Haruto hit the ground of the Ruins Zone in a tactical crouch, his eyes already tracking the movement through the haze of the collapsed buildings.
He reached for the hidden steel hilt at his back, his mind already cycling through the likely ambush points for a collapsed urban environment.
"Haruto...?"
The whisper was thin,
It came from a pile of shattered glass and rebar five feet to his right.
Haruto froze. He saw a pair of standard-issue U.A. sneakers shaking uncontrollably against a fallen brick wall.
Haruto blinked, his brow furrowing beneath his goggles.
"Toru?" he asked, his voice dropping its usual edge. "What are you doing here?"
' She was supposed to be at the Landslide Zone' he thought, his eyes narrowing,
'I smell plot convenience.'
"I-I don't know!" the invisible girl hissed, her sneakers scuffing the dust as she moved closer to him.
A pair of invisible hands snagged the sleeve of his hoodie, gripping him so hard he could feel her trembling.
"The mist... it just swallowed me! Everything went dark and then I was falling! Haruto, where are we? Where is everyone else?"
"DIE! YOU EXTRAS!"
A massive BOOM rattled the windows of the apartment complex above them.
Bakugo was 20 meters ahead, a human wrecking ball blowing a hole through a group of thugs.
Kirishima was right beside him, his hardened skin throwing off sparks as he shouldered through a brick wall.
"Get back here and fight!" Bakugo roared, his palms smoking.
Haruto watched the explosions, then looked back at the shivering sneakers beside him.
He shifted his gaze toward a narrow gap between two leaning buildings that offered a direct line of sight back to the Central Plaza.
Down there, the Nomu—that massive, purple-skinned monstrosity with the exposed brain—was facing Aizawa.
"Listen to me, Toru," Haruto said, his voice turning sharp and commanding. "Stay here. Huddle behind that reinforced pillar and don't make a sound. Bakugo and Kirishima will clear this area soon, and you'll be safe with them."
"What? No!" The invisible grip on his arm tightened. "Where are you going?"
"Aizawa-sensei is about to get killed," Haruto muttered.
"His quirk won't stop that monster's raw strength. I'm going down there to pull him out of the line of fire."
'I mean, let's be real,' he thought .
'Even if I don't move, the sleep-deprived cocoon survives this. The script says he wakes up in a hospital bed wrapped in more bandages than a mummy, looking tragic but heroic. It's a total plot necessity. The story literally can't function without him later.'
"Then I'm coming with you!", Toru said
"No, you aren't," Haruto snapped, his eyes cold behind his goggles. "It's too dangerous. I can move faster alone, and I don't have to worry about anyone else's safety. Just stay hidden and wait for the pros."
"I'm not a civilian, Haruto!" Toru's voice cracked, but there was a sudden, fierce weight to it. "You're always talking about 'positioning' and 'narratives', but you're about to run into a fight with a monster that could crush you in one hit."
Haruto paused, and turned his head slightly, his gaze drifting away from Toru and fixing on a point in the empty air
"I smell a cliché," he muttered.
"The reluctant protagonist tries to play hero alone, and the plucky sidekick insists on a dangerous team-up to prove their worth. It's a classic trope, and frankly, the writing is getting a bit predictable."
"What? Who are you talking to?" Toru asked, sounding baffled.
Haruto sighed, adjusting his mask. "Never mind. The 'Writer' clearly wants the emotional stakes higher for this act."
He looked back at the space where her face should be.
"Fine. But you do exactly what I say. No heroics."
Haruto walked right to the edge of the building and looked straight down the sheer, 90-degree drop of the concrete exterior.
"Haruto... please tell me we're not just falling," Toru whispered nervously.
"We're wall-clipping,Toru," Haruto muttered.
"Concrete is just dry ice if you have the right gear," Haruto said.
He turned his head toward the "camera". "And here is the 'acrophobia' subplot. Every stealth mission needs a vertical climbing segment to pad out the runtime. Can we just fast-forward to the bottom?"
"Who are you even talking to?!"
"The pacing, Toru. I'm talking to the pacing," he sighed.
He reached back, his hand finding her invisible shoulder. "Get on. Secure your harness. If you scream, the villains at the bottom will look up, and we'll be skeet shooting practice."
He felt the weight of the invisible girl lock onto his back, her arms wrapping around his neck in a death-grip.
Haruto didn't hesitate. He stepped off the edge.
Haruto moved with a mechanical precision, finding the "seams" in the building's construction. He used the protruding rebar as handholds and the window ledges as temporary resting points.
They reached the base of the building, dropping the final 3 meters onto the plaza floor.
***
They weren't alone for long. Some villains were patrolling the perimeter of the ruins.
Haruto stood up, dusting off his shoulder.
"Haruto, they're charging!" Toru cried.
'Look at these guys,' Haruto thought. 'The Low-Level Mob archetype. They're just here to fill the frame while the main characters get into position. It's almost insulting how little effort the writers put into their power sets.'
A villain with a head like a jagged rock lunged from the mist, his fingers elongated into stone claws. "A little brat playing hero? I'll crack you open!"
Haruto didn't even break his stride. He ducked under the clumsy swipe, his instincts mapping out the man's center of gravity before the stone claws even reached their apex.
With a sharp, practiced twist, Haruto drove the hilt of his blade into the man's solar plexus and followed up with a brutal kick to the back of the knee.
Crunch. As the villain collapsed, Haruto used the man's shoulders as a stepping stone, vaulting into the air.
He landed in a roll, coming up just in time to face a trio of thugs blocking the path to the fountain. One had tentacles for hair; another was leaking a corrosive green slime from his palms.
"Don't let him past!" the slime-user yelled, hurling a glob of acid.
Haruto's eyes narrowed. He evaded projectile as he closed the distance.
He was a whirlwind of steel and kinetic energy.
He sheared through a tentacle with a horizontal flash of his blade, then pivoted, driving a double-footed kick into the slime-user's chest.
The impact sent the villain flying back into a group of his own allies.
A massive thug with quadrupedal legs charged from his flank, his shadow looming over the invisible girl.
Haruto didn't hesitate. He threw his left blade like a dart. The steel whistled through the air, stabbing the villain's shoulder, staggering him and throwing off his balance.
In the split second of confusion, Haruto was there, delivering a palm strike to the man's chin that snapped his head back.
"Three pages of combat just to cross twenty feet," Haruto muttered to the void, retrieving his blade. "The pacing in this chapter is a bit slow. We need to reach the boss before the audience loses interest."
He cleared the final line of thugs just as the air pressure in the plaza shifted. The heavy, suffocating aura of the Nomu was directly ahead.
He looked past the groaning thugs. At the fountain, the Nomu had Aizawa pinned. The sound of the teacher's arm snapping echoed through the dome. Shigaraki was standing nearby, his fingers twitching with manic energy.
"The cutscene is over," Haruto whispered, his eyes narrowing. "
He looked at Toru,
"Stay behind me, Toru," Haruto commanded, his voice dropping the sarcasm. "The gore budget is about to go into the red."
He stepped into the shadow of the Nomu, his crimson hoodie stained with the sweat and grit of the climb.
He looked at the creature's exposed brain and then at Shigaraki's dead, yellow eyes.
"Sorry I'm late to the party," Haruto rasped, his voice dropping into that cold tone. "The extras were a bit clingy."