The rain did not just fall; it slammed against the half-finished concrete floors of the skyscraper in heavy, cold curtains. At this intermediate level, the air was thick with the smell of wet cement and ozone.
Hana Fujikawa stood in the shadows, water streaming down her face, her clothes clinging to her skin. Behind her, Eri crouched against a bare brick wall, her small hands pressed tightly over her ears.
"Keep your eyes closed, Eri!" Hana shouted over the rhythmic thrum of the storm. "Do not open them, no matter what!"
In the gloom, the hunters approached. They weren't monsters or creations of the Author; they were professional heroes and mercenaries from their own world, equipped with powerful Quirks and a singular mission: to retrieve the "Asset" and eliminate the "Glitch."
The leader of the squad, a man named Kaelen with arms encased in jagged rock armor, stepped forward. "It's over, Fujikawa. Hand over the girl. You don't have anywhere to go now."
Hana didn't answer. She felt the weight of her katana and the humming energy of Eri behind her. Suddenly, the atmosphere shifted.
"Eri"
Eri's horn began to glow with a blinding, golden intensity. A low, mechanical hum like a film reel spinning backward filled the floor.
The raindrops, mid-fall, suddenly stopped. They vibrated for a fraction of a second before roaring upward. The deluge had inverted.
The hunters gasped, their vision blurred by the rising water. The rock-armored leader stumbled, his gravity-defying surroundings throwing his Quirk off balance. "What... what is this?"
Hana didn't waste a heartbeat. She saw their confusion as a weakness, their hesitation as a death warrant.
"I'll come back Eric" She moved through the upward rain like a phantom, her speed amplified by her own gravitational manipulation.
Right now, she wasn't looking to arrest them. If she really wants to protect Eric from more danger, she has no other choice that to end them.
Kaelen lunged, his stone fist swinging blindly through the spray. Hana stepped into his guard, her eyes cold. She didn't parry; she thrust. Her blade found a gap in the stone plating, sliding deep into his chest with a sickening, wet sound.
The leader's eyes widened. This wasn't a hero battle; there was no dialogue, no heroic recovery. There was only the cold steel of a woman who had decided that the lives of her enemies were worth nothing compared to the safety of the child behind her.
"You... you really would..." Kaelen choked, blood bubbling at his lips.
"To protect her," Hana whispered, her voice cutting through the roar of the storm, "I would unmake the world."
She ripped the blade free. Kaelen collapsed, his rock armor crumbling as his life light faded. His body hit the concrete with a dull thud, the rising rain washing the blood from his skin before it could even pool.
The remaining three hunters froze. The woman conjuring ice dropped her stance, her hands trembling so violently that the frost shattered at her feet. The speedster, caught mid-dash, skidded to a halt, his mask slipping to reveal a face pale with pure, unadulterated terror.
They had seen villains, and they had seen monsters, but they had never seen someone kill with such surgical, dispassionate efficiency. The "script" they had been following the belief that they were the protagonists of this hunt had been violently rewritten in Kaelen's blood.
Hana stood over the fallen leader, her katana pointed toward the ground, the upward rain spiraling around her like an avenging shroud.
"There's nowhere to go you say," Hana say with a small sarcasms, her voice a low growl.
The silence that followed Kaelen's death was louder than the storm. The three remaining hunters stood paralyzed, their breaths hitching as they watched the blood of their leader spiral toward the ceiling, caught in Eri's inverted deluge.
Hana flicked her blade, a crimson arc cutting through the upward spray. She didn't look at Kaelen's corpse. Her eyes were fixed on the speedster, whose boots were still twitching with a nervous, electric energy.
"You're fast, aren't you?" Hana asked, her voice low and terrifyingly calm. "Let's see if you can outrun gravity."
The speedster didn't wait. Fear broke him. He turned to bolt toward the stairwell, his Quirk igniting in a blur of motion. But Hana was already ahead of him. She didn't chase him; she reached out with her left hand and clutched the air.
Suddenly, the upward rain in the speedster's path became a solid wall. Hana increased the local gravity tenfold in a narrow corridor.
The speedster slammed into the invisible pressure, his own momentum working against him. There was a sickening crack as his ribs shattered under the sudden weight of his own body. Before he could even scream, Hana was there.
She moved like a shadow through the rising water. With a single, horizontal slash, she silenced him. He didn't even hit the floor; his body was suspended for a heartbeat by the upward rain before she kicked him aside, a discarded piece of a broken story.
"Two left," she whispered.
The frost-wielder, a young woman who had been top of her class, finally found her voice. "You're a monster! We were supposed to be the heroes today! How can we be the heroes if we're the ones being kill like nothing"
"DIE!" the woman screamed, the word tearing from her throat in a ragged, hysterical shriek, thrusting both hands forward. Massive jagged glaciers erupted from the air, aiming to impale Hana and the pillar where Eri was hiding.
Hana didn't flinch. She stepped in front of Eri, her katana glowing with a faint, dark aura.
"Try if you can't"
As the ice shards flew toward her, Hana manipulated the gravitational field around the ice. Instead of shattering them, she inverted their weight. The massive glaciers suddenly jerked upward, caught in the same draft as the rain. They shot toward the ceiling, missing Hana by an inch.
In the confusion of the rising ice, Hana closed the distance. The frost-wielder tried to conjure a shield, but Hana's blade was faster. It wasn't a fight; it was an execution.
The katana bypassed the ice-shield, finding the girl's throat. A single, surgical strike. The frost-wielder's hands went to her neck, her eyes wide with the realization that the "Author" wasn't coming to save her.
The last hunter, a man with a Quirk that allowed him to harden his skin like iron, fell to his knees. He wasn't even trying to fight anymore. He saw the blood-stained steel, the inverted rain, and the woman who had just dismantled a pro-team in less than three minutes.
"Please," he say, his iron skin flickering as his concentration broke. "We were just following orders. The Author... he said you were a danger to the world."
Hana stood over him, the upward rain spiraling around her like a dark halo. She looked down at him with a pity that was far more terrifying than her rage.
"He may have been right," Hana said, her voice a ghostly echo in the concrete shell of the building. "I am a danger. But only to people like you."
She didn't hesitate. She brought the katana down in a vertical arc, ending the last of the hunters.
The roar of the inverted rain began to fade as Eri's strength wavered. The golden glow of the horn dimmed, and slowly, the water began to fall back toward the earth, splashing onto the bloody concrete.
Hana stood in the center of the carnage, her chest heaving, her katana dripping. The "kind" Hana Fujikawa was gone, buried under the bodies of the people sent to stop her. She turned to the pillar where Eri was still crouched.
"It's okay now, Eri," Hana said, her voice suddenly softening, returning to the warmth the girl knew. She sheathed her blade with a sharp clack and wiped the blood from her cheek. "The hunters are gone. They won't be bothering us anymore."
Eri opened her eyes just as a sudden headache take her.
"Grey" Eri whispered, looking at the bodies on the floor with a hollow expression.
"Let's go, we need to join sato and kaori" Hana said, picking the girl up and stepping over the remains of the squad. "We have to take you in a safe place."