Hiro remained silent throughout the car ride, and the two ladies were happy to oblige in his brooding. He was more tired than mad, though he wouldn’t blame them if they couldn’t tell the difference. It had been a long night, after all.
All was quiet as the car pulled up beside a familiar neighbourhood. If anyone had followed them, they certainly knew how to keep their distance. There weren’t any cars or even people within kilometres.
Deja Vu prodded at Hiro as he stepped out of the car, which was parked almost discreetly beside some overgrown bushes. Kanna Shimizu’s quaint-looking house looked no different from the last time he saw it. Was this supposed to be his new ‘safe house’?
Kanna unlocked the front door, and Melissa gestured for him to enter.
A cross between a cafeteria kitchen and a mad scientist’s laboratory greeted Hiro immediately. Bizarre, misshapen tools lay in neatly arranged racks around the living room. In one corner, green light shone through the eyeholes of a suit that looked suspiciously like his own, attached to a humming, red circular device. In the other corner, confectionery tools cluttered the kitchen area, lending an endearing contrast to the precise, almost mechanical organisation of the laboratory.
“You’ve been busy, Kanna.” Hiro flashed a genuine smile for the first time in a few days. “How’s your new dessert shop going?”
“We’ve had a couple of sales, nothing too fancy,” Melissa answered for Kanna. “It’s a good start. But we didn’t bring you here to show off our new shop. We brought you here because of him.”
Light footsteps clodded down the stairs as if on cue. Exhaustion seized him again as Hiro turned around. It felt like a Sumo had just beaten him up and finished the fight with a tap dance on his body. But when the figure revealed himself, confusion chased all his fatigue right out of him.
“Miles?”
He took a few steps forward hesitantly, his head spinning with emotion. The man before him really was… But—
“How? I thought Yamato Gouma had you killed!” he exclaimed, half in disbelief and the other half in joy. “I overheard him myself!”
“Well, I needed a place to lay low. Can’t exactly turn into a ghost for no reason,” Miles chuckled. “Any attempt on my life had to look like it succeeded. Sorry, I couldn’t get to you, kid. Must’ve been tough fighting out there all by yourself.”
“Sorry?” A small exhale left Hiro’s mouth as he shook his head. “I’m… I’m glad you’re alive!”
His body trembled with relieved laughter. “I’m the one who should be sorry! It was my naivety— my ego— that left you alone to fend for yourself. I was so hung up about my past that I chased you away just because I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I was so desperate to prove myself that I threw myself into danger and got tricked by the enemy. I… I’m sorry for being such an immature, rotten kid…”
The laughter turned into sobs as he slumped against a wall with his head in his hands.
“I’m at fault too, Hiro.” Miles crouched in front of him. “I was an arrogant prick, so cocksure in my course of action that I chose to keep secrets from you. I even blamed it on you when I was the one who lost your trust. Some partner I am, treating you like a mere tool to be commanded. I’m sorry for all the secrecy; I’m sorry for all the lies. But no more.”
Hiro tilted his head up as Miles kept an outstretched hand in front of him.
“I promise I’ll treat you as an equal from now on; you have done more than prove your worth.” The man smiled at him. “Partners again?”
Hiro looked at the hand hesitantly. “I owe you so much. Without your tech, I’m just… Look, I don’t know if you should trust me to save your life when it counts.”
“I would. And I know you would, too. That’s what makes us a team.”
“Or we’re no different than a bunch of guys running around fighting people.” Hiro broke into a small smile and took Miles Cooper’s hand. “Alright, then… Partner.”
Miles pulled him up to his feet.
“While we’re on the topic of ‘no secrets’, allow me to regale the tale of how I managed to fool Yamato.” He grinned.
Melissa prodded Hiro. “Miles has been waiting for this. He’s very proud of what he did.”
“Of course I am.” Miles suppressed another chuckle. “I bet that moron Yamato doesn’t even know I’ve tricked him yet.”
Hiro raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Do tell. How’d you pull it off?”
“Shortly after the HPSC abruptly called for your arrest, I suspected everything was going downhill way too quickly. Someone must have been following our tracks. So I went back to your house and investigated the area, only to find an audio bug planted into your computer via a thumb drive.”
Miles tossed the device to Hiro.
“After reconfiguring it to play back the surrounding audio it picked up, I found out what Yamato told you and confirmed my suspicions. That man really is a master at gaslighting people.” Miles shook his head. “Anyway, I traced the signal back and managed to get a solid lock onto a certain transmitting source. It wasn’t until tonight that the source files had been copied elsewhere using very familiar tech.”
Hiro pulled out the thumb drive from his pocket. “This?”
The man nodded. “I’d recognise my own tech anywhere. That’s how I know you were back in Musutafu City. And that’s why Melissa was waiting for you outside your apartment. You weren’t copying files from a computer. It was a private server designed to look like one. Well done, by the way. It mustn’t have been easy breaking into Yamato’s place.”
“It would’ve been if I hadn’t slipped up and let myself be discovered by his goons.”
“But I digress,” Miles continued. “After locking onto Yamato’s server, all I could do was hack into its network feed. If I touched anything else in the server, the security protocols would’ve detected my presence immediately. Although I could see clear evidence of his illegal dealings, I couldn’t do anything to them. What I could see, however, was that he had already ordered a villain group to kill me.”
“What did you do?” Hiro asked.
“I spent days in my office continuously hooked up to my Amplus helmet, trying to catch how he intended to kill me. But I had no luck. Guess he didn’t care how it was done as long as it did get done. That was when I realised that I didn’t have to play the guessing game if I could choose how I wanted to ‘die’. There was only one way I could survive my ‘death’, and a set of very tight circumstances in which it could be orchestrated. But thankfully, the Heavens were on my side this time.”
Hiro leaned forward as the grin on Miles’ face widened.
“Firstly, Kusanagi had broken into my office earlier and broken a window. As a result, my office was visible to everyone, along with a huge hole on its side. Secondly, it had been raining for those few days, which meant poor night visibility. Lastly, if I had just stayed in my office, I would have been trapped and easily found. Now, if you were sent to assassinate me, how would you go about it without leaving a mess?”
“Throw you to your death,” Hiro replied, recalling the sea view in the office. “You’d simply go missing, and the sea will sweep your body away. If I were Yamato, I could just say you committed suicide because you couldn’t take losing your company and your life’s work.”
Miles nodded again with a twinkle in his eye.
“Outstanding. So when a bunch of unfamiliar guys barged into my office, I knew my time was up. I tried to stop them from seizing my property and even confronted them to expose them for the fakes they were,” he said. “However, that only gave them more reason to silence me, and I soon found myself dangling at the edge of my building. I pleaded for my life and even begged them to spare my life in exchange for cooperating with whoever sent them. They simply laughed at me. After all, my death was certain.”
The man smirked audibly.
“Except that was all an act.” The grin on his face widened. “And easily the biggest gamble I had to make. If those guys had chosen to shoot me where I stood instead, I’d be dead for real. I had to goad those bloodthirsty hunters into looking at the more obvious solution: the broken window. By constantly begging them not to throw me off, I was, in fact, inciting them to do so. And after they pushed me to my death, my escape was finally secured. Thanks to these.”
Miles gestured at the winged jetpack that practically blended in with all the high-tech tools lying around.
“I had already put on my hero outfit beforehand and cloaked it. By pushing me out of my building, they were actually just letting me go free. Once I was low enough to disappear from their sight, I deployed my wings and soared to safety.”
“And then you came straight to my house looking for a place to lay low,” Melissa finished the story for him. “That was one hell of a misdirection, but you’re still so reckless, Mister Cooper. You were lucky I happened to be home that night.”
“All’s well that ends well.” The man slapped his hands together gleefully. “We’re all here now, safe and sound. That’s all that matters.”
“And we have all the evidence we need to expose Yamato for the criminal he is.” Hiro waved the thumb drive triumphantly.
Miles’ eyes flashed green as he stared at the device for a brief moment, before letting out a soft sigh.
“The data is encrypted with Yamato’s quirk,” he said. “Without the genetic make-up of his power, it’s going to be impossible to unlock the data. Only I can view its contents, but I can’t extract it.”
“Perhaps I could decrypt it,” Melissa suggested.
“It’s a five-one-two bit advanced encryption. Not even my quirk can navigate that kind of algorithm.” Miles shook his head. “Besides, we have more pressing issues to worry about.”
Hiro raised an eyebrow quizzically.
“I’ve been listening in on Yamato’s phone calls. One of his illegal scientists just had a rather concerning call with him. And well… I have two pieces of news,” Miles said. “The good news is, Kusanagi is no longer under his command. The bad news is, she has gone full supervillain and created a device to rid the entire world of quirks.”
“What?” Hiro exclaimed. “Why? How?”
Miles shrugged. “I don’t know why. She seems like a nutcase to begin with; perhaps Yamato did something that pushed her over the edge. As for the device, it’ll be made up of three machines deployed at three separate locations. One main machine and two booster machines. Once they triangulate, they will boost the quirk-destroying part of Kusanagi’s power and roll over the Earth. Everyone will lose their quirks.”
“To be honest, that’s not exactly a bad thing…” Hiro mumbled. “This world has gotten far too complicated with all these superpowers.”
“Not exactly,” Miles said. “The design was based on the flawed version of Amplus. Everyone will lose their quirks, yes. But a good twenty per cent will be killed by their quirks’ self-destruction. Quirks are intrinsically tied to an individual’s biology. It is impossible to cleanly separate its characteristics from each other. Kusanagi’s power will still corrupt quirk cells, and the world will pay for her folly.”
Hiro sighed. Even when she was no longer Yamato’s puppet, Kiko was still against him. The Heavens really enjoyed playing their sick games. “So, what’s the call?”
“We need to destroy all three machines,” Miles said firmly. “One or two won’t cut it. The moment the main machine finishes analysing Kusanagi’s quirk, it’ll become self-sustaining. We have to assume the worst and make sure there’s absolutely no room for mistakes. As for Yamato, that’ll have to wait. We just have to figure out how to get close enough to use his quirk for the decryption.”
“Sounds simple enough.” Hiro punched his palm. “Kiko first, then. But… there are only two of us. How are we going to do this?”
“I’ll help.”
The two men stared at Kanna blankly.
“I may have been driven into hiding for now, but this is still my mission to begin with. I intend to finish it.” The woman’s voice was hardened with determination. “Don’t worry. I may not be a combat hero, but I’m still pretty good at slipping in and out of places. You can count on me!”
“You’re a true hero, Jelly Girl.” Miles gave her a grateful nod. “Alright, then. Our work is cut out for us. I’ve already configured my computer to pick up on certain keywords in Yamato’s phone. Once we have a hit, it’s go time. Let’s save the world. Go beyond—”
Everyone nodded in recognition at U.A. High’s famous motto.
“Plus Ultra!"175Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡncTmtQV3j6
and then Add to home screen.