The cabin was no longer a transport, it was a screaming metal tube of ghosts. Yoshi Abara's world had narrowed down to the metallic tang of Koichi's blood and the clicking, rhythmic sound of plastic joints.
Junji Sato, or the version of him that currently occupied the doll in front of Yoshi, didn't move like a brawler. He moved with the terrifying, stiff economy of a marionette.
Yoshi didn't reach for a "Burst" or a "Split." The space was too tight, the structural integrity of the plane too compromised, and Sato's ability to body-hop made large-scale attacks a waste of energy. Instead, Yoshi dropped into a low, predatory stance. His Nigerian heritage lent him a long-limbed reach, which he used with surgical precision.
I should have closed the wound first, Yoshi thought, his heart a frantic hammer against his ribs. He's dying because I wanted to be "efficient." He's dying because I thought I could play it easy.
Junji lunged, his hand turning into a rigid, ivory lance. Yoshi didn't retreat, he stepped into the strike, using a micro-ripple to slip the distance just enough so the lance whistled past his ear. He spun, his elbow connecting with Sato's jaw in a wet crunch of simulated bone.
"You're fast," Sato's voice came from a mannequin two rows back. The body Yoshi had just hit went limp, the "life" draining out of it instantly. "But you're fighting for a man who already thinks you're a monster. Is it worth it, Yoshi? The effort of being a saviour?"
Yoshi's eyes were cold, his emotions sinking into a dark, frozen lake deep within his mind. He saw Makoto desperately dragging Koichi's limp form toward the tail of the plane, her hands slick with red. Akira was shielding them with his own body, his sidearm clicking empty.
Junji appeared in a doll right next to them.
Yoshi sprinted, his boots tearing the synthetic carpet. He aimed a flying knee at the new Sato, but as his leg made contact, the "spirit" vanished. Another Sato formed from a mannequin directly to Yoshi's left, catching him with a brutal square-punch to the cheekbone.
Yoshi staggered, his vision blurring. He tasted copper.
I could be a hero, he thought bitterly. The words Koichi had spoken in the humid heat of Naha felt like a joke now, a cruel, punchline-heavy joke. Is this what heroes do? Do they bleed in silence with such a struggle in thought?
Yoshi fought back with a sudden, vicious flare of martial prowess. He didn't use space to destroy, he used it to accelerate his own limbs. He socked Sato in the solar plexus, then delivered a spinning heel kick that shattered the mannequin's head into porcelain shards. He was nimble, a demon in a suit, weaving through the crowded aisle.
The plane groaned, a deep, metal-fatigue shriek. They were losing altitude fast. The city of Osaka was rising up to meet them through the clouds, a carpet of lights and lives.
Junji Sato realized the clock had run out. He retreated toward the emergency exit over the wing. With a casual, almost bored kick, he blew the door inward. The cabin pressure equalized in a violent, deafening roar, the wind whipping through the aisle like a hurricane.
"If you somehow survive the impact, we can finish this on more professional terms," Sato shouted over the wind. He looked at the dying Koichi and gave a small, mocking tip of his head. "Tragic. He was such a..." he seemed to struggle to find the words to say as his face contorted into an emotion Yoshi couldn't recognize. "You know what, who cares."
Sato's consciousness vanished. The mannequins all slumped simultaneously, becoming nothing more than hollow shells once more.
Yoshi didn't watch him go. He snapped to Koichi's side. He didn't know much about medicine, but he knew space. He pressed his hands against the exit wound in Koichi's back and the entry wound in his chest, and he folded the flesh. He used a localized "Singularity" to pinch the torn arteries shut, cauterizing the internal bleeding with sheer spatial pressure.
Koichi coughed, a wet, agonizing sound, before his eyes rolled back.
"He's still alive," Makoto screamed over the roar of the wind, her hand on Koichi's chest. "But he won't be for long! Yoshi, the plane!"
"Shut up!" Yoshi snarled, his face beaded with sweat. "Everyone! Touch me! Now!"
Akira grabbed Yoshi's shoulder. Makoto hugged Koichi's cooling body, her other hand gripping Yoshi's arm. Yoshi closed his eyes.
He had to be perfect. The "Internal Spatial Shear" of teleporting four people from a moving aircraft to a stationary point on earth was enough to shred them all into a red mist. He visualized the hilltop, the one he had seen in the distance, overlooking the Osaka bay.
He felt his quirk in his marrow, the vibration of the world. He synchronized their energy with his own rotation.
Don't break, he prayed to a god he didn't believe in. Don't let him die because of me.
SNAP.
The roar of the wind vanished. It was replaced by the crisp, freezing silence of an Osaka hilltop.
They hit the grass hard. Yoshi rolled, his lungs burning, his skin feeling like it had been scraped by a thousand needles. He looked up. Makoto was checking Koichi. Akira was gasping for air, clutching his chest. They were all whole. They were all alive.
"Good job, Yoshi," Makoto whispered, her voice trembling with relief.
Yoshi looked at them and felt a small, fleeting spark of warmth. But then he looked up.
The charter plane was still in the sky, a flaming spear of metal. It was diving directly toward the densely populated center of Osaka, right toward the district where the "biologically complex" residents lived. Thousands of people were about to die to cover up a Commission "accident."
"It's going to hit the city," Akira said, his voice hollow. "God... the casualties."
Yoshi looked at Koichi's pale face.
"Stay with him," Yoshi said.
Before they could protest, Yoshi vanished again.
He reappeared on the roof of the falling plane, the wind trying to tear his skin from his bones. He gripped the freezing metal of the fuselage, his fingers denting the alloy. He looked down at the sprawling city beneath him, the lights of homes, the lives of people who didn't know they were seconds away from being "refined" out of existence.
Yoshi smirked, a jagged, beautiful expression.
"You wanted a hero, Koichi?" he whispered into the gale. "Watch this."
He placed both palms flat against the burning metal. He didn't just teleport himself. He grabbed the entire weight of the aircraft, the momentum, the fire, and the plastic ghosts within. He visualized the sea, the vast, empty darkness of the Osaka bay.
He felt his veins begin to rupture from the strain. His eyes leaked blood.
"RIPPLE EFFECT: WORLD-FOLD."
This was a specific application of his space, it was used for large bodies like this charter jet, to move things bigger than he could manage naturally. Things bigger than he could lift.
The plane vanished from the sky above the city.
A split second later, three miles out at sea, a massive explosion of water and fire erupted. The charter plane slammed into the dark waves, the impact swallowed by the ocean.
On the hilltop, Yoshi Abara reappeared, collapsing onto his hands and knees. He coughed, his body shaking with the aftershocks of the massive spatial displacement. He watched the distant glow of the fire on the water, the silence of the night returning to the hills.
___
The waves of Osaka Bay were dark and rhythmic, lapping against the shore with a persistent, metallic tang of jet fuel and sea salt. The crash site was a carnival of strobing lights, the blue and red of police cruisers, the amber of recovery cranes, and the sterile white floodlights of the Hero search teams.
Ryukyu, the Dragoon Hero, stood on the wet concrete of the pier, her long blonde hair whipping in the freezing wind. She hadn't transformed, she stood in her human form, draped in a heavy tactical coat over her hero suit. Her yellow eyes, sharp and reptilian even in this form, scanned the wreckage being hauled from the surf by a team of aquatic heroes and specialized cranes.
Beside her, a local hero named Backdraft directed water currents to push floating debris toward the collection nets.
"Any sign of the manifest?" Ryukyu asked, her voice low and weary.
"Nothing yet," Backdraft replied, his voice muffled by his mask. "But it's... it's weird, Ryukyu-san. We've pulled up the cockpit, the galley, and three rows of seating. There isn't a drop of blood. No luggage. No personal items. Just these."
He pointed to a collection of items on a tarp nearby. Ryukyu walked over, her boots crunching on the grit. Laid out in the harsh light were shattered limbs of cream-colored plastic. Hollow torsos. Eyeless, smiling porcelain heads.
Ryukyu picked up a hand. It was perfectly sculpted, right down to the faux-fingerprints, but it ended in a jagged, spear-like point where a human finger should have been. "Mannequins," she muttered. "Very much like that hero I met one time... Stasis-Model."
Backdraft tilted his head. "Why would he be on a civilian charter plane filled with dolls? And why did the plane vanish from radar over the city only to reappear three miles out at sea?"
"I don't know," Ryukyu said, her eyes drifting toward the crowd gathered at the edge of the police cordon.
Because this was the border of the Shin-Sekai district, the crowd was almost entirely composed of heteromorphs. There were men with the heads of wolves, women with chitinous scales, and children with multiple limbs. They stood in a silent, united front, a wall of "impurities" that watched the heroes with a chilling lack of trust. They didn't cheer for Ryukyu, despite her being a prominent transformative mutant herself. They watched the search teams with the wary eyes of a community that had seen too many "accidents" go unpunished.
Ryukyu felt the weight of their gaze. She was one of them, yet in her hero cape, she was the face of the system that had pushed them to the edges of society and still encroached for more.
"Ryukyu-san! Look at this."
A younger hero, a sidekick from a local Osaka agency, ran up to her, his face pale in the light of his smartphone screen. "The NHN just broke the story. Stasis-Model just released a formal statement through the Commission's press office."
Ryukyu took the phone. The headline was a jagged bolt of lightning across the screen: "SKY-TRAITOR: THE FALL OF KOICHI HAIMAWARI."
The article was polished, clinical, and devastating. It featured a high-resolution photo of Koichi Haimawari, the "Crawler" who had gained international fame, alongside two others. One was Akira Furuhaya, his face pulled from old police archives, and the other was a grainy but clear image of a young man with sharp features and eyes that burned with a cold intensity, named Yoshi Abara.
Ryukyu read the text aloud, her voice growing tighter with every word. "The Commission alleges that Haimawari has radicalized into a domestic extremist. They're claiming this group attacked the Number Three Hero, Hawks, in Okinawa as an opening act of war. They're calling them 'Aftermath.'"
Disregarding the odd naming choice for the villain group Ryukyu only felt a growing headache, the groups were growing larger and larger in number. And the gall, to attack the number three hero of the nation.
She didn't even question it...
She scrolled down. "According to Junji Sato, he intercepted the group on this flight. He claims they hijacked the plane with the intent of crashing it into the heart of Osaka's mutant district to 'incite a race war.' "
"Sato claims he fought them off, but they used an unidentified spatial quirk, presumably the boy's, to teleport the plane into the sea before fleeing into the city."
Backdraft whistled low. "The ratings for Sato are through the roof. The public is calling him the 'Shield of Osaka.' They're saying he saved thousands of lives from a 'traitor hero' and a 'Demon-God.'"
Ryukyu couldn't tell if the sounds coming out of him after were laughs or otherwise in such a situation, but she didn't want to call him out on it during this time.
Ryukyu looked back at the tarp of plastic limbs. She looked at the surgical precision of the plane's destruction. She remembered the news about Kaito Ishida, Lithos, found dead just hours ago.
"They hijacked the plane," she whispered, her eyes narrowing. "Then why were there no passengers? Why was the plane empty of everything except Sato's dolls? Was it empty beforehand? Or did he set it up that way and make it look like an easy plane to hijack? If Sato was there, why did he let the plane get close enough to the city to be a threat in the first place?"
She looked at the faces of "Aftermath" on the screen. Akira Furuhaya. Koichi Haimawari, a younger hero, maybe about her age. And the boy, Yoshi Abara, there wasn't anything about the boy yet. She assumed that after a few hours it would be different.
The mutant crowd at the cordon was stirring. Someone had seen the news. A low murmur of "Traitors" and "Fake Heroes" began to spread through the people. The unity of the neighbourhood was already beginning to fracture as the Commission's narrative took hold.
Ryukyu handed the phone back to the sidekick. She looked out at the dark water, where the tail of the plane was slowly sinking beneath the waves.
"The world is getting worse," she said, her voice heavy with a profound, quiet annoyance. "Shigaraki and his group are growing to a level that could take over the country, and now the heroes are going back on their creed."
She turned away from the wreckage, her cape snapping in the wind.
"The worst of the worst just keep grouping together," she muttered, her yellow eyes glowing with a flicker of draconic fire.