Japan woke to tragedy the next morning.
News spread before sunrise. A devastating battle had erupted in Tokyo shortly after midnight. Entire streets were left in ruin. Tens of buildings had been completely destroyed. Hundreds more were damaged. Even a hospital had not been spared.
Rescue teams and heroes worked through the night, combing through debris in search of survivors. Sirens did not stop. Stretchers moved in endless lines. The initial estimate was Nearly three thousand were counted among the injured and the dead.
A disaster that lasted only minutes, but its scars would remain for years. And all of it was caused by U.A.'s infamous student fight with a villain.
Earlier that same day, the boy had already shocked the nation. In the middle of a trial, he had declared that All Might was dying. He attacked the prosecutor. He disregarded the law. He showed open contempt toward the judges.
Before night fell, the news had spread across Japan. The country was divided into two camps, those who believed him, and those who refused to.
Many demanded immediate answers regarding the state of the Symbol of Peace. Official statements were delayed. Then came the sudden nighttime broadcast.
By morning, most of Japan believed it now, the Symbol of Peace was no more, All Might had reached his limit and he was defeated last night. They also learned of a name long buried in the darkest decades of the nation's recent history, All For One. The hidden evil ruling the underworld.
Years ago, All Might had defeated that villain at the cost of his declining power and broken health. But the villain had returned and intended to announce it publicly by killing the greatest hero, to spread fear and destabilize society.
What no one expected was the arrival of the infamous student. Mori Junsei.
Any ambiguity about his nature was gone in the footage. No one could describe him as misunderstood. No one could frame him as a student with great potential, but reckless and misguided. His actions and his words were too clear.
The public saw and heard enough. There were eyewitnesses and fragmented clips of the fight throughout the city. Adding his view on humanity being dark and extremist, he had reached the point where could fight with a complete disregard for human life, casualties meant nothing to him. Killing villains on I-Island was not due to a mistake or circumstances, everyone believed he aimed to kill, that he enjoyed the concept of killing humans.
But the live broadcast had ended shortly after the battle began. The public did not see how it truly ended. The official statement was that AFO had fallen in battle and died at the hands of Mori Junsei. Afterward, Junsei fled the city immediately. His current location was unknown.
Junsei was now wanted nationwide for multiple crimes, including mass civilian casualties and destruction of public infrastructure.
Then came the leak.
The mysterious orphanage kidnapping from over a decade ago had a single survivor. Junsei. Further reports confirmed that Junsei had survived alone in the wilderness for six years afterward.
Some felt a flicker of sympathy over this tragic backstory. But most did not. To the majority, he was not a victim, he was just a monster born from darkness. A monster beyond redemption and threat to everyone.
Calls for justice rose as the people wanted heroes and police to find and defeat the monster.
——————
Inside the principal's office at U.A. High School, Nezu sat silently thinking of Junsei.
Three days had passed since he vanished to an unknown destination. Three days of Japan's police force and heroes searching for him and checking every possible lead. And yet no one could figure where he had gone.
It was as if he had disappeared from the world entirely and perhaps that was for the best. Nezu dreaded what Junsei might do if heroes or police found him after what he had done to All For One.
He found the attempts to be foolish at best, no one truly understood his limits and from what he showed already, it is fair to say he is the most dangerous individual in Japan. Anything short of a team of well organized top heroes would not suffice to face him.
If someone had told him, prior to that night, that heroes were going after Junsei, he would have worried for Junsei's safety. After the battle, however, that perspective had inverted completely.
He had underestimated him severely.
Nezu's mind drifted back to the Sports Festival. He remembered the moment cracks began appearing across Junsei's body. At the time, everyone, including him, had concluded those fractures marked his limit. If the confrontation had continued, it would have been difficult, but ultimately manageable. The heroes would have prevailed.
Not once had it crossed Nezu's mind that the cracks were not a ceiling. They were some sort of a threshold.
He replayed the recordings again and again. His words, the transformation and the roar. Even after seeing it so many times, it still sent shivers down his spine.
If even he was shaken watching that footage, what of ordinary civilians? Even if there had been no casualties that night, Junsei's words combined with that monstrous form and the inhuman roar were enough to carve fear into the public psyche.
Society barely tolerates what it can categorize as somewhat different and peaceful. Junsei crossed the lines of being a monster to society in both looks and mentality.
Nezu tapped a paw thoughtfully against his desk.
Before transforming, Junsei had already demonstrated he could cause a person to explode from the inside, an act disturbingly similar to what All For One had done to Sai. After transforming, his physical abilities noticeably increased.
Then came his clones. They were independent, could go invisible, and were capable of self-detonation. And it was reasonable to assume the original possessed their abilities
But the greatest anomaly remained at the conclusion of the battle.
Junsei had somehow taken control of All For One's body. Forced him to heal Yaoyorozu Momo and restore her quirk.
Then reduced the most notorious villain in Japan's history to dust and a blue glowing flower, which he consumed.
Heroes' accounts confirmed additional changes in Junsei's body afterward. He grew more monstrous. It was a rational presumption that he had grown stronger after eating the flower.
Nezu leaned back slightly.
[What was Ao's quirk?] Nezu kept going back to this thought.
It was not mimicry or copy in the conventional sense. They had a student like that and his quirk had a clear working frame and logic behind it. Junsei's felt random and illogical.
When Junsei witnessed an ability, he did not replicate it perfectly. Instead, he produced something functionally similar somehow.
"I am certain it is not copying, it is more like an inspiration… or interpretation of what he sees" Nezu said to himself.
Nezu recalled AFO's final words. The heroes present told him AFO sounded desperate and delusional the whole time after they returned. His urgency to retrieve Momo had been logical, he was being hunted relentlessly.
But what did he mean by his words? And why did he fear being eaten instead of being killed? AFO was an old, powerful and intelligent villain, such a peculiar choice of words was not random or due to fear. AFO probably meant every word he had said.
And, in a sense, he was right, he was eaten at the end.
Nezu paused at that line of reasoning.
Junsei did not see himself as human and his behavior reflected that. He lived among humans, but never integrated. He observed habits and learned from them while maintaining a safe distance.
And when he finally chose to show himself and fight, he hunted down and ate the target. It was like how predators behaved in nature. Blending within the environment, studying the prey, identifying weaknesses and striking at the correct moment without mercy.
Nezu's first conversation with Junsei resurfaced in his memory.
'I was born into their image.'
'My only solace is knowing I am life's answer to their evolution.'
At the time and with everything else being said and the revelation of his brother being reborn a human, he had not thought of it too much, just a part of his brother's extreme bias against humanity.
Now, he reconsidered.
Junsei did not believe himself to be human at all, he was only born in their image. Born and raised among humans, hidden in plain sight. It was his natural camouflage. He was observing humans and learning from them.
If one took Junsei's words at that time at face value, humans stole life from nature and evolved quirks, he was nature's answer to human evolution and a way to restore what was stolen. Then Junsei was an apex predator evolved to hunt humans, or at least that was the truth in his mind.
If human existence is a sin, then removing that sin is a virtue. And previously, he feared humans thinking he was not able to win, now after seeing what heroes are capable of during the I-island attack and AFO, Junsei could grow more bold and start fighting the sin.
If that was indeed the case, then Nezu dreaded what Junsei could do next.