[Bar Restaurant, Unknown location— Morning After the Incident]
The bar was quiet at this hour, the kind of quiet that only existed in places where people came to drink away their problems rather than talk about them.
The smell of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke hung in the air, and the ceiling fan above turned slow and lazy, doing nothing useful.
At the center of it all, mounted behind the bar, the television glowed.
The Hero News Network logo filled the screen for a moment before cutting to the studio, where anchor Sakura Nishihara sat behind her desk with the composed, measured expression that broadcast journalism demanded.
Her dark hair was pulled back neatly and her voice was calm and steady, the kind that kept viewers from panicking even when the news was bad.
"Good morning," she said, folding her hands on the desk. "We continue our coverage of last night's large-scale villain attack on Hosu City. What unfolded in those streets was, without question, one of the most alarming incidents this nation has seen in recent years."
The screen cut to aerial footage of Hosu. Buildings with gaping holes in their sides. Rubble spread across entire blocks.
Emergency vehicles packed into narrow roads with their lights still flashing. Several streets had been completely torn apart, the asphalt cracked and heaved upward like something enormous had walked across it.
Someone in the bar set down their glass.
"Casualties, while not as high as initially feared given the sheer scale of the destruction, remain a deeply sobering number," Nishihara continued, her expression tightening slightly. "Many civilians were injured, and tragically, lives were lost. Our thoughts remain with the families affected."
She paused a beat, then looked directly into the camera.
"The organisation believed to be responsible for this attack is the League of Villains, the same group connected to the USJ incident earlier this year involving UA students. Their involvement has now been confirmed by Hero Public Safety Commission sources."
The footage shifted again, and the bar went noticeably quieter.
On screen, the creatures known as Nomu moved through Hosu's streets.
The recordings were shaky, clearly taken from phones and building security cameras. The things were massive, wrong-looking, built in ways that made the eyes want to look somewhere else. One of them tore a section of wall clean off a building. Another absorbed a direct hit from a pro hero and barely flinched.
"These bio-engineered creatures, designated Nomu, were deployed across multiple locations in the city simultaneously," Nishihara said. "However, thanks to the rapid response of several pro heroes, including the number two hero Endeavor and the Rabbit Hero, Mirko, the Nomu were successfully contained before casualties could climb further."
She straightened slightly, and her tone shifted to something a fraction warmer.
"And in a development that will come as a relief to many, the Hero Killer Stain, who has been responsible for a string of violent attacks on pro heroes in recent months, has been apprehended."
The footage showed Stain being loaded into an ambulance. He was unconscious, restrained, his distinctive red-streaked face slack. Two officers flanked the stretcher, and a cluster of medical personnel moved around him with brisk efficiency.
"It was Endeavor who arrived at the scene and captured the Hero Killer, putting an end to his campaign of violence for now," Nishihara said. "For the many heroes and families who have lived under the shadow of his attacks, this arrest will mean a great deal."
She let that sit for a moment. Then her expression changed, and it was subtle but unmistakable. The professional composure was still there, but something genuine had crept into it.
"However," she said, "before we close this segment, there is one more aspect of last night we feel must be acknowledged."
The footage that came next was different from everything before it. No shaky phone camera and no distant aerial shot. This was raw, ground-level, and almost impossible to look away from.
A streak of yellow lightning blurred through a Hosu street at a speed that made the surrounding buildings look like they were standing still. It moved like thought itself, like the moment between deciding to act and acting. In and out of frame before the eye could fully register it.
The next clip showed the streak arrowing toward a residential building whose upper floors were actively collapsing. It hit the base of the falling section and two figures were pulled free, a woman and a young girl, both set down safely on the far side of the street before the rest of the structure came down in a cloud of dust and broken concrete. The whole thing took less than three seconds.
Another clip. A cluster of pro heroes, five of them, surrounded by three Nomu in a tight alley, their formation breaking under the pressure.
The yellow streak arrived, moved through the Nomu like current through wire, and by the time it stopped moving all three creatures were on the ground and the heroes were standing in stunned silence.
The streak resolved into a figure. Young, lean, red costume, a yellow lightning bolt across his chest, electricity still crackling faintly around his shoulders.
Nishihara smiled, and this time it was clearly genuine.
"Many of you will recognize this young man," she said warmly. "This is a first-year student from UA's hero course. You may remember him from the UA Sports Festival earlier this year, where he placed first in every single event."
A photo appeared beside her, a clean press image of Denki in his hero costume, the lightning symbol crisp on his chest.
"He is sixteen years old and is in his first year of High school. And last night, under the field guidance of the Rabbit Hero Mirko, he used his speed to save an extraordinary number of lives while pro heroes engaged the Nomu directly."
She looked into the camera for a long moment.
"In times like these it is easy to feel that the darkness is winning," she said. "But then something like this happens. A sixteen-year-old boy runs faster than most adults can think, puts himself between innocent people and something that terrifies grown heroes, and refuses to stop. That is not nothing. That is everything."
She folded her hands again. "People of Hosu, and people watching across Japan — you are not alone. New heroes are rising."
The screen held on Denki's photo for a moment longer as the network cut to a commercial break.
And then a wine bottle crossed the room at high velocity and hit the television dead center.
The screen cracked, flickered, distorted, and then froze. Locked on the last image it had been displaying before the impact. Denki Kaminari's face in his hero costume stared out from the fractured screen, expression steady, lightning symbol bright on his chest.
Tomura Shigaraki stood behind the bar's main table, five fingers spread wide at his side, neck already raw from where his nails had been working at it.
His hood was pulled up and his pale, dry face was tight with something that had moved past irritation several stops ago.
"Turn it off, Kurogiri," he said, his voice low and scraped thin. "I don't want to see that brat's face for one more second."
Behind the bar, Kurogiri set down the wine glass he had been polishing with practiced calm.
His dark mist shifted slightly as he reached for another glass. His yellow eyes moved to the cracked screen, then back to Shigaraki, and his expression behind the neck-brace communicator remained carefully neutral.
"I'll see to it," he said simply.
Shigaraki dropped into a chair, elbow on the table, palm pressed to his face with four fingers. His free hand found his neck again. The scratching resumed, slow and rhythmic.
"I'm going to kill him," he said. It wasn't a declaration of intent. It was the tone of someone stating a personal fact they had already decided on. "He keeps showing up and keeps being there. He's getting more and more annoying to leave alive."
"Patience, Tomura." Kurogiri's voice was measured, and he placed the freshly cleaned glass on the shelf. "You would do well to remember Master's instructions on this matter. He has plans for the boy. Specific plans. Whatever those plans are, they require the boy to remain alive and intact for now."
Shigaraki's scratching slowed but did not stop. "I don't care about plans."
"You will care when Master explains them to you," Kurogiri said, "Until then, nothing happens to Kaminari. Nothing that would disrupt what Master is building. I trust I don't need to say this twice."
Shigaraki said nothing. His hand dropped from his neck and he stared at the cracked screen, at the frozen image of Denki's face. His red eyes were flat and cold.
"For now," he said quietly.
Kurogiri did not reply to that. He simply reached for the next glass.
The silence stretched, and then the door to the bar room opened.
Dabi walked in like he owned whatever room he happened to be standing in, hands loose at his sides, stapled skin pulled into something that might generously be called a smile.
He let the door swing shut behind him, took in the cracked television, the wine bottle on the floor and the shards of glass beside it, and then looked at Shigaraki.
"Rough morning?" he said.
The smile widened, just a little, and it was the specific kind of smile designed to produce a very particular reaction in the person it was aimed at.
Shigaraki's eye twitched. "Nobody asked you," he said.
"True," Dabi said agreeably, pulling out a chair and dropping into it with no particular hurry.
His blue flames flickered briefly at his fingertips and went out. He glanced at the frozen image still visible on the cracked screen and tilted his head slightly. "The UA kid again?"
"Don't," Shigaraki said.
"I'm just saying, he was all over the news this morning." Dabi leaned back, arms folded behind his head. "Saved what, fifty people? Sixty? The anchors were basically in love with him."
The scratching at Shigaraki's neck resumed with noticeably more intensity.
Kurogiri quietly moved the remaining wine bottles to the far end of the counter.
"Dabi," he said, with calm and measured weight. "Perhaps now is not the ideal time."
Dabi glanced at Kurogiri, then back at Shigaraki's increasingly taut expression, and the smile didn't go anywhere.
But he did lean forward and rest his elbows on the table in a posture that was, technically speaking, slightly less provocative than the one before it.
"Fine," he said. "So. What's the plan?"
Shigaraki stared at the cracked screen for a long moment. At the frozen face looking back at him.
"For now?" he said. The words came out slow and quiet. "Nothing. We wait."
He reached up and scratched his neck one more time, deep and deliberate.
"But that kid better enjoy the news coverage while it lasts."