"Hey, has anyone seen Tenshiro?" Izumi asked the next day at lunch, catching the budding group's attention.

Hitoshi, Gani, Isamui, Mikoto, Takaryo, Kuro

"Now that you mention, no…" Isamu mused. "Zeisho? You're his best friend, do you know…?"

The fluffy boy, who had been anxious all day, shook his head in sadness.

"He seemed especially down when we went home yesterday, but when I went to pick him up today, he was already gone. His folks and I just assumed he left early…"

"Maybe we can try retracing his steps from the other day?" Hitoshi suggested.

Izuku nodded. "I have a Quirk I copied from a nice park ranger during a camping trip a few years ago. I'm sure it'll help us."

"Preferably after class." Gani pointed out. "After all, we don't wanna RIB the teacher by skipping school."

"Do you have anything better to do with your life?" Renji asked with a sigh.

VINDICATED

After school had ended for the day, the gang had gathered together to search for Tenshiro's whereabouts. Izuku used the Quirk he talked about earlier,[Retrace], to make a holographic retrace of events from the previous day, which was useful for helping locate missing people based on the information given about them.

Thankfully, Zeisho had plenty of info to give about Tenshiro and Izuku was able to form a path of where Tenshiro went after school yesterday. Zeisho then used his heightened animalistic senses to track down his friend's scent.

Eventually, the trail ended at Dagobah Municipal Beach Park, which was completely filthy and covered in trash. It pained Izuku and Izumi to see this since the beach was where Hisashi had first proposed to Inko when they were young.

"Over there!"

Everyone headed over and gasped to see the remnants of some kind of red chrysalis amongst a particularly large junk pile. Nearby was Tenshiro's school bag and broken glasses.

"Tenshiro was here!" Zeisho gasped. "Was this...his Quirk?"

"What do you mean?" Hitoshi asked.

"For as long as I knew Tenshiro, he technically had a Quirk but nobody knew what it was, not even him. For the longest time, he lived life Quirkless." Zeisho had a sad look on his face. "It...It wasn't easy for him growing up. He only really had me and his parents."

Izuku put a finger to his chin and began muttering about the term "Functionally Quirkless", meaning his Quirk needed some kind of condition to be fulfilled or took a while longer to awaken compared to how people normally get them. Katsuki had to make an explosion near his face to snap him out of it.

"So Tenshiro-Kun finally awakened his Quirk, did he?" Isamu realized. "From the look of things, he must have metamorphosized! Like a cute little caterpillar turning into a gorgeous butterfly!"

"Judging by this kind of chrysalis...I don't think it's a butterfly he turned into." Kuro noted as Yami nodded.

Zeisho sniffed around the chrysalis to pick up Tenshiro's scent, which now had a newfound odor to it which made it easier to narrow down where to find him.

"He's still around this area! Come on, he could be in trouble!"

"And judging by how society tends to react to people with mutations..." Takaryo muttered, a few bad memories of his own resurfacing.

Izuku used[Retrace]again, finding a trail left behind. With Zeisho acting as a hunting dog, the kids made their way to find Tenshiro once more.

VINDICATED

A young woman was cornered by a trio of villains who wanted to rob, violate, and kill her, and not necessarily in that order either. Her eyes were wide in fear as she shuddered under their predatory gazes.

"P-please, just let me go!"

Sneering at the frightened woman, one of the three villains who had blades in place of fingernails and a bald head stabbed his blades into the wall next to her.

"And deprive ourselves of some fun? I don't think so!"

"And who knows, you might just enjoy it yourself!" Another villain who had tentacles growing from his stomach added.

The third villain who had an unnaturally wide and demented grin, pale skin, and black hair was about to make his own statement when he suddenly felt a strange chill.

"Hey, is it just me or is it getting colder in here?"

Having felt the sudden chill as well, the other two villains and even their victim paused for a moment when they all heard a soft sound. They soon realized it was the sound of heavy footsteps as a mysterious light blue mist-like fog started to envelop them.

The three villains quickly lost their cocky confidence as the fog grew thicker and the sound of heavy footsteps drew closer. Hiding their growing fear behind vicious bluster, the villains took fighting stances.

"S-show yourself!" The fingernail blade villain shouted.

Suddenly, a large muscular arm appeared from the fog and grabbed the villain with tentacles on his stomach by his tentacles. The villain barely had time to yell in surprise and panic before he was quickly dragged into the fog. A moment later, his bloodcurdling screams could be heard over the sounds of tearing flesh. The two remaining villains could have sworn they saw the shadowed image of a huge man with a physical build not unlike that of All-Might and glowing blood-red eyes literally tearing the tentacles, and possibly even guts, off their companion's stomach.

Consumed with fear, the two villains were about the escape when the assailant turned his attention towards them, his blood-red eyes glowing like a flame which left crimson wisps in its wake. Letting go of the mutilated villain, he started to move toward them with slow menacing steps.

Suddenly remembering the woman they were about to violate, the villain with blades for fingernails quickly seized the woman who was too terrified to move.

"Take another fucking step and I'll slit her throat!" Placing the blades on the fingers of his right arm on her neck for emphasis, the villain continued to threaten the red-eyed assailant. "I'm serious! Now, back the fuck away!"

After a tense moment of silence, the assailant slowly backed away into the fog from which he came. Seeing the huge man disappear into the fog, the villain with blades for fingernails almost felt relieved when a familiar-looking muscular arm suddenly appeared from behind him and grabbed his right arm with lightning-fast speed. Shocked, the villain was unable to do anything as the arm suddenly yanked his hand away from the woman's neck and broke it.

Howling in pain, the villain was quickly dragged into the fog by his assailant and soon started screaming as the assailant, who was apparently the same man who tore the other villain's tentacles off, broke his other hand and then started to brutally tear off the fingernail-like blades on his fingers with almost clinical meticulousness.

Too terrified to even flee, the remaining villain and the woman dared not move as the assailant tore off each fingernail-like blade. By the time the assailant was done, the third villain was on his backside and wetted his pants in pure primal fear of what kind of torment he would do to him. Tears streamed down the third villain's face as the assailant finally stepped out of the fog, showing a huge muscular man with a bone-white mask seemingly fused to his face, wild black hair and wearing only a large pair of tattered blue jeans, a black leather belt with a skull-shaped buckle and a large pair of brown leather boots. The mask hid the man's face, showing only his sunken eyes and a pair of oval fleshy vents in place of cheeks which was producing fog with each exhalation.

The villain tried to point his box cutter knife at the masked man in a feeble attempt to fight him off but his sweaty trembling fingers made him lose grip of the knife.

"W-What the hell are you?"

It was at that moment that a gentle squeaky voice suddenly spoke up from behind.

"T...Tenshiro?"

VINDICATED

To say Izuku and the gang were shocked was an understatement.

Closing in on Tenshiro's scent, they had found a hulking brute of a man standing over the bodies of three criminals with a terrified woman watching nearby. Looking at the mysterious masked man's appearance reminded Katsuki of a video game called "Splatterhouse" for some reason.

However, it was Zeisho's single utterance of disbelief that made everyone realize that this man who looked like the lovechild of All-Might and Jason Voorhees was in fact, the same person as the shy glasses-wearing wimpy boy that Izumi sat behind in school.

"Whoa...what were Zeisho's parents putting in his food?" Gani commented after a long, tense silence. "He's looking...I don't want to say 'puffy'."

The others looked at Gani, annoyed.

"What? No puns amid craziness? It's how I cope." The skeletal boy explained.

Zeisho walked up to his friend, motioning the others to hold back.

"Buddy? It's okay. It's me."

The creature reached for Zeisho, fearfully and as if he was unsure this was real, then pulled back and waved at him and the others to stay away, his eyes darting to the men he'd brutalized. But the fluffy boy, a determined look on his face, took a stance….

"ZEISHO, WAIT!" The others called out, but the fluffy boy ignored them, landing in the behemouth's arms and hugging him, his fluffiness increasing and held on for dear life.

Tenshiro stumbled back and was about to fall back when Izumi rushed forward, motioning the ground upwards to catch him. Izuku joined his sister and applied [Softening] Quirk, saving Tenshiro and Zeisho from any scrapes and cuts.

"You not a bad guy, you're my best friend! I know you." Zeisho began to sob. "I know you didn't mean any harm! And this was your first Quirk activation; those always go haywire!"

Izumi then slowly walked over, making calming motions as she smiled sweetly.

"You were defending someone, right?" She guessed, eyeing a woman now hiding behind the other kids.

Tenshiro nodded and tried to speak, but only grunts came from him. Seemed this new form muted him.

The green haired girl just smiled and joined in the hug, saying three words that made it all better:

"You're a hero."

Tenshiro began to calm down, looking over at the others; he saw no fear or disgust; only concern and relief that he was calming down. Isamu and Izuku smiled as they walked over to aid in calming him down as Mikoto checked on the three asailants.

"They'll make it." He said as he used his Quirk to get their hearts pumping and seal up the worse of their wounds.

"Wait, these people are still alive?!" Katsuki said. "…Well then, we got a hell of a lot less to worry about!"

"Can I bite off their heads?"Yami asked Kuro.

"No."

"We better call the police..." Hitoshi said as he hurriedly took out his phone.

VINDICATED

Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi felt like he needed migraine medication for the sheer amount of paperwork he was going to get for this incident.

From what the reports said, a teenager believed to be Quirkless awakened his long-dormant Quirk, which was a Mutant type that enhanced his physical traits to the same level as All-Might and allowed him to produce a mist-like fog he could teleport through depending on where the fog was...not only that, but he had also just mutilated a trio of serial rapists and murderers...well, two of them, at least. The third one was left in a catatonic state while begging every deity that existed in every religion for forgiveness.

Thankfully, the potential disaster was contained by a brave group of kids who knew the boy but right now, he was in a holding cell, having willingly turned himself in after his friends calmed him down. His parents were on their way and one of the kids, Izuku, had made a call to his father, who was a well-respected lawyer and alumni of UA High on top of that.

"Despite everything, I feel like the kid's in good hands."

Knightmare Lord A/N:

Just a nice easy-to-read chapter to pick back up the pace of the story since Mrotrax and I kinda laid off it for a while too long.

Anything you want to say, my buddy?

Mrotrax A/N:

Hope I did well on the calming down of Tenshiro!

Stay safe and warm!