Tensei Iida, known to the public as the Turbo Hero: Ingenium, kept his pace steady, his eyes scanning every narrow gap between the buildings.
He pressed his fingers to the communicator in his helmet.
"Team A, check the north sector," Tensei commanded. "Team B, check the west."
He cut the connection and rounded a corner, his mufflers clicking as he slowed his pace.
There was a mundane alleyway, filled with the smell of damp cardboard. He almost passed it - until a flash of tattered red fabric caught his eye.
Tensei stopped dead in his tracks.
He turned back and jumped into the alleyway.
There, standing in the darkness, with a jagged blade in hand, was the nightmare of the hero world.
"Found him!" Tensei shouted into his comms. "The Hero Killer!"
Tensei felt the air shift. The Hero Killer was gauging the distance.
"I won't let you kill anyone else," Tensei declared, his mufflers clicking into high-output mode.
"You're surrounded, Stain. My team is blocks away. Drop the weapons and turn yourself in. Don't make me take you down by force."
Stain let out a dry, hacking laugh. He raised the jagged blade, pointing the tip directly at Tensei's throat.
"Then show me, Ingenium. Show me if your 'duty' is faster than my justice."
Without hesitation Tensei lunged, a blur of white armor.
In a flash of movement, four throwing daggers whistled through the air. Tensei ducked, the blades embedding themselves deep into the wall behind him. He surged forward again, aiming a series of rapid-fire strikes.
Thud. Clack. Shing.
The alleyway was too narrow for Tensei to reach top speed, and Stain knew it.
The Hero Killer was playing a game of inches, leading Tensei into tighter and tighter corners.
Tensei swung a wide hook, but his foot slipped on a patch of moss. It was a millisecond of imbalance, but for Stain, it was eternity.
Stain's eyes gleamed with light. He lunged forward, his blade grazing Tensei's shoulder, slicing through his armor.
Tensei grunted, feeling the sting of the metal, but he didn't slow down. He grabbed Stain's wrist, intending to pin him against the wall.
"I've got you!"
"No," Stain whispered, a gruesome smile stretching across his face. "I have you."
Stain pulled back, his tongue flickering out to catch a single drop of blood from the edge of his blade.
Tensei's heart went cold. He'd heard about the mysterious paralysis that struck Stain's victims.
He tried to ignite his engines for a final, desperate burst to clear the alley, but his legs suddenly felt like lead.
The hum of his mufflers died down. Tensei's knees buckled, and he collapsed, his armor clattering loudly against the ground.
Stain stood over him, he raised his long katana, the tip hovering right over Tensei's spine.
"You have conviction," Stain admitted, his voice cold. "May your sacrifice be the spark that wakes the real heroes... or the fire that consumes the fakes."
"BOOOOORING!"
A sudden shadow dropped from the dumpsters. Jin - Twice - landed. He didn't even look at the Hero Killer, he just grabbed the paralyzed hero's arm trying to lift him.
"This guy is heavy!"
Stain's eyes narrowed to slits. "More maggots interfering with justice?"
Stain didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, his sword aimed straight for Twice's back to stop the rescue. His blade inches away from carving through them both.
BANG. BANG.
Two shots rang out, the bullets snapping through the air right in front of Stain's face.
The Hero Killer hissed, forced to flip backward to avoid getting shot in the head. He landed in a crouch, his eyes darting upward.
"Haru-kun said the monologue was the worst part," a high-pitched, girlish voice chirped.
Toga stood on a rusty fire escape, her signature combat mask covering her face.
"You talk a lot, Stainy. It makes it really easy to hit you!" Toga laughed, her voice playful behind the mask.
"Jin! Go! I'll play with him for a bit"
"Right! I'm leaving! make sure you don't get licked Toga-chan!" Jin screamed.
He scooped Tensei over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Tensei was heavy, but the panic gave Jin a burst of strength. He started sprinting toward the end of the alley.
Stain growled and tried to jump after them, but Toga dropped from the fire escape, landing in his path. She kept her distance, her gun pointed right at his chest.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
She fired three more times. Every time Stain tried to close the gap, she shot at his feet or his lead shoulder, forcing him to weave and dodge. She was zoning him perfectly, keeping a twenty-foot gap between his blades and her body.
"Who are you?" Stain roared, his killing intent flaring.
"More fakes playing dress-up?"
"We aren't heroes, Stainy," Toga said, her voice buzzing behind the teeth of her mask.
She fired another shot, grazing Stain's sleeve.
"We're only here because Haru-kun said you aren't allowed to harm the side-characters today."
Stain threw a handful of daggers, but Toga dove behind a dumpster, the metal clanging as the knives hit.
She popped back up instantly. Stain didn't retreat this time, he sprinted along the vertical surface of the brick wall, defying gravity as he closed the distance.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Toga tracked him, her shots kicking up dust from the ground just inches behind his heels.
Stain leaped from the wall, spinning mid-air, his katana outstretched to shear through her guard.
Toga slid beneath the strike, the wind of the blade ruffling her buns, and fired upward at his torso. Stain used the flat of his blade to parry the bullet, and landed in a crouch.
"You're fast, girl, but you're reliant on a finite toy." Stain hissed, his eyes tracking the slide of her pistol
"Finite? Haru-kun gave me spare mags, Stainy! I can do this all day!" Toga chirped, though her breathing was getting heavier.
She backed away, maintaining the twenty-foot gap. Stain lunged again, this time throwing a heavy wooden junk to distract her.
Toga shot it mid-air, splintering it, but Stain was already through the debris, swinging his jagged katana at her.
Toga parried the blow with the frame of her pistol - a risky move that left a deep gouge in the metal - and kicked him in the knee, forcing him back just enough to level the barrel at his chest.
CLICK.
The sound was tiny, but it echoed in the silence of the alley. The slide was locked back. The chamber was empty.
"Uh oh," Toga said, her smile widening behind the teeth of her mask. "Out of candy."
Stain's lips curled into a snarl.
He lunged. His katana aiming for a non-lethal but crippling strike to her thigh.
Toga didn't reach for another magazine. She looked over her shoulder and saw that the alley was finally empty.
Jin and Tensei were gone, having vanished into the bright, orange glow of the main street.
"Job's done!" Toga chirped.
As Stain's blade whistled toward her, she reached into a pouch on her belt and slammed a purple sphere onto the ground right between them.
POOF.
A massive cloud of thick smoke erupted, filling the alleyway instantly. Stain roared and slashed his katana through the mist, but his blade hit nothing but air.
Toga was already halfway up a rusted drainpipe, moving with the agility of a spider before disappearing into the light.
Stain's eyes burned with murderous intent. He ignored his bleeding shoulder and sprinted toward the pipe. He wasn't going to let the girl escape.
He was beginning to chase after her, when a sharp tang echoed through the alley.
A sleek, black-handled combat knife struck the metal drainpipe just inches above Stain's reaching hand.
Stain halted, but before he could look back, he felt a cold hand rest on his shoulder.
"Easy there, Kenshin. You're moving a little too fast," a voice whispered from behind him.
"You can't go chasing after schoolgirls in dark alleys. That's a different kind of 'villain' vibe"
Stain spun around, his notched blade whistling through the air in a perfect horizontal decapitation strike. But the blade met zero resistance.
The figure in the red-and-black mask ducked down letting the katana pass through the empty space where his neck had been a millisecond before.
He stayed down there on the pavement, sitting, looking up at the Hero Killer with an exaggeratedly calm tilt of the head.
"Ooh, close!" Haruto said, his voice completely unbothered.
"But you've got that look in your eye. That 'I'm-about-to-murder-a-teenager-because-she-broke-my-immersion' look. It's a bad look, Stainy. Also, your scarf is tacky. There, I said it. It's a crime against fashion."
Stain roared, a sound of pure primal fury, and unleashed a flurry of stabs downward. He wanted to shred the intruder.
His blades tore through the black fabric and the mask, burying themselves into the figure's chest and shoulders.
But there was no blood.
The figure dissolved into a thick, gray sludge that splattered across the alley floor. As he disintegrated, his head remained for some time, looking up at Stain.
"Anyway, Edge Lord, don't forget to wash your tongue before you go to bed. The germs are having a party there. Check ya later."
Stain stood over the pile of gray goo, his chest heaving with rage as the last of the clone vanished into nothingness.
***
In a quiet park nearby, well away from the shadows, Jin dropped Tensei onto the dry grass. The man in the gray bodysuit was gasping for air, leaning his back against a thick oak tree.
Tensei Iida lay on the ground, the feeling finally beginning to tingle back into his fingertips as the paralysis started to fade. He looked up, his breathing ragged.
Toga simply appeared from the sidewalk, walking casually toward them with her hands behind her back.
"That was fun! Stainy is so grumpy. He really needs a hobby,"
she said with a giggle, strolling up to them as if she hadn't just been in a life-or-death duel.
She stopped and lightly kicked at the grass, checking the new scratch on her pistol with a pout.
Tensei looked at the two of them - a man in a mask and a girl who acted like they had just finished a game of tag. He felt a wave of confusion that surpassed even his physical pain.
"You... you saved me... Thank you. But you used weapons... are you vigilantes?"
Toga looked at the hero as if he had asked a very complicated math question. She turned her gaze toward her partner.
"Right... What are we, Jin?"
He looked back at her, confused.
"I don't know Toga-chan. Whenever I ask Boss about it, he just starts rambling about 'branding' and 'copyright lawsuits' "
"He's just too lazy to think of a name" Toga giggled, poking Jin in the arm.
"Wait a moment," Tensei said, his voice regaining its authoritative Pro Hero edge.
He pointed a finger at Jin, who was still catching his breath against the tree.
"You're an adult. And she is clearly... what, sixteen? Seventeen?"
Jin froze, his mask twitching. "I'm thirty! I'm a baby! Why is everyone pointing at me?!"
"This is a serious violation!" Tensei barked, trying to stand but stumbling back onto the grass.
"You have a minor, armed with a firearm, wearing a school uniform! Are you her handler? Are you... enticing a minor into a life of crime?"
Jin's hands flew to his masked head, his voice spiraling into a frantic panic.
"No! I'm the victim here!"
Toga didn't look offended; she looked delighted. She skipped over to Jin and linked her arm through his, leaning her head on his shoulder with a manic grin.
"He's my best friend, Beetle-man! We're like a high-stakes after-school club!"
"He is leading you down a dark path, young lady!" Tensei insisted, his hero instincts overriding his common sense.
"Sir, step away from the girl! You are under arrest for... for being a highly suspicious guardian!"
"Arrested?! Finally, some structure in my life! I'm a free spirit, you'll never take me alive! Do they have a dental plan in their? Because I haven't seen a doctor since the quirk registry!"
"He's not a kidnapper," Toga said, waving her empty pistol casually at Tensei.
"If anything, Boss is the one you should worry about. He's the one who said 'child labor' is just a fancy term for 'scouting talent before they get expensive' "
"That doesn't make it better!" Tensei roared as they vanished into the twilight. "That makes it significantly worse!"
She reached down and patted Tensei's helmet one last time.
"Just stay put, Beetle-man. The real heroes and the police will be here in a few minutes, okay?"
With a final, playful wave, Toga turned and began walking away just as casually as she had arrived, with Jin scrambling to catch up to her.