….
[Same Day - Night]
The atmosphere in District 7 was eerie.
It was a dead zone, a cluster of rot tucked away behind the city's gleaming skyline, where the streetlights were broken without a sight of normality.
Jin-Ho stepped over a puddle of indeterminate grime, his phone pressed tight against his ear.
"Yeah, I am in position." he murmured, eyes scanning the peeling numbers on the apartment blocks. "It's a ghost town out here."
The area matched Giran's description perfectly: run-down apartments, broken streetlights, the kind of place where people kept their heads down and didn't ask questions.
["Took you long enough."] Giran's voice crackled through the phone. ["The building should be two blocks north of your position. Apartment 3-B.]
["Father is a petty criminal named Takami - with a history of theft and assault. Mother's Tomie, got some kind of eyeball quirk.]
["And the kid… you were right about the feathers. Neighbors have reported seeing red feathers around the apartment windows."]
Jin-Ho's pace quickened.
After months of giving Giran vague instructions to search for 'a young boy with a feather-related quirk' and 'a family named Takami involved in criminal activity', they had finally gotten a solid lead.
Jin-Ho had been careful not to reveal too much, just enough clues to point Giran in the right direction without making it obvious he had foreknowledge.
["The father's escalating."] Giran continued. ["Word on the street is he is planning something bigger tonight, probably a robbery."]
"Good work." Jin-Ho said, spotting the apartment building ahead.
It was even worse than he had imagined, paint peeling, windows cracked, the whole structure looking like it might collapse if someone sneezed too hard. "I will take it from here."
["Just be careful, Boss."] Giran added, his tone shifting slightly. ["My sources say the police got a tip-off about the father's location. But they aren't the ones responding to the dispatch."]
Jin-Ho slowed down. "What do you mean? Who is?"
["Let's just say you might have unexpected company. The hot-headed kind."]
"Giran, wait—"
The line went dead.
Jin-Ho pulled the phone away, staring at the black screen. "Unexpected company?"
The answer arrived three seconds later, and it didn't knock.
BOOM.
The world turned white, then orange. The third floor of the apartment complex didn't just explode; it was vaporized.
A shockwave of heat and pressure hammered the street, blowing out windows for three blocks and sending a cloud of superheated dust rolling over Jin-Ho.
He reacted on instinct, threw up a telekinetic barrier, deflecting jagged slabs of concrete that would have taken his head off.
Car alarms went off. The air was suddenly sucked out of the alley, replaced by a blistering heat that dried Jin-Ho's eyes in an instant.
From the sky, a comet descended.
It slammed into the pavement with enough force to crack the foundation of the neighboring building. The flames roared, not uncontrolled, but focused, terrifyingly precise.
Endeavor.
"Great…." Jin-Ho coughed, waving away the smoke as he ran toward the disaster. "Just the guy I wanted to see."
Of all the heroes who could have responded, it had to be him.
The father of the boy Jin-Ho had secretly saved a year ago. The man whose entire family Jin-Ho was actively trying to protect from his toxic influence.
This was going to be complicated.
On the other hand, The Flame Hero stood amidst the wreckage, his turquoise eyes scanning the debris with cold, predatory calculation.
There was no compassion in his stance, only the rigid efficiency of a man looking to close a case.
Endeavor turned, spotting Jin-Ho sprinting through the smoke.
"Civilian!" He roared, his voice booming over the roar of the fire. "Fall back! This area is unstable!"
"I am not a civilian!" Jin-Ho shouted back, not slowing down.
He reached the pile of rubble that used to be the entrance. With a sharp gesture, he seized a two-ton slab of reinforced concrete - lifting the debris effortlessly into the air.
Endeavor's flames flared hotter, a physical manifestation of his annoyance. "Public quirk usage is—"
"I am U.A. Faculty!" Jin-Ho cut him off, tossing the slab aside with a crash.
He turned to the Number Two Hero, wiping soot from his face. "Jin-Ho. Assistant teacher. You want to check my license, or do you want to help me pull these people out before they suffocate?"
Endeavor paused. The flames masking his face flickered, revealing the scowl beneath.
He assessed Jin-Ho - not as a person, but as a variable:
U.A. staff. Telekinetic. Useful.
"The villain is likely buried in the center." Endeavor turned his back on Jin-Ho, blasting a stream of fire to melt a twisted steel beam blocking the path. "Do not slow me down."
"Wouldn't dream of it." Jin-Ho muttered. "I will take the west sector. You handle the east."
Endeavor didn't respond. He just moved, a juggernaut of heat tearing through the wreckage. He was brutal in his rescue method, melting obstacles rather than moving them, focused entirely on the objective.
"I am here to help." Jin-Ho said curtly, already extending his hands toward a large section of collapsed wall. It began to rise, concrete and rebar groaning as his telekinesis took hold.
Jin-Ho turned his attention to the west side of the collapse, the area where Apartment 3-B had likely fallen.
He closed his eyes, extending his senses.
Come on... where are you?
He filtered out the roar of the flames and the screeching of metal. He listened for the small things.
A heartbeat.
A shuffle.
And then, he heard it.
It wasn't a scream. It was a whimper. Low, muffled, and terrified.
Jin-Ho's eyes snapped open. He carefully began to disassemble a pile of drywall and piping, his telekinesis acting as delicate tweezers.
His entire world had narrowed down to a single, muffled sound coming from beneath a tangle of rebar and drywall.
He extended his hands, and carved a narrow tunnel through the wreckage, stabilizing the ceiling with a telekinetic lattice.
"I am coming in." he announced, his voice calm, projecting into the dark. "Stay still."
He crawled five feet, then ten.
Then, the tunnel opened into a small, miraculous pocket of air formed by a fallen support beam.
There, huddled in the dust, was the boy.
He couldn't have been more than four. He was small, shivering, and covered in a layer of gray soot that made the blood trickling from his forehead look starkly black.
But what caught Jin-Ho's attention were–
Feathers.
Crimson, downy, and vibrating with anxiety, they formed a protective, trembling shell around the child's back.
Keigo Takami.
The future Hawks, and the future Number Two Hero who would be shaped into a weapon by the Hero Public Safety Commission before he was old enough to understand what was being done to him.
But right now, he was just a scared kid clutching a dirty, worn action figure to his chest like a life line–
Ironically, the figure was Endeavor.
"Hey there—
"I have got you. You are safe now."
The boy sniffled, hugging the doll tighter. His eyes - golden, bird-like, and startlingly sharp - darted over Jin-Ho with an intelligence that felt too old for a child.
"K-Keigo..." the boy whispered, answering a question Jin-Ho hadn't asked yet.
"Keigo. Good name." Jin-Ho reached out a hand, palm open. "I am Jin-Ho. Can you move? Does anything hurt inside?"
Keigo shook his head, though a small wince betrayed him. "My arm... and my head. But I am okay."
He hesitated, his lower lip trembling. "My mama. Have you seen my mama?"
Jin-Ho nodded. In the original timeline, she indeed survived.
The father would be arrested soon - Endeavor would catch him in a robbery attempt, and mother and son would flee, living in poverty until the HPSC found them.
But Jin-Ho wasn't sure about this timeline, not with the building collapse changing things.
"We are going to find her." Jin-Ho promised, tone firm. "But I need to get you out of this hole first. Can you hold on to me?"
Keigo nodded.
He scrambled forward, burying his face in Jin-Ho's shoulder, one arm wrapped around Jin-Ho's neck, the other refusing to let go of the flame hero doll.
As they backed out of the tunnel, Jin-Ho felt a tickling sensation against his cheek. The small red feathers were drifting around them, reacting to Keigo's relief, softening the hard edges of the rubble.
They emerged into the smoke-choked evening just as Endeavor was hauling a woman from a cavity ten meters away.
She was hysterical, her clothes torn, thrashing against the paramedics trying to check her vitals.
"Mama!"
The kid immediately rushed for her, but the mother who heard him had a different expression of finding a lost child.
"You survived…" she asked.
Immediately, Jin-Ho understood just how simply it was for the HPSC to buy him off from her clutches.
…that means I can do the same. Jin-Ho wondered, already feeling good as he planned to do one over the HPSC.
Jin-Ho moved toward them and asked–
"Ma'am… Is there anyone else during the explosion? Anyone else from your family inside?"
Tomie flinched. A shadow passed over her face - terror, followed by a sharp, guilty spike of relief.
"No." she stammered, finally pulling Keigo closer to cover up her lie. "No. It's just us. Just me and Keigo."
Obviously, she was lying. Or rather, omitting.
Maybe, her husband wasn't in the building.
However, he was still out there doing things that would eventually get him caught by Endeavor later tonight. She knew it, and she was terrified that admitting it would bring the police down on them.
"Okay." Jin-Ho said, letting the lie slide. He wasn't here for the law.
He looked at Keigo.
The boy had stopped crying, his attention fixed on the towering figure of Endeavor, who was currently blasting a path for the fire crews.
The heat from the Number Two Hero was intense even from here.
"That's a cool toy, Keigo." Jin-Ho noted.
Keigo looked down at the doll, then up at the man wreathed in fire. "He is... he is real."
"Yeah. That's him."
"He saved mom." Keigo whispered, his wings fluffing up in a mixture of fear and awe. "I want to be like him. I want to be a hero who saves everyone."
Jin-Ho nodded, feeling the generality behind the kids' words.
This was it, the moment where the dream took root. It was also the dream that the HPSC would exploit, would twist into something that served their purposes rather than the boy's genuine desire to help people.
"You can be." Jin-Ho said, leaning in to block the view of the harsh flames. "But listen, Keigo. You don't have to be exactly like him. You can be your own kind of hero. Someone who flies his own way. Got it?"
Keigo blinked, confused, but he nodded slowly. "My own way."
"Right." Jin-Ho turned to leave.
He still needs to take care of the aftermath of the blast, and once he is done with it, he will come back with Giran to officially take Keigo under his wing.
Just as Jin-Ho walked past, Endeavor was trying to stabilize a fractured support column, but his method was blunt force.
The Flame Hero's quirk was incredibly powerful.
He was using thermal expansion to weld metal, but the radiant heat was intense. Too intense. Jin-Ho could see the air shimmering dangerously close to a pocket where survivors might be huddled.
"You are cooking them."
Endeavor turned, eyes narrowing behind his mask of fire. "Excuse me?"
"The thermal output. It's too high for a confined space." Jin-Ho stated, not breaking stride. He extended a hand, making the steel beam begin to rise, bending slightly under the force of his telekinesis.
"You are a sledgehammer, Endeavor. This situation needs a scalpel. Let me handle the extractions. You focus on clearing the perimeter debris."
Endeavor's flames flared - a visible spike of irritation.
He wasn't used to being commanded, certainly not by an unknown. But he was also a professional.
He looked at the beam, then at the unstable rubble, and finally at Jin-Ho's steady hand.
Endeavor stepped back. "Do not make me regret this."
"Just keep the path clear."
….
.
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
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