The apartment I was holed myself in barely felt like a place meant for living. The walls bore streaks of grime, and the floors creaked underfoot with every shift of weight. Light came from the radiating sun streaking through the window. I had a paper bird perched silently on the edge of the dusty windowsill.
I was sat on the floor of what I believed to be the windowsill, scrolling through current highlights of the sports festival that happened a few days ago now. The videos always seemed so bright, so coloured and it washed out the hues of my surroundings.
The crowds roar buzzed from the speakers.
The first clip made me pause. It was Bakugou, aptly named Student number 1 on screen for confidentiality reasons. I had already knew he won, I heard people talking about someone with a description like his winning. Arrogant, brutal and explosive.
He was on the podium, chained. They chained him up, like a dog. I thought that maybe his quirk could have been going off but he even had a muzzle on his mouth as he was chained.
There was no reason for it to bother me, and really and truly it didn't. But I did find it a little weird. I wondered if Eri got a front row view of this. If she were watching, would she understand what she was seeing? Could she handle the noise, the lights, the endless shouting?
I sighed and readjusted myself.
The following clips shown me someone I certainly wasn't expecting to see, especially not in the hero course fighting against someone with incredible ice powers. It was Deku... Midoriya. He had an awkward stance, but he also had a lot of power, one flick generated enough air pressure to shatter the ice coming towards him.
"I always thought he was quirkless." But then again, the last time I seen him I was nine, so who knows, maybe he's a really late bloomer.
The rush of ice was too much for him though and he didn't last.
His raw power was undeniable but also poorly controlled. "I can't decide if this is impressive or just confusing."
I seen more clips of the day, the second years and also the third years. I had seen my sister, she was doing well, but I clicked off the rest of the clips not really interested to see anything else.
None of the hero students, or students in general had their names on display. Each competitor was either given their hero name, or were labelled generically: "Hero student 1," "Hero student 2,". It was for confidentiality I got that.
But what of the people that had already known some of them previously, like me. I could go online right now and expose who both Bakugou Katsuki and Midoriya Izuku are, and more than that, they still display all their capabilities to such a wide masses for entertainment.
I found it really cool as a kid, but as I got older and as we've even seen the fallout of things like that. I find it pointless.
The heroes' world loved entertainment.
Swiping away from the festival, I tapped into the news feed. A familiar name had flashed across the screen, accompanied by blood-red headlines: "Hero killer strikes again: Ingenium down for the count?" The article detailed the latest attack from the psycho in Hosu. Ingenium was still alive, just left broken and with worries that he may not be able to use his legs anymore.
I put my phone down and stared out the grimy window. I was in Hosu, and I probably should have picked a better place to stay, in fact I might later on tonight. But the city is crawling with an abnormal amount of heroes. It made me think that they had figured me out here, but maybe it was for Stain instead.
The sharp edges of my paper bird caught the faint light. The little movements it was making was rhythmic, almost meditative. It got me thinking on something.
The Eden Project.
I remember the instructors there never showed their faces. Blank sheets of white obscured their features, who knows I could have ran into them without noticing them. They wore those sheets as if it allowed them to discard their humanity at will.
Some of the sheets bore kanji, stark and cold, for "Authority" or "Order". Their words weren't commands, they were edicts. It was as if they were just mouthpieces, tools of a greater, faceless machine. Even now, the memory of their presence felt like an oppressive shadow.
Our names were barely used either, We were numbers. I was 14, and the others were nothing more than that as well. Stripped of identity, stripped of humanity. There was a boy, he was number 11, he was always fidgeting a piece of string. And an older girl, number 78, who could summon bursts of light from her hands.
We would all whisper our names to each other and pass them around like we were playing Chinese whispers, they were like forbidden treasures but even doing that felt dangerous.
We were tools in a cruel game to replicate what couldn't be copied. To gain power on the level of societies number 1.
Training was difficult, it was designed to break our limits and if you couldn't keep up, you disappeared, no ceremony. Just gone.
My last day there, I remember the place burning and someone guiding my hand to an exit, to escape.
Hosu, was the base of operations. That's why I'm here. Even if the place is burned down, there is always a chance that the building could have something in it that no one else has found.
___
Hosu was a maze of towering buildings and winding alley's. Not Tokyo's labyrinth, but still enough to easily lose yourself. Four days here and I had nothing to show for it. My search for that great fire, that burning building was a needle in a haystack no one else seemed to remember it, or actually they didn't even seem to know what I was talking about.
I leaned against a chipped brick wall in a narrow alley, scrolling through my phone. I had combed the internet trying to find records and news reports of the fire, it only happened two years ago. And there was nothing. No reports, no footage, not even a passing mention on the most obscure forms.
Either I was crazy or someone had gone to great lengths to erase it's existence.
And even when I turned my attention to the locals, sneaking into bars, and going into quiet shops tucked away in the city's usual bustle. "Hey, you ever heard about a fire here a couple years back?" I'd ask casually. Most responded with blank stares, brushing me off like I'd asked for directions to the moon.
"Big fires don't just vanish..." I muttered under my breath. But sometimes, just sometimes, I'd catch a flicker in someone's eyes. Recognition. They wouldn't say anything, even when I offered monetary rewards. Those moments kept me searching.
As I shoved my phone into my pocket, a voice pierced the alley's stillness.
"You're looking for something that doesn't exist."
I paused and turned to the sound. At the entrance of the alley stood a man, his silhouette framed by the hazy glow of a nearby streetlamp. His coat patched and frayed, the kind worn by someone accustomed to slipping through cracks in the world and wanted to be unnoticed. A wide brimmed hat cast his face in shadow, but his posture betrayed strange confidence.
I straightened up, narrowing my eyes. "Oh really, please enlighten me then."
He stepped forward slowly, his boots clicking against the cobblestones with deliberate rhythm. "The fire two years ago. You've been asking about it."
Of course, going through the city asking questions for days, some people probably would have heard about it by now, and if it were someone included in keeping everyone else quiet about it then this shouldn't be too surprising.
"I call bullshit." I said while pointing at him.
"Well, you're not the first. Many just give up, there were no casualties as far as I know so it didn't even matter."
I crossed my arms sizing this man up. His face was still mostly obscured but I could see a gray patch in his otherwise dark bears, he was an older fellow. There was a wariness to his voice. "Do you remember it?"
He nodded. "I was there."
His words hung in the air like smoke from a cigarette bud. My guard was up. "Can you tell me where it was?"
"You really want to know?"
"I wouldn't be asking if I didn't." I replied sharply.
I always find that elderly folk do love to drag on a conversation.
He hesitated as if weighing the consequences that almost everyone else was afraid of. Then he sighed, his shoulders sagged. "Old industrial district, west end of the city. The building was completely gone, or at least that's how I last seen it."
I did want to ask him when was his last time there, but he was stepping back into the shadows and eventually I couldn't even hear him anymore.
'Whatever.'
***
The west end of Hosu stretched out like a hub of neglect. Unlit alleyways and forgotten corners, it was where those who wanted to be hidden reside. Fiends, addicts and thugs.
The aged streetlamps painted cracked asphalt and crumbling structures in muted golds and shadowy greys. I threaded through the skeletal remains of this district, eyes scanning every corner for something, anything that felt more off about the place than it already was.
I stepped into a hollowed out frame of what might've been a factory. The smell hit first, damp, mildew and rusted metal. Then the memory hit second. I was walking out of here with a larger figure guiding me to this exit on a bright and hot sunny evening.
I remember walking up steps to reach this exit. But the room in front of me was cavernous, it's open space filled with debris.
Maybe the entrance to the place I had been was under the rubble. I wanted to chuckle at how similar it was to Overhaul's operations. A piece of paper slipped and turned to a little mouse to scour the place and search for an entry point.
It didn't take long for it to come back, with nothing. "This building is probably new," I muttered lowly. New, but then abandoned, there are supposedly earthquakes that affect Hosu a lot every few years, the last one was a year ago, so maybe this place became a wreck in it's ruin.
I don't remember going through any earthquakes while being here though.
As I moved forward through the room, my footfalls were muffled, they always were, I walked without a sound partly because of my quirk and another due to training.
I spotted something on the walls—graffiti. Red letters, jagged and uneven, screamed out from the wall: "Don't forget us!" Beneath it, smaller words scrawled like a desperate plea. "This was where it began."
A cold weight settled into my chest. I stared at the message, my mind churning. This was lead, the distinct cracks in it made me believe so as I looked upon the fragments. I searched the room further, my eyes darting over every corner. Near the back wall, a pile of bags sat haphazardly, accompanied by a faint metallic glint.
I crouched down, pulling aside a torn canvas bag to reveal the source—a series of knives, their blades well-worn but sharp. Beside them, a half empty water bottle and a carefully folded map. Whoever had been here hadn't just been passing through; this place had become their haunt.
That's when I heard it, a faint rustle, the sound of movement. I readied myself in case of confrontation. Turning my head slowly, I caught a glimpse through a cracked doorway. A figure moved through the shadows with well-practiced stealth, tattered armour blending seamlessly with the night.
I stayed low and quickly moved myself from the bags which I judged to be his belongings as I observed. He moved with purpose, every step deliberate. The ragged dark reds meshed with his appearance and the crude long weapon in his hand confirmed it for me.
'That's the hero killer Stain.'
For a moment, I stayed rooted, trying to decide my next move. Stain was infamous, not just for his kills but for his ideology. He wants for the purge of fake heroes, heroes that do it for the fame and monetary gain. It wasn't so far-fetched of an ideal though.
Being a hero gave many benefits, and the barrier to entry seem's even lower these days. But that can't solely be blamed on the current heroes, blame All Might. The threat level has been at an all time low for years now. There isn't even a need for the amount of heroes that exist.
Not everyone can be an All Might.
I clenched my fist and opened it up to show a paper dart. As stain hopped down and passed the cracked frame of a window, I let it fly. The paper dart drifted through the air, silent as a whisper, before landing against the edge of his scarf. It stuck to the fabric and was almost indistinguishable.
He continued on oblivious.
Once he was out of sight I began moving freely again without a care in the world.
Earlier I mentioned coming up steps and seeing the blinding light of the sun. I know where those steps were, it was right underneath where I was standing, covered up and gone now. Even if I were to open it up... 'Would there be anything there?'
I wanted to say yes, but I was sure to be wrong. If the people behind this were discreet enough to cover their tracks with the people in the area all staying silent for them, then there was no reason why they would have left something that bait behind. The entire area was probably just covered in cement to help build this crappy run down factory.
Guess I should move on then. To stain.
Stain had killed 3 people in Hosu so far and had badly injured Ingenium but failed to kill him. Looking at his past records it's usually five a city. So he would only need two more tonight before he is gone.
Hosu was teeming with heroes this past week, both known and obscure, probably all out in search for the hero killer. Stupid, I thought it should be more focused group work. But who am I to say that.
A sheet of paper floated in front of me. Intricate folds were appearing on the map spreading into a section of Hosu mapped out. My connection to the dart, the tag, I placed on Stain pulsed in a mini figure of the man I saw moving steadily throughout the alleyways.
'Wow he's fast.'
He had already made quite a distance on me. I followed the blip with my eyes before folding the paper out of existence.
Sure I had agreed with his ideology to an extent, but that didn't mean I was all game for just needlessly killing. Life is fragile and is brimming with so much potential meaning; it shouldn't be snuffed out just because someone think's you're doing your job wrong.
Of course, even I have exceptions to that.
But the way I see it, Stain should still be stopped.
I stepped back outside, the chill of the night brushing against my face. The stretch of the city out before me, it's network of streets and alleys weaving into the horizon. Taking a deep breath I created a large paper bird, in the shape of a large hawk, I got atop of it and sat and let it carry me in his direction.
Four days in this city, all for me to get nothing. The Eden project had taken so much, my name, my childhood, my freedom. And now, even evidence of their existence.
"I guess seeking out stain is also a way to relieve myself."
A selfish reason, but who cares. I'm a selfish guy when I wanna be.