Chapter 260 - 259: World Fame

Location: The X Agency, Tokyo - Back Office

Time: 8:10 PM (Local Time)

BZZZT.

Six holographic screens floated above the glass tracking table, playing different international news channels at the exact same time.

On the NHA TV studio feed in Tokyo, news anchor Daikaku Miyagi adjusted his square glasses with a trembling hand.

[...We're still trying to verify the incoming reports from the World Heroes Association,] Miyagi announced through the office speakers.

[...Thirty minutes ago, the global countdown initiated by Humarise abruptly skipped to zero across all twenty-five targeted nations.]

The horned news anchor paused to look down at the paper script shaking between his fingers, letting out a loud breath on live television.

[...However, we've just received official confirmation that there aren't any casualties anywhere on the planet,] Miyagi continued, staring wide-eyed into the camera lens.

[...Every single chemical device was neutralized within a two-minute window by a single Japanese Pro Hero.]

CLICK.

The broadcast feed split in half, cutting to a brunette NHA TV field reporter outside a cordoned-off subway entrance in central Tokyo.

Behind the yellow police tape, Fat Gum and Cementoss stood near a crater of torn-up asphalt and stared down into the open stairwell in total confusion.

[I'm standing live at the Tokyo grid zero site!] the female reporter shouted over the passing police sirens, clutching her microphone with both hands.

[...Just moments before the timers collapsed, Pro Hero Cementoss buried the bomb beneath twenty-five solid layers of concrete!]

She wiped sweat from her forehead and pointed toward the giant concrete dome cracked open in the middle of the intersection.

[...When Cementoss finally opened the concrete shell five minutes ago, the explosive was completely gone!] she reported breathlessly.

[...It became a drawing on the concrete!]

[...According to Fat Gum, Hero X stopped by after returning from Europe and turned the weapon into a flat painting so the disposal unit wouldn't risk a gas leak!]

Over near the coffee machine in the back office, Tsunagu Hakamada slowly lowered his ceramic mug onto the counter.

CLINK.

"He did Japan too?" Tsunagu asked, turning his head toward the glass table.

"...When did he even have the time to stop by downtown Tokyo?"

Mirai Sasaki pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and tapped a button on the console to pull up the Tokyo seismic logs.

"...Right between his jump from Manila and his arrival at the Otheon mountain range, Tanaka," Mirai answered quietly as his eyes scanned the timestamps on the monitor.

"...It took him less than eight seconds."

Tsunagu tugged at the high denim collar of his coat and let out a long, tired sigh.

'When he woke me up in that freezing warehouse and spawned a fake body to fool the villains, I knew his Quirk defied common sense,' Tsunagu thought, staring at the subway mural on the screen.

'...Crossing twenty-five national borders in two minutes is something else entirely.'

"Look at the American feed, Kudo," Tsunagu said aloud, pointing a gloved finger toward the third monitor on the left.

Mirai swiped his hand across the glass surface to unmute the international broadcast from the United States.

[...an unprecedented phenomenon that defense ministries from London to Cairo are calling an outright miracle!] American news anchor declared from her New York studio desk, her blonde hair slightly messy from rushing onto the set.

[...Thirty minutes after the music stopped playing from the clouds, social media platforms have completely crashed under the weight of billions of uploaded videos!]

The screen behind female anchor switched to a shaky smartphone clip recorded in the middle of a Cairo bazaar.

On the video, a dusty Egyptian police officer pointed wildly at a bright red graffiti tag painted across the sandstone wall of a warehouse.

[I swear to God, the red smoke was already pouring out of the valves!] the police officer yelled in Arabic while translated subtitles flashed at the bottom of the screen.

[...Salaam inhaled the gas, and his veins turned pitch black right in front of us!]

The camera panned over to Salaam, who sat on the curb drinking from a plastic water bottle while paramedics checked his pulse.

[...Then that song started booming out of the night sky!] the officer continued, slapping his own forehead in disbelief.

[...A guy in a white suit walked straight out of the stone wall, snapped his fingers once, and the gas sucked right back inside the metal tank before turning into paint!]

[...He cured Salaam's body without even touching him!]

The broadcast cut rapidly to a street interview in Paris, where a French SWAT commander stood beside a colorful chalk drawing on the cobblestone plaza.

[We thought we were all dead,] the commander admitted, holding his helmet under his arm while French civilians cheered and danced in the background.

[...Who is this man?]

[...Why was there music playing out of thin air, and does Japan really have a hero who can bend space like a comic book god?!]

Back in the New York studio, the female anchor pressed a finger to her earpiece as fresh information came through from the control room.

[We're getting word directly from WHA headquarters in California,] she announced, leaning forward over her desk.

[...The hero in the white suit is officially registered in Tokyo under the name Hero X!]

[...In less than half an hour, his name has topped every search trend in ninety-four countries!]

Beside the table, Mirai folded his arms across his chest and watched the replay of Salaam's black veins vanishing in reverse.

'Even with Foresight, I never could've pictured a rescue on this scale,' Mirai thought with a wry smile.

Tsunagu picked up his tablet from the corner of the desk and scrolled through the incoming messages.

"Kudo, are you seeing the numbers on the WHA public hotline?" Tsunagu asked.

"...Foreign embassies are calling the Japanese commission nonstop, and they're all asking how much it costs to put our agency on an international retainer."

Mirai rubbed his temples as a slight headache set in.

"...Tell them our phone lines are under maintenance for the rest of the night," Mirai replied dryly.

SPIN.

Behind the main desk, Makoto spun slowly in Kaito's leather chair and kicked her feet up onto the edge of the mahogany surface.

She took a long sip of her iced coffee through the plastic straw, watching the replay of her boyfriend walking into the brick wall of a Parisian bakery.

"Look at the way he fixed his lapels right before jumping to New York," Makoto said, a proud grin spreading across her face as she pointed her cup at the screen.

"...He totally practiced that angle in the mirror this morning."

Tsunagu blinked and looked over at her with a helpless smile.

"Wait... you knew he could link twenty-five countries together like that, Miss Manager?" Tsunagu asked, setting his tablet down.

"Of course I knew," Makoto replied brightly, placing her cup on a coaster and leaning back into the leather cushions.

"...I'm the one who has to remind him to eat lunch when he gets bored, though I didn't think he'd blast his own track across five continents just to flex on a cult."

Mirai adjusted his tie and looked back at the frozen frame of Kaito smiling on the Cairo security camera.

"...It certainly solved our PR work for the next decade," Mirai admitted, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"...Nobody in the world is ever going to question our jurisdiction again."

--<>--

Location: U.A. High School, Heights Alliance - Class 1-A Common Room

Time: 8:25 PM

"Ow, ow, ow... my left shoulder is still tingling," Mina Ashido groaned, rolling her arm in wide circles as she flopped onto the green sofa.

Down on the carpet in front of the couch, Eijiro Kirishima rubbed the back of his neck with a grimace.

"Tell me about it," Kirishima said, flexing his fingers to make sure the numbness was finally gone.

"...He barely tapped my collarbone during our spar this afternoon, and my whole body locked up like a statue for ten minutes."

Mashirao Ojiro stretched his tail out across the floorboards to shake off the stiffness.

"At least you didn't land face-first on the turf before he warped us all back into the dorms," Ojiro sighed.

All twenty students of Class 1-A crowded around the common area, with half the class on the couches and the others leaning over the dining tables with their phones out.

On the large television mounted against the wall, NHA TV replayed the split-screen footage from Madrid, Cairo, London, and Singapore.

Izuku Midoriya held his glowing smartphone up from the end of the couch.

"Hey, look at this article Taneo Tokuda just posted on Juko News!" Midoriya called out.

Ochaco Uraraka and Tenya Iida leaned over the armrest to peer down at Midoriya's screen.

[The Two-Minute God: How Japan's Newest Hero Erased a Global Extinction Event Before the Chorus Dropped,] Midoriya read aloud as his thumb scrolled through the column.

"...They've already put together a full map of his route."

"...He started in Egypt, zigzagged through Europe and the Americas, cleared Asia, and finished at the Humarise main base in Otheon!"

Toru Hagakure waved her empty uniform sleeves excitedly in the air.

"Man, if we'd managed to touch his coat during that twenty-on-one challenge today, we would've been out there in the field too!" Hagakure yelled.

Minoru Mineta clutched his head on the floor.

"Are you kidding me, Hagakure?" Mineta shouted.

"...If we went out there, we would've just stood around watching him turn bombs into stickers while our jaws hit the pavement!"

Yuga Aoyama pressed both hands to his cheeks with sparkling eyes.

"Still, did you guys see his outfit?!" Aoyama asked.

"...Not a single speck of dust on that white suit after visiting twenty-five warzones!"

"...That level of style is simply criminal!"

Over at the wooden dining table, Hanta Sero, Denki Kaminari, and Kyoka Jirou huddled around an open laptop surrounded by empty soda cans.

CLICK.

Kaminari hit the spacebar to pause a stitched-together video compilation uploaded ten minutes earlier.

"Okay, wait, wait—check the timestamp on the Cairo clip versus the Otheon clip," Kaminari said, tapping his knuckle against the laptop screen.

Jirou plugged one of her earlobe jacks directly into the laptop's audio port and closed her eyes to listen to the overlapping background recordings from six countries.

Her eyes snapped wide open a second later, and she pulled her jack out of the port.

"...No freakin' way," Jirou muttered.

Momo Yaoyorozu walked over from the kitchen counter carrying a tray of warm teacups.

"What is it, Jirou?" Momo asked.

Jirou pointed a finger at the audio waveform on the screen.

"The track that played out of the sky is that 'New Type of Hero' song we heard him use a few weeks back," Jirou explained.

"...The full song is exactly two minutes and fourteen seconds long."

Sero leaned in closer and squinted at the satellite clock burned into the corner of the leaked WHA footage from Otheon.

A huge grin broke across Sero's face before he burst out laughing.

"...Wait a minute," Sero said slowly.

"...The first bass drop in Egypt happened at 7:39 and forty-six seconds, and the fire in the Otheon command room vanished at 7:42 on the dot!"

Kaminari slammed both hands on the table and laughed hysterically.

"He paced the entire rescue to match the length of his own song!" Kaminari yelled.

"...Who does that?!"

"...The world was facing a global terrorist attack, and the guy made sure he wrapped up the fight right on the outro beat!"

Kirishima pumped his fist into the air from the carpet.

"That's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my entire life!" Kirishima roared.

"...He didn't even rush—he was just vibing across the planet!"

Beside Fumikage Tokoyami, Tsuyu Asui tapped her chin with a finger.

"Ribbit... I wonder how the sound even comes out of the clouds like that," Tsuyu said.

"...Does he fold the air molecules to act like giant speakers?"

Tokoyami folded his arms while Dark Shadow popped out of his collar to nod in agreement.

"...Whatever the method, his mastery over space is absolute," Tokoyami murmured.

Back near the rear pillar, Katsuki Bakugo stood with his hands shoved deep into his sweatpants pockets and glared silently at the television screen.

On the broadcast, a slow-motion replay showed Kaito snapping his fingers between the twin Humarise swordsmen in Otheon and folding both Trigger-enhanced villains into flat paper dolls without looking at them.

SHK.

Bakugo's palms crackled with tiny sparks of sweat as he remembered the spar from earlier that afternoon.

'All twenty of us went at him at the exact same time,' Bakugo thought, gritting his molars together so hard his jaw ached.

'...I even threw my biggest blasts right at his face, and we couldn't even brush the hem of his damn suit.'

At the end of the sofa, Shoto Todoroki stared down at his own right hand, then looked up at the television where his father stood frozen in front of a wall of painted graffiti fire.

"...He put out my old man's strongest flames with a single finger snap," Todoroki said quietly, his voice cutting through the chatter near the couch.

Midoriya stopped scrolling on his phone and looked from Todoroki back to Bakugo.

"We thought we were finally starting to catch up to the top pros during our work-studies," Midoriya said, clenching his scarred right hand into a fist on his knee.

"...He's way ahead of everyone, Kacchan."

"...Even with All Might retired, the bar just went higher than ever."

Bakugo turned his back on the TV and stomped toward the stairs.

"Shut the hell up, Deku," Bakugo growled.

"...I don't care if he can fold the whole damn universe into a piece of paper....I'm still gonna rip that smug white suit to shreds before we graduate."

--<>--

Location: U.A. High School, Main Building - Faculty Office

With Aizawa, Present Mic, and the combat faculty still stationed at defensive perimeters across Japan, the teachers' lounge was empty save for two small figures near the television monitor.

CLINK.

Principal Nezu set a warm porcelain teapot down on the low wooden table and poured a fresh cup of green tea with his white paws.

On a wheeled office stool beside him, Recovery Girl leaned on her syringe-shaped cane with her eyes glued to the medical report scrolling across the NHA TV ticker.

"...I've been practicing medicine since before the hero ranking system was even invented, Nezu," Chiyo said softly, shaking her gray-bunned head in disbelief.

Nezu handed her a small teacup.

"Have you ever seen a cellular reversal quite like that, Recovery Girl?" Nezu asked cheerfully.

Chiyo took the cup and blew gently across the steam.

"It shouldn't be medically possible," Chiyo replied.

"...Once Ideo-Trigger enters the bloodstream through the lungs, it permanently alters the user's Quirk factor and ruptures their capillary walls."

"...My own Quirk only speeds up the body's natural healing process, so I couldn't have flushed that toxin out of his system."

She pointed her cane at the screen and watched the looped clip of the Cairo bazaar where the black veins vanished from the Egyptian hero's neck in a split second.

"That young man bypassed cellular healing entirely," Chiyo murmured, narrowing her eyes behind her visor.

"...He simply rejected the event of the gas leaking in the first place and flattened the chemical back into its container."

"...What kind of monster did you help get licensed, Nezu?"

Nezu took a slow sip from his teacup, his furry ears twitching with amusement.

"When All Might called me weeks ago asking to help fast-track a new hero's paperwork, I must admit even my calculations didn't account for this," Nezu said brightly as he set his saucer down.

"...It's rather ironic when you think about Flect Turn's entire motive tonight."

Chiyo glanced over at the principal.

"...You mean the Quirk Singularity Doomsday theory?" Chiyo asked.

"Precisely!" Nezu replied, raising a single white paw.

"...Humarise believed that as Quirks mix and evolve through the generations, they'll inevitably grow too complex and destructive for the human body to control."

Nezu turned his chair toward the monitor and watched the replay of Kaito chatting with Endeavor's sidekicks in Otheon without a drop of sweat on his brow.

"...By all technical definitions, Hero X's Canvas is the ultimate realization of the Singularity—a power that edits three-dimensional space and physical laws across the globe," Nezu explained, a sharp glint appearing in his black eyes.

"...Yet he suffers zero strain, zero mental backlash, and retains complete control down to the millimeter."

Chiyo let out a quiet, relieved chuckle.

"...So the Singularity handed us a safety net even stronger than Toshinori was in his prime," Chiyo said.

"Indeed," Nezu agreed, taking another sip of his tea.

"...Though I suspect the villains hiding in the shadows are having a much harder time enjoying the broadcast than we are."

--<>--

Location: Gunga Mountain Villa, Paranormal Liberation Front Assembly Hall

Time: 8:45 PM

Dead silence hung over the long conference table at the center of the underground hall.

Up near the front of the room, six projection screens displayed the same international news broadcasts playing across the rest of the world.

Around the table, all nine lieutenants of the Paranormal Liberation Front, Re-Destro, Skeptic, Trumpet, Geten, Dabi, Himiko Toga, Twice, Mr. Compress, and Spinner along with double-agent Pro Hero Slidin' Go, stared up at the frozen image of the white-suited hero in Otheon.

Nobody said a word for three full minutes.

SWING. SWING.

With her knees pulled up against the edge of her chair, Himiko Toga swung her booted feet back and forth underneath the table and hummed a cheerful, off-key tune.

"Hmm-hmm-hmm~ Bending space and time~" Toga sang brightly, resting her chin in her hands with a wide, fanged smile.

"...Hey, hey, Jin!"

"...Don't you think Hero X looks super cute in that white suit?"

"...Do you think Skeptic can hack the sky so I get my own pop song whenever I cut somebody up?"

Twice gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up before grabbing his masked head in both hands and jerking backward.

"Totally, Toga! A catchy jingle would really boost our morale!" Twice chirped.

"...Are you out of your mind?! If music starts playing before an ambush, the heroes will know exactly where we are!"

SLAM!

Down at the tech station of the table, Skeptic slammed the lid of his reinforced laptop shut as veins bulged across his forehead.

"Damn it! Damn it all to hell!" Skeptic snarled, biting his thumb until it nearly bled.

"...I've routed seven different satellite crawlers through the HPSC central registry, the WHA border logs, and Tokyo tax records!"

"...Every single time my code pulls up the file for Hero X, the pixels blur out on my monitor!"

Skeptic ripped off his headset and threw it across the table in a fit of panic.

"There isn't even a digital firewall!" Skeptic yelled, his voice cracking.

"...I printed out a screenshot of his civilian registration form two minutes ago, and the ink smudged itself while I was looking at the paper! ...How the hell does a Quirk censor a piece of paper inside my own hands?!"

Across from him, Spinner gripped the armrests of his chair with his scaly green hands, his mouth completely dry.

Mr. Compress adjusted the top hat tilted over his mask and tapped a gloved finger against the wood.

"...Hero X," Mr. Compress murmured, his usual theatrical tone noticeably subdued.

"...Now we find out the man was barely warming up."

"...What do we do then?"

Slidin' Go wiped a handkerchief furiously across his sweating chin as his eyes darted around the room in terror.

"T-twenty-five countries in two minutes!" Slidin' Go stammered, his thick fingers trembling.

"...I'm on the active hero roster in Japan, and none of the regional commanders even knew he could jump continents!"

"...If he finds out I'm leaking patrol routes to the Liberation Front, I can't even hide—he'll just walk out of my bathroom mirror and turn me into a postcard!"

Trumpet clasped his hands tightly on the table to hide their shaking.

"Calm yourself, Slidin' Go," Trumpet ordered sharply.

"...We have over a hundred thousand liberation warriors stationed across every prefecture in the country."

Twice jumped halfway out of his seat before slumping back down with his arms crossed.

"A hundred thousand warriors don't mean squat if the guy can turn an entire mountain range into a comic strip with a snap of his fingers!" Twice yelled.

"...Hey, I've got a great idea!"

"...Why don't we just call off the whole war in three months, pack our bags, and open a nice quiet bakery in the countryside?!"

Nobody at the table laughed.

Trumpet and Skeptic stared down at the wood in grim silence, unable to argue against what they had just watched on live television.

At the head of the table, Re-Destro rested his heavy elbows on the armrests of his wheelchair as dark stress marks crept around his eyes.

"...The Doctor assured us that once Grand Commander Shigaraki completes his four-month stabilization in the capsule, his power will surpass anything All Might ever possessed," Re-Destro said, his deep voice echoing through the quiet hall.

Beside him in a thick winter parka, Geten lowered his hood and looked at the replay of Kaito turning Endeavor's roaring inferno into wall paint.

"...Shigaraki's Decay destroys anything his five fingers touch, and once he wakes up, that wave of destruction will spread across an entire city," Geten said quietly, his icy breath visible in the air.

"...Tell me, Re-Destro."

"...How do you decay a man who doesn't need to stand on the ground, and who can turn a wave of crumbling dust into a flat drawing before it even reaches his shoes?"

Re-Destro opened his mouth, then slowly closed it again without an answer.

Down at the shadowy end of the table, Dabi leaned back in his chair with his booted feet propped on the corner of the wood, watching Endeavor stand bandaged beside the white-suited hero on the screen.

FZZT.

Small wisps of blue smoke curled up from the scarred skin below Dabi's eyes as he let out a low scoff.

"...What a sick joke," Dabi muttered under his breath, glaring directly at Kaito's smiling face on the broadcast.

"...All Might finally rots away into retirement, and some smug corporate freak in a white suit drops out of the sky to babysit Enji Todoroki."

--<>--

Location: Otheon Mountains, Fortress Exterior

Time: 1:15 PM (Otheon Local Time)

WEE-WOO. WEE-WOO.

Dozens of armored WHA transport trucks and local Otheon police cruisers lined the rocky canyon road outside the breached Humarise stronghold.

Paramedics hurried back and forth with stretchers to load up the unconscious cultist grunts while armed officers secured the perimeter.

Near the back of a reinforced iron containment truck, the Otheon Police Captain held two flat pieces of paper gingerly between his thumb and forefinger.

He looked wildly back and forth between the paper dolls of Ena and Dio and the white-suited hero in front of him.

"...Uh, excuse me, Hero X, sir?" the Captain asked hesitantly, sweat beading on his forehead as he gestured toward the graffiti murals of Sidero and Rogone painted onto the canyon rocks.

"...We're ready to transport the Humarise inner circle to the maximum-security Tartarus annex, except our handcuffs don't fit on drywall or notebook paper."

Kaito chuckled warmly and slid one hand out of his trouser pocket, walking over to the open rear doors of the five Quirk-suppressing iron pods mounted on the truck bed.

"Sorry about that, Captain," Kaito said casually.

"...I was on a bit of a tight schedule earlier... Go ahead and toss those two sheets inside the first cage."

The police captain nodded quickly, placed the two paper dolls onto the metal floor of the first restraint pod, and stepped back.

Kaito raised his right hand and lined up his thumb and middle finger.

SNAP.

POP! POP! POP!

A soft spatial ripple swept across the canyon walls and into the back of the armored transport trucks.

Inside the first cage, the two sheets of paper inflated back into three-dimensional flesh and bone, dumping a groggy, Trigger-exhausted Ena and Dio onto the iron floor in a heap.

At the same time, the graffiti murals on the canyon boulders and the charcoal drawing of Beros up on the cliffside peeled straight off the stone and materialized inside the remaining four pods with loud thuds.

CLANG!

The WHA officers slammed the steel doors shut and engaged the magnetic locks with huge sighs of relief.

"Thank you so much, sir!" the Captain said, giving Kaito a stiff salute before jogging off to oversee the convoy.

Before Kaito could take two steps away from the truck, Burnin, Kido, Onima, and the rest of the Flaming Sidekickers rushed up to surround him alongside Pankration, Maestro, and Vespa.

"Yo, Hero X! That was completely insane!" Burnin yelled, gesturing wildly at the sky with both hands.

"...How the heck did you blast your own theme song out of the clouds across the whole mountain range?!"

"...Did you hide invisible speakers in the stratosphere or what?!"

Kido gestured rapidly with his bandaged hands, completely losing his usual stoic cool.

"Forget the speakers—how did you turn an iron cannonball into a laser pointer without even looking behind you?!" Kido asked.

"...One second those twins were trying to take our heads off, and the next second they were origami!"

Maestro stepped forward and offered a deep bow with his violin tucked under his arm.

"Indeed, my friend," Maestro said. "...As a fellow musician, your sense of rhythm and tempo during combat is a masterpiece."

Pankration slapped his leather chest harness with a wide grin while Vespa hovered beside him nodding rapidly.

"You saved all of our hides out here, man!" Pankration boomed.

"...If you ever visit Greece, drinks are on my agency for a whole year!"

Kaito laughed easily and held up a hand as he looked around at the bruised, dirt-covered heroes.

"You guys are giving me way too much credit," Kaito said warmly, looking directly at Burnin and Kido. "...I saw the layout when I dropped in... You three kept those blade-twins pinned in the canyon bottleneck, and Maestro's sonic waves had their front line shut down before I even got out of my chair in Japan."

Kaito looked over at Pankration and Vespa and gave them an appreciative nod.

"Holding off five Trigger-boosted elites without giving up an inch of the gate is tough work," Kaito added casually.

Burnin blinked, her cheeks flushing slightly beneath her fiery hair before she grinned and punched Kaito lightly on the shoulder.

"Man, those three U.A. students told us you were some untouchable boss, and you're actually super chill!" Burnin laughed.

THUD. THUD.

The chatter around the transport trucks quieted down as heavy footsteps crunched against the gravel path.

Endeavor walked slowly out of the shattered fortress entrance with thick white medical bandages wrapped tightly around his scorched forearms and ribs.

The Flaming Sidekickers and international heroes stepped aside to clear a wide path between the Japanese Number One and Kaito.

Endeavor stopped five feet away and stared directly into Kaito's eyes while low orange flames flickered along his jawline.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

'He doesn't know me from the three months I spent managing his agency in my timeline,' Kaito thought, keeping a relaxed smile on his face.

'...Let's see how this version of Enji handles owing someone a favor.'

Endeavor took a deep breath and lowered his chin slightly in front of his entire agency and the foreign strike team.

"...In the command room," Endeavor rumbled, his gravelly voice carrying across the quiet staging area.

"...That was your voice echoing through the air."

Kaito rested one hand in his suit pocket.

"Guilty," Kaito replied smoothly. "...The acoustics in that bunker weren't great, so I had to fold a small pocket of space near the ceiling to get through to you."

Endeavor glanced down at his bandaged right hand and flexed his bruised fingers, remembering the sensation of trapping his heat beneath his skin to overwhelm Flect Turn.

"...Pulling the heat inward to collapse the air around my skin," Endeavor said, looking back up at Kaito with sharp blue eyes.

"...That advice is the only reason I bypassed Flect Turn's reflection without tearing my own lungs apart."

"...How did a rookie who debuted a month ago know the exact thermal threshold of my body?"

Kaito tilted his head slightly as a small, nostalgic smile crossed his lips.

"Call it a lucky guess from an outside observer, Number One," Kaito answered lightly "...When you watch someone throw fire that hot for long enough, you figure out pretty quickly that their body works like a high-pressure engine."

"...I just figured if anyone had the grit to pull that heat back inside on the first try, it'd be you."

Endeavor stared at him for three seconds, searching the young man's face for any hint of mockery.

The Number One Hero let out a low breath through his nose, crossed his bandaged arms over his chest, and gave a single firm nod.

"...The prototype still boils my blood after ten seconds," Endeavor stated bluntly.

"...Next time we're both in Tokyo, I expect you to explain the cooling theory behind that move in person, Hero X."

"Sure thing, Endeavor," Kaito replied.

Kaito glanced down at the silver wristwatch on his left cuff and raised his eyebrows at the Tokyo timezone dial.

"Speaking of business hours... it's already past eight-thirty back in Japan, and I have a strict rule against unpaid overtime," Kaito joked, waving his left hand at the international heroes and the Flaming Sidekickers.

"...Get some rest, everyone, and I'll see you guys around in Tokyo!"

Before Burnin or Endeavor could open their mouths to reply, Kaito raised his right hand into the air.

SNAP.

...

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