In the helicopter, Momo and Honoka yelled at the same time.
"AKIRA!!!!!"
The cameraman grabbed Momo by the waist. The news anchor grabbed Honoka by the arm. Both of them pulled with everything they had, hauling the two women back from the edge.
"WAIT!!!!" the anchor screamed, her professional composure long gone, replaced by the raw panic of a woman watching two people try to jump out of a moving helicopter. "FOR GOD'S SAKE!! YOU ARE GOING TO GET YOURSELVES KILLED!! WE WILL LAND!! JUST WAIT!!"
Momo struggled against the cameraman's grip. Her eyes were locked on the canopy below, on the hole that Akira's body had punched through the trees, on the spot where he had disappeared. Every cell in her body wanted to jump.
She sat back. Honoka sat back beside her. Both of them breathing hard, their hands gripping the edges of the door, their eyes still fixed on the jungle below.
"Hurry up!"
The anchor nodded and rushed to the cockpit. She spoke to the pilot quickly, gesturing at the clearing below. He nodded, banked the helicopter hard, and began scanning the terrain for a landing zone.
***
Below, Akira's body hit the jungle floor.
He crashed through the remaining canopy, branches snapping under his weight, foliage shredding around him, before landing in a bed of scorched ground.
His body was somehow intact.
But he was unconscious before he hit the ground.
He lay in the ash, breathing slowly, his red hair splayed across the dirt. He just layed there... in a deep sleep.
Minutes passed... and soon the HPSC squad arrived.
Lieutenant Sato emerged from the treeline first. Her team followed, all of them in formation, weapons drawn, quirk-dampening equipment ready.
They moved through the scorched jungle in silence, stepping over craters and fallen trees, following the trail of destruction until they reached the clearing where Akira lay.
They stopped at the edge.
All six of them stared at the unconscious boy on the ground.
For a few seconds, nobody moved. The operatives exchanged glances, hands tightening on their weapons. They had watched this boy die, come back as something divine, tear a Nomu-hybrid apart piece by piece, and erase a villain from existence with purple fire. The fact that he was currently unconscious and powerless didn't erase what they had seen.
He could wake up.
The silence stretched. Sato's hand rested on her cuffs.
Then she spoke.
"Move," she said. "He can be neutralised now."
The team advanced slowly. Quirk-dampening cuffs in hand. Suppression equipment armed. Every step measured, every angle covered, treating the unconscious teenager on the ground with the same caution they would give a live explosive.
They made it three steps.... alas, getting the boy would not be that easy.
CRASH!
A blade slammed into the earth directly in front of the lead operative. The impact threw dirt and ash into the air, the shockwave staggering the entire team backward. The blade embedded itself in the ground, vibrating, its pink gemstone pulsing with light.
The agents scrambled back, weapons raised. They formed a defensive semicircle, scanning the treeline.
Two figures stepped out of the jungle.
Jian walked calmly, his hands in his pockets, his gold glasses catching what remained of the sunset.
Beside him, Mei extended her hand.
The claymore ripped itself free from the ground and flew back to her grip.
She caught it one-handed, the massive weapon spinning once before settling onto her shoulder. Pink energy crackled along the blade's edge.
She looked at the HPSC operatives and smiled.
"Well," she said, "this is the fucking limit."
"You take one step toward that boy," she continued, the smile widening, "and I am slicing every single one of you into a hundred parts."
The operatives froze due to their survival instinct. They know about her. They knew what the woman with the claymore could do.
Lieutenant Sato raised her hand. The agents backed off.
Sato looked at Jian.
"You really want to do this?" she asked.
"I don't care anymore," Jian said simply.
Sato studied him for a moment. Making sure he was dead serious.
"Then it seems I have no other option," Sato said.
She stepped forward.
Her hands moved to her belt. She drew two blades..... short, and completely transparent. Not glass, but something else — a material that bent light around itself, making the edges nearly invisible. They caught the fading sunlight and refracted it, creating prismatic glimmers that were there one second and gone the next.
Mei looked at the blades. Her eyes narrowed with professional interest.
"That's an interesting pair," she said.
Sato said nothing.
Then she vanished.
Not teleportation. Not speed..... It was invisibility. Sato's quirk erased her from the visible spectrum entirely.
One moment she was standing in the clearing. The next, the space was empty.
Mei didn't move. Her eyes closed. Her grip on the claymore shifted — left hand sliding to the base of the hilt, right hand moving to the pommel. A defensive stance. And then she waited.
It is a simple quirk. Invisibility. The kind that sounded underwhelming on paper. But when combined with twelve years of Commission combat training, with transparent blades that couldn't be seen, with the tactical expertise of a woman who had been the HPSC's top field operative for the better part of a decade — it became something lethal.
Against most opponents.
Mei was not most opponents.
The first strike came from the left. Mei's claymore moved before her eyes opened. A lateral sweep that caught Sato's invisible blade two centimetres from her ribs. Steel rang against transparent steel. Sparks flew from nothing. Sato's outline flickered for a fraction of a second on impact before vanishing again.
The second strike came from behind. Mei pivoted on her heel, bringing the claymore around in a reverse sweep that forced the invisible operative to dodge. Mei heard the footstep and adjusted her angle. The blade clipped something. Fabric. A sleeve.
Sato reappeared for a heartbeat, her invisibility disrupted by the contact, her face showing the first crack of surprise. She flickered out again immediately.
Mei smiled. "You're good."
No response. Just the whisper of transparent blades cutting air from two directions simultaneously.
Mei parried both. Casually. The same way she had parried the Nomu's blade-fingers.
This went on for a while... till the time she was done playing.
Pink Sword Aura flared along the claymore's edge. The air around Mei compressed, vibrated, and then detonated outward in a pulse that stripped the invisibility from everything within ten metres. Sato's form shimmered back into existence.
Mei was already inside her guard.
The claymore's flat side hit Sato's right wrist. Sato's transparent blade flew from her grip, spinning into the undergrowth. Her wrist bent at an angle that wrists weren't supposed to bend.
Sato's mouth opened. No sound came out. The pain was too sudden, too sharp, too complete for her body to produce a scream in time.
Mei's boot hit her chest. Sato flew backward, hit a tree, and slid to the ground. Her remaining blade fell from her other hand. Her broken wrist hung at her side, already swelling.
The fight had lasted for a few minutes.
Mei rested the claymore on her shoulder and looked down at the lieutenant.
"Stay down," she said.
Sato stayed down.
The remaining operatives hadn't moved. They stood in their semicircle, weapons drawn, watching their commanding officer get dismantled by a woman who hadn't even used her full power.
None of them stepped forward.
Then a voice echoed from the treeline.
"YOU ARE CROSSING THE LINE, LI MEI!!!!"
Madam President walked into the clearing.
She was followed by four agents.
Mei looked at her, but the smile didn't fade.
"And you not doing anything to help the kid was not crossing the line?" Mei asked.
"Tell me? Blocking his mother from reaching him while he bled out in a jungle wasn't crossing the line? Letting a monster snap his neck while you stood in a tunnel talking about custody wasn't crossing the line?"
Madam President's expression didn't change. "Everything I did was within the bounds of-"
"Don't," Mei said. "Don't finish that sentence."
Jian stepped forward. He placed his hand on Mei's shoulder.
"We will see wh-"
Just then his phone rang.
He looked at the screen. His expression changed as he glanced at Mei.
She saw the look. And she understood immediately. She knew who was on the other end of that call.
Jian answered.
He listened for a while and said nothing. The clearing was silent except for the distant sound of helicopters and the faint crackle of dying embers.
"Are you sure this will work?" Jian said finally.
He listened to the answer.
Then he sighed.
"You better not mess up," he said quietly. "This is a personal matter."
He hung up. Put the phone in his pocket.
Just then, Momo and Honoka burst through the treeline. They had made it from the helicopter on foot. Both of them were breathing hard.
They saw Akira on the ground. They saw the HPSC agents. They saw Madam President.
Honoka moved to rush forward. Momo was right behind her.
"Let them take him," Jian said.
Both women stopped dead.
Honoka turned to Jian. Her face went through three emotions in one second..... confusion, disbelief, and rage.
"WHAT?!"
She grabbed him by his collar, pulling him toward her with a strength that surprise and fury gave to a body that should have been too exhausted to stand.
"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?! THAT IS MY SON!! THEY WANT TO ARREST HIM!! THEY LET HIM DIE!! AND YOU WANT ME TO HAND HIM OVER?!"
Jian grabbed her shoulders. And shook her hard.
It was the first time anyone present had seen this side of Jian.
"Trust me on this one," he said. His voice was low. "We will get Akira out. I give you my word."
Honoka stared at him. Her grip on his collar didn't loosen. Her eyes searched his face for doubt, for hesitation, for any crack in the certainty he was projecting.
She found none.
She let go as she stepped back, and nodded.
Jian straightened his collar and turned to Madam President.
"You can take Akira into custody," he said. His tone had shifted again — back to business, back to the language of boardrooms and legal frameworks. "However, under Article 14 of the Quirk Emergency Detainment Act, any individual taken into Commission custody during an active crisis is entitled to two personal escorts of their choosing to accompany them throughout the detention period. These escorts have observation rights and cannot be denied access to the detainee at any point."
Madam President stared at him. Her mask cracked.... just slightly, just a twitch at the corner of her eye. She hadn't expected legal precision from a Chinese billionaire in a burned jungle.
But the law was the law, and she can't afford to mess up more than she has already have. And he was right.
She couldn't deny it without creating a procedural violation that would be ammunition for any future legal challenge.
"Additionally," Jian continued, "under the same statute, a formal hearing must be held within forty-eight hours of detention. The detainee has the right to legal representation, the right to present evidence, and the right to a public or private proceeding at the discretion of the defence."
"Am I right?"
Madam President held his gaze for a long moment. The jungle was silent around them. The sun was almost gone. The violet tinge in the clouds was fading.
She nodded.
Because that was all she could do.
"Then Honoka and Mei will accompany him," Jian said. He turned to Mei. "Is that okay with you, honey?"
Mei unsummoned her claymore.
"You don't need to ask that," she said.
Jian nodded. He looked at Honoka.
Who simply nodded.
Jian turned back to Madam President and gave her a final nod.
She signalled her agents. Two of them moved forward carefully, lifting Lieutenant Sato, who was cradling her broken wrist. Two others approached Akira..... gently, as if handling something that might explode, and lifted his unconscious body onto a stretcher they had brought through the jungle.
Honoka walked beside the stretcher. Her hand found Akira's and held it.
Mei walked on the other side. Her arms were crossed but her eyes never left the agents.
They moved through the jungle.
At the edge of the clearing, Momo stood beside Jian, watching them go.
She didn't follow. She couldn't after all.
She watched Akira's stretcher disappear into the treeline.
And in her mind, she said one thing.
Everything will be alright...
+++++++++++++
Guess who was on the phoneeeeeeee...
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