Chapter 14: Truth and Conviction
The interrogation room at the Musutafu Police Precinct was aggressively sterile. The walls were painted a dull, clinical white, the fluorescent lights buzzing with a faint, anxiety-inducing hum.
Yuga Aoyama sat perfectly straight in a rigid metal chair, his hands resting politely on his knees. To his right stood his homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa, his arms and face heavily wrapped in thick white bandages from the USJ attack. Sitting directly across from Aoyama was Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi, a man whose plain tan overcoat hid one of the most dangerous Quirks in the criminal justice system.
"I apologize for the intense setting, Aoyama-kun," Tsukauchi said, his voice gentle but professional. He clicked a pen, resting his notepad on the metal table. "As Eraserhead explained, my Quirk is a polygraph. I can detect lies with absolute certainty. Given the precision of the League of Villains' attack, we must rule out the possibility of a leak from within UA. Do you understand?"
Aoyama offered a bright, dazzling smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "But of course, Detective! It is perfectly logical. Ask me anything. I have nothing to hide from the light of justice!"
Aizawa narrowed his one visible eye. Aoyama was usually a bundle of flamboyant nerves. Yet today, sitting across from a human lie detector, the boy's heart rate was perfectly steady.
Stay calm, Aoyama told himself, focusing entirely on his core. Deep within his chest, the Prismatic Flight hummed—a warm, golden reservoir of absolute safety gifted by the Sovereign. It acted as a perfect anchor, overriding his physiological fear responses.
"Let's begin," Tsukauchi said, his eyes locking onto Aoyama's. "Are you secretly working with the League of Villains?"
Aoyama didn't blink. He thought of Shigaraki's decaying hands. He thought of All For One's suffocating voice. He thought of the pure hatred he harbored for the monsters who threatened his parents.
"Absolutely not," Aoyama declared, his voice ringing with fierce, unadulterated truth. "I despise them."
Tsukauchi nodded, jotting a note. "Did you provide the USJ staff schedule to the League, or to anyone acting on their behalf?"
This was the trap. If Aoyama panicked, his heart rate would spike. But he had rehearsed this exact mental gymnastics with Nocturne in the shadows of his dorm room. A lie detector measures your internal belief in a statement, Rei had taught him. So, change the context of the truth.
Aoyama leaned forward, placing a hand over his heart, his face a mask of dramatic, offended horror. "Detective! I would never do anything to endanger my classmates! The very thought of helping villains hurt my friends makes my stomach turn!"
It was the absolute, objective truth. He hadn't given the schedule to help the League. He had given it to them as part of a grander chess move, orchestrated by the Sovereign, to ambush them and protect the class. His intent was salvation, not sabotage.
Tsukauchi stared at the boy for three agonizing seconds. Then, his shoulders relaxed.
"True," Tsukauchi sighed, offering a tired smile. "Thank you, Aoyama. You're cleared. It takes a lot of bravery to sit in that chair."
"A hero must always shine, even under pressure!" Aoyama chimed, standing up with a theatrical flourish. He gave Aizawa a crisp salute and strutted out of the interrogation room.
The moment the heavy metal door clicked shut behind him, Aoyama exhaled a long, silent breath. He walked calmly down the precinct hallway, slipped into the men's restroom, and locked himself in a stall.
His hands were completely steady as he pulled a black, encrypted burner phone from his pocket. He quickly typed out a message to a hidden proxy server.
The Detective is blind to the light. The Commission suspects nothing. The spy is secure.
Miles away, the Winged Sovereign received the message. The board remained perfectly intact.
The rain in Hosu City did not fall; it attacked. It lashed against the grimy brick walls of the city's labyrinthine alleyways, washing the neon reflections into bloody streaks across the pavement.
Akio and Kenji were conducting a quiet, unsanctioned patrol. Nocturne had deployed them to monitor the underworld chatter in the neighboring city, testing their synergy without Rin's portals to bail them out.
Kenji walked with his hands in the pockets of his dark tactical jacket, his silver Knight's Vow kept to a dull, barely visible simmer beneath his skin. Akio walked beside him, his eyes scanning the rooftops.
"You think the Sovereign was right to send us out here?" Kenji muttered over the sound of the rain. "Hosu is crawling with Pro Heroes."
"That's exactly why we're here," Akio replied quietly. "The Commission's heroes patrol the main streets where the cameras are. The Sovereign wants us looking in the places they ignore."
A sudden, agonizing scream shattered the rhythm of the rain.
Both boys froze. It came from a narrow, pitch-black alleyway to their left.
Kenji didn't hesitate. He broke into a sprint, his silver aura flaring to life. Akio was right behind him, his fists igniting with golden-violet energy.
They rounded the corner and stopped dead in their tracks.
Pinned against the brick wall, suspended three feet in the air by a half-dozen throwing knives driven through his costume, was a Pro Hero. He was bleeding profusely, his eyes wide with paralyzing terror.
Standing over him was a nightmare pulled straight from a horror film. The man was wrapped in tattered, blood-red scarves, his face a grotesque mask of scarred flesh and no nose. In his hand, he held a jagged, blood-stained katana.
"You wear the cape, but your heart is filled with greed," the man rasped, his long, serpentine tongue tasting the rainwater on his lips. "You are a fake. And fakes must be purged."
"Hey!" Kenji roared, his voice echoing like thunder.
The Hero Killer, Stain, slowly turned his head. His bloodshot eyes locked onto the two teenagers.
"More fakes?" Stain hissed, gripping his katana tightly. "Children playing dress-up?"
"Akio, get the hero!" Kenji ordered.
Akio surged forward, slamming his hands into the pavement. A massive dome of golden-violet energy—the Aegis Pulse—erupted between Stain and the pinned Pro Hero, shielding the bleeding man. Akio slid under the dome, immediately placing his glowing hands over the hero's deepest wounds, forcing his Eternal Vitality into the man's failing system.
Stain's eyes narrowed. He noted the golden shield, but more importantly, he noted the healing. The boy wasn't attacking to gain glory; he had immediately prioritized saving a life, ignoring his own defense.
"Interesting," Stain murmured.
With blinding, terrifying speed, Stain vanished. He bypassed the dome entirely, launching himself straight at Akio from above to stop the healing. His jagged blade descended, aiming to draw blood and trigger his paralyzing Quirk.
CLANG!
The sound of metal striking solid silver echoed through the alley.
Kenji had stepped directly into the path of the blade. He hadn't raised his hands to block. He hadn't flinched. Driven by the absolute, uncompromising desire to protect Akio, Kenji's Knight's Vow flared into a blinding, incandescent armor of sheer physical density.
Stain's katana struck Kenji's collarbone. The cheap steel didn't just fail to pierce the skin; the blade violently shattered into a dozen pieces.
Stain's eyes widened in genuine shock. He backflipped away, landing gracefully on the hood of a rusted dumpster. He looked at the broken hilt in his hand, then at the silver-clad boy standing immovably in front of his partner.
"Your Quirk..." Stain rasped, his murderous aura receding slightly, replaced by an intense, burning curiosity. "It is not a shield. It is pure, unadulterated conviction given physical form."
Kenji raised his fists, ready to fight. "I don't care about your ideology, murderer. If you want to kill him, you have to go through me."
Stain stared at Kenji. He looked at the boy's ruined middle-school uniform beneath his jacket. He looked at the way Kenji stood—not for fame, not for money, but purely to act as a wall between death and the innocent. And behind him, Akio was still pouring his own life force into a corrupt Pro Hero, saving a man who didn't deserve it simply because it was the right thing to do.
The bloodlust in the alleyway suddenly evaporated.
Stain slowly lowered his broken hilt. A twisted, terrifying smile spread across his scarred face.
"No," Stain whispered, his voice reverent. "I do not think I will."
Akio looked up, his hands still glowing. "What?"
"I hunt the fakes. The ones who crave the spotlight," Stain declared, stepping backward into the shadows. "But you... you are different. You operate in the dark. You prioritize the rescue over the kill. You possess the spirit of true heroes. The spirit of All Might."
Stain sheathed his broken blade, his tattered red scarves billowing in the wind.
"The underworld speaks of a 'Winged Sovereign,'" Stain called out, his glowing red eyes piercing the gloom. "They say he is building an army. Tell your Sovereign this: The Hero Killer recognizes his Swarm. I will not hunt you. Let us see who can purge the rot from this society first."
With a swirl of blood-red fabric, Stain melted into the darkness, leaving only the sound of the rain.
Kenji slowly let his silver armor fade, his knees shaking slightly now that the adrenaline was crashing. He looked back at Akio, who was staring at the empty alleyway in disbelief.
They had just been spared by the deadliest assassin in Japan. And they had inadvertently earned his respect.
"We need to call Rei," Akio breathed, wiping rain from his eyes. "The board just got a lot more complicated."