Chapter 31: The Wrath and the Remedy
The gunshot still echoed in the rafters of the abandoned warehouse, but down on the concrete, the silence of the Winged Sovereign was the loudest sound in the world.
Rei Arata knelt behind the massive, protective expanse of Fat Gum's back. He clutched his left shoulder, his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. The violet, cosmic glow of his cloak was completely dead. The terrifying, ancient pressure that usually radiated from him had vanished, leaving him as vulnerable as any ordinary civilian.
The Quirk-erasing drug was a localized ice age in his veins, aggressively hunting down and neutralizing the cosmic machinery of his soul.
"They took his power!" Rappa roared, his manic laughter booming across the warehouse. The massive Yakuza brawler cracked his knuckles, winding up his shoulders. "The Boogeyman is just a kid! Crush the fat hero and bring me the Sovereign's head!"
A dozen heavily armed Yakuza thugs raised their high-tech assault rifles, preparing to unleash a hail of suppressing fire to tear right through Fat Gum and Aizawa.
But they never got the chance to pull their triggers.
High above them, the corrugated steel roof of the warehouse didn't just break; it completely disintegrated.
A localized sonic boom shattered the remaining skylights. A streak of blinding, incandescent emerald fire tore through the roof, moving at Mach 3. Tensei Iida didn't bother landing gracefully. The Celestial Engine slammed feet-first directly into Rappa's chest.
The kinetic impact was apocalyptic. Rappa's massive frame was violently launched backward, his ribcage cracking audibly as he smashed through three concrete support pillars before burying himself in a mountain of rusted shipping containers, completely unconscious.
Before the dust from Tensei's impact could even settle, the massive, silvery-blue void of Sanctuary Phasing tore the air apart.
The Vanguard did not wait for an order. They felt the Sovereign's beacon. They felt the absolute, terrifying silence of his severed connection in their own chests. And they descended with apocalyptic fury.
BANG. BANG. BANG. From the starry void of the portal, three high-velocity rounds of hardened hair sniped the Yakuza shooters in the rafters. Lady Nagant didn't miss. The snipers fell from their perches before they even knew they were being targeted.
Giulio Gandini dropped to the concrete, his polished shoes silent. His cybernetic arm whirred, the Crimson Arsenal flaring into a massive, jagged broadsword. He moved with the terrifying, flawless efficiency of a master assassin, his golden eye burning with unadulterated rage. He swept through the Yakuza gunmen, cleanly slicing their assault rifles in half with arcs of crackling red energy, incapacitating five men in less than three seconds.
"Do not touch our King!" Kenji roared, landing beside Aizawa. The Quirkless Knight's silver armor erupted with blinding density. A Yakuza thug panicked and fired a shotgun at point-blank range. Kenji didn't blink. The buckshot flattened harmlessly against his silver chest, and Kenji drove a devastating right hook into the man's jaw, sending him spinning into the shadows.
Sir Nighteye stood frozen, his sharp eyes wide behind his glasses. He wasn't looking at the beaten Yakuza. He was looking at the flawless, terrifying coordination of the Swarm. They weren't communicating. They didn't need to. They were acting as a single, furious organism, violently neutralizing any threat to their heart. His vision was coming true right before his eyes.
"Akio!" Tensei yelled, his emerald engines venting superheated plasma as he stood guard over the perimeter. "He's fading!"
Akio dropped from the portal, sliding across the dusty concrete until he reached Fat Gum. The massive hero stepped aside, revealing the gasping, bleeding form of the Sovereign.
Akio's heart hammered against his ribs. He could feel the cold, agonizing void where Rei's power should have been.
"It's a biological weapon," Aizawa warned, kneeling beside them, his eyes darting scanning for more shooters. "It's destroying his Quirk factor."
"I won't let it," Akio gritted his teeth.
Akio ripped off his tactical gloves and slammed his bare hands directly over the bleeding bullet wound on Rei's shoulder. He didn't summon the Aegis Pulse shield. He bypassed his external defenses and channeled every single drop of his Eternal Vitality directly into Rei's bloodstream.
"Burn it out!" Akio yelled, his fists igniting with a blinding, golden-violet light.
Rei screamed, his back arching off the concrete.
The healing wasn't gentle. It was a brutal, microscopic war. The crimson Yakuza drug was actively destroying Rei's DNA, and Akio was forcefully over-clocking Rei's cellular regeneration to outpace the decay. Akio pushed his power to a forbidden, agonizing extreme, literally boiling the foreign venom out of the Sovereign's veins through sheer, hyper-accelerated cellular turnover.
Blood—thick, black, and laced with the crimson drug—spilled from Rei's lips as his body violently purged the poison.
Nearby, the last remaining Yakuza squad leader tried to crawl toward the exit.
A heavy boot stepped on the man's wrist, pinning him to the floor.
Hitoshi Shinso stared down at the terrified Yakuza, his purple Synaptic Overclock lightning sparking dangerously around his mask. Shinso didn't just want the man paralyzed. He wanted answers.
Snap.
Shinso's eyes flared a brilliant, telepathic purple. He seized the man's nervous system and violently ripped through the lieutenant's cognitive barriers, tearing the memories directly from his mind.
Shinso gasped, his own breath catching as the horrific images flooded his brain.
He saw a sterile, subterranean medical facility. He saw Overhaul, his hands stained with blood. He saw surgical tools. And strapped to the operating table, weeping in absolute terror as her flesh was repeatedly destroyed and reassembled... was a little girl with white hair and a small horn on her forehead.
Eri. "They're harvesting her," Shinso whispered, stumbling backward, the purple lightning flickering as sheer nausea hit him. "The bullets... the drug that erases Quirks. It's not a chemical. It's human blood. They're torturing a little girl to make it."
Aizawa's head snapped toward Shinso, his visible eye widening in absolute horror. "A child? They're weaponizing a child?"
A sudden, blinding pulse of cosmic violet light illuminated the warehouse.
Beneath Akio's glowing hands, the cold void in Rei's chest finally shattered. The golden-violet fire of Eternal Vitality had successfully burned the prototype venom from his system, jumpstarting the cosmic engine of his soul.
The violet butterfly-wing patterns on the Sovereign's black cloak violently reignited, flaring brighter and more terrifying than ever before. The heavy, ancient pressure returned to the room, suffocating the conscious Yakuza thugs.
Rei Arata slowly pushed himself up from the concrete. He was breathing heavily, his shoulder throbbing with a dull ache, but his power was completely restored. He placed a gentle, grateful hand on Akio's shoulder, then looked up at Shinso.
"A little girl," Nocturne repeated, his dual-toned voice lacking its usual ethereal smoothness. It was replaced by a raw, vibrating, unadulterated rage.
Fat Gum clenched his massive fists, his cheerful face completely gone. "Those sick, twisted bastards. Using a kid's blood to make weapons."
Nocturne turned to face the three Underground Heroes. Sir Nighteye braced himself, expecting the Sovereign to attack them now that his power was restored.
Instead, Nocturne stood perfectly straight, his silver moth-mask reflecting the moonlight.
"You asked me what my endgame is, Nighteye," Nocturne said, his voice echoing with chilling, absolute finality. "You wanted to know why I am building an army outside your laws. This is why."
Nocturne gestured to the beaten Yakuza thugs bleeding on the warehouse floor.
"The Commission would launch a six-month investigation into the Shie Hassaikai," Nocturne stated coldly. "They would file warrants. They would negotiate jurisdictions. And while the bureaucrats shuffle their papers, that little girl would be strapped to an operating table, dying a thousand times over to manufacture bullets meant to enslave this society."
Aizawa looked at the Sovereign, the heavy truth of the words settling in his gut. The system was too slow to save the ones bleeding in the dark.
"I am the architect of a new board," Nocturne declared, his cloak billowing as the Swarm rallied around him—Giulio, Kenji, Tensei, Akio, Shinso, and Rin, a perfect, unbreakable wall of shadows. "And on my board, we do not negotiate with monsters who put children in cages. We exterminate them."
Nocturne looked directly at Eraserhead.
"If the Underground wishes to stand in the light, Shota Aizawa, then stay out of our way. Because tomorrow night, the Vanguard is going to tear the Shie Hassaikai compound down to the bedrock."
With a swirl of his dark cloak, Nocturne turned his back on the Pro Heroes. Rin tore the air apart, opening the silver gateway. The Swarm stepped into the starry void, leaving the Underground Heroes alone in the ruined warehouse, surrounded by the broken bodies of the Yakuza.