Chapter Text
In the past.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Jouhei Mizuno walked down the crowded street, speeding up as he spotted what looked like an accident. He started zigzagging his way through the crowd.
"Move, please!" He maneuvered around a few cars stuck at a standstill.
"Mizuki! Get out of my way! Get out of my way!" Up ahead, he saw a man in a green helmet and another man crouched on the ground near where Mizuki was lying. The man in the helmet called out,
"Don't move. Help is coming, kid."
Jouhei dropped his bag and frantically shoved his way between two people.
"That's my boy. That's my boy. Mizuki! Mizuki!"
"Dad?" Mizuki asked, staring blankly up at the sky.
The two men around Mizuki backed away as Jouhei frantically threw himself down onto his knees next to his son.
"Mizuki! Mizuki! Don't… don't move, okay? No, no, no, just don't move. Somebody get us some help!"
Jouhei shouted at the surrounding crowd. He looked around wildly, gently pinning his son down to stop him from touching his face.
"Dad, what happened?" Mizuki asked.
"Mizuki, it's gonna be all right. Just don't move. Don't move, okay?"
"What happened?" Mizuki asked again.
Jouhei looked over at an older man on the ground, who was being tended to by two other bystanders.
The old man looked back at Jouhei.
"Your boy... he pushed me out of the way. He saved my life."
Jouhei scanned the scene.
There were barrels scattered all around them.
A man with a cut on his forehead was leaning against the overturned truck.
"Take it easy," another bystander said, holding a cloth to the bleeding gash while someone else pulled a passenger from a badly crashed car.
Suddenly, Mizuki started coughing. "Oh, Dad! Oh, it burns!"
He slammed the palms of his hands over his eyes.
Jouhei looked at the spilled barrels and the warning labels stamped on them.
Horror filled his heart.
He quickly pulled his sweater sleeve down over his hand and began trying to wipe the chemical liquid off Mizuki's face.
"Oh, Jesus! Close your eyes, Mizuki!"
"Dad!""Close your eyes!"
"Dad!""Close your eyes."
Mizuki blinked up at his father, stuttering in pure panic.
The overcast sky and his father's worried face were swiftly overtaken by black spots, consuming his vision.
"Dad. Dad. Dad."
Jouhei pulled Mizuki tightly into his arms as his son grew more frantic in his terror.
"I can't see. I can't see. I can't see! I can't see!"
The onlookers grouped tightly around them as the sirens grew louder, finally arriving at the scene.
The present.
An adult Mizuki sat inside a dark confession booth, holding a pair of dark sunglasses in his hands.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been too long since my last confession. My dad, he used to come to this church when I was a kid."
"He was a fighter. Old school. Boxer. Lost more than he won. Had a 24-31 record before he... uh... but he could take a punch. Jesus, he could take a punch."
"Language,"
the priest whispered from behind the screen.
"Sorry, Father. ... Yeah, guys he went up against used to say it was like hitting oak. Quirk use were not an allowed in the ring And on the nights when he was outmatched, My dad's strategy was to let 'em hit him till they broke their hands." Mizuki chuckles gently running his fingers over his glasses, “ he never got knocked out, my dad."
"Knocked down sure. But he always got back up. He was always on his feet when he lost. Every now and then, though, every now and then, he'd get hit and something inside of him would snap. My grandmother, she was the real Catholic. Fear God ran deep. You'd have liked her. She used to say, "be careful of the Mizuno's boys. They got the devil in 'em."
He chuckles as he wiped the lenses of his glasses with a handkerchief he pulled from a pocket. “And you'd see it sometimes in the ring. His eyes would go dead, and he start walking forward, real slow hands at his sides, like he wasn't afraid of anything."
Mizuki exhales through his nose. Then sighed softly, "And the other guy, he'd see that look, and he tried to get away from him. Nah. My dad, he catch him and trap him in the corner."
" and then he’d let the devil out. Yeah. Now, I didn't understand it, you know? What was he feeling inside, I didn't understand it. Not back then. "
Father Siraj said. "But you understand it now? perhaps this would be easier if you tell me what you've done. "
Mizuki exhaled again and put back on his glasses.
“I'm not seeking penance for what I've done, Father I am asking forgiveness for what I'm about to do.”
Father Sitaj sighs. " that's not how this works. What exactly are you going to do?"
Later that evening.2:38 Docks.
Two large men are dragging three women towards a container where A man with a square shaped head is waiting in front of it. He had a bucket in one hand in the other was a baton.
"Help!” “Help! Help me! Help!” “Help me!” the woman were fighting against the men's grip as hard as they could but they weren't getting anywhere. They didn't stop screaming either.
Turk spoke when the two thugs had dragged them in front of him. "Hey! Hey!” “Man, shut up. I'm getting 163,515.50 Yen a head for y'all so, you be quiet I let you have a bucket. You don't…"
The girls screamed in fear as Turk grabbed the one in front. As he shoved the prongs into her stomach. She screamed in pain.
The other one started sobbing harder. "No. Please, no. " Turk threw her into the Container Smirking as the two thugs followed by throwing the other in.
"Scream all you want. Come on, let me hear your scream. Scream loud. "
The who was thrown in was trying to comfort the others. "It's okay…"
The thugs laughed at her words. While another man was seating in a chair by the dock's edge, eating popcorn.
Turk waved the baton at the girls in a gesture. "Nobody gives a shit down here."
The shadows and lights over the other container near the container where the girls were shoved in, so they could see dark shadow land on the top of it. right behind the laughing Turk. They screamed again. making him turn to look,
When the shadow leaped from the top of the container. knocking him down and making him drop the baton which rolled across the ground,
The thugs then attacked the shadow, the first lunged forward with brutal, heavy right hook.
Instand of ducking backward, the shadow stepped perfectly inside the guard of the attacker, a split-second blur of dark fabric.
A sharp, open-palm strike caught the thug square in the chest, driving the breath from his lungs, Before the man could recover, the figure grabbed his jacket collar, spun him around, and drove a vicious knee directly into his midsection.
The thug collapsed into the puddles, groaning and clutching his stomach seeing his partner drop in seconds, the second thug rushed forward, swinging his fists in frantic punches, Shadow melted backward, dodging each wild punch by mere inches with effortless, liquid grace.
As the thug overextended on a desperate, lunging left cross, the figure sidestepped the blow entirely.
They caught the thug's extended arm, twisted his wrist, and used his own forward momentum to hurl him face-first into the ground.
Where the shadow hit the back of his head knocking him out. Turk wasn't knocked unconscious and had pulled out a gun while on the ground.
The shadow rolling away from the knocked out thug, grabs the baton. as Turk aims and shoots at the Shadow who escapes between the containers.
Turk looks around. he hears sounds and blindly shoots. then he clumly follows after keeping the gun in the air.
The shadow appears be hide him and throws the baton, knocking down Turk. The Shadow picks it back up and throws it at the guy sitting in the chair. The man falls into the water.
The shadow approaches the girls in the container, '' Head towards 48th. Stay in the lights. Flag down the first officer you see.''
The girls stay huddled in the container, the Shadow strikes the side of the container with his fist. ''Now!'' he barks letting the girls run away, Turk was aiming the gun at him again.
When in an impressive flip the shadow lands on Turk and starts punching him in the face repeatedly,
Scene change. 9:45 PM. Mizuki's Apartment.
Mizuki froze, his hand still gripping the cold metal of the balcony door handle.
Rain dripped from his dark clothes, pooling rapidly onto the floorboards of the room.
The heavy, adrenaline-fueled breathing of the vigilante slowly gave way to the quiet, familiar hum of their shared living/dining. Shinsou didn't look up immediately.
His fingers steadily traced the fur behind a stray cat's ears, his messy indigo hair catching the dim light of the desk lamp.
" you're late." His own under-eye bags were deeply pronounced—a permanent fixture of his insomnia—but his gaze was sharp when he finally leveled it at his adoptive brother.
"You're tracking mud, Mizuki," Hitoshi added softly, his voice carrying that flat, Mizuki exhausted reached up, pulling back the damp hood and peeling off the dark mask.
Beneath it, the fierce persona from the shipping docks vanished, leaving a tired young man. This close to the start of the UA high school entrance exams—still a long way away—the stakes felt heavier every night.
Operating as an unlicensed vigilante in a world obsessed with Pro Heroes was a dangerous game.
"They were smuggling girls, Hitoshi," Mizuki said, his voice rough. "Locked in a shipping container by the pier. If I hadn't gone—"
”If you hadn't gone, the heroes wouldn't have bothered to check a dark dock until morning, and it would be too late. I know."
Hitoshi interrupted. He gently nudged the cat off his lap and stood up. "You did what you had to do. But you can't use your quirk to outrun exhaustion forever."
Hitoshi walked over to the bathroom, grabbing a clean towel and tossing it at Mizuki's chest.
Under the strict laws of the current hero society, Mizuki was a lawyer by day and a vigilante at night, but nobody knew the second part. except for him. and Hitoshi,
Hitoshi himself was working tirelessly to get into UA's general education or the hero track despite the bias against his own Brainwashing quirk.
He didn't want to see his brother end up in a quirk detention cell before they even got their chance."Court is at nine," Hitoshi reminded him, leaning against the doorframe.
"Miss Cameron is counting on her lawyer to be awake enough not to lose the case. The Prosecuting attorneys will tear you apart if you're slurring your words on the stand. Clean up. I'll hide the gear."
Mizuki caught the towel, 'staring' down at his bloody knuckles before letting out a long, defeated breath. The shadow on the docks was invincible, but here, he was just a brother running out of time.