The dust from All Might's initial impact was still settling, but for Class 1-A, the real shockwave was standing right in front of them, wiping blood off his chin.
The silence was heavy, broken only by the distant booming of All Might's fists.
Midoriya was on his knees a few yards away, his hands trembling as he stared at Haruto. "His... his vitals were gone." he muttered
"That was a horror movie" Mineta shrieked from behind a rock, "He had a hole in him! You could see the floor through his chest! People don't just... zip themselves back together! He's a zombie!"
"Akagi?"
The voice came from the edge of the plaza. Bakugo and Kirishima had just burst through the wreckage of the Collapse Zone.
Bakugo's face contorted as he looked at the massive lake of blood Haruto was standing in.
"Hey, Deku! Why is the extra standing in a puddle of guts like he's waiting for a bus!?"
"Ribbit..." Tsuyu croaked from the fountain ledge, her eyes wide. "He had a hole in his chest just moments ago...Haruto-chan..."
Bakugo let out a snarl, his eyes darting between Midoriya and Haruto.
"First the damn nerd shows up with a hidden power he's been sitting on for years, and now you?"
He pointed a smoking palm at Haruto.
"What the hell is it with you pathetic extras?! You're both the same—hiding behind a 'Quirkless' label."
***
"His heart stopped, he was a corpse. It should have been game over for him"
Shigaraki lunged forward a step, hand outstretched as if to personally decay the "glitch".
But Kurogiri's mist pulled him back.
"We have to leave, Tomura Shigaraki," Kurogiri urged. The pro heroes are here.
Shigaraki didn't look at the entrance. He stared at Haruto with a look of pure hatred.
"I'll find out what you are," Shigaraki's final rasp echoed as the portal began to collapse.
"And when I do, I'm going to tear you apart so thoroughly that there won't be enough of you left to remember how to breathe. This isn't a victory, you freak.
With a swirl, the villains vanished.
***
All Might didn't have his signature boisterous laugh. His face was a mask of fury, his eyes glowing in the shadows of his brow.
"To think you would target children..." All Might's voice vibrated, "To think you would commit such atrocities in a place of learning!"
"CAROLINA... SMASH!"
He crossed his arms in a brutal strike. The resulting shockwave sent the remaining low-tier villains tumbling like autumn leaves.
The Nomu took the hit dead-center. Its purple, flesh rippled like a stone dropped in a pond.
Haruto sat by fountain, his eyes tracking the destruction.
"Here we go," Haruto thought, glancing at the "camera" with a smirk. "The Battle of the Titans. The part where the animation studio spends eighty percent of the seasonal budget on a three-minute sequence"
The Nomu lunged. it occupied the space where All Might had been a millisecond prior.
The two collided in the center of the plaza, a series of sonic booms that shattered the remaining glass in the dome.
Every time All Might landed a punch that would have leveled a building, the Nomu's "Shock Absorption" nullified it.
Every time the Nomu struck back, All Might's sheer willpower forced him to tank the blow, his feet carving deep trenches into the floor.
All Might's muscles bulged, the fabric of his hero suit straining.
"You said this thing was built to kill me?!" All Might roared.
"If it can withstand one hundred percent of my power... then I will simply force it to take more! Every hit... is more than a hundred percent!"
The air pressure became a physical weight, forcing the students to shield their eyes.
"PLUS...!"
All Might buried his fist into the Nomu's gut, the impact creating a vacuum that sucked the surrounding dust inward.
"ULTRA!"
A pillar of pure energy erupted from the center of the plaza, punching a hole straight through the reinforced roof of the USJ.
The Nomu was launched like a violet rocket, disappearing into the clouds.
Haruto whistled, shielding his eyes from the falling debris as the shockwave finally subsided.
"Now that," he whispered to the "void" watching the silhouette of All Might standing tall amidst the steam, "is how you end the arc. Maximum budget. Minimum dialogue. Total aura."
*********<>*********
Haruto leaned back against the bus seat, watching Bakugo's palms smoke and Midoriya's pen hover over the page.
"Start talking, you freak," Bakugo hissed.
"I'm not going to ask again. What kind of back-alley deal did you make to get a power like that? And don't give me that 'Quirkless' garbage. I've spent ten years watching Deku pretend to be a pebble while he was sitting on some kind of weird power. Now I find out the other extra is a walking anomaly?"
Midoriya leaned forward from the seat in front, his notebook already out, though his hands were shaking too much to write.
"Haruto... Kacchan is right about one thing. Regeneration of that scale... even for a High-Spec Quirk, there's usually a massive caloric drain. But you just... reset. It was like time reversed for your internal organs."
Haruto didn't look away from the window.
"It's called narrative consistency, Greenie. You wouldn't get it.", Haruto said.
"Stop with the cryptic crap!" Bakugo roared, slamming a hand against the headrest.
"You were dead! You're either a liar like Midoriya, or you're something that shouldn't be in this hero school. Which is it? Are you a spy? An experiment?"
He sighed.
"Fine," Haruto said, "You want the technical specs? You want the Quirk registration entry? Fine. Let's call it 'Cellular Stockpile'"
Midoriya's eyes lit up instantly. "Stockpile? Like... like a kinetic charge? Or a biological reserve?"
"Biological," Haruto lied through his teeth. "I don't heal I replace. My body has a pre-set 'save state' of healthy tissue.
When the physical shell takes damage - like, say, a hand through the torso - the 'Construction Crew' in my marrow dumps the entire reserve to force a localized regeneration. It's not magic, Bakugo. It's just high-speed 3D printing with stem cells."
Bakugo narrowed his eyes, his aggression shifting into a cold appraisal.
"If it's a stockpile, that means it's finite. You aren't immortal then."
"Exactly," Haruto said.
Midoriya was scribbling furiously now.
"That explains the exhaustion! And the blood, the old cells are discarded as waste during the overwrite. That's why there was so much of it on the floor! Haruto, the caloric intake for a Quirk like that must be astronomical ?"
Haruto suppressed a smirk.
'He's buying it. He's actually rationalizing the glitch into the power system. Man, I love it when the characters do the power scaling for me.'
"So you've been hiding it because it's a Last-Resort type of power?" Kirishima asked from the seat in front, his face full of 'Manly' sympathy.
"That's... that's heavy, man. You're literally burning your lifespan every time you save one of us."
Haruto looked at his hand, then clenched it into a fist.
"Something like that," he whispered, his voice dripping with just enough 'protagonist energy' to be convincing.
Bakugo scoffed and turned away, finally sitting down.
"Whatever. Just don't expect me to hold back during the Sports Festival just because you're 'fragile' underneath that cheat-looking-ability."
Haruto turned back to the window, watching the U.A. gates loom closer.
Haruto muttered to the void.
"I just gave them a Power with a Price trope. It's the ultimate narrative camouflage. "
****
The bus pulled into the U.A. gate.
As the rest of Class 1-A filed out, Toru remained in the seat beside him.
The fabric of her school uniform shifted as she leaned closer.
"You're lying to them, Haruto," she said. It wasn't an accusation, her voice was thin, still carrying the panic she felt back in the plaza.
Haruto didn't look away from the window at first.
He watched his own reflection in the glass.
Then, he turned his head slowly to the empty space beside him.
"That was a pretty detailed medical explanation," Haruto said. "Midoriya is already halfway through a ten-page thesis on my 'Cellular Stockpile' theory. Even Bakugo stopped shouting. So, tell me, Ghost-chan... how do you know I'm lying?"
"Because I was right there," Toru hissed, her invisible hand tightening on his arm. "I wasn't across the plaza like the others. I was kneeling in the blood, Haruto. I heard your heart stop, and then I heard it start again."
She shifted in her seat, the fabric of her sleeve brushing against his torn hoodie.
"And you didn't look tired," she continued, her voice trembling.
"If you were really burning your life away, you'd be shaking. You'd be gray. But the second that hole closed, you just looked... bored. You treated a lethal injury like it was a smudge on your sleeve."
Haruto leaned back, a genuine smile on his face.
"Sharp. I guess being invisible makes you a natural at seeing the things people try to hide" , he sighed,
"You're right. I'm not dying. But Bakugo and Midoriya won't stop digging until they have a 'how' and a 'why.' If I don't give them a tragic reason to back off, they'll never leave me alone."
"It's a cruel thing to tell people," Toru whispered.
"Don't ever try that one on me. I'm the one who had to watch it happen. I thought I was losing you"
The stoic mask Haruto usually wore cracked just a little. He reached out, his hand finding her invisible head and patting it.
"I'm sorry, Toru. I didn't mean to scare you that much. No more 'Noble Sacrifices' for at least a few weeks. I promise."
Toru let out a shaky, invisible laugh. "You're so full of yourself."
"Maybe," Haruto muttered, pushing himself up as the bus reached its destination. "But someone has to keep the plot moving, right? If I don't stay in the picture, who's going to make sure you get your screen time?"