What if Deku was a quirkless hacker vigilante like Aiden Pierce from Watch Dogs

 

The rain in Musutafu never truly washed anything clean.

 

It fell in heavy, rhythmic sheets, hammering against the rusted fire escapes and slick asphalt of the city’s underbelly. It caught the harsh, bleeding glare of the neon signs—the vibrant pinks and electric blues advertising Pro Hero agencies, late-night noodle stands, and quirk-enhancement supplements. The water pooled in the cracked pavement, turning the streets into fragmented mirrors that reflected a city obsessed with its own glowing image.

 

Izuku Midoriya crouched on the grating of a third-story fire escape, the iron digging into the soles of his heavily modified combat boots. He was perfectly still, a shadow detached from the brickwork. The downpour cascaded off the brim of his dark, low-pulled baseball cap and drummed against the shoulders of his deep green trench coat. The coat was lined with kevlar mesh, heavy and water-logged, but it kept the worst of the night’s chill from seeping into his bones.

 

The lower half of his face was obscured by a dark, industrial-grade respirator mask. It muffled the erratic, harsh breaths of the city—the distant wail of sirens, the rumble of the elevated trains—and filtered out the pervasive stench of ozone, exhaust, and rotting garbage.

 

To the world above, to the skyscrapers of glass and steel where heroes like Endeavor and Hawks perched, this alleyway was a blind spot. A stain on the pristine tapestry of Hero Society. But to Izuku, it was a focal point. It was where the system’s programming showed its most glaring bugs.

 

He didn’t look at the alleyway with his naked eyes. His gaze was fixed on the screen of the device in his right hand.

 

It was a smartphone, but only in the sense that a tank was a vehicle. It was a bulky, armored slab of black metal, graphite, and exposed circuitry, heavily modified with external processors, custom antennae, and a lithium-ion battery pack scavenged from an electric vehicle. The screen glowed with a faint, ghostly green luminescence, casting long, sharp shadows across the upper half of his face. His emerald eyes darted across the cascading lines of code, processing the raw data of the city at a speed that would make most veteran analysts dizzy.

 

“You cannot be a hero without a Quirk.”

 

The memory of All Might’s voice, hollow and final on that sun-drenched rooftop ten months ago, echoed in the back of his mind. Izuku didn't flinch away from the memory anymore. He let it play, a subroutine running in the background, keeping him sharp.

 

All Might was right. Izuku Midoriya, the quirkless, fragile, useless Deku, could not be a hero. Heroes were symbols of peace. Heroes stood in the light, smiling for the cameras, wrapping themselves in capes and the adoration of the masses. Heroes were a product, marketed and sold by the Hero Public Safety Commission.

 

But a product required infrastructure. It required logistics, cameras, banking systems, traffic control, and PR databases. The HPSC had built a digital empire to manage their heroes, an omnipresent network called AegisOS. It connected every security camera, every traffic light, every ATM, and every citizen's personal device in Musutafu into one seamless, terrifyingly invasive grid, all in the name of "public safety."

 

The HPSC thought they owned the city because they owned the heroes.

 

Izuku’s thumb glided across the screen of his custom phone, bypassing a 256-bit encryption firewall in a matter of seconds.

 

They were wrong. The city didn't belong to the heroes. It belonged to the one who held the master keys.

 

He tapped a widget on his home screen. An application of his own design booted up. He called it the Profiler.

 

Instantly, the world below him transformed. Izuku looked away from the screen, staring down at the street through the lenses of his custom contact lenses—syncing via Bluetooth to the phone in his hand. Augmented reality overlays snapped into his field of vision. The physical world was overwritten by the digital.

 

A lone salaryman hurried down the sidewalk across the street, his umbrella held low against the wind. As Izuku looked at him, a translucent green box snapped around the man’s figure. Text populated in the air beside him.

 

TANAKA, KENJI

AGE: 34

QUIRK: MINOR PYROKINESIS (FINGERTIP IGNITION)

OCCUPATION: ACCOUNTANT, SHIBUYA LOGISTICS

INCOME: ¥4,500,000 / YEAR

FLAG: RECENT SEARCH HISTORY - 'HOW TO FLEE TO SOUTH KOREA WITHOUT A PASSPORT'

FLAG: DEBT TO SHIE HASSAIKAI SYNDICATE: ¥12,000,000

 

Izuku watched him pass. A dead man walking, crushed by the weight of a debt he could never repay. The heroes wouldn't save him. Hero Society only cared about flashy villain attacks they could stop on the evening news. They didn't care about the insidious rot of organized crime bleeding the working class dry.

 

Izuku swept his gaze to a group of teenagers huddled under the awning of a closed convenience store, passing a cigarette back and forth.

 

SATO, YUMI

AGE: 16

QUIRK: STATIC CLING

FLAG: PURCHASED 'TRIGGER' ENHANCER FROM UNREGISTERED VENDOR (3 HOURS AGO)

 

NAKAMURA, HIRO

AGE: 17

QUIRK: BONE DENSITY MANIPULATION

FLAG: JUVENILE RECORD - AGGRAVATED ASSAULT

 

The data flowed into him. It was a chaotic, beautiful symphony of secrets. Everyone wore a mask in this society. Everyone pretended to be something they weren't. But the data never lied. The data stripped them bare. Every text message, every bank transaction, every late-night search, every GPS ping—Izuku could see it all.

 

He was a ghost haunting the servers of Musutafu. And tonight, he was hunting.

 

His phone vibrated, a sharp, angry haptic feedback against his palm. A notification flashed on his HUD, glowing a harsh, warning red.

 

ALERT: CTOS PREDICTIVE CRIME ALGORITHM TRIGGERED.

PROBABILITY OF VIOLENT FELONY: 94%

LOCATION: ALLEYWAY 4B, KAMINO DISTRICT - 40 METERS AHEAD

 

Izuku stood up slowly. The joints of his trench coat rustled faintly. He stepped to the edge of the fire escape, looking down into the narrow, refuse-choked alleyway that cut between two towering apartment complexes. The only light came from a flickering, caged halogen bulb above a steel service door, casting long, erratic shadows.

 

He tapped his phone, accessing the alley's network node. He hijacked the microphone of a discarded smart-tablet lying in the trash below, amplifying the audio and feeding it directly into his earpiece.

 

Voices filtered through the static of the rain.

 

"I told you, man, I don't have it! The agency cut my pay this week! Just give me until Tuesday!"

 

The voice was desperate, cracking with terror.

 

Izuku moved silently along the fire escape, his footsteps masked by the storm, until he was positioned directly above the confrontation. He peered over the rusted railing.

 

Below, a man in a tattered business suit was backed against a brick wall, his hands raised defensively. Surrounding him were three figures. Two were standard street thugs—bulk, muscle, cheap leather jackets, and baseball bats.

 

The third man, the leader, stood at the front. He was tall, his silhouette jagged and unnatural.

 

Izuku aimed his phone down. The Profiler snapped a box around the leader.

 

MORI, KATSUO

ALIAS: 'RIPPER'

AGE: 28

QUIRK: RAZOR SCALES (EPIDERMIS COVERED IN RETRACTABLE, HIGH-TENSILE KERATIN BLADES)

CRIMINAL RECORD: EXTORTION, ARMED ROBBERY, MANSLAUGHTER (SERVED 3 YEARS, PAROLED EARLY)

AFFILIATION: UNAFFILIATED (FREELANCE ENFORCER)

BANK BALANCE: ¥14,350,000 (FLAGGED: MULTIPLE UNREGISTERED DEPOSITS)

 

"Tuesday?" Mori laughed. The sound was grating, like metal scraping against stone. He stepped into the dim pool of the halogen light. His skin caught the illumination—it wasn't skin, but overlapping, dark green scales that shifted and rasped against each other with his every movement. Along his forearms, the scales protruded into wicked, serrated edges. "You think my patience operates on a weekly schedule, Hideo? You borrowed from the wrong people. And when people don't pay, I have to make an example. Otherwise, the whole ecosystem falls apart."

 

Mori raised his right arm. The scales along his wrist extended with a sickening shing, forming a jagged, organic blade.

 

"Wait, wait! Please!" Hideo sobbed, pressing himself so hard against the brick it looked as though he were trying to phase through it.

 

Izuku didn't feel a surge of righteous fury. He didn't feel the burning passion of a hero ready to save the day. He felt cold, calculating calm. He saw the alley not as a battlefield, but as a chessboard. As a circuit board waiting to be rewired.

 

He looked at his HUD. The environment was littered with interactive nodes, glowing white in his vision.

 

The halogen streetlight above them.

The electrical junction box on the wall to the left of the thugs.

A burst steam pipe beneath the street grating near Mori's feet.

The security camera mounted on the corner of the building, its red recording light blinking.

 

Step one: Blind the system.

 

Izuku’s thumb danced over his screen. He isolated the IP address of the HPSC security camera watching the alley. With a few lines of code, he initiated a localized spoofing attack. He intercepted the video feed currently being sent to the central servers, recorded ten seconds of empty alleyway, and looped it. To anyone watching the monitors at the local police precinct or hero agency, Alleyway 4B was quiet, empty, and peaceful.

 

Step two: Isolate the targets.

 

Izuku accessed the municipal power grid. He targeted the streetlights at the entrances of the alleyway. Tap. Tap. The lights on the street popped loudly, showering the pavement in sparks before dying completely, plunging the entrances into pitch blackness.

 

Down below, one of the thugs with a bat looked over his shoulder. "Hey, Boss. Lights just blew on the street."

 

"So what?" Mori snarled, not taking his eyes off Hideo. "City's infrastructure is garbage anyway. Keep your eyes on this rat. I'm gonna take a few fingers as interest."

 

Step three: Execute.

 

Izuku holstered his phone in a secure pouch on his chest rig. In a fluid, practiced motion, he reached beneath his trench coat and drew his weapon.

 

It was a heavily modified, matte-black pneumatic pistol. It didn't fire lead. Izuku had spent months in his underground hideout machining the internal mechanisms to fire compressed rubber-slugs and high-voltage taser rounds with terrifying velocity. It was non-lethal, but it hit with the force of a sledgehammer.

 

In his left hand, he gripped a sleek, cylindrical handle clipped to his belt. A flick of his wrist, and a telescopic steel baton snapped out with a sharp clack, locking into place. The metal was reinforced with a tungsten core, perfectly balanced.

 

He stepped over the railing of the fire escape.

 

He didn't yell. He didn't announce his presence. He simply let gravity take him.

 

As he fell the fifteen feet toward the pavement, his hand hovered over a small remote strapped to his wrist, synced to his phone. He pressed the single, large button on its face.

 

Overload.

 

The electrical junction box on the wall beside the thugs received a massive, unchecked surge of power directly from the main grid.

 

BOOM.

 

The box detonated with the force of a flashbang. A blinding, searing arc of blue-white electricity exploded outward, accompanied by a deafening crack that echoed like a gunshot. A shower of molten sparks cascaded over the two thugs.

 

"GAAAH!" The thug on the left screamed, dropping his bat as the sparks scorched his leather jacket and blinded him. The second thug stumbled backward, throwing his hands over his eyes, completely disoriented.

 

Mori flinched, his scaled arms coming up to shield his face, his Quirk automatically flaring as the razor edges extended in defense.

 

Izuku hit the ground behind them.

 

He didn't land in a heroic crouch. He hit the slick asphalt and instantly rolled, the heavy soles of his boots and the kevlar of his coat absorbing the kinetic energy. He came up in a dead sprint, utterly silent save for the splash of his boots in the puddles.

 

The first thug was still rubbing his eyes, trying to clear the spots from his vision. Izuku closed the distance in a fraction of a second. He didn't aim for the head or the chest. He aimed for the mechanics of the human body.

 

Izuku swung the tungsten baton low and hard, striking the side of the thug’s left knee. The sickening crack of the patella fracturing cut through the sound of the rain.

 

The thug didn't even have time to scream before Izuku pivoted on his heel, using the momentum of his swing to bring the baton up, driving the pommel brutally upward into the thug's solar plexus. All the air left the man's lungs in a violent whoosh, and he crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, unconscious before he hit the asphalt.

 

"What the hell?!" The second thug blinked away the blindness just in time to see his partner fall. He roared, gripping his baseball bat with both hands, and swung it wildly at Izuku's head.

 

Izuku ducked under the wild, uncoordinated swing. He stepped inside the man’s guard, raising his pneumatic pistol. Point-blank range.

 

Thwump.

 

The compressed rubber slug hit the thug directly under the collarbone. The impact was devastating. The man was lifted off his feet, the bat flying from his hands, and he crashed backward into the garbage cans, groaning in agony as his arm hung uselessly at his side.

 

Two down in less than three seconds.

 

"You little shit!"

 

Izuku spun around. Mori was recovering from the flash. The villain's eyes burned with predatory fury. The scales covering his body had shifted, overlapping into a thick, biological armor. The blades on his forearms were easily six inches long, gleaming with rain and malice.

 

"A hero? Sneaking around in the dark?" Mori spat, stepping away from the terrified victim, Hideo, who was currently sliding along the wall, trying to escape. "You think a stick and a toy gun are gonna pierce my scales? I can deflect bullets, you bastard!"

 

Izuku didn't speak. He never spoke on a job. His voice was a data point, an identifying marker. He remained silent, a faceless phantom in a respirator mask and a green coat, his glowing green eyes the only visible feature, cold and analytical.

 

Mori charged.

 

For a man covered in heavy scales, he was fast. He closed the gap, lunging forward with a sweeping, horizontal slash of his right arm, aiming to decapitate Izuku.

 

Izuku didn't try to block it. He knew the tungsten baton would hold, but the sheer kinetic force of the villain's enhanced musculature would shatter Izuku's wrist. He was Quirkless. He could not match a Quirk-user in raw power. He had to be smarter.

 

Izuku dropped to his knees, sliding on the wet asphalt, sliding directly beneath the lethal arc of Mori's blade. As he passed under the villain's guard, he lashed out with the baton, striking the back of Mori's calf.

 

Clang.

 

The baton bounced off the scales, vibrating painfully up Izuku's arm. Mori didn't even flinch. The armor was too thick.

 

Mori spun around with terrifying agility, backhanding Izuku with his left arm. Izuku barely managed to bring the baton up to parry. The serrated scales ground against the steel with a shower of sparks. The force of the blow lifted Izuku off his feet, throwing him backward. He crashed hard into the brick wall, the breath knocked out of him. Pain flared in his shoulder, sharp and hot.

 

"Is that all you got?" Mori mocked, stalking forward, his blades scraping together. "You hit like a bitch."

 

Izuku pushed himself off the wall, his chest heaving under the kevlar. His physical body was at its limit, but his mind was already three steps ahead.

 

He didn't need to break Mori's armor. He just needed to bypass it.

 

Izuku glanced at his HUD. The environment map was still active. He noted his position. He noted Mori’s position.

 

Directly between them was a circular, iron maintenance grate set into the pavement. Beneath it was the city's pressurized steam network.

 

Izuku holstered his baton. He raised the pneumatic pistol with both hands, taking aim at Mori's face.

 

Mori laughed, crossing his arms over his face, hiding behind his impregnable scales. "I told you, guns don't work on me!"

 

Izuku didn't aim for Mori.

 

He adjusted his aim two degrees downward.

 

Thwump. Thwump.

 

He fired two rubber slugs in rapid succession, not at the villain, but at the rusted lock mechanism holding the iron grate in place. The heavy slugs shattered the brittle, oxidized iron.

 

Izuku dropped his hand to his wrist remote and triggered his secondary hack. He tapped into the municipal pressure valves beneath the street, closing the release vents further down the line and forcing all the superheated steam to funnel directly to the compromised grate.

 

The pressure spiked instantly.

 

With an ear-splitting hiss, the iron grate blew off its hinges, rocketing ten feet into the air. A massive, violent geyser of superheated, blinding white steam erupted from the ground directly in front of Mori.

 

"ARGH!" Mori shrieked. His scales were thick, but they didn't protect him from the searing heat of industrial steam boiling the air around him. He staggered backward, completely blinded by the thick white cloud, flailing his bladed arms wildly in a panic.

 

Izuku moved.

 

He skirted the edge of the steam vent, moving silently through the thick fog. He drew his baton again, holding it in a reverse grip.

 

Mori was coughing, swiping at the air. "Where are you?! Face me, coward!"

 

Izuku stepped out of the mist directly behind Mori.

 

He didn't attack the scales. He analyzed the villain's anatomy. Quirks were biological. They had limitations. They had weak points. Mori’s scales covered his skin, but they couldn't cover everything. To allow for movement, there were microscopic gaps at the joints. And more importantly, to allow him to breathe, hear, and see, there were openings at the neck and the base of the skull.

 

Izuku leapt up, planting his boot squarely on the back of Mori's knee, forcing the villain to buckle backward. As Mori stumbled, Izuku wrapped his left arm around the villain's throat in a chokehold, careful to avoid the razor scales on the collarbone.

 

With his right hand, Izuku jammed the tip of the tungsten baton directly into the small, unarmored cluster of nerves at the base of Mori's skull—the occipital nerve.

 

Izuku drove it in hard.

 

Mori let out a choked, gagging gasp. His entire body went rigid as the strike short-circuited his nervous system. His eyes rolled back into his head, the razor scales on his arms instantly retracting as he lost consciousness.

 

Izuku stepped back, letting the massive villain collapse to the wet pavement like a felled tree.

 

Silence descended on the alley, broken only by the steady drum of the rain and the hissing of the broken steam pipe.

 

Izuku stood over the bodies, panting heavily. The adrenaline was beginning to recede, leaving behind the throbbing ache in his shoulder and the deep, bone-weary exhaustion that always followed a patrol. He adjusted his mask, his breathing harsh and mechanical through the filters.

 

He looked toward the end of the alley. The victim, Hideo, was still huddled on the ground, staring at Izuku with wide, terrified eyes.

 

"H-Hero...?" Hideo whispered, trembling. "Th-thank you... I..."

 

Izuku didn't reply. He simply stared at the man, his glowing green lenses cold and unreadable. The Profiler was still running in his peripheral vision.

 

HIDEO, SATO

FLAG: DEBT TO SHIE HASSAIKAI SYNDICATE: ¥1,500,000

FLAG: SEARCH HISTORY - 'HOW TO EXPLAIN MISSING FUNDS TO WIFE'

FLAG: GAMBLING ADDICTION

 

The man wasn't innocent. He had made his own bed. But he didn't deserve to be butchered in an alleyway over it.

 

Izuku slowly reached into his coat.

 

Hideo flinched, throwing his hands over his face, whimpering, expecting to be shot.

 

Instead, Izuku pulled out a burner phone. He tossed it onto the ground near Hideo's feet.

 

Hideo slowly lowered his hands, staring at the cheap plastic phone.

 

"There's an address in the contacts," Izuku's voice was digitally synthesized through his mask, sounding like a distorted, robotic whisper, devoid of humanity. "An underground clinic. They specialize in addiction counseling and debt relocation. Go there. Tell them the Ghost sent you. If you ever borrow from the Yakuza again, I won't stop them next time."

 

Hideo scrambled to his feet, snatching the phone from the puddles. He bowed frantically, over and over, tears mixing with the rain on his face. "Y-yes! Thank you! Thank you, Ghost! I swear, I'll change! I swear!"

 

He turned and bolted down the alley, disappearing into the rainy night.

 

Izuku watched him go, feeling nothing. He turned his attention back to his primary objective.

 

He knelt beside the unconscious form of Katsuo Mori. The villain was breathing steadily, out cold. Izuku patted down the man’s leather trench coat until he found what he was looking for.

 

A high-end, heavily encrypted HPSC-issued smartphone. The kind of tech only Pro Heroes and high-level syndicate bosses could afford.

 

Izuku pulled his own custom phone from his rig. From a hidden compartment in the base, he pulled out a specialized, multi-pronged data cable. He jammed one end into Mori's phone and the other into his own device.

 

The moment the connection was established, Izuku’s screen exploded with activity.

 

BIOMETRIC LOCK DETECTED: RETINAL SCAN REQUIRED

 

Izuku tapped a script on his phone labeled 'Brute Force Bypass v4'.

 

The screen flashed rapidly, hundreds of thousands of algorithms slamming against the phone's firewall in a matter of seconds. The processing power required was immense; Izuku could feel his own phone heating up in his palm.

 

Crack.

 

ACCESS GRANTED

 

Izuku smiled beneath his mask. It was a cold, predatory smile.

 

He was into Mori's personal ecosystem. He combed through the data. Text messages, extortion lists, contacts for low-level weapon smugglers. Izuku set a script to silently download everything to his encrypted cloud server back at his hideout. He would parse through it later. Right now, he wanted the prize.

 

He accessed the banking app.

 

CURRENT BALANCE: ¥14,350,000

 

Fourteen million yen. Blood money. Squeezed from desperate people, stolen from small businesses, earned through violence and terror.

 

Mori would use this money to buy better weapons, hire more thugs, and bribe the corrupt Pro Heroes who patrolled this district to look the other way. It was the lifeblood of the sickness infecting Musutafu.

 

Izuku wasn't going to arrest Mori. He wasn't a cop. He was a hacker. He hit people where it actually hurt.

 

He initiated a transfer protocol.

 

He didn't just move the money; he washed it. He routed the fourteen million yen through a maze of proxies. First, it bounced to a shell server in Switzerland, then fragmenting into dozens of micro-transactions through a decentralized crypto-exchange in Singapore, before reassembling in a blind trust in the Cayman Islands. Completely untraceable.

 

From there, he divided the sum.

 

Seven million yen was wired to the administrative account of the Musutafu Sunshine Orphanage, designated as an anonymous corporate donation for building repairs and educational supplies.

 

The remaining seven million yen was routed to the Musutafu Quirkless Outreach Center, a dilapidated clinic that struggled to keep its doors open while serving the marginalized 20% of the population that society had forgotten.

 

TRANSFER COMPLETE. BALANCE: ¥0

 

Izuku unplugged the cable. He stood up, dropping Mori's now useless, bricked phone into a puddle, crushing it beneath his heavy boot.

 

Suddenly, his own phone vibrated violently. His HUD flashed a blaring crimson warning.

 

ALERT: PRO HERO APPROACHING. ETA: 30 SECONDS.

IDENTIFICATION: ERASERHEAD

QUIRK: ERASURE

THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME

 

Izuku’s eyes widened slightly. Eraserhead. The underground hero. One of the few Pros Izuku actually respected, but also the most dangerous to his operation. Eraserhead didn't rely on flashy moves or PR; he relied on stealth, capture tape, and neutralizing Quirks.

 

Which made him incredibly lethal against someone who didn't have a Quirk to begin with.

 

Izuku couldn't fight him. Not yet. His gear was good, but Aizawa’s experience was unparalleled.

 

Izuku moved to the wall of the alley. From his belt, he unclipped a specialized, motorized winch attached to a grapnel hook. He aimed it at the edge of the roof, three stories up, and fired. The hook shot into the darkness with a muffled thwip, biting securely into the concrete lip of the building.

 

Before he ascended, Izuku took out his phone one last time. He needed to leave a message. He couldn't let the HPSC spin this as a random gang fight. He needed them to know the system was compromised.

 

He connected to the alley's local network node again. He uploaded a tiny, deeply embedded script into the firmware of the nearby ATM, the streetlights, and the security camera.

 

He hit 'Execute'.

 

Then, he gripped the handle of the winch and squeezed the trigger. The motor whined, yanking him off the ground. He ascended rapidly, the rain whipping against his coat. He cleared the edge of the roof, tumbling over the low parapet wall and immediately dropping into a crouch in the shadows.

 

He disconnected the grapnel, rolled the wire back into the housing, and waited, his breath held.

 

Five seconds later, a shadow dropped into the alleyway below.

 

Shota Aizawa, the Pro Hero Eraserhead, landed in a crouch without making a single sound. His long, dark hair was plastered to his face by the rain, his capture weapon—a long, prehensile scarf made of steel wire and carbon nanofibers—coiled around his neck like a striking viper. His yellow goggles rested around his neck.

 

Aizawa stood up slowly, his dark, exhausted eyes sweeping the scene.

 

He didn't find chaos. He found surgical precision.

 

He walked over to the first thug. He knelt, examining the man's leg. "Shattered patella. Blunt force trauma," Aizawa muttered to himself, his voice a raspy drawl. He checked the second thug. "Pneumatic impact weapon. Non-lethal, but highly effective. Ribs are cracked."

 

Finally, Aizawa walked over to Katsuo Mori. He recognized the villain immediately. Ripper. A dangerous, D-rank villain that usually required a team of sidekicks to subdue due to his armored scales.

 

Aizawa examined the back of Mori's neck. He saw the small, purpling bruise at the base of the skull.

 

"Precision strike to the occipital nerve," Aizawa analyzed, his eyes narrowing in the darkness. "Bypassed the armor entirely. No sign of a Quirk being used. Pure tactical martial arts."

 

Aizawa stood up, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. This wasn't a hero's work. Heroes were trained to use their Quirks to overwhelm. They were loud. They left collateral damage.

 

This was clean. This was ruthless.

 

Aizawa looked up at the security camera mounted on the wall. He reached for his radio. "Dispatch, this is Eraserhead. I'm at Alleyway 4B in Kamino. I have three suspects down. Send a wagon."

 

"Copy that, Eraserhead," the dispatcher's voice crackled in his earpiece. "Did you engage?"

 

"No," Aizawa said, his eyes scanning the rooftops, though he saw nothing but rain and shadow. "Someone beat me to it."

 

"Understood. We'll pull the security feeds for the area."

 

"Don't bother," Aizawa said flatly.

 

"Sir?"

 

"The cameras didn't catch anything."

 

As Aizawa spoke, the alleyway suddenly came alive.

 

The screen of the ATM embedded in the wall to his left flickered, the standard bank logo glitching out in a storm of static.

 

The digital advertising billboard on the side of the building above him, which had been displaying an ad for Uwabami's new perfume, suddenly went black.

 

Even the broken, crushed phone lying in the puddle at Aizawa's feet sparked, its shattered screen glowing faintly.

 

Aizawa turned slowly in a circle. Every digital screen, every monitor, every LED display within a fifty-meter radius of the alleyway was synced together. The screens glowed with a sickly, neon green light, casting an eerie, matrix-like luminescence over the wet asphalt.

 

Then, lines of text began to scroll rapidly across every screen, cascading downward like rain. The text formed ASCII art, shaping into a stylized, jagged rabbit mask with a cracked eye.

 

Beneath the logo, a single line of text appeared, blinking steadily on every screen in the alley.

 

 SYSTEM OVERRIDE.

 FUNDS REALLOCATED.

 D3KU WAS HERE

 

Aizawa stared at the ATM screen, reading the moniker.

 

"Deku," Aizawa muttered, the name tasting like ash in his mouth.

 

It wasn't the first time he had seen that tag. Over the past three months, it had appeared across the city. A ghost in the machine. A vigilante who didn't patrol the streets, but patrolled the servers. Corrupt politicians' bank accounts drained. Yakuza drug shipments intercepted by anonymously hacked traffic lights leading them straight into police blockades. Human trafficking rings exposed via massive data dumps sent directly to the press.

 

The Hero Public Safety Commission was terrified of him. They had classified him as an S-Rank cyber-terrorist. They assumed he had a powerful technopathy Quirk.

 

But Aizawa, looking at the precision martial arts strikes on the thugs at his feet, knew better.

 

This wasn't just a hacker sitting in a basement. This was someone who could bleed you in the digital world, and break your bones in the physical one. A phantom who operated entirely outside the rigid, Quirk-obsessed hierarchy of their society.

 

Aizawa looked up at the fire escape, his eyes tracing the path the vigilante must have taken.

 

"You're making a lot of noise for a ghost, kid," Aizawa whispered to the rain. "Sooner or later, you're going to slip up. And when you do, I'll be waiting."

 

Three stories above, perched precariously on the edge of a gargoyle overlooking the alley, Izuku Midoriya listened to Aizawa’s words through the hijacked microphone of the ATM.

 

He didn't smile. He didn't feel a sense of triumph.

 

He looked down at his custom phone. The battery was draining, and he needed to run a diagnostic on his bypass scripts before they tracked his ping.

 

He was just a Quirkless teenager. Society had deemed him useless. A glitch in their perfect, superhuman world.

 

They wanted to ignore him. That was fine.

 

Press X to Hack.

 

Izuku tapped his screen, wiping his digital footprint from the alley's network, erasing his presence completely.

 

He turned his back on the alley, pulled his collar up against the rain, and melted into the neon-lit shadows of the Musutafu skyline, leaving nothing behind but broken bones and a blinking cursor.

 

He was the glitch. And he was going to crash the whole damn system.

 

The smell of burning paper is remarkably distinct. It doesn't smell like a campfire or a burning building; it smells like roasting chemicals, crisping fibers, and the suffocating tang of ink turning to ash.

 

Ten months ago, that smell had defined the end of Izuku Midoriya’s childhood.

 

He remembered standing in the narrow alleyway behind his apartment complex in the dead of night, the cold wind biting at his tear-stained cheeks. In front of him was a rusted, corrugated metal incinerator barrel used by the building's superintendent. Inside it, a small fire crackled, casting a flickering orange glow over Izuku’s empty, hollowed-out eyes.

 

He held a notebook in his hands. Its cover was charred from an earlier explosion, the title Hero Analysis for the Future No. 13 barely legible.

 

“I cannot simply say, ‘You can become a hero even without power.’”

 

All Might’s voice, devoid of its booming bravado, had echoed in his head on a loop. The Symbol of Peace, the man Izuku had worshipped since he could walk, had looked down at him with pity—a suffocating, heavy pity that crushed whatever hope Izuku had left. “It’s not bad to dream. But you also have to consider what’s realistic, young man.”

 

Izuku had watched the Symbol of Peace leap away, leaving him alone on a rooftop with shattered dreams and a terrifyingly clear view of the city.

 

He hadn't jumped. He hadn't cried anymore, either. He had simply walked down the stairs, taken the train home, and locked himself in his room. He looked at his posters, his action figures, his meticulously kept notes. They weren't monuments to a dream anymore; they were a monument to his own delusion.

 

So, he had gathered the notebooks. All thirteen of them. Years of observation, of tactical breakdowns, of Quirk analysis.

 

He tossed Notebook No. 13 into the barrel. The flames licked at the edges, curling the paper inward before consuming it in a flash of yellow heat. He watched his childish handwriting—notes on Kamui Woods' binding strength, Mount Lady's center of gravity, All Might's muscle density—turn black, then white, then crumble into nothing.

 

He had expected to feel empty. He had expected to feel like he was dying.

 

Instead, as he watched the ashes float upward into the smog-choked Musutafu sky, a strange, crystalline clarity washed over him.

 

All Might was right. The physical world belonged to Quirks. The laws of physics, biology, and kinetic force were bent and broken by those lucky enough to be born with a genetic mutation. In a fistfight, a Quirkless boy would always lose. In a society that valued superhuman strength, a Quirkless boy was a statistical anomaly. A rounding error.

 

But as Izuku looked up past the embers, past the rooftops, his eyes caught the glowing red lights of a cell tower. He looked down the street at the traffic lights blinking in perfect, automated synchronicity. He looked at the glowing lens of the security camera mounted above the alleyway.

 

The physical world belonged to Quirks.

 

But the physical world was no longer the only world.

 

Hero Society didn't run on punches. It didn't run on flashy smiles. It ran on logistics. It ran on PR algorithms that calculated a hero’s popularity. It ran on banking systems that processed the billions of yen in collateral damage and merchandising. It ran on the Hero Public Safety Commission’s central grid, a massive digital infrastructure that tracked every citizen, every villain, and every Pro Hero in Japan.

 

Quirks couldn't bend the internet. Super strength couldn't punch through a 256-bit encryption firewall. Fire breath couldn't burn a digital footprint.

 

Izuku didn't go back upstairs to his room. He walked to a late-night electronics thrift store. He emptied his meager savings account and bought a refurbished, bulky laptop, a soldering iron, and a textbook on Python programming.

 

He returned home, cleared his desk of all All Might merchandise, and set the laptop down. He opened a new, blank notebook.

 

With a black pen, he wrote a new title:

 

Code & Infrastructure Analysis for the Future No. 1.

 

The boy who wanted to be a hero died that night in the ashes. The Ghost of Musutafu took his first breath in the glow of an LCD screen.

 

 

 

PRESENT DAY - 10 MONTHS LATER

 

The shrill, piercing ring of the Aldera Junior High school bell cut through the dull hum of classroom chatter.

 

Izuku sat at his desk near the back window, staring blankly out at the grey, overcast sky. He was dressed in the standard black gakuran uniform, though it hung slightly looser on him than it had a year ago. His green curls were a messy, unkempt halo, and dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes—a testament to a sleep schedule that rarely saw more than three hours of uninterrupted rest.

 

Around him, the classroom erupted into chaotic energy as the teacher dismissed them for lunch. Desks scraped against the linoleum, laughter echoed off the walls, and the casual, everyday displays of minor Quirks flared to life. A boy in the front row stretched his fingers, turning them into pencils; a girl near the door casually floated her bento box to her desk.

 

Izuku didn't look at them. He wasn't really there.

 

His hands were beneath his desk, his thumbs flying across the screen of a heavily modified, secondary smartphone. It looked like a cheap, thick block of plastic—a burner phone to the untrained eye—but beneath the casing, it was a localized network sniffer.

 

Currently, his screen was displaying a real-time layout of Aldera Junior High’s digital network.

 

NODE: FACULTY ROUTER 01 - SEC: WPA2

NODE: STUDENT WIFI PUBLIC - SEC: NONE

NODE: SECURITY CAMERA CCTV - SEC: AES-128

 

Pathetic, Izuku thought, his expression remaining perfectly blank. The school board spends three million yen upgrading the gymnasium for Quirk-counseling exercises, but leaves the central security cameras running on a default admin password from 2008. I could lock the entire faculty out of their grading portal in four seconds.

 

He didn't, of course. There was no point. Aldera was a microscopic, irrelevant gear in the machine. He was just running basic penetration tests to keep his fingers fast.

 

"Hey. Deku."

 

The voice was a low, dangerous rumble, accompanied by the distinct smell of burnt caramel and nitroglycerin.

 

Izuku sighed internally. He smoothly slid the burner phone into his pocket, his face shifting into a carefully rehearsed mask of timid subservience, and looked up.

 

Katsuki Bakugo stood by Izuku's desk. His uniform was unbuttoned, his tie loose, his spiky ash-blonde hair defying gravity as usual. Flanking him were his two usual sycophants—a boy with elongated, extendable fingers, and another with leathery, bat-like wings.

 

Bakugo’s crimson eyes were narrowed, glaring down at Izuku with a mixture of disgust and perpetual anger.

 

"What are you looking at, nerd?" Bakugo demanded, slamming his palm flat against Izuku's desk. A small pop of a localized explosion singed the wood, leaving a faint black scorch mark.

 

A year ago, Izuku would have flinched. He would have stammered, his heart hammering against his ribs in terror, desperately trying to defuse the situation.

 

Now, Izuku just looked at the scorch mark, and then up at Bakugo. He didn't feel fear. He felt a clinical detachment.

 

He didn't see 'Kacchan', his childhood friend.

 

Through the invisible lens of the Profiler playing in his mind’s eye, Izuku saw the data.

 

Katsuki Bakugo. Age: 14. Quirk: Explosion. Income bracket: Upper Middle Class. Recent digital activity: Three hours logged on a Pro Hero forum arguing about Endeavor’s tactical flaws; purchased two pairs of custom combat boots online; GPS pings indicate he runs a five-kilometer route every morning at 0500 hours.

 

Bakugo was a prodigy. He was powerful, intelligent, and driven. But digitally? Bakugo was loud, predictable, and left a footprint a mile wide. His phone’s Bluetooth was always set to 'discoverable.' Izuku could brick Bakugo’s phone, drain his parents' bank accounts, and leak his private search history to the entire school before the explosive teen could even raise his fist.

 

But Izuku didn't. Bakugo was a bully, but he wasn't the target. He was a symptom of a society that worshipped power at the expense of empathy.

 

"Nothing, Kacchan," Izuku said, keeping his voice carefully modulated, pitching it slightly higher to sound appropriately meek. "Just... looking at the rain."

 

Bakugo sneered, leaning in closer. "You've been acting weird lately, Deku. Too quiet. You stopped mumbling your creepy little notes. You finally figure out that Quirkless nobodies like you don't get to have opinions?"

 

"Yes," Izuku said simply.

 

The immediate, flat agreement caught Bakugo off guard. The explosive teen blinked, his scowl faltering for a fraction of a second. He was used to resistance, to Izuku's pathetic, naive optimism. This hollow capitulation offered no friction, no fuel for Bakugo's fire.

 

"Tch," Bakugo scoffed, pulling his hand away from the desk. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Whatever. Just stay out of my way. High school applications are coming up. I'm going to U.A. Don't think about applying, you Quirkless piece of shit. You'd just embarrass the name of the school."

 

"I'm not applying to the Hero Course," Izuku lied effortlessly. He wasn't applying to U.A. at all. He had forged application papers for a quiet, generic vocational school on the other side of the city to keep his mother, Inko, happy.

 

Bakugo glared at him for a moment longer, searching for the lie, before turning on his heel. "Come on," he barked at his lackeys. "This air is making me sick."

 

Izuku watched them walk away. He waited until they were out of the classroom before pulling his phone back out. He opened a background script he had written months ago.

 

Execute: Nuisance Protocol KB.

 

Across the room, Bakugo was walking out the door when his smartphone suddenly blared an ear-piercing, maximum-volume notification sound—a recording of a crying baby.

 

Bakugo jumped, instinctively dropping his bag and scrambling for his pocket. "What the hell?!" he yelled, frantically tapping the screen. "Shut up! Turn off, you piece of garbage!"

 

The screen was frozen on maximum volume. The lackeys stared at him in confusion. The rest of the hallway turned to look at the explosive boy fumbling with his phone.

 

Izuku smiled, a small, genuine smirk hidden behind his hand as he looked back out the window.

 

It was petty. It was childish. But sometimes, a ghost just wanted to prove he was in the room.

 

 

 

School ended. Izuku didn't walk home.

 

He navigated the labyrinthine streets of Musutafu with the practiced ease of a local, but he avoided the main thoroughfares. He ducked through alleyways, crossed through abandoned construction sites, and utilized pedestrian tunnels. He didn't do this to avoid bullies; he did it to avoid the HPSC's 'AegisOS' optical network.

 

The Hero Public Safety Commission had installed facial recognition cameras on almost every major intersection. They claimed it was to optimize hero deployment. Izuku knew it was a surveillance dragnet. By keeping his head down, wearing a generic baseball cap, and taking blind-spot routes, Izuku ensured that the algorithm never logged a consistent pattern of his daily movements.

 

Thirty minutes later, he arrived at his destination.

 

It was the Red Zone—an industrial sector of Musutafu that had been abandoned a decade ago after a massive battle between All Might and a villain with a terraforming Quirk had structurally compromised the entire district. The city had promised to rebuild, but the funds mysteriously dried up, leaving a sprawling graveyard of rusted warehouses, cracked concrete, and overgrown weeds.

 

Izuku approached an unassuming, heavily graffitied concrete bunker that used to be a subterranean maintenance hub for the city’s defunct metro expansion line. The heavy steel door was chained shut and padlocked.

 

Izuku didn't touch the padlock. He walked around to the side of the bunker, moving a discarded piece of corrugated tin to reveal a rusty ventilation shaft. He slipped his backpack off, shimmied through the narrow opening, and dropped silently into the darkness below.

 

He landed on a metal gantry, walked down a flight of stairs, and stepped onto a concrete floor. The air was cool and smelled of ozone, old dust, and hot copper.

 

He reached out in the pitch blackness and flipped a heavy industrial breaker switch.

 

Clack.

 

The room groaned to life.

 

It didn't turn on like a normal room. It powered up like a starship. First came the low, deep bass thrum of the massive cooling fans kicking into high gear. Then, banks of LED lights flickered on, casting a sharp, tactical blue-and-white glow over the space. Finally, the screens illuminated one by one.

 

Welcome to the Root Directory.

 

It was a marvel of scavenged engineering. Over the past ten months, Izuku had transformed the abandoned maintenance hub into a state-of-the-art cyber-warfare bunker.

 

Three massive server racks lined the back wall. They weren't bought; they were salvaged from the e-waste dumpsters of bankrupt tech startups, rebuilt by Izuku’s own hands, and rewired to bypass standard power consumption monitors by splicing directly into an abandoned, unmetered municipal power line.

 

The center of the room was dominated by a large, circular console made from a discarded air-traffic control desk. Mounted above it were six high-definition curved monitors. Cables snaked across the concrete floor like thick black veins, pulsing with data.

 

To the left was his workbench, covered in soldering irons, circuit boards, 3D-printed gun parts, and the disassembled remains of several smart devices.

 

Izuku tossed his school bag onto a ratty, sunken couch in the corner. He shrugged off his school jacket, wincing slightly as a sharp spike of pain radiated from his left shoulder.

 

He reached up, probing the muscle. It was tender and deeply bruised from where Katsuo Mori’s heavily scaled arm had sent him flying into the brick wall the night before.

 

Izuku walked over to a metal cabinet, pulling out a first-aid kit. He stripped off his white undershirt, revealing a torso that was vastly different from the scrawny, fragile boy he had been a year ago.

 

He hadn't spent all his time at a keyboard. He knew that to hack the physical world, he had to survive it. He had spent hours in this bunker undergoing brutal, self-directed calisthenics, studying anatomy, and practicing close-quarters combat with his telescopic baton against hanging heavy bags. His muscles were lean, defined, and coiled tight. He was no Pro Hero, but he was fast, resilient, and utterly ruthless in his execution.

 

He slathered a potent, cooling anti-inflammatory gel over his bruised shoulder, wrapped it tightly with a compression bandage, and pulled on a black, long-sleeved tactical shirt.

 

He grabbed a can of cheap, lukewarm coffee from a mini-fridge, popped the tab, and sat down in the high-backed leather chair at the center console.

 

He exhaled, the sound lost in the whir of the cooling fans.

 

This was where he belonged. Up above, he was Izuku Midoriya, the Quirkless, useless Deku. Down here, in the cold light of the servers, he was a god.

 

He cracked his knuckles, the sound sharp in the bunker, and laid his hands flat on the mechanical keyboard.

 

"Let's see what the city is hiding today," Izuku whispered.

 

He began to type. His fingers moved with blinding, rhythmic speed, a blur of motion over the keys.

 

The six screens above him flared to life, shifting from standby black to a cascading waterfall of code, maps, and video feeds.

 

INITIALIZING VPN PROXY CHAIN...

BOUNCING IP: REYKJAVIK  SAO PAULO  HONG KONG  MUSUTAFU...

ACCESSING AEGIS OS BACKDOOR v.4.2...

HANDSHAKE CONFIRMED. STEALTH MODE ENGAGED.

 

The center monitor snapped into a highly detailed, real-time wireframe map of Musutafu. Tiny glowing dots pulsed across the grid—red for emergency services, blue for Pro Heroes currently on patrol (tracked via their HPSC-issued phones), and green for active police units.

 

Izuku was surfing the AegisOS network.

 

It was a terrifyingly beautiful piece of software. The HPSC had sold AegisOS to the public as a "smart city initiative" meant to optimize traffic, reduce crime response times, and connect emergency services. What they hadn't told the public was that AegisOS required a universal backdoor into almost every connected device in the city.

 

Smart cars, ATMs, home security systems, pacemakers, smartphones—if it had a microchip and connected to the grid, AegisOS could see it.

 

Izuku hadn't broken AegisOS. That was impossible; the encryption was too dense. Instead, he had found a flaw in its architecture. AegisOS was so massive, so all-encompassing, that the HPSC had to automate its maintenance. Izuku had written a script that disguised himself as an automated maintenance subroutine. He didn't break down the front door; he walked in wearing a janitor's uniform, and the system ignored him.

 

He opened a secondary window, bringing up the police frequency logs from the previous night in the Kamino District. He wanted to see how the HPSC was handling the fallout from Alley 4B.

 

He pulled up the police report filed by Detective Tsukauchi.

 

Suspects Katsuo Mori (Quirk: Razor Scales) and two accomplices apprehended. Minor injuries sustained prior to police arrival. Suspects claim they were attacked by an unknown assailant utilizing high-voltage electrical surges and blunt force trauma.

 

Note: All local CCTV footage was found to be looping old footage. Bank records for Katsuo Mori indicate a complete zeroing of his accounts, with funds dispersed to local charities via untraceable offshore routing.

 

Addendum by Pro Hero Eraserhead: Assailant left digital signature D3KU. Highly skilled in CQC and tactical evasion. Treat as high-level vigilante/cyber-threat.

 

Izuku hummed, taking a sip of his coffee. Eraserhead was sharp. Most heroes would have just assumed it was a rival gang or a Quirk user. But Eraserhead saw the methodology. He would have to be careful around the underground hero in the future.

 

Izuku pushed the police report aside. He wasn't interested in the past. He was interested in the current data stream.

 

He initiated a 'Packet Sniffer' protocol.

 

In layman's terms, he cast a massive digital net into the flow of information running across Musutafu’s servers, looking for anomalies. He wasn't looking for standard text messages or internet searches. He was looking for heavily encrypted, localized bursts of data. People who had something to hide went out of their way to hide it.

 

For ten minutes, the screens scrolled uselessly. Mostly corporate espionage, teenagers buying illegal Quirk-enhancers on the dark web, and low-level drug deals. Izuku set automated scripts to forward the drug deals to the police tip-line, but ignored the rest.

 

Then, his terminal beeped. A sharp, distinct chirp.

 

ANOMALY DETECTED

 

Izuku sat up straight, his eyes locking onto the third monitor.

 

A data packet had just flashed across the grid. It was massive, heavily encrypted, and moving incredibly fast.

 

Izuku typed frantically, attempting to latch onto the signal before it vanished.

 

"Where are you going?" Izuku muttered, his eyes tracking the routing path on the wireframe map.

 

The packet was bouncing erratically. It originated from a cell tower in Sector 4, bounced to a private server in Roppongi, then looped back into Musutafu.

 

But what caught Izuku’s eye wasn't the route. It was the protocol.

 

The packet was using an HPSC 'Gold-Tier' encryption key. This was the level of encryption reserved for Top 50 Pro Heroes and government officials to communicate securely without fear of interception by villains.

 

However, the handshake protocol—the digital greeting the packet used to connect to the server—was crude, brutal, and distinctly archaic.

 

Izuku recognized that handshake. He had seen it on Katsuo Mori's phone the night before.

 

It was a Yakuza protocol. Specifically, the Shie Hassaikai.

 

"A Pro Hero encryption key transmitting data to a Yakuza server?" Izuku's brow furrowed. "That doesn't make sense."

 

The HPSC and the Yakuza were natural enemies. The Yakuza were a dying breed, clinging to the shadows, while the HPSC controlled the light. There should be no overlap.

 

Unless someone was playing both sides.

 

"Got you," Izuku whispered, slamming the 'Enter' key.

 

He managed to clone the data packet just as it reached its final destination. He dragged the cloned file onto his localized, offline server.

 

Now came the hard part. Unlocking it.

 

Izuku stared at the file on his desktop. It looked like a locked black box. The HPSC Gold-Tier encryption was symmetric AES-256. If he tried to brute force it with his current hardware, the heat death of the universe would occur before he cracked the password.

 

"I can't break the lock," Izuku reasoned out loud, his mind slipping into its analytical hyper-focus. "So, I need to steal the key."

 

He looked at the origin point of the data packet on the map. Sector 4.

 

He cross-referenced the geographic location with the AegisOS database of registered Pro Hero agencies.

 

MATCH FOUND: AEGIS SHIELD AGENCY

LEAD HERO: CRIMSON FIST (KENJIRO TSURUGI)

BILLBOARD RANKING: 42

 

Crimson Fist. A brute-force brawler hero known for his red armor, massive kinetic shockwave Quirk, and his aggressive "tough on crime" stance. He was highly popular with the conservative demographic of Musutafu.

 

"Alright, Crimson Fist," Izuku murmured. "Let's see what you're hiding."

 

Izuku didn't try to hack Crimson Fist's personal phone. The hero’s cybersecurity would be state-of-the-art. Instead, Izuku looked for the weakest link in the agency's chain.

 

He pulled up the public roster for the Aegis Shield Agency. He bypassed the Pro Heroes and looked at the support staff. Secretaries, PR managers, IT technicians.

 

He found a name. Sato, Yuta. Junior Network Administrator.

 

Izuku searched Sato Yuta’s digital footprint. It took less than three minutes to find the vulnerability. Sato was an avid player of a popular online gacha game, and he frequented forums to trade digital items.

 

"Social engineering 101," Izuku said softly, his fingers dancing over the keys.

 

He quickly coded a highly targeted phishing email. He disguised the sender ID to look like the automated support system of the gacha game, claiming that Sato’s account had been compromised and required an immediate password reset to secure his rare items. Embedded in the "Reset Password" link was a silent, self-executing Trojan horse malware.

 

Izuku sent the email.

 

He leaned back in his chair, taking a slow sip of coffee. Now, he just had to wait.

 

Two minutes passed. Five minutes.

 

On the eighth minute, a green light flashed on Izuku’s terminal.

 

PAYLOAD DELIVERED. REMOTE ACCESS GRANTED.

 

Sato Yuta had clicked the link.

 

Izuku was now inside the personal laptop of the Aegis Shield Agency’s Junior Network Administrator.

 

Moving with surgical precision, Izuku navigated through Sato’s files. He didn't touch anything, didn't trigger any alarms. He used Sato's legitimate network credentials to access the agency’s internal intranet.

 

Once inside the agency's servers, Izuku bypassed the internal firewalls and found the secure communications directory. He located the encryption key registry—the digital ledger that held the decryption codes for all outgoing HPSC communications from the agency.

 

He downloaded the key registry, scrubbed his presence from Sato's laptop, and severed the connection, leaving no trace he was ever there.

 

The entire infiltration took less than forty seconds.

 

Izuku dragged the stolen decryption key over the locked black-box file he had intercepted earlier.

 

The computer hummed, processing the code.

 

Click.

 

The file decrypted, unpacking into a folder containing an audio file, a video file, and a PDF ledger.

 

Izuku opened the video file first.

 

The screen flickered to life. It was a feed from a security camera inside a dimly lit, high-end karaoke VIP room.

 

Two men sat across from each other at a glass table.

 

One was Kenjiro Tsurugi, the Pro Hero Crimson Fist. He wasn't wearing his costume, but an expensive tailored suit. He looked relaxed, arrogant, smoking a cigar.

 

The other man was smaller, wearing a plague doctor mask.

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. That mask. The Shie Hassaikai.

 

He clicked 'Play' on the audio.

 

"The commission is breathing down my neck, Mimic," Crimson Fist’s voice echoed through the bunker's speakers, rough and irritated. "My arrest numbers are down for the quarter. If I drop out of the Top 50, I lose the corporate sponsorship from Detnerat."

 

The man in the plague mask, Mimic, let out a grating, muffled laugh. "Your rankings are your problem, Tsurugi. The Boss pays you a very handsome retainer to keep your sidekicks out of Sector 4. We hold up our end."

 

"I need a win," Crimson Fist demanded, leaning forward. "A flashy one. For the cameras."

 

Mimic sighed, an irritated sound. "Fine. We have a warehouse on the docks. Pier 42. It’s full of low-level Trigger product we’re phasing out anyway. Tomorrow night, we’ll station some expendable grunts there. You can burst in, smash the place up, and arrest them. The media will eat it up."

 

"And the real shipment?" Crimson Fist asked, taking a drag of his cigar.

 

"The real shipment comes through Sector 4 tomorrow at midnight, while you and the police are busy looking like heroes at the docks," Mimic replied coldly. "Do not interfere with the Sector 4 convoy. It’s highly sensitive cargo. We’re moving... livestock."

 

Livestock.

 

Izuku’s stomach dropped. He knew what that meant in the underworld. Human trafficking. People with weak or mutant Quirks, or Quirkless individuals, sold for illegal experimentation or forced labor.

 

Crimson Fist just nodded, totally unfazed. "Fine. As long as I get my headline. Transfer the usual payment to the offshore account."

 

"Pleasure doing business with a hero," Mimic sneered.

 

The video feed cut to black.

 

Izuku sat perfectly still in the glow of the monitors. The bunker was silent save for the hum of the cooling fans, but inside Izuku’s head, there was a deafening roar.

 

He opened the PDF ledger. It was a list of payments. Millions of yen, transferred monthly from Shie Hassaikai shell corporations directly into accounts controlled by Crimson Fist. In exchange, the Pro Hero diverted police patrols, ignored distress calls in Yakuza territory, and staged fake arrests to maintain his public image.

 

Izuku stared at the smiling face of Crimson Fist on a secondary monitor, displaying his official HPSC profile.

 

“I am here to smash evil!” was his official quote.

 

Izuku felt a cold, terrifying anger blooming in his chest. It was fundamentally different from the anger he felt toward Bakugo or school bullies. This was a deep, systemic rot.

 

Hero Society wasn't just flawed. It was compromised.

 

People like Katsuo Mori, the Ripper from the alleyway, were just symptoms. They were the parasites feeding on the edges of the wound.

 

But Crimson Fist? He was the disease. A man sworn to protect the innocent, using his power and the blind trust of the public to line his own pockets while people were sold like cattle in the dark.

 

And the system let him do it. The HPSC didn't care as long as his approval ratings were high and the merchandise sold.

 

Izuku leaned forward, the green light from the monitors reflecting in his eyes, making them look sharp, predatory, and completely devoid of the childish innocence he had carried onto that rooftop with All Might.

 

He opened his digital map of Musutafu.

 

He zoomed in on the Aegis Shield Agency.

 

With a few keystrokes, he bypassed his own safety parameters. He didn't just log the agency as a point of interest. He logged it as a hostile target.

 

A glowing, blood-red crosshair appeared over the agency on the map.

 

Izuku stood up. He walked over to his workbench. He didn't look at his school books. He looked at his gear.

 

He picked up a high-capacity lithium battery. He picked up a spool of copper wire. He picked up his telescopic baton, testing its weight in his hand.

 

He had started this vigilante crusade to stop street crime, to protect the people the heroes ignored. But now, he saw the bigger picture.

 

He couldn't just fight the criminals on the street. He had to fight the criminals in the penthouses. He had to fight the heroes.

 

He walked back to the console. He opened a secure, encrypted text file. He typed a single line, a manifesto for his new objective.

 

They hide behind the light. I will drag them into the dark.

 

Izuku Midoriya pulled his heavy green trench coat off the back of the chair. He shrugged it on over his tactical shirt. He grabbed his respirator mask, snapping the straps behind his head, the filter engaging with a harsh hiss. Finally, he pulled the baseball cap down low over his eyes.

 

He checked the time on his phone.

 

It was 4:00 PM.

 

The fake raid at the docks was tomorrow night. The real shipment—the human trafficking convoy—was coming through Sector 4 at midnight.

 

Izuku had twenty-four hours to prepare. He needed to build better tech. He needed EMPs. He needed to be ready to take down a Pro Hero and a Yakuza convoy simultaneously.

 

And for that, he was going to need hardware that he couldn't scavenge from a dumpster. He was going to need an engineer. He needed someone crazy enough to build weapons for a ghost.

 

He initiated a search algorithm on the dark web, looking for expelled support-course students and black-market mechanics.

 

He didn't just want to override the system anymore.

 

He wanted to tear the root directory apart.

 

Izuku turned off the main lights in the bunker, leaving only the tactical blue glow of the servers. He walked up the stairs, disappearing into the shadows of the ventilation shaft, a phantom rising from the underground, ready to wage a digital war against the gods of his world.

 

The air-gapped server is the holy grail of cybersecurity.

 

To the average person, the internet is an invisible ocean that touches everything. But to a paranoid man with secrets to hide, the internet is a liability. You cannot be hacked remotely if you are not connected to the network. An air-gapped server is exactly that: a computer physically isolated from the internet, Bluetooth, and any unsecured local networks. It is an island.

 

And Kenjiro Tsurugi—the Pro Hero known as Crimson Fist—was a very paranoid man.

 

Izuku Midoriya sat in the dim, blue-lit confines of his underground bunker, his eyes reflecting the harsh glare of his six monitors. On the center screen was the blueprint of the Aegis Shield Agency, a sleek, four-story fortress of glass and steel located in the heart of Musutafu’s bustling commercial district.

 

The packet Izuku had intercepted yesterday gave him the transaction ledger and the video of the meeting with the Shie Hassaikai. It was damning, yes. But a smart defense attorney funded by the Hero Public Safety Commission could argue it was a deepfake, a fabrication created by a villain with a tech Quirk to slander a Top 50 hero.

 

Izuku needed the undeniable, raw, cryptographic proof. He needed the source files, the original contracts, the digital signatures, and most importantly, the exact GPS routing data for tonight’s human trafficking convoy. If he was going to intercept the Yakuza and expose a corrupt hero on the same night, he couldn't rely on guesswork.

 

His digital probes had mapped the entire agency. He had breached their Wi-Fi, mapped their security cameras, and cataloged the Quirks of every sidekick on the payroll. But the routing data wasn't there. It was stored locally, in a reinforced server tower inside Crimson Fist's private office on the top floor.

 

It was air-gapped.

 

"Which means," Izuku murmured, his voice a dry rasp in the quiet bunker, "I have to walk through the front door."

 

He spun around in his chair, facing his workbench. Laid out before him was the physical manifestation of his digital war. His heavy green trench coat, reinforced with kevlar mesh. His industrial respirator mask, painted matte black. His telescopic tungsten baton. The pneumatic pistol, loaded with high-impact rubber slugs and taser darts.

 

And, sitting in the center of the table, his newest creation.

 

It looked like a standard, albeit bulky, USB flash drive. But its casing was constructed from heat-resistant ceramic, and its internal architecture was anything but standard. Izuku called it the 'Data-Leech.' It was programmed with a highly aggressive, self-executing worm. The moment it was plugged into a USB port, it would bypass local administrator privileges, copy every kilobyte of data on the hard drive, encrypt it, and store it on the Leech’s internal memory. It didn't need the internet to work. It was a digital parasite.

 

Izuku picked up the drive, tossing it in his palm. It was light. It felt entirely disproportionate to the amount of damage it was about to cause.

 

He slotted the drive into a secure pouch on his tactical chest rig. He strapped his holster to his thigh, sliding the pneumatic pistol into place. He clipped the baton to his belt. Finally, he picked up his smartphone—his weapon of mass disruption—and slipped it into his coat pocket.

 

He looked at the clock on his terminal.

 

18:45 JST

 

Rush hour. The commercial district would be packed. Thousands of civilians, hundreds of cars, dozens of Pro Heroes finishing their day patrols. The worst possible time for a stealth infiltration.

 

Izuku pulled his baseball cap down over his green curls and snapped the respirator mask over his mouth and nose.

 

Which made it the perfect time for a ghost to strike.

 

 

 

The commercial district of Musutafu was a sensory overload of neon signs, massive holographic advertisements, and the endless, overlapping chatter of thousands of people rushing home from work.

 

Izuku stood on the roof of a five-story office building, looking down at the Aegis Shield Agency across the intersection.

 

The agency was ostentatious. A massive, glowing red fist made of hard-light holograms rotated above the entrance. Two hulking sidekicks in red-and-gold armor stood by the reinforced glass doors, scanning the crowd with bored, arrogant expressions.

 

Izuku pulled out his phone. The Profiler snapped into his vision through his contact lenses, washing the vibrant city in a tactical green hue. Lines of data cascaded down his peripheral vision.

 

He targeted the sidekick on the left.

 

SHIMIZU, DAISUKE

HERO ALIAS: BARRICADE

QUIRK: KINETIC ABSORPTION

HEART RATE: 68 BPM

COMMS FREQUENCY: 450.25 MHz (ENCRYPTED)

 

He targeted the right.

 

TANAKA, REI

HERO ALIAS: RICOCHET

QUIRK: ELASTICITY

HEART RATE: 72 BPM

COMMS FREQUENCY: 450.25 MHz (ENCRYPTED)

 

Directly assaulting the building was suicide. Even if he got past the guards, Crimson Fist was inside, along with a dozen other sidekicks. If the alarm was tripped, Izuku would be trapped in a steel box with people who could punch through concrete.

 

He couldn't fight them. So, he had to make them leave.

 

Social Engineering.

 

In cybersecurity, social engineering is the psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. It relies on human error, predictability, and emotional response.

 

Heroes were incredibly predictable. They were trained to respond to crises. They craved the spotlight. They were biologically conditioned to react to screaming and sirens.

 

Izuku looked down at the massive intersection in front of the agency. Four lanes of traffic, packed bumper-to-bumper with commuters, delivery trucks, and public buses.

 

He accessed the municipal traffic control network via the AegisOS backdoor.

 

NODE: INTERSECTION 4A COMMERCIAL

STATUS: AUTOMATED ROTATION

 

Izuku took manual control.

 

First, he targeted the eastbound lane. He turned their light green. The cars began to accelerate, surging forward into the intersection.

 

Then, exactly three seconds later, he turned the northbound lane green as well.

 

He didn't want a bloodbath. He didn't want fatalities. He just wanted chaos. He engaged the automatic emergency braking systems on the lead cars in both lanes, forcing them to slam to a halt just inches before a catastrophic T-bone collision.

 

The screech of burning rubber tore through the evening air.

 

SCREEEEECH! CRASH!

 

The lead cars stopped in time, but the drivers behind them—distracted by their phones, eager to get home—didn't. A massive, multi-car pileup rippled backward through the intersection. Metal crumpled, glass shattered, and airbags deployed with deafening pops.

 

Instantly, the intersection became a gridlocked nightmare. Horns blared continuously. Drivers leaped out of their cars, shouting and waving their arms. Pedestrians on the sidewalks screamed, a wave of panic rippling through the dense crowd.

 

Izuku didn't stop there.

 

He targeted the underground water main beneath the intersection. He commanded a localized pressure spike, blowing a minor release valve. A geyser of harmless but terrifyingly loud steam erupted from a manhole cover near the crashed cars, obscuring the street in a thick white fog.

 

Down below, the two sidekicks at the agency doors jolted upright, their boredom vanishing.

 

"What the hell?!" Barricade shouted, putting a hand to his earpiece. "Boss, we've got a major pileup right outside! Multiple civilian vehicles, potential injuries, possible villain attack involving steam or smoke!"

 

Izuku hacked their comms frequency, listening in.

 

"I see it from the window," Crimson Fist’s voice barked over the radio. "It's right on our doorstep. Every news network in the city is going to have cameras pointed at this intersection in five minutes. All available sidekicks, deploy immediately! Secure the perimeter, look heroic for the cameras, and get that traffic moving. I'll be down in two minutes!"

 

Predictable, Izuku thought, his eyes narrowed behind his mask.

 

Within seconds, the reinforced glass doors of the agency slid open. A dozen sidekicks poured out into the street, their Quirks flaring as they bounded toward the pileup. They weren't moving like a tactical unit assessing a threat; they were moving like actors rushing to hit their marks on a stage.

 

Izuku watched as Barricade and Ricochet abandoned the front doors, rushing to pull a man from a crumpled sedan.

 

The front door was clear.

 

Izuku holstered his phone and fired his grapnel hook. The wire shot across the gap between the buildings, wrapping securely around an air conditioning unit on the roof of the agency. He swung across the dizzying drop, the wind howling past his ears, and landed silently on the agency's roof.

 

He moved fast. He located the roof access door. It was secured with a heavy magnetic lock, glowing red.

 

Izuku held his phone to the keypad.

 

INITIATING BLUETOOTH SPOOFING...

BRUTE FORCING NFC PROTOCOL...

ACCESS GRANTED

 

The light turned green. The heavy door clicked open.

 

Izuku slipped inside, the door sighing shut behind him, cutting off the cacophony of the street.

 

He was in.

 

 

 

The interior of the Aegis Shield Agency was sterile and corporate. White walls, red carpets, and the soft, ambient hum of central air conditioning.

 

Izuku drew his pneumatic pistol, holding it in a low-ready position as he descended the concrete stairwell to the top floor. His heart was a steady, rhythmic drum in his chest. The adrenaline was there, sharpening his senses, making the world hyper-detailed, but he didn't let it consume him. He breathed through the respirator, slow and measured.

 

He pushed open the door to the fourth floor.

 

The executive suite.

 

According to his map, Crimson Fist’s office was at the end of the long hallway.

 

Izuku stepped into the corridor. His HUD flashed a warning.

 

SECURITY CAMERA DETECTED. RANGE: 15 METERS. FIELD OF VIEW: 120 DEGREES.

 

A sleek, black dome camera was mounted on the ceiling, panning slowly back and forth.

 

Izuku didn't break stride. He aimed his phone at the camera.

 

Loop feed.

 

To the lone, bored security guard sitting in the basement monitoring room, the fourth-floor hallway appeared completely empty.

 

Izuku walked right under it.

 

He reached the heavy oak doors of the executive office. Biometric lock. A thumbprint scanner.

 

Izuku couldn't spoof a fingerprint with his phone. But he had prepared for this. He pulled a small, airtight plastic baggy from his pocket. Inside was a piece of high-resolution ballistic gel. Earlier that morning, Izuku had tracked down the upscale coffee shop Crimson Fist visited every day. He had waited for the hero to throw away his iced coffee, retrieved the plastic cup from the trash, and used graphite powder and clear tape to lift a perfect thumbprint, transferring it onto the gel.

 

Disgusting? Yes. Effective? Absolutely.

 

Izuku pressed the gel against the scanner.

 

Beep. Click.

 

The heavy doors unlatched.

 

Izuku slipped inside, closing the door softly behind him.

 

The office was massive, decorated in dark mahogany and crimson leather. One entire wall was a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the chaotic intersection below, where the flashing lights of police cruisers were now joining the fray. Crimson Fist was down there, posing for the news drones as he single-handedly lifted a crushed car out of the way.

 

Izuku ignored the window. He moved to the massive mahogany desk.

 

Behind the desk, built into the wall and disguised behind a sliding oil painting of Crimson Fist himself, was a brushed steel vault door.

 

"Arrogant," Izuku whispered.

 

He slid the painting aside. The vault required a six-digit numerical code.

 

Izuku didn't hack this one. He had read Crimson Fist's file. He knew the man’s ego.

 

Izuku punched in the date Crimson Fist had debuted as a Pro Hero.

 

Buzz. The light flashed red.

 

Izuku paused. He thought for a second. He punched in the date Crimson Fist had broken into the Top 50 rankings.

 

Chime. The light turned green.

 

Izuku pulled the heavy door open.

 

Inside the small, climate-controlled vault was the air-gapped server. It was a sleek, black tower, completely devoid of wireless antennas. It hummed quietly, a physical manifestation of corrupt secrets.

 

Izuku knelt in front of it. He unzipped the pouch on his chest rig and retrieved the Data-Leech.

 

He found a USB port on the back of the tower and plugged it in.

 

The small LED on the drive blinked blue, then solid red.

 

Izuku pulled out his phone, physically connecting a cable from his phone to a secondary port on the Data-Leech to monitor the progress.

 

A progress bar appeared on his screen.

 

BYPASSING FIREWALL... SUCCESS.

LOCATING ROOT DIRECTORY... SUCCESS.

DOWNLOADING FILES... 12%

 

The transfer rate was painfully slow. The files were massive. Terabytes of video, audio, ledgers, and routing data.

 

24%

 

Izuku watched the bar, his eyes flicking to the door. He was exposed. Every second he spent in this room increased the probability of discovery exponentially.

 

41%

 

"Hey! Tsurugi! Where the hell are you?!"

 

The voice echoed from the hallway outside.

 

Izuku froze.

 

The voice didn't belong to a sidekick. It was young, incredibly loud, and dripping with aggressive arrogance.

 

"Traffic is a complete clusterfuck out there! You said I was supposed to be observing high-level crisis management! This agency is a joke!"

 

Izuku’s blood ran cold.

 

He knew that voice. He had heard it belittling him for a decade.

 

Katsuki Bakugo.

 

What is he doing here? Izuku’s mind raced, processing variables at terrifying speeds. He’s a third-year middle schooler. He shouldn't be at a Pro Hero agency... unless... U.A. High recommendation scouting. The top candidates do shadow programs with local agencies.

 

Footsteps were stomping down the hall, coming directly toward the office.

 

"Hey! Anyone in here?!" Bakugo yelled, the sound of small, popping explosions accompanying his footsteps as he aggressively palmed the walls.

 

Izuku looked down at his phone.

 

88%

 

Come on. Come on.

 

94%

 

The door handle to the office began to turn.

 

100%. TRANSFER COMPLETE.

 

Izuku ripped the Data-Leech from the server port, shoved it into his pocket, and lunged away from the desk just as the heavy oak doors swung open.

 

Katsuki Bakugo stepped into the office, scowling deeply, his hands in his pockets. He was wearing his school uniform, though it was disheveled.

 

He stopped dead in his tracks.

 

The office was dark, lit only by the ambient glow of the city through the massive window. But silhouetted against that light, standing by the open vault, was a figure in a heavy green trench coat, a black respirator mask, and a baseball cap pulled low.

 

Green eyes, glowing faintly in the darkness, locked onto Bakugo.

 

Silence stretched for a fraction of a second.

 

Bakugo didn't ask questions. He didn't demand to know who Izuku was. His instincts as a combat prodigy overrode all rational thought. He saw an intruder by an open vault in a Pro Hero agency.

 

"Villain," Bakugo snarled, a feral, terrifying grin splitting his face.

 

He raised his right hand.

 

BOOM!

 

A massive, concussive explosion erupted from Bakugo’s palm, illuminating the office in a blinding flash of orange fire. The shockwave shattered the glass of the painting, scorched the mahogany desk, and blew the heavy leather chair across the room.

 

Izuku had already moved.

 

He threw himself into a lateral roll, the heat of the explosion singeing the fabric of his coat as he dove behind a massive marble pillar near the window.

 

His ears were ringing violently. The sheer kinetic force of Bakugo’s Quirk in an enclosed space was devastating.

 

"Hiding?!" Bakugo roared, stalking into the room, his palms popping with miniature detonations, casting erratic, strobe-light flashes across his crazed expression. "I don't know what you're trying to steal, extra, but you just made my night! I'm going to blast you into ash and get my U.A. recommendation guaranteed!"

 

Izuku crouched behind the pillar, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

 

He couldn't fight Bakugo. Not because he was afraid—though the primal fear of his childhood bully still echoed somewhere deep inside him—but because he couldn't afford to hurt him. Bakugo was a civilian. An aggressive, violent civilian, but a civilian nonetheless. And worse, Bakugo was perceptive. If they engaged in prolonged hand-to-hand combat, Bakugo might recognize his fighting style, or worse, notice the complete lack of a Quirk.

 

I need a distraction. I need to break line of sight and get out.

 

Izuku pulled his phone out. His hands were shaking slightly from the adrenaline, but his thumbs were steady.

 

He accessed the agency’s internal environmental controls.

 

Fire Suppression System: Override.

 

Execute.

 

With a loud, mechanical groan, the fire sprinklers in the ceiling burst to life. Icy, foul-smelling water rained down in torrents, instantly soaking the plush carpets and extinguishing the small fires Bakugo had started.

 

"Gah! What the hell?!" Bakugo yelled, holding his arms up as the water pelted him. His explosions sputtered and hissed, the moisture momentarily suppressing his nitroglycerin sweat.

 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He burst from behind the pillar, sprinting toward the office door.

 

Through the pouring rain of the sprinklers, Bakugo saw the blur of the green coat.

 

"Oh no you don't!" Bakugo roared. He ignored the water, forcing his Quirk to ignite through sheer willpower. He swung his arm in a wide arc. BOOM!

 

The blast didn't hit Izuku, but it hit the doorframe just as Izuku passed through it. The concussive force picked Izuku up off his feet, throwing him hard into the wall of the hallway.

 

Izuku grunted in pain, the wind knocked out of him. His left shoulder—already bruised from his fight with the Yakuza brute the night before—screamed in agony as he hit the drywall.

 

He scrambled to his feet, pulling his pneumatic pistol from its holster.

 

Bakugo stepped out of the office, his uniform soaked, smoke rising from his palms, looking like a demon stepping out of a tempest.

 

Izuku raised the pistol, aiming center mass.

 

"A gun?" Bakugo sneered, devoid of fear. "You think you can shoot me before I blow your face off?!"

 

Izuku didn't shoot Bakugo.

 

He aimed upwards, at the massive, ornate glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling between them.

 

Thwump. Thwump.

 

Two rubber slugs shattered the load-bearing crystal and the reinforced mounting bracket.

 

With a terrifying screech of tearing metal, the massive chandelier fell.

 

Bakugo looked up, his eyes widening. "Shit!" He dove backward into the office just as the chandelier crashed into the hallway with the force of a bomb, sending a tidal wave of shattered glass, twisted metal, and sparks flying in all directions.

 

The hallway was plunged into near darkness, illuminated only by the emergency red strobe lights that had activated with the fire alarm.

 

Izuku didn't wait to see if Bakugo was hurt. He knew he wasn't; Bakugo’s reflexes were too good. Izuku turned and bolted down the hall toward the stairwell.

 

He hit the door to the stairs, throwing it open, and began taking the steps three at a time, vaulting over the railings to descend faster.

 

"YOU BASTARD!" Bakugo’s roar echoed down the stairwell, vibrating against the concrete.

 

Explosions began to sound in rapid succession. Boom. Boom. Boom. Bakugo wasn't running down the stairs. He was using his explosions to propel himself, launching down the center of the stairwell shaft, falling with controlled, violent speed.

 

Izuku looked up. Through the gap in the stairs, he saw the fiery orange flashes rapidly descending toward him.

 

He's too fast. I can't outrun him.

 

Izuku reached the second-floor landing. He burst out of the stairwell into an open-plan office space filled with cubicles. The sprinklers were active here too, the alarm blaring a deafening klaxon.

 

Izuku slid behind a bank of server racks in the IT department. He holstered his pistol and drew his telescopic baton, flicking it open with a sharp clack.

 

A second later, the stairwell door was blown clean off its hinges.

 

Bakugo stepped into the cubicle farm, panting slightly, his red eyes scanning the darkness. The emergency strobes caught the feral intensity in his expression.

 

"I know you're in here," Bakugo growled, stalking forward, his palms smoking. "You move like a rat. A fast rat, but still a rat."

 

Izuku crouched in the shadows. He needed to incapacitate him. Non-lethally.

 

Analyze, Izuku’s brain automatically kicked into overdrive. He leads with his right hand. He relies on wide, sweeping arcs for maximum area of effect, leaving his left flank exposed for precisely 0.4 seconds after a primary blast. His center of gravity shifts forward when he attacks, committing fully to the momentum.

 

Without realizing it, the habit he had spent ten years cultivating betrayed him.

 

"Right hook... explosive follow up... weight shifted to the left... blind spot at the seven o'clock position..." Izuku muttered, his voice barely a whisper, distorted by the mask, but audible in the brief lull between the alarm sirens.

 

Bakugo froze.

 

He slowly turned his head toward the bank of server racks.

 

His eyes widened. The rage flickered, replaced for a fraction of a second by absolute, terrifying confusion.

 

He recognized that cadence. He recognized that frantic, analytical muttering. He had heard it for a decade, sitting behind him in classrooms, following him on playgrounds.

 

"Deku...?" Bakugo whispered, the word slipping out before he could process the sheer impossibility of it.

 

Izuku’s heart stopped.

 

He heard me. He knows.

 

Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through Izuku’s carefully constructed vigilante persona.

 

Bakugo didn't wait for confirmation. The confusion instantly transmuted back into a rage hotter than anything Izuku had ever seen.

 

"DEKU?!" Bakugo roared, the sound tearing from his throat like a physical weapon. "THERE'S NO WAY IN HELL!"

 

Bakugo launched himself across the room. He didn't run; he flew, propelled by a massive explosion from both hands, rocketing over the cubicles directly toward Izuku's position.

 

Izuku stood up, adrenaline flooding his system. He didn't have time to hack. He didn't have time to run.

 

Bakugo crashed into the server racks, shattering the metal and plastic, swinging a devastating right hook aimed squarely at Izuku’s masked face.

 

Izuku reacted purely on instinct and muscle memory.

 

He didn't block. He stepped into the guard, utilizing his smaller stature. He ducked under the fiery right hook, the heat blistering the back of his neck. As Bakugo’s momentum carried him forward, Izuku brought the tungsten baton up, striking not to break bone, but to paralyze muscle.

 

He struck the brachial plexus nerve bundle under Bakugo’s right armpit.

 

Bakugo gasped, his right arm going instantly numb, dropping uselessly to his side. The explosion died in his palm.

 

But Bakugo was a monster of sheer willpower. Instead of retreating, he used the momentum of Izuku’s strike to spin, swinging his left leg in a brutal roundhouse kick.

 

Izuku brought his left arm up to block. The kick connected with the kevlar mesh of his coat, but the force was still immense. Izuku was thrown backward, crashing through a cubicle partition, sliding across the wet carpet.

 

His baseball cap was knocked off his head.

 

Izuku groaned, pushing himself up to one knee.

 

Bakugo stood over the ruined cubicle, clutching his deadened right arm, panting heavily. The emergency red strobe light flashed, illuminating Izuku’s face.

 

The hat was gone. The dark, messy green curls were plastered to his forehead by the rain and sprinkler water. And above the terrifying black respirator mask, staring back at Bakugo, were a pair of wide, glowing, unmistakable emerald eyes.

 

Bakugo stopped breathing.

 

The world seemed to slow down. The blaring alarms faded into background static.

 

"You..." Bakugo breathed, his crimson eyes trembling as they locked onto the green curls. "It... it is you. You Quirkless piece of shit. What are you wearing? What are you doing here?!"

 

The shock was profound. Izuku Midoriya, the cowering, useless nerd he bullied daily, was dressed like a mercenary, moving like a ghost, and had just neutralized his right arm in a single strike.

 

Izuku didn't speak. He couldn't. If he spoke, the illusion would shatter completely.

 

He had to disappear. Now.

 

Izuku’s hand drifted down to his belt. He didn't reach for a weapon. He reached for his phone.

 

He didn't look at the screen. He knew the interface by heart. He initiated the 'Blackout' protocol he had coded for extreme emergencies.

 

"ANSWER ME, DEKU!" Bakugo screamed, raising his left hand, a massive, unstable explosion building in his palm.

 

Izuku pressed the button.

 

He didn't just hack the agency. He hacked the entire city block's localized power grid.

 

He sent a catastrophic overload command to the primary substation feeding the commercial district.

 

BANG.

 

A massive, distant transformer blew with the sound of rolling thunder.

 

Instantly, the entire block went dark. The agency lights, the emergency strobes, the computers, the streetlights outside, the neon signs—everything died simultaneously.

 

The world was plunged into absolute, suffocating pitch blackness.

 

"WHAT?!" Bakugo shouted, blinded by the sudden shift. He fired the explosion in his left hand blindly forward, the flash of orange briefly illuminating the ruined office space.

 

But when the light faded, the space in front of him was empty.

 

"DEKU!" Bakugo roared into the darkness, spinning wildly, his palms sparking. "DON'T YOU RUN FROM ME! FACE ME!"

 

There was no answer. Only the sound of the falling water from the sprinklers and the distant, chaotic sirens from the street below.

 

By the time Bakugo found the shattered window leading to the fire escape, Izuku was already gone. A ghost swallowed by the dead city.

 

 

 

Izuku stumbled into the alleyway three blocks away from his bunker, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps through the respirator.

 

He collapsed against a brick wall, sliding down into the damp garbage and mud.

 

Every muscle in his body was screaming. His left shoulder was a symphony of agony, his ribs ached from where he had crashed through the partition, and his head throbbed with a vicious migraine.

 

But the physical pain was nothing compared to the terror gripping his heart.

 

He knows. Kacchan knows.

 

Izuku tore the mask off his face, gasping for unfiltered air, coughing violently as the cold rain hit his face.

 

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force down the rising panic attack. If Bakugo told the police, if he told the heroes, it was over. They would raid his apartment. They would find the bunker. His mother would be destroyed. The Ghost of Musutafu would be unmasked as a Quirkless fourteen-year-old, a cosmic joke played on the world.

 

Think, Izuku commanded himself, forcing his analytical mind to override his emotions. Think objectively. What did he actually see?

 

He saw green hair. He saw green eyes. He heard a mutter.

 

Will he tell anyone?

 

Izuku thought about Katsuki Bakugo. The boy’s pride was absolute. His ego was fragile. Would Katsuki Bakugo, the prodigy, go to the police and admit that he was outmaneuvered, outfought, and escaped by a Quirkless nobody? Would he admit that 'Deku' was a highly dangerous vigilante who infiltrated a Pro Hero agency right under his nose?

 

No.

 

Bakugo wouldn't tell anyone. His pride wouldn't allow it. He would convince himself it was a trick. Or worse, he would keep it a secret so he could hunt Izuku down and crush him personally.

 

Izuku took a shuddering breath. He was safe from the law, for now. But he had just made a very dangerous, very personal enemy.

 

He reached into his pocket with a trembling hand and pulled out the Data-Leech.

 

The small drive felt heavier now. It held the proof. It held the routing data for the Yakuza convoy. It held the key to bringing down Crimson Fist and saving those people.

 

He looked at his other hand. He pulled out his custom smartphone.

 

The screen was cracked. The casing was incredibly hot to the touch, almost blistering his skin. The battery pack was swollen, warping the graphite frame.

 

He had pushed the hardware beyond its physical limits. Hacking the fire suppression system, spoofing the mag-locks, decrypting an air-gapped server, and initiating a localized blackout all within twenty minutes had fried the motherboard.

 

The phone sparked once, a sad, fizzling sound, and the screen died.

 

Izuku let his head fall back against the brick wall, the rain washing the blood and sweat from his face.

 

He had the data, but he had lost his weapon. He had no way to process the files on the Leech fast enough. He had no way to control the city's grid for the convoy interception tomorrow night. He was blind, deaf, and unarmed.

 

He couldn't do this alone anymore. He had reached the bottleneck of his own genius. He could write the software, but he couldn't build the hardware to sustain it.

 

He needed an upgrade. He needed a mechanic.

 

He closed his eyes, his mind flashing back to the dark web forum he had been scouring before the mission. There was a user. A notorious, brilliant, and completely deranged support-gear mechanic who had been kicked out of three different vocational schools for illegal modifications and catastrophic explosions.

 

She operated out of a chop-shop in the scrapyards of the industrial sector.

 

Her handle was Mecha-Queen.

 

Izuku pushed himself up from the mud, ignoring the agony in his body.

 

He had a few hours before dawn. He had a Yakuza convoy to stop. And he was going to need a lot of explosions to do it.

 

It was time to pay Mei Hatsume a visit.