August 14, Year 2
The city is decorated like a bride for the Obon festival. There is not a single street without lanterns, not a single corner without the noise of laughter. But no amount of light can hide the wicked, and no amount of noise can drown out their breathing.
Down here under the Minato bridge, twelve men are dividing stolen money.
The bridge swallows all of it; the light, the laughter, the smell of food. Down here there is only the sound of the river, the distant echo of festival drums, and the low murmur of a deal being finalized. Crates are stacked against the support pillars. Two electric lanterns throw pale yellow light across hard faces. Nobody celebrating. Nobody sending light to the dead. Just business.
I know all twelve of them. I have been watching this crew for three weeks. They call themselves the fushi-kai.
small time trafficking, protection rackets, the occasional kidnapping when someone needs quick money. No single member worth much on their own. Together they have been making this ward miserable for quite some time, while the heroes deal with problems they consider more important.
Tonight they are expecting a buyer for the goods in those crates.
They are not expecting me.
Tonight something very unfortunate is going to happen for them.
———
(Lizard's POV)
The deal was almost done. Mako had just finished counting the last stack when the first lantern went out.
Nobody moved. We all just looked at it for a moment; the lantern, now dark, swinging slightly on its hook against the bridge pillar. There was no wind.
Then the second one went out.
Total darkness. The festival above us suddenly felt very far away.
"Quirk ..... someone's using a quirk--" Riku started, and then something dropped from the underside of the bridge and landed directly on top of Mako, and the sound it made when it hit was not something I want to remember. It was not the sound of a person landing. It was the sound of something that had calculated exactly how much force was necessary and applied precisely that amount and nothing more. Mako did not get up.
Someone activated a flashlight. Bad idea. It turned whoever was holding it into the only visible target in the darkness, and a mace crossed twelve feet of black air and knocked it out of their hand along with what sounded like several fingers.
Screaming. Shuffling. The crew was breaking formation, and I could hear Kenta somewhere to my right trying to harden up, the familiar sound his quirk made, like gravel compressing, as his fists turned to granite density.
"I can hear him!" Kenta shouted.
"He's to the left, rush left, all of ---"
A grunt. Then silence. Kenta had the densest fists in the crew and he had been put down mid-sentence.
"Lights!!" Mako screamed from the ground , still conscious then, barely "Get some light, get some--"
Shirou ignited his palms. Brilliant orange light flooded under the bridge and for one moment we could all see clearly again, and I immediately wished we couldn't.
Four were already down. I hadn't heard four people fall. That was what got me; not the number, but the silence. Four men taken out in near complete darkness and not one of us had heard it happen clearly enough to point and say: there, he's there.
In the light of Shirou's burning hands I saw him for the first time. Standing at the edge of the light, completely still, iron and dark green cloth, a four-sided mace at his side. Antlers rising from his helmet. A visor with nothing human behind it.
Shirou hurled both palms forward, twin jets of ignited oil screaming across the air toward him.
He was not there when they arrived. He had moved the moment Shirou's hands went back, read the trajectory before the flame even left his palms, and was already flanking wide. He came in from Shirou's blind side and something in the way he moved was deeply wrong…. too quiet, too deliberate, no wasted motion at all, like watching a machine that had been built specifically for this one narrow purpose.
thats it !! That must be his quirk !!
He put Shirou down with a single strike and the fire died with him.
Darkness again.
"Spread out!! Don't let him isolate you!!" someone screamed. Good advice. I heard Riku extending his limbs in the dark, trying to create a perimeter, six-meter reach turning the area around him into a web of searching arms.
A sound , a sharp crack and then Riku made a noise that I had never heard a grown man make before, the sound of being snapped forward by his own overextended limb, the Hunter having grabbed it mid-sweep and pulled, and then Riku was airborne briefly and then he wasn't.
Toad found his voice somewhere behind me and hurled his fermentation orbs into the dark, the ones that produce his blinding choking cloud. his best move, the one that had dropped a c-rank hero three months ago.
The smoke came. It swallowed everything: the bridge, the crates, the river sounds, all of it.
Twelve of us had walked in here tonight. By my count, through the chaos, at most six were still standing. Twelve men, quirks between us, and he had come down here alone with a mace and a coat full of things he had prepared specifically for each one of us, and he had done his homework better than any hero I had ever encountered.
That thought was somehow the most frightening thing of all.
In the smoke I heard the others. One by one the sounds stopped. a shout cut short, an impact, a body meeting stone. each silence dropping like a stone into still water, each one closer than the last. I pressed my back against a bridge pillar and tried to control my breathing and failed completely.
I couldn't see anything. I couldn't hear anything except my own breathing, loud and ragged and humiliating.
Then the smoke shifted.
And he was standing directly in front of me.
________
Today's hunt was way too easy.
"This just in, 12 villains have been found unconscious near district 7. Testimony of the villains suggests this is another working of the vigilante Hunter in Green-"
I like to listen to the radio when I travel back home after a hunt. It's like a ritual that I follow.
Lately they have given me a name. They are calling me Hunter in Green. I like it. It makes me sound badass.
"This makes the 8th case this year alone. And yet the police have refused to give any statement on this 'Hunter'. Togashi-san, what are your views on this?"
"Well, Miss Tsumi, as an expert in criminology, it worries me that the Hunter in Green even needs to exist. It is a clear indication that our police and superhero department is failing to protect civilians to a point where they have to rely on themselves. I don't think we should villainify his actions, but rather understand why a civilian took such steps. I think we as a soc-"
"Bullshit!! That damn terrorist is not doing it because he wants to protect anyone. He is just a criminal who wants to make himself feared, so that he can start his criminal empire!!"
What is this dude even talking about?
What criminal empire?
"Mister Nohara, please don't intercept me when I am speaking!!!"
"Oh, you expect me to take permission from you before speaking, but you don't expect that terrorist to have a hero licence before he breaks someone's jaw?"
Is this guy even listening to the conversation?
"I never said that. I said we should address the root cause of the problem and reform this misguided youth. He is not some yakuza don, he looks like he is my son's age. As I said earlier kids like him just need to reformed."
Wait, how does he know I am young? Did my height give it away?
"So you admit that instead of arresting these criminals, you want to give them a hero badge?!!"
Huh?
"What are you eve--" -- disconnected.
Before I go hunting, I put a little piece of paper at the near bottom of the door. If the door is opened, it gets torn. It is a mechanism I came up with so that if a villain breaks into my apartment, I would know. The tape is still there, as usual.
Someone is here. Someone smart enough to cover their tracks. The tape they used to replace mine is the exact same kind. Whoever this is, they know how to cover their tracks.
They can't be alone. There must be a teammate who locked the door from the outside. I can't run from it. They must be outside waiting in case I make a run for it.
Hunter pulled his mace out of the bag.
But I need to get the fuck out of here, he thought.
He took a step back from the door and slowly started walking away. Suddenly his apartment door opened, and before he could react, someone shot a tranquilizer dart at him.
-----
In an unknown facility, after God knows how long, Hunter woke up.
The first thing he noticed was that he was in what seemed like an interrogation room.
It was clean. Way too clean for it to be some villain's lair.
His hands were cuffed, not simply tied with rope. There was not a single bruise he could feel.
Meaning they hadn't hurt him.
Clean location, cuffed, and not hurt.
Fuck. The police had finally got him.
His gaze started scanning the room to better understand his condition.
There was a small white rat plushy in a business suit sitting across from him.
And suddenly the plushy spoke.
"Ah, you finally woke up, Mister Midoriya!"
What the---
"You know, for a 17-year-old kid, you are quite hard to track. But alas, it looks like the Hunter is finally hunted, huh?"