At the Kawasaki Electric plant on the southern outskirts—
Just after Yamamoto Saru ended his call, a man with the grotesque form of a humanoid scorpion rushed in.
"Master Yamamoto! Pro Heroes are closing in on the factory. It looks like they're preparing to attack!"
"What!?"
The composure on Yamamoto's face shattered instantly.
Kurogiri's warp gate was still some minutes away.
Their intel had said police and Pro Heroes were searching across eight different points. The Evolutionary organization deliberately created fake sites, hired thugs from the "black-market chaos zone," and planted them to stall authorities and mislead them.
Those punks should've bought them time.
Kurogiri should've been retrieving them.
Yet somehow, the Pro Heroes had pinpointed the real base out of the eight.
Yamamoto snapped an order and hurried to the surveillance room with the Scorpion and the Winged Man. On the monitor, he saw Kōgūyami, Pixie-Bob, Mandalay, Kamui Woods, and Sirius marching straight toward the factory without hesitation.
Kōgūyami was here…
Meaning All Might might be close behind.
Yamamoto's blood ran cold.
He knew police had requested support from Japan's top hero—the Symbol of Peace.
And if Kōgūyami was present, the vanguard wasn't far.
"Level-one alert—now!" Yamamoto barked into the factory's broadcast system. "If our rescue doesn't arrive in ten minutes, destroy every piece of data you planned to take, then inject the Quirk-Enhancement Formula and fight!"
Lock, still hidden by Mimesis, heard every word.
Yamamoto turned, producing two vials of shimmering golden liquid.
One went to the Scorpion. One to the Winged Man.
"What's this?" the Winged Man asked, hand trembling.
"The newest evolution formula. Created using data from the Flamingo experiment. It will fully evolve your Quirk."
The Poison Scorpion snatched his vial eagerly. He'd long accepted that he would die for this organization.
But the Winged Man hesitated.
He was half-secretary, half-researcher.
He knew the cost of this serum.
The price of 'evolution'…
was one's remaining life.
A "complete" evolution meant completely burning through all vitality.
Death was guaranteed.
"All of this is for us—the Evolvers," Yamamoto insisted. "If the heroes break the defense line, we won't escape anyway."
He produced another golden vial, implying he would also inject it if necessary.
That seemed to settle the Winged Man's fear.
He accepted the vial and left with the Poison Scorpion.
The instant they were gone, Yamamoto slipped the extra vial back into his coat.
His face trembled with panic—not conviction.
He didn't intend to die.
Everyone else here could, as long as the heroes were delayed long enough for Kurogiri to extract him.
"If it comes down to itReleasese all the incomplete Nomu."
His eyes slid toward the rows of cultivation tanks.
Those malformed creatures couldn't survive long outside their vats—minutes at best.
But in those minutes, their raw combat ability would be more than enough to stall Pro Heroes.
…
Outside, five heroes breached the factory:
Kōgūyami.
Pixie-Bob.
Mandalay.
Kamui Woods.
Sirius.
"New message from Lock," Mandalay relayed, fingers pressed to her headgear. "We have ten minutes before the villains destroy all remaining research data."
The Quirk-Enhancement Drug data was the real priority.
Destroying Evolutionary's base meant nothing if their research survived elsewhere.
"Then we attack now."
Kōgūyami split into dozens of clones.
Pixie-Bob slammed both hands onto the floor—earthen monsters erupted from the ground one after another. Two of them formed up defensively around Mandalay and Sirius.
"There are two sets of footsteps approaching," Sirius warned.
"Combat positions!"
Kamui Woods surged forward first.
"Preemptive Strike—Lacquered Chains!"
His branches lashed forward just as the Winged Man and Poison Scorpion rounded the corner.
"Wind Blades!"
The Winged Man flapped his feathered arms, generating invisible slicing gusts that severed several branches. But there were too many—Kamui Woods was relentless.
The Winged Man didn't dare stay grounded. He shot upward, flapping wildly. He had no desire to die here. Let the combat-oriented Scorpion handle this.
The Poison Scorpion snapped his oversized pincers, breaking through several branches—but as more earth monsters and clones closed in, desperation overtook him.
He injected the golden serum without hesitation.
Branches coiled around him, forming a cage.
Earth monsters and clones surged through openings, striking from all sides.
Then—
A burst of dark purple gas erupted from the Scorpion's body.
The branches touching it melted like wet paper.
The earth monster it touched dissolved into a collapsing heap of mud.
Kōgūyami's face tightened as information from his clones hit his mind.
"Fall back! His Quirk is poison gas—very high-grade!"
Confined areas made poison catastrophically dangerous.
Mandalay sent the warning instantly through telepathy.
And inside the factory—
"A Poison Scorpion…?" Lock exhaled. "Looks like I have to attack from the inside first."
He took a deep breath, eyes sweeping the many researchers ahead—
—and prepared to make his move.
---
A/N: Advanced Chapters Have Been Uploaded On My Patreon
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