protein and 200 grams of rice.
He had participated in 12 minutes of active conversation to maintain the social baseline.
"The Saitama contract offers a higher hazardous-environment premium, Tanaka-san. Telecommunications infrastructure is a growing sector. It is the logical progression for my resume."
"He even talks like a manual," Kato groaned, but she handed him a small, gift-wrapped box. "Open it."
Kaito unwrapped it. It was a high-end, solar-powered titanium calculator with a reinforced casing.
"It's shockproof," Kato said. "For whatever radio towers you're going to be climbing. Consider it a thank you for doing my overtime last Tuesday."
"Thank you, Kato-san. This will reduce my equipment depreciation costs," Kaito said. He didn't smile, but he put the calculator in his internal suit pocket.
The dinner ended at 10:00 PM.
Kaito took the Hibiya Line back to his apartment.
He had completed Contract 8.
-----
Kaito stood on the platform of Omiya Station in Saitama, his suit jacket draped over his arm.
TO-TOOOT.
TO-TOOOT.
The air here was different from Tokyo; it was heavier.
His next contract as a Telecommunications Tech wasn't a desk job.
It was a physical grind that saw him assigned to the "Kanto High-Speed Backbone" project.
The commute to the work sites usually began at 5:30 AM.
On the third Tuesday of the month, Kaito was walking toward his station when the morning routine was interrupted.
A villain with a minor kinetic-storage quirk had lost his temper at a nearby intersection, flipping a delivery truck to create a barricade against the local police.
CRASH~BOOM
The public reaction was a chorus of collective irritation.
A salaryman standing next to Kaito didn't look scared; he looked at his watch and hissed through his teeth.
"Again? That's the third time this week," the man muttered to no one in particular. "Where are the heroes? I have a 9:00 AM meeting in Saitama City. If I'm late, the government isn't going to pay my docked wages."
"They're probably busy doing a photoshoot in Minato," a woman replied, not even looking up from her phone.
Then
Kaito watched a pro hero arrive on the scene.
The hero spent more time posing for a nearby teenager's livestream than actually clearing the wreckage.
'What is he doing?'
Kaito didn't intervene with a flashy display; he simply adjusted his glasses
As he neared the incident. He didn't lift or touch anything. He simply Updated the asphalt near the front axle.
Render: Structural Re-alignment.
WOOSH
The truck didn't fly away. Instead, the gravity and friction around the vehicle shifted just enough that when the hero finally gave it a half-hearted shove, the massive vehicle slid back onto its wheels with impossible ease.
The crowd didn't cheer; they just started walking again, annoyed that the delay had cost them four minutes.
Kaito reached the job site—a 150-meter lattice tower overlooking the Saitama plains.
"Arisaka! Get your harness on!"
The voice belonged to Uryu, a veteran tech with skin the texture of old leather and a quirk that allowed him to see in the infrared spectrum.
He was Kaito's primary colleague for the month.
Uryu didn't care about Kaito's background; he only cared if Kaito could crimp a fiber-optic cable in a gale.
"The HPSC is breathing down our necks to get these 5G nodes live by Friday," Uryu grumbled as they clipped into the safety lines. They were perched on a platform that groaned under the wind.
"They're talking about 'emergency data redundancy.' Like they expect the whole grid to melt down."
"The nodes are designed for high-capacity throughput, Ishida-san," Kaito said, his voice a steady monotone as he began his ascent.
Kaito didn't use a wrench; he used his fingers to guide the delicate glass fibers into the housing.
"If the HPSC wants redundancy, it implies they anticipate a disruption that exceeds standard hero-civilian collateral damage. They are preparing for a blackout they can't predict."
"Smart kid," Ishida spat, his infrared eyes scanning the horizon for heat signatures. "Just make sure those bolts are torqued. I don't want to be up here again in a week because a shockwave loosened the housing. I've got a daughter's birthday on Saturday, and I'm not missing it for a maintenance call."
WHEEEEZEE.
Kaito reached the top of the tower. The wind was a constant, punishing 40 knots. Most techs struggled to keep their hands steady, but Kaito was a statue.
For thirty days, this was his life. He wasn't just installing cables; he was performing a silent overhaul.
Kaito reinforced the signal dishes. He patched the logic gates of the routers. He made the entire Saitama node-cluster 400% more resilient to the kind of electromagnetic interference generated by high-tier energy quirks.
'Finally, it's Almight-proof. Even "United States of Smash" can't knock down this tower' Kaito thought
He wasn't doing it for the heroes. He was doing it because the "Act of God" clause in his Haken contract meant that if a hero-villain fight knocked these towers down, he would be forced to work unpaid emergency overtime to fix them.
-----
At the end of Month 21, Kaito sat in his Omiya apartment and checked his banking app.
Deposit: 450,000 JPY.
Sender: Kanto Telecomm Haken Group.
He was nineteen years and eleven months old.
Kaito had one month left. He had endured the wind, the annoying colleagues, and the public's hero-fatigue.
He was now moving to his final destination: Ota Ward. The 2.5 million yen bonus was finally within reach.
-----
Deep beneath a nondescript doctor's office in Shizuoka, the air was cold enough to frost the glass of the nutrient tanks.
The only light came from the rhythmic green pulse of heart-rate monitors and the glow of chemical vats holding early-stage Nomu prototypes.
Kyudai Garaki adjusted his goggles, his gloved fingers dancing across a terminal as he monitored the vitals of a massive, brain-exposed creature.
GURU-GURU-GURU
The monster let out a low, wet gurgle.
"The preparations at the Ota Ward perimeter are proceeding without incident, Master,"
Garaki croaked. "The HPSC has finished the telecommunications backbone. The fools believe they are simply modernizing the national emergency grid to handle 'unspecified surges' in hero activity. They have no idea they've built us a direct line into the heart of the city's nervous system."
"Let them believe," a deep, resonant voice vibrated from the darkness.
All For One stood by a floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the distant lights of the city. He was wearing a bespoke black suit, his posture perfect, his face unscarred and handsome.
He held a crystal glass of water, his fingers steady. This was a man at the absolute peak of his existence.
"The HPSC has always been a collection of short-sighted bureaucrats. They build walls, never realizing those same walls can be used to trap the very Symbol they worship."
Zen Shigaraki, AFO, turned away from the window, his presence filling the room. "I have spent twenty years cultivating this era. I have let the 'Successors' of that pathetic quirk play their games, passing their torch from one gutter to the next. But All Might... he is the first one who actually managed to make the torch burn bright enough to annoy me."
Garaki paused his work, sensing the shift in his Master's mood. "The Sucessors, Master? You should have killed each and every one right? Nana Shimura and this time It's Almight. We should be happy now master."
"The gnats," All For One spat, the word carrying a century of resentment and thrill.
He didn't turn around to look at Garaki. "Killing 'Them' was never about joy. Joy is a fleeting, human emotion. It was about reclamation. Watching Nana Shimura crawl in the dirt, weeping for a legacy that was never hers—that was satisfying, certainly. But it wasn't joy. It was the feeling of a librarian finally erasing a smudge from a manuscript."
He set the glass down and leaned against the mahogany desk, his expression darkening.
"But there is a specific type of irritation reserved for those who do not fight. The ones who hide. The Fourth User...He spent decades in the mountains, rotting in silence, thinking that by withdrawing from the world, he could keep my brother's power 'safe' from me. He wasted a lifetime being a hermit. That isn't heroism. It's an inefficiency that serves no one."
"And the variable, Master?" Garaki asked, his voice trembling as he pulled up a secondary file. "The 'X' we have been tracking?"
"Hero X," All For One whispered. The name didn't sound like a hero's title; it sounded like a defect in his world.
"The entity that thinks it can rewrite my chaos into his order. He is young. I can feel the arrogance in his efficiency."
AFO's hand rested on the arm of his chair. "He thinks he can hide in the background of a world I built."
"Should we divert assets to find him?"
"No," All For One confirmed, a chilling amusement creeping into his tone. "Once I have crushed the life out of All Might in the Ota Ward—once the world sees their Symbol of Peace bleed—this 'X' will be forced to look upon the mess I have made. I will peel back the layers of his 'perfection' and find the man underneath. A power that can 'manipulate' reality... that is the only piece missing from my masterpiece. I will kill the Symbol of Peace, and then I will hunt the him in the background."
"The convergence is set for next 3 weeks?"
Garaki asked.
"Yes," All For One said. "We will lure the blond foolish oaf to the center of his own machine. And while the world is looking away, we will break the spine of the future."
-----
The Ota Ward Industrial Hub was a landscape of windowless concrete and cooling towers. It was the digital nerve center of Japan, housing the servers that managed everything from the national power grid to the Haken Agency's payroll records.
Kaito sat in the monitoring booth of Substation 4-C. He was exactly 160 hours into his final week.
The 2,500,000 JPY career milestone bonus was no longer a theory; it was a pending transaction scheduled for 5:00 PM on Friday.
Kaito wore a high-visibility vest that smelled of ozone.
His feeling wasn't about the battle of ideologies happening in the shadows; it was about the fact that the HPSC's "Telecommunications Backbone" was vibrating at a frequency that suggested a mounting atmospheric charge.
"Arisaka-kun," a voice crackled over the radio. It was his new supervisor, a man named Goro who spent most of his shifts eating convenience store donuts. "The HPSC just issued a 'Level 5 Disaster' warning for the Ota sector. They're saying it's an 'Atmospheric Anomaly.' They're ordering a total evacuation. Get out of there."
Kaito looked at the sky through the reinforced glass. It wasn't weather. He could feel it in his teeth—the signatures of Prime All Might and Prime All For One were moving toward Ota Ward at terminal velocity.
"I can't leave, Goro-san," Kaito said, his voice flat. He was currently using a heavy wrench to tighten a grounding bolt. "The pressure differential is causing the Phase-3 insulators to arc. If I don't stay and manually vent the nitrogen cooling system, the substation will explode. If the substation blows, the Ota Data Hub goes dark."
"Are you crazy? Your life is worth more than the servers!"
"If the hub goes dark," Kaito continued, ignoring him, "the Haken Agency's payroll servers won't sync for the Friday afternoon deposit. I have seven days left on a twenty-four-month contract. I am not letting a 'disaster' ruin my credit score and my bonus. I will follow you after this."
Kaito stepped out onto the metal gantry. The air was heavy, charged with enough static to make his hair stand on end.
A mile away, a massive explosion sent a plume of dust into the sky. All Might had made landfall.
BOOM
Kaito adjusted his safety helmet and looked at his watch.
4:02 PM.
Fifty-eight minutes left in his shift.
"So this is that time?" Kaito muttered, looking toward the epicenter where the two strongest men in history were about to collide. "The battle that costs the stomach and respiratory organs of Almight and the faceless head of AFO "
He gripped his wrench and turned back to the control panel.
Kaito wasn't a hero. He wasn't a villain. He was a professional who was about to defend his paycheck against the end of the world.