The clones fused together and became a giant white speaker-like mass on my back.
It wasn’t the sum of their Quirks. It was the product of them.
When I said it could kill everyone, that wasn’t an exaggeration.
If I fired it as is, the buildings within range would collapse, and people wouldn’t just bleed from their ears—their brains would burst.
I didn’t care if a few unlucky bystanders got caught in it, but total annihilation was a different matter.
I had no interest in drawing attention. That was why I’d chosen a sonic attack.
I only needed to bring down that Villain.
But using [Seal] was difficult here. The surroundings were far too open.
"Meat!!!"
Moonfish’s giant teeth—now as large as buildings, with countless living teeth drooling as they lunged at me—came crashing in.
I saw a gap. Found it. A narrow space where I could use [Seal].
"[Seal], Silence."
Black curtains filled the spaces between the teeth. A massive black sphere enveloped the area.
All sound outside the zone was cut off.
Just before the teeth tore my flesh apart, the white membrane that acted like a speaker’s safety catch peeled away.
"Release."
Boom!!!!!!
At the blast, Moonfish’s tens of thousands of teeth began vibrating in unison.
The teeth’s shapes changed as they tried to "adapt." It was meaningless.
Cracks spread from deep within them.
The same thing that happened when a building shattered and collapsed was happening to every single tooth.
One tooth split cleanly down the middle.
Then the one beside it.
Then the next.
Not one after another, but all at once.
Tens of thousands of teeth exploded from the inside in the same instant.
Silver dust scattered in every direction from the cross-sections of the teeth.
There was so much of it that it looked like a mist of flesh-scraping metal, saliva, and blood.
Suddenly, blood poured from my nose. Along with the pain of my brain being wrung out, a status window appeared.
[!Danger! : Quirk overload. Your brain is burning!]
Dammit. My consciousness was cutting out. I’d never experienced this before.
I needed to buy time for [Super Regeneration], just in case.
Before I blacked out completely, I used [Carapace] and [Barrier] to shield my body.
I could feel saliva running from the corner of my mouth. Without even wiping it away, I checked the time on my phone in a hurry.
Less than a minute had passed. Looking more closely, it had been about ten seconds.
That was an absurdly short penalty for one finishing move.
But ten seconds of being unable to act was enough to turn a battle around.
"Looks like I can’t fire it off recklessly.
Or maybe I should figure out how to set a [Reservation] to regenerate my brain."
For cleanup, I approached Moonfish, whose teeth had all been destroyed, leaving his gums exposed.
A Quirk that had mutated this far was worth my curiosity.
Using a syringe I’d borrowed from Toga, I took a sample of Moonfish’s blood.
I plucked a hair from Moonfish and used the status window.
[Chien-Singularity]
Each tooth extends and mutates into a blade-like shape.
It can "adapt instantly" to the situation, and because the Quirk has a will of its own, it can dominate its user.
What an utterly grotesque Quirk.
"At this rate, humanity’s extinction isn’t far off."
I said it as if I were fine, but I felt a little impatient.
If All For One died in a disaster, or used that disaster to grow stronger, neither outcome would help my plans.
I swallowed Moonfish’s hair.
I had to deal with this catastrophe myself first. I no longer had any business with him.
I kicked him in the head to knock him out, then healed him with [Overhaul].
I intended to monopolize the [Singularity] for myself whenever possible.
Just then, the black curtain slowly lifted.
"You took down that Villain...? W-who are you..."
Shishida Kamui was crawling toward me, pressing down on his severed arm to stop the bleeding.
His eyes were wide and trembling, as if he’d just seen a savior appear out of nowhere.
Behind him were the horribly mauled and mutilated Heroes.
Some of them were still alive, even with missing body parts. Their vitality was apparently worse than cockroaches’.
Maybe I should charge Hawks and Public Safety extra for "treatment fees."
I wondered how many yen per person would be appropriate. Of course, I’d keep their hair too.
I spoke to Kamui as casually as if I were calling a beast over.
"Come here. I’ll heal you."
Shishida Kamui crawled over to me with obvious effort.
"Mount Lady and Dego are in worse shape than I am... please, take care of them first..."
Even with his arm cut off, he was worrying about someone else. It brought back a memory I’d rather not have remembered.
Kudo had made that same expression while All For One was strangling him by the neck.
How touching. If I hadn’t died more than five times, I might have been moved.
"I decide who gets treated first. And people who say things like that usually die."
"What...?"
Kamui froze in place, as if trying to make sense of what I’d said.
For now, he wouldn’t die immediately if I left him alone.
The worst off was Mount Lady, whose severed arm had left her cold and fading fast.
If she hadn’t received first aid, she would have died.
She seemed conscious, but only barely; a weak, dying sound escaped her lips.
"No... I still have so much I need to do, so many things I want to do...
I don’t want to die here, all alone, without anyone knowing..."
"Kamui... Dego...? Am I really going to die? Please... someone, call somebody..."
Her rambling sounded like the last words of someone who could feel death closing in.
Even when I approached, she couldn’t turn her head. She trembled like she’d seen a reaper.
Her face was a mess, like a child had been crying and sniffling until they were exhausted.
I activated [Overhaul].
But [Overhaul] couldn’t create a body part that didn’t exist.
To make three, you needed three ones. It was a surprisingly honest Quirk.
If I used a corpse’s body for treatment, the heroes with their moral purity complexes would throw a fit.
And since there was no one watching, I couldn’t even kill the ones who started nagging.
[Overhaul]’s hand touched me.
I had no choice but to use my own body.
Calling it a body donation made it sound grand, but for someone with [Super Regeneration], this was nothing more than fixing a broken object for a fee.
"[Overhaul]."
Crack.
My arm burst apart with the familiar sound of flesh and bone being torn away.
Pain at this level no longer even moved my expression.
Compared to my silence, Kamui’s shocked, shaking voice was almost frantic.
"Y-you lost your arm!!!"
His concentration broke, and I snapped at him sharply.
"Shut up. You’re getting in the way."
Kamui fell silent, and I focused again, using my arm to rebuild her arm.
Mount Lady’s newly restored fingers twitched convulsively.
"Huh...?"
She didn’t seem to understand what was happening at all.
As if she were forcing herself, her head turned toward me.
Unfortunately, the sun was setting, and my face was hidden in shadow because she was looking up at me from below.
"A dream...? ...All Might?"
I had no idea what context had made that name come out of her mouth.
Maybe her brain was designed so that in a crisis, the word "it’s okay" automatically made her think of All Might.
There was no question her mind wasn’t in a normal state.
"Stop talking nonsense and lie still."
She heard that, tears welled up, and she weakly grabbed my clothes.
"...Thank you..."
I brushed her hand off and moved on to the next patient.
The treatment didn’t take long. With [Overhaul], and more than enough "materials," it was practically creation.
At this rate, the compensation would be pretty sweet.
Hawks was late, probably because he had a lot on his plate.
I’d already taken the Quirks I needed for treatment, so I activated [Strong Wings] without hesitation and prepared to leave.
"Wait!!"
A woman’s voice stopped me for a moment.
When I looked back, Jiro was standing there with a face full of emotion, while Kamui supported Lady and Dego with his exhausted body.
"Thank you... for helping us... for saving us...! Because of you, we lived!!"
Her voice was far more desperate than anything I’d ever heard at school.
She was sniffling and refusing to look away. Was she really that grateful?
Kamui looked at Jiro with a proud expression, then approached me.
"To think you would cut off your own arm to heal others... I shamefully mistook your words and thought you lacked the qualities of a Hero.
Your actions were more heroic than anyone else’s.
You are our... benefactor. Please, at least tell us your name."
What a performance. He was under the delusion that being called heroic was a compliment to everyone.
To me, being called "heroic" was nothing but an unpleasant insult.
If I hadn’t been wearing a mask, my face would have twisted.
There was no benefit in humoring them.
So I wouldn’t.
"You don’t need to know."
"W-wait...!"
I ignored him and flew away faster.
I didn’t want to waste even a moment turning my back.
***
While I was flying, Toga sent me a message with a photo attached, saying she’d collected a lot of blood.
I checked Toga’s location and told her to come to the meeting place.
"Please save me!!"
In the direction of the scream, a living tooth that was crumbling into dust was snarling at a civilian.
Even if the main body had been healed, did that thing still remain?
Or was this its last desperate struggle as it vanished?
For now, I decided to observe a little longer to understand this [Singularity].
Bang!
Just as the tooth was about to bite the civilian’s arm, a gunshot rang out.
Apparently it had a weak point, because the part hit by the bullet rapidly turned to dust and disappeared.
"A guy who uses a gun?"
I became interested. In this Quirk-worshipping society, I wanted to see someone who acted like me.
I erased the sound with [Silence] and tracked the shot with [Strong Wings].
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The feathers I used for detection vanished without a trace under the bullets.
A large hole opened in my wing, along with the smell of gunpowder and a faint trace of blood.
I had definitely erased all sound and all traces.
I’d moved covertly, and the feathers weren’t even large.
That meant he had simply caught everything with his eyes.
An exceptional sniper.
Better than any sniper I’d seen in the war.
And the fact that he was firing warning shots at a person meant he wasn’t a Hero either, just like me.
I wasn’t the kind of person who craved talent for its own sake, but the desire to recruit him surged up all the same.
I couldn’t let him get away, so I wrapped myself in [Carapace] and [Barrier] and closed the distance by force.
As if I were no longer a threat, bullets flew for my vital points.
My defensive Quirks began to crack beautifully, little by little.
I liked the power too.
Some bullets lodged in my body, revealing that they weren’t ordinary rounds at all, but bundles of hair.
So it wasn’t a real gun. It was a Quirk.
"Thanks for giving me a free Quirk."
I used [Eat] to swallow the hair.
A white rifle sprouted from my arm.
It was different from the old-fashioned gun I usually favored, but I liked the fact that I could pull it out anywhere.
The clack of the mechanism sounded like a good song, and the gunpowder smelled like a pleasant perfume.
I had already achieved my goal, but I wanted to enjoy this moment a little longer—the rush of adrenaline after so long—so I landed on a rooftop.
Red feathers from [Strong Wings] split off into the darkening sky in countless numbers.
When I ran out, I used [Super Regeneration] to expand my detection range.
A grin spread across my face.
Shooting teeth would be more fun than shooting at a head, wouldn’t it?
Using [Chien], I turned the elongated teeth into bullets with [Overhaul].
"This is a sniper duel."
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!!
I had no time to reload. Whenever I made bullets, my clones kept loading them into the gun without pause.
"It’s a sniper duel where only I get to "spray.""
But even with a gun, I wasn’t outclassed anywhere; the difference was in talent.
My body was riddled with holes by the sniper’s bullets, then regenerated, then riddled again.
On my side, it was just "infinite ammo," "infinite stamina," "infinite vision," and using a sniper rifle like a machine gun.
And the more bullets I fired, the more I [Adapted].
"Ghk!!"
Once the bullets began piercing walls and twisting their own trajectories, the fight was over.
He probably wasn’t dead, but he couldn’t move anymore.
When I got there, I found a woman with blue hair wearing a prison uniform. She was sitting on the ground, blood soaking her thigh.
Even so, she wore a cynical expression that looked as if she feared neither death nor anything else.
"...Looks like the times really have changed. Monsters like you are running wild. Are you a Villain? You’re not a Hero, are you."
"You’re not a sniper. You’re about to lose the ability to speak, so listen to me."
"Under me—"
Bang!
The woman fired her gun in the blink of an eye.
"...Go to hell."
Her left eye burst apart under the lead bullet.
Her head turned slightly, but that was all.
She sighed, then looked at me with eyes that were already healing.
"Nice try. People die when they’re shot, after all,
except for a very small number of them."
She was denying what I’d said. And yet, somehow, that was amusing.
The woman’s expression shifted from shock to helpless resignation.
"Just kill me... Public Safety and working under you are the same thing. If I have to live like that, I’d rather die."
At the mention of her hatred for Public Safety, the corners of my mouth lifted even higher.
"If you hate being under someone, I’ll put you beside me instead. Become my bodyguard.
I rather like you."
"If you hate contracts, then let’s just use each other. I’m only using everyone for my revenge too."
The woman spat onto my shoe.
"How boring. How am I supposed to trust yo—"
This time, I cut her off.
"If my revenge succeeds, I’ll bring Public Safety down."
"...Bullshit... bullshit. Anyone can say that."
She’d taken the bait. Unlike her words, the certainty in her voice had vanished.
I took out my phone and showed her Hawks’s number.
"You know the name of an escaped convict, don’t you? Hawks, Public Safety’s hunting dog. Would you believe me if I had him run an errand for you?"
"I’m not held by a leash from Public Safety. I’m the one holding the leash."
The woman lowered her head and said nothing. I didn’t give her time to sort through her thoughts and kept talking.
"I’ll also give you forged ID, a place to live, and the "freedom" to stop running.
You don’t look like someone who’s ready to die or go to prison just yet."
She didn’t lift her head, but she did deactivate her rifle.
"...Then at least tell me how."
I smiled pleasantly at her and stepped closer.
"That’s easy."
Clack.
My arm transformed into a white rifle and loaded itself.
The muzzle touched the woman’s chin.
"You just have to die and be reborn."
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