The morning light filtered through the paper shoji screens in thin, dusty needles of grey. Yoshi sat up slowly, the movement triggering a chorus of protests from his chest. The bandages were tight, a restrictive cage of gauze that smelled of antiseptic and the dry, medicinal scent of Morioka's home.
He began to stretch, a methodical and cautious inventory of his own body. He rotated his right shoulder, watching the way the skin pulled at the seam where his arm had been severed and mended. It worked. The nerves fired, the muscles coiled, and the blood flowed. But the memory of the loss remained, a deep cold that sat in the marrow of his bone.
He leaned back against the wooden frame of the bed, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as he replayed the fight in the park. He was trying to find the logic in it, the underlying physics of how he had been dismantled so efficiently.
Usually, Yoshi was untouchable. He had learned to wrap the space around his body like a secondary skin, adding a layer of distance that existed in the gaps between the atoms of the air. It was a shroud, although it relied on his reaction speed, but when he could pull it off, bullets would lose momentum before they hit him, and blades would slide off as if he were made of polished oil.
In an open space like that park, he should have been at his peak. He had the room to move, the distance to manipulate, and the velocity to end any threat before it reached him.
But the Tiger hadn't played by those rules.
Yoshi touched the scar on his chest. When that silver sword had come down, it didn't feel like a weapon hitting a shield. It didn't feel like a struggle. The Tiger had simply… ignored the distance.
It was a cut that reminded Yoshi of his own "Split" technique, the way he could sever the space around a target to bypass their defences, this was similar, extremely so, but he could tell that it was still different.
Then there was the regeneration. Yoshi had felt the impact of his own power when he hit the man. He had heard the ribs shatter, had seen the blood spray, and had felt the internal organs give way under the sheer force of his spatial expansion.
Any living creature should have been a heap of meat. But the Tiger hadn't healed. Healing was a process of knitting and growth. What the Tiger did looked a lot more like a reversal. One moment he was broken, the next, he was whole, his fur dark and his muscles fresh, as if the damage had been a mistake the world had simply corrected.
The memory made Yoshi feel a brief, flickering nausea. He was strong. He knew he was strong. Since the moment he had stepped into this world, he had been the one dictating the terms of engagement. But in that park, pinned to a bronze shield with a blade through his heart, he had felt smaller than he ever had in his life.
Surprisingly, he didn't feel a great pit of anger. There was no hot, vengeful fire burning in his gut, and the fear had subsided into a cold, clinical awareness. Instead, he felt a slight, nagging annoyance. It was the feeling of seeing a dark, persistent stain on a clean white shirt, something that stood out, something that didn't belong, and something he would eventually have to scrub away.
He stood up, his joints clicking. He dressed slowly, pulling a fresh shirt over his bandages, his mind still tracing the line of that clean, conceptual cut. He felt like a puzzle that had been taken apart and put back together by a master who didn't care for the pieces.
He walked out of the room, the cedar floorboards cool beneath his feet. He expected the heavy, somber atmosphere of a house in mourning, or perhaps the frantic energy of Akira and Makoto preparing for another move.
Instead, the first face he saw as he entered the main living area stopped his thoughts dead.
Koichi Haimawari was sitting at a low wooden desk by the window. He was leaning over a bowl of steaming rice and grilled fish, his movements steady and purposeful. He looked pale, and his travel jacket was missing, likely destroyed by the Stasis-Model's lance, but his eyes were clear.
Koichi looked up, a piece of fish halfway to his mouth. He blinked, then offered a small, tired wave.
"Oh. Hey, Yoshi," Koichi said, his voice a little scratchy but unmistakably his own. "You're up. That's good."
Yoshi stood in the doorway, his head tilting slightly to the side as he took in the sight. The man who had been a dying weight for the last few days was now just... eating.
"I heard you got into a bit of a scrap," Koichi continued, gestured vaguely toward Yoshi's bandaged chest before returning his focus to the rice. "I wanted to come in and check on you earlier, really, but... man. I was just so hungry. I think I slept for a week."
Yoshi let out a short, quiet huff of air, half-laugh, half-disbelief. The tension that had been coiling in his spine since the park began to unravel. He walked into the room, his boots tapping softly on the wood, and offered a small, sharp smirk.
"You're a mess, Koichi," Yoshi said, nodding toward the empty bowls already piled on the desk.
"Yeah, well," Koichi replied, a ghost of his old, self-deprecating grin appearing. "At least I'm a mess that's eating. You want some? The Doctor says you need the salt."
___
The overcast sky of Osaka seemed to mirror the leaden weight in Naomasa Tsukauchi's chest as he walked the narrow, steam-vented streets of the Shin-Sekai district. The air here was different from Musutafu, it was thicker, smelling of salt-water and the heavy, metallic tang of factory work grease.
It was a district that had been built on the survival of those the world called "errors," and as a man whose quirk was literally the detection of truth, the sheer amount of deception and hidden pain in the air was enough to give him a permanent headache.
Naomasa clutched a file in his coat pocket, his fingers tracing the edge of a photograph he hadn't shown his team. It was a grainy image of Yoshi Abara.
Internally, Naomasa was haunted by the conversation he'd had with Izuku Midoriya. Midoriya had been different then, colder, but when he spoke of Yoshi, the truth had rung out like a bell.
Is he a villain, Yoshi Abara? Naomasa wondered, his eyes scanning the crowds of mutants. Or are you just someone that we may need to nudge toward the right side?
He wanted to find the boy. He wanted to look him in the eye and let his quirk do the work. He wanted to hear the truth of the "Aftermath" from the source. But as he looked at the men walking beside him, he realized he was fighting a war on two fronts.
"Hey, look at this one," Detective Okamura said, gesturing toward a small stall where an elderly mutant with lizard-like scales was selling traditional charms. Okamura didn't wait for an answer. He walked up to the stall, his hand resting heavy on the grip of his sidearm.
"Registry papers," Okamura barked. "And let's see the permit for these... what are these? Good luck charms?"
The elderly man's hands shook as he fumbled for his papers. "I... I have them right here, officer. Please, I'm just trying to make..."
"Quiet," Okamura snapped, his lip curling in a sneer. He picked up a hand-carved wooden tiger, turning it over with a look of profound disgust. "This looks like unlicensed merchandise. I'm confiscating the stock for 'evidence.'"
"But that's... that's my livelihood for the month!" the old man croaked.
"Well it's a damn tax for the protection we're providing," another officer chimed in, laughing. He reached over and grabbed a handful of oranges from the neighbouring stall, biting into one without even looking at the shopkeeper.
Naomasa felt a surge of cold, sharp anger. This wasn't an investigation. It was a shakedown. Ever since he'd been reassigned to this crew, he had seen it again and again, the crass comments, the racial slurs directed at "variants," and the blatant disregard for the people they were supposed to protect. These men didn't see themselves as peacekeepers, they saw themselves as a superior species authorised to haggle, steal, and humiliate.
"Okamura. Put the stock down," Naomasa said, his voice a low, dangerous velvet.
Okamura turned, a mocking grin on his face. "Come on, Tsukauchi. We're just keeping the peace. These types only understand strength. If you're too soft on them, they'll think they can hide the terrorists in their basements."
"I said put it down," Naomasa repeated, stepping into the detective's space. The light in his eyes was steady and uncompromising. "You are an officer of the law, not a common thief. If I see you 'confiscate' another item without a warrant and a logged evidence bag, I will personally file the disciplinary report that ends your career. Am I clear?"
The silence that followed was brittle. The other officers stopped their "haggling," looking at Tsukauchi with a mixture of resentment and confusion. They viewed him as a "Standard" elitist from Tokyo who didn't understand how the "real world" worked in the districts.
"Clear, sir," Okamura muttered, dropping the wooden tiger back onto the stall.
Naomasa turned to the shopkeeper, offering a brief, respectful bow. "I apologize for the disruption. We are looking for information regarding the group Aftermath. If you see anything, please contact Officer Sansa at the local precinct."
As they walked away, Naomasa could feel the glares of his team burning into his back. He knew what they were thinking. He knew that by being a "good man," he was making the job ten times harder. No one in the district would talk to them because they were viewed as thugs with badges. The residents clammed up, their eyes darting away, their truths hidden behind walls of justified fear.
If they didn't get results soon, the Commission would remove Naomasa from the case entirely, replacing him with someone "more efficient", someone else who wouldn't care about the ethics of a shakedown.
I can't be everywhere at once, Naomasa thought, his hand tightening on the brim of his hat. But I won't let the badge be used as a blunt instrument for their hate. Not while I'm the one wearing the coat.
He looked at the brick walls of the district, thinking of the trail of blood that had vanished at the monument. He felt the isolation of his position, a man of truth in a city of lies, surrounded by a team that had forgotten the difference between a hero and a bully. He missed Nezu. He missed the quiet, honest conversations in All Might's office.
But as a vendor with multiple limbs watched him from a distance, her eyes showing a flicker of surprise at his intervention, Naomasa realized that being a "good cop" wasn't a bad role, it was his role, and the role every other cop should be inspired by.
"Keep moving," he told his crew, his voice cold and purposeful. "We have a job to do. And we're going to do it right."