The silence was the most terrifying thing. The sonic boom had passed, the dust was settling, and the only sound now was the rattling of loose glass still clinging to the edges of demolished window frames.
Kenzou Rokujo lowered his arm, still staring at the empty patch of sky where a mountain of obsidian had been seconds ago. His mind was a blank whiteboard, save for one looping thought: What was that?
The injured Pro Hero, Crush-Fist, struggled to his feet, clutching his ribs. He was a powerfully built man with a permanent scowl, known for his no-nonsense attitude and intense focus on Quirk power levels. He looked at the smoking crater where Giga-Rock had stood, then at Kenzou, then back at the sky.
"What in the...?" Crush-Fist coughed, stumbling toward the nearest reporter who was scrambling to pull his expensive camera back together. "Did you get that? Did the military deploy a new sonic cannon?"
Kenzou instinctively pulled his worn baseball cap lower over his eyes, trying to disappear. He didn't want the credit. He didn't want the attention. He just wanted to go home and try to make sense of the fact that his "push" had just broken the known laws of physics.
"Sir! Are you the hero who defeated Giga-Rock?"
A shrill voice cut through the air. A reporter, a young woman with a microphone bearing the logo of a minor but persistent local news channel, had spotted Kenzou. Her eyes were wide with the thrill of a scoop.
"No, I... I just tripped," Kenzou mumbled, turning to sprint away.
"Wait! Your name! We need your name!" the reporter called, scrambling over a pile of rubble.
Kenzou ran. He used the same speed he used to cover his 10km daily run—a speed that made him appear as a blur to the average eye. In two seconds, he had put a city block between himself and the scene.
He vaulted a collapsed wall and ducked into a narrow, dark alleyway. He leaned against the damp brick, panting not from exertion, but from sheer panic.
"I need to figure this out," he muttered, peeling off his sweat-soaked t-shirt. He inspected his right fist, flexing and unflexing it. It was just a hand. A plain, normal, Quirkless hand. Was it a delayed Quirk manifestation? Did I somehow inherit a new form of Deku-san's power? No, that's impossible. I'm Quirkless.
He was interrupted by a new voice, low and gravelly.
"Kid. Hold up."
Kenzou snapped his head up. Standing at the mouth of the alley was Crush-Fist. The Pro Hero's face was bruised, his costume torn, but the intensity in his eyes was staggering.
"You can't outrun me, even with that... speed," Crush-Fist said, his voice laced with suspicion. "I want to know what your Quirk is. Right now. That wasn't an ordinary punch. That was an extinction-level force."
Kenzou swallowed, feeling a familiar frustration bubble up. This was the same doubt, the same dismissiveness he'd faced his entire life—just aimed at the wrong problem this time.
"I don't have one, sir," Kenzou said, his voice quiet but firm. "I'm Quirkless."
Crush-Fist let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh. "You just launched Giga-Rock halfway to the moon, and you're going to tell me you're Quirkless? Don't insult me, kid.
Tell me the truth. Is it a hidden kinetic energy Quirk? A sonic amplification Quirk? We have to register it!"
"It's not a Quirk," Kenzou insisted, pushing himself off the wall. "It's just... hard work. I train."
Crush-Fist took a menacing step forward, his knuckles momentarily glowing as he subconsciously activated his density Quirk.
"Training doesn't violate Newton's laws of motion. That punch had the force of a tactical missile! I need to report this. You're either a new form of Hero or... a massive security threat."
Kenzou realized he couldn't just run. He had to convince the hero.
"Look, Crush-Fist-san," Kenzou said, keeping his voice respectful. "I've been rejected by every Hero school because I'm Quirkless. I'm not lying. But I want to be a hero, just like Deku-san. My strength is... it's just raw physicality from four years of non-stop training."
He knew how unbelievable he sounded, but he was telling the truth.
Crush-Fist narrowed his eyes. He ran his hand over his chin, his expression shifting from anger to a deeply unsettling curiosity. The silence stretched, broken only by the distant wail of sirens.
"Okay," Crush-Fist finally said. "New theory. You do have a Quirk, but it's a Passive Enhancement type that only affects your body and requires a ridiculous amount of conditioning to activate. It's so simple and powerful that it bypasses the standard registration criteria. Is that it?"
Kenzou hesitated. If he said yes, the world would leave him alone, finally accepting his strength as a "Quirk." If he said no, they'd call him a liar, a terrorist, or a mutant.
"Yes," Kenzou said, nodding slightly. "It's a Passive Enhancement. It just took... a long time to surface."
"Good," Crush-Fist said, the tension in his shoulders easing only slightly. "We'll call it that. 'Absolute Force.' But here's the problem, kid: that wasn't a hero maneuver. That was a disaster waiting to happen. If you hit a smaller villain like that in the city, you'd kill them and destroy half the block."
Kenzou felt a chill. The Pro Hero was right. He wasn't controlling his power. He hadn't known he had to.
"I can't control it," Kenzou admitted quietly. "I didn't know I was that strong."
Crush-Fist considered this. He looked at Kenzou's earnest, exhausted face. He saw the desperation to be a hero, the sheer dedication, and the frightening lack of control. This kid was a walking, accidental nuclear weapon.
"Here's the deal, kid. I won't report your 'Quirk' to the Hero Commission yet," Crush-Fist said, leaning in. "But you owe me. Until we figure out how you can control that terrifying strength, you are essentially a freelance, unlicensed Hero. You don't use it again unless it is a life-or-death, city-ending emergency. Understand? I'll contact a few underground connections. We need to measure your power level safely."
This was the opening Kenzou had dreamed of—a connection to the Pro Hero world, a chance to train under an expert, even if it was under duress.
"I understand, Crush-Fist-san," Kenzou said, relief washing over him. "I'll do whatever you say. I just want to learn how to be a hero without... without hurting people."
Kenzou returned home that night to find his mother, who had been frantic, relieved and confused. He invented a quick, plausible lie: a new Pro Hero had swept in at the last moment and saved the day.
But the next morning, the media storm was unavoidable.
The headlines screamed:
MYSTERY HERO EMERGES: TITAN VILLAIN DEFEATED BY UNIDENTIFIED SHOCKWAVE!
CRUSH-FIST SAVED BY UNKNOWN FORCE—IS THIS A NEW ERA OF POWER?
FANS SPECULATE: THE RETURN OF ONE FOR ALL?
Kenzou pulled his cap low and ate his breakfast in silence, listening to the TV commentators argue over his fictional Quirk. Kinetic Force Absorption? Vacuum Pressure Manipulation? None of them were even close.
Later that afternoon, his phone buzzed. It was a restricted, encrypted number.
Crush-Fist: Meet me at the abandoned testing ground. Sector Gamma-9. Midnight. Come alone. And bring a punch.
Kenzou arrived at the designated site, an isolated, heavily reinforced testing facility miles outside the city limits. Crush-Fist was waiting with a nervous-looking man in a lab coat and a single, intimidating piece of equipment: a massive, custom-built impact testing machine designed to measure the destructive force of high-level Quirks. It looked like a titanium wall, twenty feet high, anchored deep into the earth.
"This is Dr. Hanzo," Crush-Fist introduced. "He specializes in physical enhancement Quirks. He's going to try and measure just how ridiculous your 'Passive Enhancement' really is."
Kenzou felt a lump of dread in his throat. How do you measure infinity?
"Rokujo-kun," Dr. Hanzo said, adjusting his glasses. "We've calibrated this machine to handle forces up to 10 Gigajulio—the upper limit of what the current Number One Hero can produce at full power. We need you to hit it. Don't hold back. Just a clean, powerful punch. Give us your maximum effort."
Kenzou nodded, stepping up to the huge titanium wall. He took a deep breath, focusing on the sheer force of will he used during his daily squats. He remembered his inspiration: Deku-san nearly tore his arms off. He had to try to match that effort.
He reared back, put his entire body into the motion, and delivered the strongest punch he had ever knowingly thrown.
One hundred push-ups. One hundred sit-ups. One hundred squats. A 10km run. It was the sum total of four years of meaningless effort.
The result was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The titanium wall did not just measure the force; it was immediately and violently vaporized. The punch ripped through the metal and the concrete anchors beneath it as if they were wet tissue paper. The air in the facility was sucked out in a vacuum, followed by a shockwave that blew the roof of the chamber off entirely.
The force gauge, a complex digital screen, simply flashed two words before going dark: OVERLOAD. ERASURE.
Crush-Fist and Dr. Hanzo were both thrown backward fifty feet, landing hard in the dust. They picked themselves up, looking less like professional analysts and more like shell-shocked survivors.
"W-what was that reading?" Crush-Fist stammered, his eyes wide with a fear he usually reserved for city-wide invasions.
Dr. Hanzo shakily pointed to the now-shattered remnants of the machine. "It didn't record a number. The punch... it generated a localized void. It was so fast, so complete, it essentially removed the material from existence."
Kenzou stood in the center of the demolished chamber, his fist still extended. He didn't feel tired. He didn't feel anything except a crushing sense of disappointment.
"Was that... enough?" Kenzou asked, his voice meekly echoing in the huge, broken space. "Was that close to the Number One Hero's power?"
Crush-Fist finally found his voice. He walked slowly toward Kenzou, his face pale and serious.
"Rokujo Kenzou," he said, his voice quiet. "You didn't hit 10 Gigajulio. You hit a level of force we don't have a word for. You just proved that you are not just stronger than the Number One Hero. You are stronger than the entire history of Quirks."
He sighed, running a hand over his face. "This changes everything. You cannot be registered. You cannot attend a Hero school. You cannot use this power in public. You're not a hero, kid. You're a secret weapon. And our new training is going to be about one thing, and one thing only: learning how to punch like a normal person."
Kenzou looked down at his own fist, the one that had just erased an entire testing chamber. The reality of his absolute power, and the terrifying, impossible journey it meant for his dream, was finally starting to sink in. He wasn't just Quirkless anymore. He was something far more isolated.
How do I save people if I can't even punch a wall without blowing up a city? he thought, the earnest dream of a hero now overshadowed by the responsibility of a god.
The challenge is set! Kenzou needs to learn to hold back. What kind of bizarre, strength-dampening "Hero Suit" will Crush-Fist create for him, and what unexpected villain will force Kenzou to test his new "normal" punch?