The first light of dawn painted Tokyo's skyline in soft pastels as Tsuyu Asui began her patrol shift. She preferred these early hours, when the city was just beginning to stir and the streets held a peaceful quality that would disappear within the hour. From her vantage point on a rooftop overlooking the Shibuya district, she could see early commuters starting to emerge, shop owners opening their businesses, and the gradual transition from the quiet of night to the bustle of day.
"Froppy, checking in," she spoke into her communicator, her voice clear in the crisp morning air. "Beginning Route Seven patrol."
"Copy that, Froppy. All clear in your sector. Have a good shift," came the dispatcher's response.
Tsuyu began her descent, using her quirk to wall-crawl down the side of the building with practiced ease. Her patrol route was methodical—she'd been working this area for almost two years now and knew every alley, every business, every face that belonged and every detail that seemed out of place.
Her first stop was the early morning market district, where vendors were setting up their stalls for the day. Mrs. Tanaka, who sold fresh flowers from a corner stand, waved as she approached.
"Good morning, Froppy-chan! Early as always, I see."
"Good morning, Mrs. Tanaka, ribbit. How was your weekend?"
"Quiet, thankfully. Though there were some youngsters making noise near the station again last night. Nothing serious, but you might want to keep an eye out."
Tsuyu made a mental note and continued her rounds. These small interactions were as important as any villain capture, she believed. Heroes weren't just emergency responders—they were part of the community, threads in the fabric that held society together.
As she walked through the awakening district, her mind wandered to the conversation she'd had at the café three days ago. The stranger—Shino—had asked questions that continued to echo in her thoughts. About justice, about the system, about whether the people who claimed to represent these ideals were as pure as they appeared.
Her training had taught her that heroes represented order, law, and justice. The Hero Public Safety Commission existed to ensure that hero society functioned properly, that potential threats were identified and neutralized, that the public remained safe. It was a simple, clean narrative that she had never questioned.
Until recently.
Her radio crackled to life, interrupting her thoughts. "All units, we have a 10-54 in progress at convenience store on Meiji Avenue. Requesting immediate response."
"Froppy responding," she said immediately, activating her rocket boosters and launching herself toward the location. A 10-54 was robbery in progress—typically a straightforward situation that heroes handled dozens of times each week.
The convenience store came into view ahead, its neon sign flickering in the morning light. Through the large windows, she could see movement inside—one person behind the counter with hands raised, another figure whose posture suggested agitation and urgency.
Tsuyu landed silently on the roof and peered through the skylight. The scene below was exactly what she expected: a man in a worn hoodie was gesturing frantically at the elderly store owner, who was slowly opening the cash register. The would-be robber's hands were shaking, and she noticed he kept glancing nervously at a baby carriage parked near the door.
She dropped through the skylight with practiced silence, landing in a crouch behind an aisle of snacks.
"This is Froppy," she announced clearly, standing and moving into view. "Please step away from the counter and put your hands where I can see them."
The man spun around, and Tsuyu immediately assessed the situation more clearly. He was young, probably in his twenties, with deep circles under his eyes and clothes that looked like they hadn't been changed in days. More importantly, she noticed he wasn't holding any kind of weapon—this was desperation, not malice.
"Please," he said, his voice breaking. "I just need... she's sick, and I can't afford..."
"Sir, I need you to remain calm," Tsuyu said, keeping her voice steady but gentle. "What's your name?"
"Kenji," he whispered. "Kenji Yamada."
"Okay, Kenji. I'm going to need you to step away from the counter slowly, and then we can talk about whatever's troubling you, ribbit."
From the baby carriage came a weak cry, and Kenji's face crumpled. "She has a fever. The formula she needs, it's so expensive, and I got laid off last week, and the clinic won't see her without payment up front..."
Tsuyu moved slowly closer, keeping her posture non-threatening. Behind the counter, the store owner—Mr. Ishida, she remembered his name from her regular patrols—watched with a mixture of fear and concern.
"Kenji, taking things isn't going to solve your problems," she said. "But there are other ways to get help. Have you contacted social services? There are programs for families in need."
"They said it would take weeks to process!" Kenji's voice rose. "She needs help now! Look at her!"
Tsuyu approached the baby carriage and looked inside. The infant was clearly unwell, her small face flushed with fever, tiny fists clenched in discomfort. The sight hit her harder than she expected.
"How old is she?" she asked softly.
"Six months. Her mother..." Kenji's voice broke completely. "Car accident three months ago. It's just me now."
The radio on Tsuyu's belt crackled: "Froppy, status report. Do you need backup?"
She looked at Kenji, who had slumped against the counter in defeat, then at the sick baby, then at Mr. Ishida, who was watching the scene with growing sympathy. This wasn't a villain. This was a father driven to desperation by circumstances beyond his control.
"Situation under control," she reported. "Will handle this personally."
Over the next thirty minutes, Tsuyu coordinated between Kenji, Mr. Ishida, and several community service contacts she had cultivated during her time patrolling this district. Mr. Ishida, after hearing the full story, agreed not to press charges and even offered Kenji a part-time job helping with early morning deliveries. Social services expedited emergency assistance, and Tsuyu personally escorted Kenji and his daughter to a clinic that provided immediate care regardless of payment status.
As she filled out her incident report later, Tsuyu found herself staring at the form's rigid categories. "Incident type: Attempted robbery. Resolution: Suspect apprehended, charges pending." But that wasn't the real story, was it? The real story was about systemic failures, about how people fell through the cracks, about how desperation could drive good people to consider bad choices.
She wrote: "Incident resolved through community intervention and resource coordination. Underlying causes addressed. No charges filed."
The radio crackled again: "All units, we have reports of quirk-related disturbance in Warehouse District Seven. Multiple perpetrators involved. Requesting backup for on-scene heroes."
Tsuyu sighed, closed her partial report, and launched herself toward the new location. The day was just getting started.
The warehouse district was a maze of industrial buildings, loading docks, and narrow alleys that created perfect hiding spots for criminal activity. As Tsuyu approached the scene, she could hear the sounds of conflict echoing between the buildings—shouting voices, the crash of metal against concrete, and the distinctive sounds of various quirks being activated.
She landed on a fire escape overlooking the main courtyard where the disturbance was taking place. Three heroes were already engaged with what appeared to be a gang of five or six individuals whose ages ranged from teenage to adult. Boxes and crates were scattered everywhere, their contents spilled across the concrete.
"Froppy on scene," she reported, assessing the situation quickly. The gang members were using their quirks aggressively but without the kind of coordination or training that marked more dangerous villains. This looked like a turf dispute or perhaps a deal gone wrong rather than organized crime.
One of the on-scene heroes, a man whose quirk allowed him to create energy barriers, gestured toward the north side of the courtyard. "Three more scattered that way! Watch out for the kid with the explosion quirk—he's unpredictable!"
Tsuyu nodded and moved toward the indicated area, using the warehouse's exterior to wall-crawl around the conflict zone. She found two of the scattered gang members trying to escape through a gap in the chain-link fence. One was barely eighteen, the other maybe twenty-five.
"Stop right there!" she called out, dropping down to block their path.
The older one immediately activated his quirk—some kind of enhanced strength augmentation—and grabbed a piece of rebar from the ground. "Get out of the way, hero! This isn't your business!"
"I'm afraid it became my business when you started using quirks illegally in public, ribbit," Tsuyu replied, settling into a combat stance. "Stand down and we can discuss this peacefully."
"Peaceful?" The younger one laughed bitterly. "Like the Commission's peaceful when they shut down our neighborhood center? Like they're peaceful when they force us out of the only places we have to gather?"
"I don't know what you're referring to," Tsuyu said carefully, "but if you have legitimate grievances, there are proper channels—"
"Proper channels!" The older man spat. "You heroes are all the same. Everything's got a proper channel until it's your people getting screwed over."
The younger one tugged at his companion's sleeve. "Daisuke, don't. She's not one of the bad ones. I've seen her around the neighborhood."
Daisuke hesitated, and Tsuyu saw an opening for deescalation. "What neighborhood center?"
"The one on Fifth Street," the younger one—barely more than a boy, really—said quickly. "They shut it down last month. Said it was a 'potential gathering place for anti-social elements.' But it's where kids went after school, where old people came to play shogi, where people who didn't have anywhere else could get a meal."
"We weren't hurting anyone," Daisuke added, his grip on the rebar loosening slightly. "But some Commission suits decided we looked suspicious. And now Mrs. Chen doesn't have anywhere to teach her cooking classes, and the Watanabe kids don't have anywhere to go after school while their mom works."
Tsuyu frowned. She remembered the Fifth Street community center—she had participated in a community outreach event there last year. It had seemed like exactly the kind of positive community resource that heroes were supposed to support.
"So you decided to... what exactly? What is this?" She gestured toward the chaos behind them.
"Territory dispute," Daisuke said grimly. "The Commission closes our legal gathering place, so the gangs start fighting over who gets to use the warehouses as meeting spots. This whole thing could have been avoided if they'd just left the center alone."
The sound of approaching sirens filled the air, and Tsuyu knew their conversation was about to be cut short. "Listen," she said quickly, "I want to hear more about this. But right now, you need to surrender peacefully before this gets worse."
Daisuke looked at the younger man, then at Tsuyu. "You really want to know what happened?"
"Yes."
"Then talk to Mrs. Chen at the grocery store on Maple Street. She'll tell you exactly how 'proper channels' work for people like us."
He dropped the rebar and raised his hands. The younger man followed suit.
As backup heroes arrived to process the arrested individuals, Tsuyu found herself thinking about the conversation. The gang members' story didn't excuse illegal quirk use or public disturbance, but it provided context that the simple "villain activity" classification would miss entirely.
She approached one of the other heroes, a woman named Tempest whose weather-manipulation quirk had been crucial in subduing the group.
"Have you heard anything about the Fifth Street community center being shut down?" Tsuyu asked.
Tempest shrugged. "Probably. The Commission's been cracking down on unlicensed gatherings lately. Something about potential security risks in the current climate."
"But it was just a community center."
"Was it?" Tempest gave her a sharp look. "In my experience, when the Commission flags something as a security risk, there's usually a good reason. We don't see all the intelligence they have access to."
Tsuyu nodded, but something about the response bothered her. The dismissive certainty, the assumption that the Commission's decisions were automatically correct, the lack of curiosity about the actual impact on the community—it all felt wrong somehow.
As the last of the gang members were loaded into transport vehicles, Tsuyu noticed the youngest one looking back at her through the window. He couldn't have been older than sixteen, and there was something in his expression that reminded her of herself at that age—idealistic, frustrated, desperate to make the world better.
What happened when idealistic young people lost faith in the system? When proper channels failed them, when the organizations meant to protect them became the sources of their problems?
She thought about Shino's words from the café: "Sometimes the system that's supposed to protect people ends up becoming the thing they need protection from."
By the time Tsuyu returned to headquarters for the evening paperwork, the events of the day had taken on a weight that surprised her. The two incidents—Kenji's desperate attempt to help his sick daughter and the warehouse district conflict over community space—kept circling through her mind.
The HSPC building buzzed with activity as heroes came and went, filing reports, attending briefings, and coordinating future operations. Tsuyu made her way to her assigned desk in the bullpen, pulling out the forms she needed to complete for both incidents.
The first form, for Kenji's case, stared back at her with its rigid categories. "Incident type: Attempted robbery." That was technically correct, but it captured nothing of the underlying circumstances. She found herself writing a longer narrative than usual in the comment section, detailing the family's situation and the community resources that had been mobilized to address the root causes.
As she worked, she overheard conversations from nearby desks:
"Three more buildings flagged for 'potential security concerns' in District Four..."
"The Commission wants all community gathering reports by Friday..."
"Did you hear they're expanding the surveillance protocols?"
She finished Kenji's report and moved on to the warehouse incident. Again, the form demanded simple categorizations: "Gang-related quirk violence. Multiple arrests. Area secured." But what about the closed community center? What about the displaced teenagers who had nowhere else to go?
"Having trouble with your paperwork, Asui?"
Tsuyu looked up to find Supervisor Matsuki standing beside her desk. He was a career Commission employee, someone who had worked his way up through the bureaucracy and took pride in the efficiency of the system.
"Just trying to be thorough, sir."
"I noticed you've been writing quite detailed narratives lately." He picked up Kenji's report and skimmed it. "This level of detail isn't necessary. The important facts are: crime attempted, perpetrator apprehended, situation resolved. The rest is just... background noise."
"With respect, sir, I think the context is important for understanding patterns of criminal activity."
Matsuki set the report down with a slight frown. "Asui, your job is law enforcement, not social work. We have other departments that handle root causes and community outreach. Your focus should be on immediate threats and maintaining order."
"But if understanding the root causes could help prevent future incidents—"
"The Commission analyzes crime patterns at levels above your clearance," he interrupted. "Trust the system, Asui. Do your job, file clean reports, and let the experts handle the bigger picture."
Tsuyu nodded and returned to her forms, but the supervisor's words sat uncomfortably in her mind. Trust the system. But what if the system was part of the problem?
She thought about the community center that had been closed, about Kenji's struggles with bureaucratic delays, about the gang members who felt they had no legitimate place to gather. How many of the "criminal incidents" she dealt with on a daily basis were actually symptoms of larger failures?
And why was she discouraged from thinking about these connections?
As the evening wound down and the building emptied, Tsuyu found herself staying late, supposedly reviewing files but actually thinking. The conversation at the café had opened something in her mind, a willingness to question things she had always taken for granted.
The Commission's mission statement, posted prominently throughout the building, read: "Protecting society through the regulation and support of hero activities." But whose definition of protection? Whose version of regulation?
She pulled up the Commission's database on her computer and began searching for information about the Fifth Street community center. The file was surprisingly detailed, tracking the center's activities going back several years. But as she read through the reports, she found herself growing more confused rather than less.
The center's activities were innocuous—cooking classes, after-school programs, senior citizen gatherings, community meetings about local issues. The "security concerns" that had led to its closure seemed to stem from a single report about "potential political organizing" that had resulted from a meeting where residents discussed petitioning for better street lighting.
Political organizing. As if citizens discussing community issues in a community center was inherently suspicious.
Tsuyu closed the file and leaned back in her chair. The building was quiet now, most of the heroes having gone home to their families, their normal lives outside the costume. She looked around the bullpen at the empty desks, the motivational posters about justice and service, the Commission logos displayed prominently on every surface.
When had this place started feeling less like a force for good and more like... something else?
Her phone buzzed with a text message. It was from her friend Ochaco: "Girls' night this weekend? You've seemed stressed lately."
Stressed. That was one way to put it. Another way might be "Doubtful of the foundation."
Tsuyu gathered her things and prepared to leave. Outside, the city was winding down for the night, unaware of all the small dramas and larger questions that had unfolded during the day. She walked through the streets she had been patrolling for two years, seeing them with new eyes.
Every community center, every gathering place, every spot where people might come together to discuss their problems or support each other—how many of those were being watched, categorized, potentially shut down if they became too "problematic"?
As she approached her apartment building, Tsuyu found herself thinking about Shino again. The stranger who had asked the right questions, who had voiced doubts she hadn't even known she was carrying. She wondered what he was doing tonight, whether he was also looking at the city and seeing things differently than he had before.
She climbed the stairs to her apartment, unlocked the door, and stepped into the simple space that had always felt like a refuge from the complexities of hero work. But tonight, even here, the questions followed her.
Tsuyu changed out of her costume and prepared for bed, but sleep felt far away. Instead, she sat by her window, looking out at the city lights and thinking about justice, about systems, about the difference between what heroes were supposed to do and what they actually ended up doing.
Tomorrow would bring new incidents, new reports, new opportunities to see how the world really worked versus how it was supposed to work. And for the first time in her career, Tsuyu wasn't sure she was ready for what she might discover.
The day had been exhausting not because of the physical demands, but because of the mental weight of seeing familiar things in unfamiliar ways. Change was coming—she could feel it in the way her certainties were becoming questions, in the way simple answers no longer seemed sufficient.
But change toward what, she didn't yet know.
Outside her window, the city slept on, unaware that one of its protectors was slowly awakening to questions that could reshape everything.