Kurogiri had been flying for hours on end. It was a wonderful sensation; he was the most powerful man in the world. While his portals were still the fastest means of transport, Kurogiri still had no way of knowing whether anything was in the same place.

He started by traveling around the United States. As soon as he started flying lower in the city, people pointed at him and screamed. It was the same attack that he used before, but this time, the public were even less prepared.

As he hovered in the air, he first noticed that there were no Pro Heroes. The policemen were trying unsuccessfully to stop the masses from panicking. When Kurogiri swooped lower, he accidentally took off the rooftop of several buildings, and the debris showered over the pedestrians. It let him get a closer look at the general population. All of them were Quirkless.

He decided to play the long game. After fifteen more minutes of swooping aimlessly from roof to roof, he soared away, leaving thousands of confused people in his wake. Kurogiri decided to make a note of how fast he could travel, and once he had flown a safe distance, the purple fog retracted, leaving just himself. Even without his Quirk active, that didn't make him any less intimidating.

Kurogiri, having never been in the States before, wasn't used to how people interacted, but he knew that if he wanted to plan, he couldn't stand out like this. He walked inside an empty souvenir shop. Travelers recognized the layout instantly; tall, magnetic slabs full of magnets were everywhere, as well as the collections of cheap toys. Clothes were scattered around the store as some sort of afterthought. He picked up a hoodie, inspected it, and walked up to the counter.

"Hi, how can I help you?" The clerk was new to the job. She couldn't have been older than 16. Her smile quickly vanished as soon as she looked up at Kurogiri's face, if one could call it that.

Kurogiri didn't know how to speak English very well, so he ignored the request. Wordlessly, he pointed at the hoodie.

"Um... do you have any money?" The clerk pulled a dollar bill out of the register and pointed at it. Kurogiri narrowed his eyes and kicked himself mentally. In Japan, he didn't need money; there was simply no need. With his Quirk, robbery was no problem. He didn't want to stand out, so he shook his head.

"Well, I'll need you to return that now." Her voice was uncertain. Kurogiri ignored this and put on the hoodie before leaving the store and a very confused cashier. He reminded himself to learn English before flying away to confuse another city.

Shigaraki was useless to him. He easily overpowered the other villains that evenPro Heroes struggled to defeat. Still, Kurogiri never lost sight of the visiion. Society needed to be destroyed, and if he couldn't begin in Japan, he would do it here.

Two weeks later, the mysterious purple cloud was the only thing that people would talk about. At first, the cloud only hovered above smaller cities and was mostly harmless. As the days passed, it became increasingly violent and started to cause more destruction.

On the internet and social media, rumors started to spread faster than Kurogiri himself. Scientists ignored them and used what evidence they had, but their views were silenced by the conspiracy theorists. Several of the more extreme believers had already taken to holding large signs on the street, proclaiming that the aliens were here, or that it was about to be Judgment Day.

Recordings of the attacks reached every corner of the Internet, snd it was harder to tell if some of the footage was even real or not. Skeptics continued to deny Kurogiri's existence, saying that it was all a very sick prank. Of course, some of them changed their opinion once their homes were destroyed.

Kurogiri himself hid himself as best as he could, trying to minimize his exposure in public. He went inside a local library and printed out a list of the top 100 cities in the United States by population. As he figured out where he was, he looked at the list, generated the purple cloud, and took off. There was a lot of work to do.


Azumi Shiraseru sat unhappily as she turned off her computer. She closed her eyes and tried to relax herself, but her visions only led to one memory.

She woke up at 7:00 AM, shoved her laptop and notes into her backpack, and was ready for another day at work. When she checked on Bunseki's room, his bed was already made as usual. He's probably downstairs eating breakfast already.

When she checked the table, no one was there. Checking the fridge and trash can, Azumi saw that no one had eaten anything since dinner. The only evidence of Bunseki was the half-full glass of water on the table. Trying to rationalize her fear, she thought that maybe he had already went to school, and so she waited. Once she arrived at work, she called his phone.

"Bunseki? Are you already at school?" Her voice was low, as to not irritate any of her coworkers. After several rings, the call switched to voicemail. She tried again several times, but there was no response.

Fingers trembling slightly, she called the school. "Hello?"

The principal picked up immediately. "How can I help you?"

"Is Bunseki Shiraseru present?" There were shuffling noises on the other end of the phone, and the principal was shuffling with a schedule of some sort.

"I'll call the teacher." For thirty seconds, Azumi waited to see if her son was safe.

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but... your son isn't at school." Azumi covered her hands and walked outside as fast as she could. "We've checked the schedule and asked all the teachers, and they've walked around the entire school looking for places to hide. They've found nothing."

"Oh my god." She sat down on the curb while the world spun uncontrollably around her. Once she regained her balance, she convinced herself that he would be back soon. Several hours later, when the students were being dismissed from school, there was still no response. Sitting down, she slowly stared into space and suddenly started to see a man in front of her. Her vision was blurry and it was hard to see any of his features, but the man appeared to be about the same age as her. He seemed to flicker in and out, and his body glowed with white light. He snapped, and a card appeared on the table.

Her eyes still unfocused, she could barely make out the words, "He's alive and well." When she tried to reach for the card, it disappeared.

"What..." Azumi temporarily lost the ability to speak.

He stepped closer and extinguished the lights before displaying a globe. He was talking, but she no longer listened. Her brain was already filled with questions. Could her son have been kidnapped or killed? What did this man have to do with this?

"...you might not trust me right now, but I know that your son will come back. Give it time." Azumi focused her eyes on the holographic picture in front of her and recognized the office building that she worked in before moving to the US. Remembering her time working in Tokyo, she slowly recalled the names of every street that she walked. The next thing that caught her attention was the people. Some of them didn't look like actual humans; they had extra limbs or ones that she didn't have. Others were floating in midair.

"Are you sure that's Tokyo? The last time I checked, there weren't any levitating people. This sounds like an elaborate prank to me. Where's my son?"

"He's right here." The man snapped again, and the image shifted from a city to a classroom. The view was much clearer than a regular camera's, and every student's face was clearly shown, along with Bunseki's.

"Why didn't you tell me that? I'll fly to Japan right now!" Azumi stood up, but the man's gaze stopped her immediately.

"This is a different Tokyo. If you fly there, you'll see that this school doesn't actually exist in this world. While it is extremely difficult, travel between the worlds is possible. Your son is smart. He'll find a way back to you."

The fight left Azumi. She slouched against her seat. "Even so, it's going to take some time, if this is his first day away. I don't want him to forget."

With another snap, the hologram was gone, and the light behind the man glowed even brighter. "He won't." A white portal appeared with quick musical notes filling the silence. The man waved his hands, and he disappeared. Half a year later, she still felt the same way she had then. Nothing made sense.


Within two weeks, Japan had completely recovered from Kurogiri's attacks. We really hoped he wouldn't strike again, but I needed more information still. "Let's pay a visit to Shigaraki."

"Yeah, but it's a three hour walk there and back." Midoriya shrugged. I thought about how to contact him. We did give him a video phone, but like everything else at Tartarus, it was shrouded in secrecy, and it was almost impossible to break through the layers of encryption.

After talking to everyone else, including the teachers, I figured that it was best to do another trip alone. Over the last month, Ares had stopped holding me for detention. He wasn't being nicer, but with everything going on, he forgot to. As soon as school was over, I found a bike and was on my way to Tartarus.

The way there was boring, but at least I would be traveling faster than I would be on foot. My mind wandered to the few issues that I still had left to think about.

Because no wanted to go back to USJ, the teachers took us to another facility that we could use for training. There's lots of new structures there, and some of them are still being built. All Might is basically making our Quirks stronger, and Tenya has the only training plan that's considered "normal."

All Might saw me standing there and watching everyone else. Kaminari was strapped to a car battery and being repeatedly shocked, Uraraka was in some sort of hamster ball that was being thrown down a hill, and Sero was making so much tape that I winced upon seeing his drying skin.

"Young Shiraseru, get to work." He clapped me on the back. I could tell that he was holding back, because I didn't go flying across the building. I ran over to Uraraka. She unsteadily wobbled once she was out of the ball, and I waited before she could regain her composure.

"Are you okay?"

She leaned on the ball. "Yeah."

"Hopefully, this won't bother you too much, but it would help if you could get me up there." I pointed to the man-made mountain, which was at least twice as tall as the one in USJ. Uraraka focused, and I felt the sensation of weightlessness as I was lifted higher into the air. Once my feet touched the ground, I gave her the thumbs-up.

After picking several possible scenarios from books and recreating them on the terrain below, I looked at Midoriya. He was always hard-working, and this time, it was no different. His body produced green sparks of something like electricity as he threw punch after punch. I started to pick up on the statistics, and I compared them with All Might's side by side.

All Might, being a Pro Hero, is more controlled with his Quirk, and even when he's using the same percentage of power as Midoriya, he produces more force than he does. Even so, there's still a pattern. There's an exponential correlation between percentage of power and force. Graphing the information of the two, even though Midoriya's increase was shallower, the pattern still existed. I pointedly waited until the end of class before finding my way down.

"All Might, I have a question." At his height, he was three or four heads taller than I was. "I'm going to be honest with you. Don't be surprised."

All Might turned around. "Of course."

"Do you share a Quirk with Midoriya?" No one was in earshot except for him. All Might lost his composure for a second. He made a series of pained grunts.

"Must... stay this way..." He was about to run away when he screamed. There was a puff of smoke, and I looked at the person who used to be All Might. He didn't look like a hero whatsoever, but I could see the similarities in his hair and face. "Well, my secret's been exposed to one more person. Can I trust you?"

"Sure."

"Okay, yes. I do share a Quirk with Midoriya. Your Quirk's data, right?" He took a moment to wipe the blood from his mouth. I nodded. "In that case..." He looked like he was about to say something, but he shook his head. "You're smart. You'll figure it out. Now I have to get back before anyone sees me this way."

I snapped back to reality. I can't believe that I spaced out for an hour. While I was closer, I used that time to figure out what exactly All Might wanted me to figure out.

My data is most accurate when I collect it in real-time. I compared All Might's current strength to his strength years ago by looking at clips from the news. It wasn't perfect, but enough to work. In the corner of my vision, I now had a graph of All Might's strength for every month starting five years ago. For the first four years, his strength was constant, and the lines overlapped with each other. Something must have happened before the school year started to drain his power. Though it didn't look like much, it would take another five years before his power would drop to 50% capacity.

That was a good step already, and I focused on getting to Tartarus. As the black dot in the distance grew bigger, I tried to figure out what I would say to the guards so they would let me talk to Shigaraki.

About a hundred meters away, I stepped off my bike and slowly walked to the entrance. Before I even knew it, I had several lasers pointed at me and several hundred guns. My hands were already in the air.

"On the ground, now!" I complied, and I felt rough hands carrying me inside. Instead of going to the elevator, we were carried down below to a room that would make a dusty attic look clean. There was so much dust in the air that I struggled not to cough. Handcuffs stopped me from getting up, and I could see that they were much more sophisticated than the ones usually seen in movies.

"How did you find this place?" None of the guards revealed their faces.

"My Quirk allows me to access data, and I'm pretty sure that this prison stores some, even if it's encrypted. The location might not be accessible to anyone, but I've visited it before and I can retrace my steps." It didn't help that there was a person that was writing down every word that I spoke.

"Are you sure? Recite the exact latitude and longitude of every corner of this room." I closed my eyes and imagined a copy of the room we were in. I compared the coordinates of Tartarus itself before quickly scaling them down. After I was done telling them that, the interrogator scowled. "Stupid Quirk. What do you want?"

"I need permission to talk to Tomura Shigaraki."

Arms grabbed me again, and I was too surprised to do anything about it. They brought me the video phone, and I could see static before it finally revealed Shigaraki. He was thinner than when I last saw him, and I hoped that he was still being fed.

"Hello?" Shigaraki's blue eyes locked on mine.

"Whatever it is, I'm not telling you anything."

"It's about Kurogiri, and I don't have time. Did he act strangely in the past month?"

Shigaraki removed the hand on his face, and his wrinkles were accentuated by the bright light above. "Our meetings were shorter. He means well, but he was always much more anxious when we were around. He tried to create an exit portal as soon as the meetings were finished, and he never does that."

"Kurogiri has been performing experiments in a lab. That might explain why he's so strong, but even I don't know everything yet. Have you found the lab?"

"No. We haven't." He sighed and whispered something. I listened closely and heard, "...I trusted him..."

"Where do you think he is now?"

"By the looks of it, he's probably scheming in his lab again. We were planning on launching another attack on UA, but Kurogiri took us by surprise. A little destruction is always welcome."

One of the guards tapped my shoulder. "One minute left."

I put my hands to my face and let out a deep breath. "Are you willing to give me any more information that I don't have right now?"

"No. I'm never doing that." Well, it was worth a try. "You're lucky that I agreed to reply. Kurogiri's now in control here. Look at me!" I looked at the guard and he held up two hands. Thirty seconds left. "I'm stuck here. There's nothing left to do."

The guards pulled me away from the phone while another severed the connection. "That's it?" I nodded and was grateful when I could finally breathe fresh air again.