The alley was quiet—too quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that made you feel safe. The kind that told you something was already wrong.
Takuma crouched low on a rooftop above Musutafu's industrial outskirts, eyeing the loading dock below. His fingers twitched, brushing against the edge of a rusted vent. The sensation of cool iron seeped into his skin, soft and familiar now, like the pulse of a restrained storm.
There's too much weight here. He wasn't wrong.
Below, a dozen men moved in practiced rhythm. Some wore low-grade support gear—scavenged, stolen, cheap—but dangerous. One carried what looked like a modified Nomu muscle enhancer, stitched together with black-market tubing. At the center of the operation stood a tall man in a jagged crimson coat, his breath visible even though the night was warm.
And beside him—Takuma's heart stuttered.
A girl. No older than ten. Thin. Pale. Her eyes were wide, locked on the man who held her hand too tightly. She wasn't crying. She just looked… hollow.
Dead in everything but body.
That was the tell.
Trafficking.
The man—the leader—was laughing. Tossing around names. Heroes. Buyers. One of the others brought out a duffel bag of stolen Quirk enhancers. The group was getting ready to move.
Takuma's rage flared, immediate and instinctive. He didn't wait for a better angle.
He dropped into the yard like a shadow on fire.
Smoke exploded from his coat sleeves in thick coils, twisting through the yard like hungry snakes. The first thug barely had time to turn before he was struck in the chest by a rebar spike yanked from the foundation of the yard wall. Another was knocked clean off his feet by a slab of concrete that cracked from beneath his own boots.
Takuma moved like a phantom—silent, fast, brutal. Metal surged beneath his fingers, twisting into weapons, shields, and restraints. Smoke kept their aim blind. A scream burst from one of the guards as his gun was wrenched from his hands and crumpled like tinfoil.
Within seconds, six were down.
And then the leader barked a command.
"Stay back, girl!"
But she didn't.
The moment Takuma reached out to tear him down with a column of rusted scaffolding, the child bolted—throwing herself between them.
"No!" She stood there. Arms out. Tears running down her face.
"Don't hurt him… please! He's all I have!"
Time collapsed.
Takuma froze.
The steel warped in the air, hovered, twitched—and stopped.
His heartbeat became a pounding drum in his ears. He couldn't breathe. Not because he couldn't. Because he wouldn't.
Nothing about what she did or said made sense, but it didn't have to. She was innocent, like...
The image in front of him fractured something deep. That face—fearful, pleading, young—slammed into a part of him he had buried beneath ten tons of rage. He was back in the alley. Back to that night.
Aoi.
Blood running into the cracks of the pavement.
Her face, twisted in pain.
Her hand reaching toward him—
"Run, Takuma!"
He hesitated.
He always thought he wouldn't. That he couldn't. But now? This child, this flickering light in the endless dark, had just made him falter.
And that's all Eraserhead needed.
In the distance, from atop a silo, the red lens of Aizawa's goggles lit up. Line of sight: acquired.
Takuma's knees buckled. The smoke stopped. His connection to the steel died instantly. The weapons in the air collapsed like discarded puppets. The rebar he'd shaped slammed into the ground with a screech of metal on concrete.
Takuma gasped, reaching for something—anything—but it was gone.
His power. His edge. He turned too late.
A binding scarf slammed into his chest, wrapping around his arms and torso with mechanical precision. He crashed to the ground, breath knocked from his lungs, eyes spinning.
Bootsteps echoed behind him.
Aizawa stood above, his scarf wound taut and firm. "You froze," he said quietly. Not unkind. Just true.
Takuma struggled against the fabric, but it was useless. With his Quirk disabled and his body screaming from overuse, there was nothing left.
"It was a set up." Takuma hissed. The scene flashed through his mind. It was too easy. Too organized. In hindsight, their clothes were too clean, the boxes they carried too light.
They weren't criminals. They were a trap.
"Yes." He nodded, not bothering to deny it. "But now you don't risk becoming what do hate. Someone you can't stand to look at. Something you'd regret."
The last thing he saw before his eyes shut was the girl, reaching down to gently grab his hand as the world faded away to darkness.
U.A. Holding Wing – Two Days Later
"You want to what?" Present Mic nearly spat his coffee.
Nezu smiled, tail swishing idly. "I want to give him a place in Class 1-A."
"He's a vigilante," Midnight said.
"He's brilliant," Recovery Girl murmured. "IQ through the roof. And he's read more on villain psychology than some of my graduate students."
Aizawa, arms crossed, nodded once. "He has the mind, the power, and the motive. But no guidance. That ends now."
"He's been running alone for too long," Aizawa continued. "Without someone to hold him accountable, his potential becomes dangerous. At U.A., we don't just train Quirks — we train people. If we don't take him in, who will?"
Nezu's eyes gleamed with quiet resolve. "This is our chance. Takuma Itsuno could become a hero that reshapes the world… or a natural disaster we fail to stop."