Ashend Rises
The first target was a weapons drop.Beneath an unfinished overpass on the edge of Musutafu—half-choked in weeds and stray concrete dust, where no cameras dared watch and no hero patrols bothered to go. Just five men, a crate of black-market rifles, and a greedy night thick with opportunity.
Takuma crouched on a rusted I-beam above them, a dark blur in the skeletal framework of the overpass. Hood up. Eyes unblinking. Body still. His breath came slow, measured—like a held note on the verge of becoming a scream.
He watched. Analyzed.
Three armed. Two distracted. No quirks. Their backs are to each other. No coordinated fallback plan. No overwatch.
He knelt and placed a palm on the beam beneath him. The moment his fingers met steel, the metal responded—not by flowing into him, but by stirring.
It was like touching a living wire.
Power radiated up his arms in a shimmer of silver light. Not substance, not weight—but potential. A pulse. A thrum. Like the beam was giving him permission. The veins in his forearms glowed faintly, tracing jagged lines of steel-gray energy under his skin.
The steel didn't enter him. It connected to him.
And through that connection, he commanded.
Below, a rebar rod resting against the side of the truck lifted silently into the air, guided by his will. It hovered, invisible in the dark.
He dropped.
The first man never saw him. A burst of kinetic force from the rebar cracked across the back of his head, sending him sprawling. Before the others could turn, Takuma landed between them like a curse given form.
The next second erupted into chaos.
A rifle jerked toward him—he wrenched the concrete beneath their feet into jagged spikes, shifting the ground just enough to throw the man off balance. The bullet ricocheted wild.
Takuma moved in a blur, ducking beneath another shot. The rebar twisted midair, snaking forward to wrap around a gunman's arm before yanking him off his feet. His scream choked off when he hit the ground.
The others ran.
One made it to the truck. The other limped, his shin bent at a wrong angle, whimpering as Takuma approached. He looked up with blood and panic in his eyes.
Takuma stared back, the glow in his arms dimming.
"I know what you sold," he said, voice low. "You don't get to hide behind the shadows anymore."
He raised his hand—then hesitated.
No. Not yet.
Instead, he turned and approached the crate. A single tap of his finger against a bullet casing let him taste the residue—smokeless powder, metal oil, flammable grease.
Perfect.
From his palm, thin wisps of dark smoke began to seep, curling around his hand like serpents. He stepped back and let it fall onto the guns.
The fire started small. Controlled.
Then it bloomed.
The sky glowed amber for just a moment, casting his shadow across the debris. And just before vanishing into the dark, he left behind the symbol burned into a piece of sheet metal, etched by sheer heat:
ASHEND.
The media was slower to catch on.
Another vigilante, they said at first. A new player in town. Possibly another hero drop-out or a failed intern gone rogue. But the reports kept piling up.
No fatalities. Multiple injuries. Dozens of arrests in the wake of his attacks. Every scene marked with burns or smoke damage—and a name scorched into steel or stone.
The underworld whispered it like a prayer:
Ashend.
At Home
Takuma sat on the edge of his bed, arms stretched out in front of him, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Faint lines still glowed beneath the skin—leftover energy from his last hit. He flexed his fingers, watching the dim silver fade.
The concrete had given enough energy to last maybe ten minutes of solid work. Not bad for cheap building material.
But he could feel it already: the drain, the chill behind his ribs.
That drop had taken more from him than he liked to admit.
He rubbed his face, glanced at the mess of maps, printouts, and USB sticks scattered across his desk. A hitlist of the scum that slipped through society's cracks. Not all of them murderers. But enough of them guilty. Enough to justify the bruises on his knuckles.
Maybe.
He told himself it was justice. That the ones who killed, who ruined, deserved more than a slap on the wrist from a hero with a sponsor and a PR team.
But as he stared into the mirror hanging by his closet, he didn't see justice.
He saw smoke. Gray, coiling, consuming everything around it.
Meanwhile — Musutafu, Pro Hero HQ
Tsukauchi laid the latest file down on the table. Burned crates. Confiscated quirk enhancers. Five suspects in the hospital.
"All connected to known smugglers," he said. "No deaths, but one's got a shattered pelvis. Two more with permanent joint damage."
Eraserhead scanned the images without comment. The glow marks on the concrete caught his eye—thin etching lines like circuitry. "The same again?"
"Yeah. Smoke. Metal interference. Something's draining and repurposing structural materials on-site. He's not absorbing it—he's using it."
Aizawa leaned back, expression unreadable.
"This isn't a random brawler," he muttered. "This is someone who studies. Plans. Watches."
"Another Stain?" All Might asked.
"No," Aizawa said. "Worse."