News, especially strange and exciting news, travels faster than anything else at a school full of super-powered teenagers.
The story of the mysterious figure in the North Quad didn't just spread; it exploded. The three students who had been saved were the spark that lit the fuse.
They had stumbled back into the main campus area, breathless and wide-eyed, their clothes torn and their faces pale.
They burst into the student lounge, a place usually filled with the lazy chatter of off-duty Strikers. The room went silent as everyone turned to look at the disheveled trio.
"You won't believe it!" the spiky-haired kid, whose name was Mark, gasped, leaning heavily on a table. "There were... creatures! Like giant, shadow bugs!"
"We were goners!" the girl with the broken shield cried, her voice trembling. "They were so fast! Our shields were failing, and then... and then..."
"He just showed up!" the third student finished, his eyes the size of dinner plates. "Out of nowhere! Dressed all in black, with a mask... no face on it at all! Just blank!"
The other students in the lounge exchanged skeptical looks. It sounded like a story cooked up to explain why they had broken the rules and gone into a non-patrolled sector.
"And the way he fought!" Mark continued, getting more animated. "He had this... this pipe! Just a regular metal pipe! And he just... tapped them! One tap each, and they just... poof! Gone! It took like, five seconds!"
The story was so ridiculous that most people would have laughed it off. But the genuine terror in their eyes was hard to fake.
And when the official C-Rank Striker team that had been dispatched finally arrived at the scene, their report only made the mystery deeper.
They found three traumatized students, a few strange wet spots on the pavement that evaporated before they could be sampled, and absolutely no sign of any Aberrations.
The only other person they found was a bored-looking janitor who complained that he'd been called out for a cleanup job where there wasn't even any mess to clean.
"I brought the industrial-grade squeegee and everything," Alex had told the stern-looking team leader with a world-weary sigh. "Wasted trip."
By that evening, the story had hit The Node, and it went from a strange rumor to a full-blown phenomenon.
The forums, which were usually filled with students trying to sell old textbooks or complain about cafeteria food, were now dedicated to this one topic. The thread was titled: "The Black-Clad Ghost of the North Quad - What REALLY Happened?"
Alex, sitting comfortably on his lumpy bed, scrolled through the posts with a grin, munching on a bag of chips he'd successfully liberated from the vending machine. Reading the wild theories about himself was quickly becoming his new favorite hobby.
> User: BlazeBoy22
I'm telling you, Mark is making it up. He probably just tripped and imagined the whole thing to avoid getting in trouble for sneaking out. A guy with a pipe? Please.
> User: LeoTheLion
I don't know… Mark looked pretty scared. And I believe in mysterious, powerful people now. Some people out there can do things you wouldn't believe. #OracleIsReal
> User: ShieldMaiden9
My cousin is on the response team. She said it was weird. No signs of a fight at all, except for the students. It was too clean. It's like whatever happened was erased.
This last comment sparked a new wave of speculation. The idea that he had left no evidence became a key part of the legend.
> User: DataGeek
Let's analyze the data. If the story is true:
Subject is incredibly fast and stealthy.
Subject uses a low-tech weapon with high-tech results.
Subject leaves zero evidence of their presence.
Subject has zero interest in fame or recognition.
What kind of person fits that profile?
> User: SirPunchesAlot
Maybe it's a secret instructor? Like a final exam we don't know we're taking? "Pop Quiz: Don't get eaten by shadow bugs. Your grade is Pass/Fail."
> User: ConspiracyCarl
No way, man. It's gotta be a government agent from a black-ops division, testing out new stealth gear. The whole Glitch was probably a setup. We're all just lab rats in a giant experiment!
> User: FistWizard69
I bet it's a super high S-Rank student from the senior class who was just bored and decided to mess with some freshmen for fun. That's something I would do.
Then came the post that gave him his name.
> User: Thinker_Not_A_Fighter
All these theories are missing the point. The most interesting part is what he didn't do. He didn't make a grand entrance. He didn't shout a cool attack name.
He left zero mess. He took zero damage. He had zero wasted movements. He's a walking embodiment of nothing, of the number that comes before one. We shouldn't call him the "Black-Clad Ghost." We should call him Zero.
The name stuck instantly. It was simple, cool, and perfectly captured the mysterious nature of the incident. Within an hour, everyone on The Node was calling him Zero. The Urban Legend of Zero, the Ghost of Aegis, was born.
The story was everywhere on campus. In the hallways, students would whisper about him. In the cafeteria, tables were buzzing with theories.
The tale grew with each retelling. The simple steel pipe became a legendary artifact that could de-materialize anything it touched. The three shadow mantises became a horde of twenty giant monsters.
Zero wasn't just fast; he could teleport. He wasn't just silent; he was an actual ghost.
Meanwhile, in a high-tech training room on the other side of campus, Yuna Kwon was not impressed.
She stood in the center of the room, her eyes closed, her hands outstretched. The air around her was freezing cold.
She was trying to follow the strange advice from the odd IT worker. Signal noise. Data flow. Instead of trying to unleash a blizzard, she was trying to form a single, perfect snowflake.
It was maddeningly difficult. It required a level of control she had never even tried to achieve before. Her power wanted to rage, to explode outwards. Taming it felt like trying to whisper a secret during a hurricane.
She could hear two A-Rank students talking near the door, their voices low but excited.
"...and then he just vanished! They say he didn't even leave footprints."
"I heard he took out the creatures without even touching them, just by looking at them."
"Do you think he's stronger than Yuna?"
Yuna's eyes snapped open. The half-formed snowflake in front of her shattered into a cloud of ice dust. She turned and glared at the two students, her icy gaze making them flinch and quickly walk away.
She let out a frustrated breath, the air misting in front of her. Zero. She had heard the ridiculous stories all week. A mysterious hero fighting with a pipe. It sounded like a children's story.
To her, power was something real, something overwhelming. It was the crushing pressure of her [Glacial Core], a force that could freeze an entire room in a heartbeat.
It was a tangible, undeniable thing. Her whole life had been about learning to wield that immense power. The idea that true strength could come from efficiency rather than raw force was insulting.
It went against every lesson her family had ever taught her, every instinct she had.
A parlor trick, she thought with a scowl, clenching her fists. It's a gimmick. A way for the weak to feel special.
She believed that if this Zero ever faced a real threat, a truly powerful Aberration or a high-ranking Striker, his clever little tricks and his metal pipe would shatter like glass.
Precision was meaningless in the face of overwhelming power. You couldn't efficiently dodge an explosion that leveled a city block. You couldn't find a weak spot on a tidal wave.
Her rivalry was with real power, with the top-ranked Strikers of the world. This mysterious Zero was just a distraction, a silly campus legend for lower-ranked students to get excited about. He was an amusing sideshow, nothing more.
She closed her eyes again, trying to refocus. But the thought of him lingered, an annoying itch in the back of her mind. This new focus on "efficiency" and "precision" felt like a cheap trick, whether it came from a ghost with a pipe or a janitor with a weird analogy.
Back in a little-used bathroom on the third floor, Alex was busy trying to unclog a stubborn toilet. He had one earbud in, listening to a downloaded audio file of the campus news forum discussing the latest Zero theories.
"...and my theory is that he's actually a benevolent spirit bound to the island's core, a guardian who awakens only when students are in mortal peril!" a student said dramatically.
Alex grunted and gave the plunger another hard shove. "Nope," he muttered to the toilet. "Just a guy who really, really doesn't want to fill out paperwork." The clog finally gave way with a satisfying gurgle. He smiled. Another problem solved with quiet efficiency.