….
[U.A. Faculty Dorms]
The faculty dorms sat at the far northeastern edge of U.A., a quiet cluster of reinforced units beyond the main buildings, separated from the dorms by a broad stone courtyard lined with zelkova trees.
A gravel path linked them to the campus road, while the support staff worked late in a low annex to the south. Beyond the northern treeline, a forty-foot perimeter wall stood lined with motion sensors, sealing this corner as the calmest stretch of the grounds.
Dabi's flat occupied the eastern corner of the second floor, its narrow balcony overlooking the courtyard.
Inside, the layout was simple - living room, compact kitchen, a short hall leading to two bedrooms.
The walls had been repaired twice.
Once after an incident involving a nightmare and a bedframe and next time because Eri had wanted a bigger window.
Both times, Cementoss had handled it without complaint.
Tonight, moonlight spilled through the widened window, painting a pale rectangle across Eri's empty bed.
She slept instead in the master bedroom, curled against Rumi, fingers knotted in fabric, her small horn catching faint light as her breathing remained slow and even.
Rumi lay still, one arm draped protectively over her.
Dabi was away completing a small 'assignment' his daughter had given him, so today the apartment held only them.
Then the air in the living room split open.
Kurogiri's Warp Gate tore through the silence, a vertical seam of dark mist spilling outward, pooling low across the floor.
Chimera entered first, ducking beneath the frame, his bulk compressing the space as his gaze swept the room and caught two heat signatures, prompting him to lift a hand.
Slice emerged behind him, already in motion, pressing to the wall and advancing toward the bedroom without a sound, focus sharpened to a single objective.
Mummy followed, bandages trailing like probing tendrils, mapping the space as he moved toward the kitchen.
Then Himiko Toga stepped through the mist with her hands clasped behind her back, tilting her head at the apartment like a bird studying something small and alive.
"Aww." Toga pressed her hands to her cheeks, her voice came out in that breathy, sing-song register she slipped into when something caught her attention. "Look at this place, these little shoes, and the drawings - are those hers? They're so cute, oh my god."
She drifted toward the fridge, fingers hovering over a crayon drawing of what might have been a rabbit and a person with blue lines on their face. "She really is just a normal little kid, isn't she? Living her own small life, drawing her pictures, and falling asleep with her favorite plush like nothing else in the world matters."
Her golden eyes held something unfamiliar - not cruelty, but a thin, unsettling wonder, like a cat transfixed by a fishbowl.
"Toga and everyone, stay focused." Nine's voice.
She didn't turn around. "I am focused. I am just saying, it's cute. Don't you think it's cute, Nine? The little family setup? Papa's out working, mama rabbit's in bed with the baby - it's like something straight out of a picture book."
"Toga."
"Okay, okay." She rocked back on her heels, still smiling. "I am ready. I have been ready. You don't have to be so serious all the time, y'know."
Nine ducked through the gate, tall, pale, white hair falling past his shoulders, the bulk of his life-support corset encasing him from waist to nose.
The dark mask hummed softly, regulators cycling as tubes traced his ribs, while amber indicators pulsed at his collarbone like a slow mechanical heartbeat; his pale, rectangular eyes, white-pupiled and devoid of expression, swept the room with the detached precision of a man inventorying cargo.
His gaze settled on each member of his team in turn.
"The target is the child's Quirk - Rewind." he said, voice steady under the soft cycling of the regulators. "That's the only thing in this apartment that concerns us, so keep your focus and don't get distracted by anything else."
He looked at Toga.
"You will handle the extraction as planned, and if she panics and you can't calm her down, restrain her carefully." he said, his tone firm and deliberate. "We need the Quirk intact, which means the child stays unharmed, so don't make any mistakes - understood?"
Toga gave him a thumbs up and a smile that belonged on a school field trip. "Got it. Calm, gentle, in and out - I can be very good with kids when I want to be."
"You've never held a normal conversation with one." Slice said from the hallway, tone flat, not even glancing back.
"Wow, rude. I could be great with kids. You don't know."
Nine ignored both of them. "The Rabbit Hero is in the bedroom with her." He let that sit for a second. "Don't underestimate her and let's keep this quiet."
Chimera rolled his neck, a sharp crack echoing from his spine. "And if it gets loud?"
"We're inside U.A.'s campus." Nine said, glancing toward the moonlit courtyard beyond the balcony. "If this turns loud, we are working against a four-minute window before reinforcements arrive, so the objective doesn't change, you keep it contained."
Chimera huffed. "Four minutes is plenty."
Nine didn't respond, he simply turned toward the bedroom door as the regulators hissed and the amber lights pulsed in steady intervals.
"Go."
….
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Dabi stepped off the plane in Osaka looking like he had lost a fight with his own stomach.
Two planes in one day had taken more out of him than he would admit.
"Still." he muttered, glancing at the photo in his hand - Hawks striking a perfect, effortless pose while Dabi looked as uninterested as ever, "Mission accomplished."
Below the picture, Hawks had written a message to Eri - Signed it, too.
Drew a little feather next to her name.
If it had just been the photo and the autograph, Dabi would have been on a flight back hours ago.
But there was something else he had come here for.
.…
Hawks' agency was busy. Sidekicks moving through hallways, screens running live patrol feeds, the general organized chaos of a top-three hero's operation.
In the training area off the main floor, Fumikage Tokoyami was running drills with two of Hawks' sidekicks. They were walking him through response protocols - positioning, communication timing, how to coordinate Dark Shadow's range with a team that was moving fast.
The kid was focused, absorbing everything.
"So." Dabi leaned against the railing. "How's Tokoyami doing?"
"Oh, the kid is great." Hawks tilted his head, watching a drill play out below. "Good instincts, doesn't freeze up. Give me a year with him and he would be top ten material."
Dabi watched Tokoyami for another second, then turned to Hawks.
"You could've just called me, y'know."
"Hm?"
"If you wanted details about the USJ attack, you should've come to me." He said it the same way he said everything. "I am the one actually involved. But you have to drag my student into this don't you?"
Hawks laughed - easy, bright, completely unconvincing. "Ahaha, man, what are you even talking about? Tokoyami's here for his internship. That's it. You're reading way too much into this, Dabi. Seriously, do you like, write conspiracy theories in your spare time? Something like novels? Pick up a hobby or some–"
"Yeah, it must be." Dabi said nothing, his gaze drifting over the training floor.
Hawks kept smiling, but it stopped at the surface, never reaching anything that mattered.
"But hey, since we're in the novel already." Dabi said, still watching Tokoyami run drills below. "Usually the next chapter is the part where somebody goes and tightens up a few screws that got rusty. Right?"
There was nothing subtle about it, the Hero Public Safety Commission, the leash that had shaped Hawks into a weapon before he could understand it, and still held him bound.
"I know your bosses don't trust me." Dabi said. "That's fine. It goes both ways."
They still considered the possibility, however slim, that he was connected to All For One.
"Dabi–"
"No, listen. I am not here to argue about it." He finally turned to look at Hawks directly. "It's not gonna get fixed with meetings and definitely not with reports, background checks or whatever surveillance they have got running on me this month. That's just how it is. So leave it."
Hawks' smile had gotten thinner.
"Just... don't push me on this." Dabi held his gaze. "Because if you force my hand, I'll deal with it myself, and if it comes to that, the outcome will favor me - not them."
Hawks looked at him for a long time, the grin was gone now, and without it his face looked younger and a lot less fun.
"You know." Hawks said, quiet, almost to himself. "For a guy who says he has got nothing to do with hero society, you sure do talk like someone who is still in the game."
"Bad habit."
Neither of them said anything else about it.
….
Dabi was settling back after the nightmare of a return flight.
…and when his phone finally picked up a signal, notifications flooded in.
Most of them were junk, news alerts and stuff.
Though he got a message from Rumi that was just a photo of Eri asleep on the couch with the TV still on.
He scrolled past them, then he stopped, a message from the green-haired kid.
He opened it and his face changed - the laziness dropped out of his posture.
Then he ran toward the exit at a speed that made people in the terminal hallway flatten themselves against the walls.
He hit the doors, burst through them into open air, and looked in the direction he needed to go.
Then he jumped, straight up with no runway.
Just bent his knees and launched himself into the sky with a force that cracked the pavement where he had been standing.
He went up - and up, and up, past the height of the terminal building, past the height of anything near the airport, to a point where the people on the ground below would have looked like specks if he had bothered to look down.
He was still in his civilian clothes.
At the apex of the jump, he threw both hands behind him and fire erupted from his palms.
From the soles of his feet too, blue-white jets screamed against the air and shoved him forward with a force that multiplied every second.
The acceleration was brutal, within moments he was moving fast enough that the air compressed in front of him and a white cone of vapor trailed behind his body like a jet contrail.
Was he flying? Almost, but not quite yet.
He didn't have sustained lift, couldn't hover, or change direction with any kind of control.
What he could do was launch himself in a straight line and use his fire as thrust to maintain speed and altitude.
It was less flying and more being a human rocket pointed at a destination and hoping the math worked out.
…and he was still getting used to this mode of transport.
The [Arachnid Genome] had changed things in his body that he was only beginning to catalogue.
The obvious stuff was - wall crawling, increased strength, reflexes that had jumped by an order of magnitude.
But his fire control had gotten sharper too, more precise, and responsive, like the genome had improved the neural pathways that connected his quirk to his intent.
He still hadn't developed the organic web part, which he believed wasn't off the table given that seventy percent of the genome was still locked.
That would come later, or it wouldn't.
Right now the only thing that mattered was speed.
How fast he could cover the distance between where he was and where his students were...
He pushed more fire out, the white trail behind him widened.
.
….
[To be continued…]
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