The battle did not begin with sound.
It began with pressure—a tension in the air that made Elias feel, absurdly, like the atmosphere in his own bedroom had thickened. The screen before him filled with the rolling blue-black of the Pacific, clouds trembling with electric veins. A single speck of white carved across the sky like a comet: Star and Stripe, America's strongest hero, carrying herself with the impossible composure of someone who had long ago decided that fear was a luxury she couldn't afford.
Below her, far smaller but infinitely more ominous, Shigaraki Tomura stood balanced atop a flying Nomu, the wind whipping through his pale hair. He looked like a corpse that had decided it was offended by the living.
Elias leaned forward on his elbows, breath held.
Even before the lightning struck, even before the sea churned, he could feel it—the weight of power. Of decisions that mattered. Of people who could shake the world simply by daring to exist loudly.
Something he had never felt in his own life.
The skies exploded.
A shockwave of electricity burst outward from Shigaraki, cracking the air itself. The Nomu's silhouette vanished in white light. Fighter jets split formation, metal wings screaming as they dove out of the blast radius.
Star and Stripe did not flinch.
Her voice cut through the roar like a blade:
"The air within one hundred meters ahead of me will cease to exist!"
And the world obeyed.
The vacuum erupted with a sound that wasn't a sound at all—more of a sudden absence, like the universe had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale. The space before her collapsed inward, folding around Shigaraki. His skin pulled taut against bone. The pressure attempted to crush him the way a hand crushes an egg.
Elias's nails dug into the carpet.
He mouthed the words, almost involuntarily:
New Order.
The Quirk that rewrote the rules of reality.
The Quirk he had fantasized about more times than he would admit. The Quirk that let a single human being tell the world how to behave.
And she wielded it with terrifying precision.
He envied her so sharply it hurt.
He wanted that kind of certainty—of strength—of presence. He wanted to take the world in both hands and bend it until something finally went his way.
From the flicker in Shigaraki's grin, even as his bones strained under the pressure, Elias sensed that the villain felt something similar—but twisted.
Before the vacuum could finish the job, Star gave another order.
"Fire!"
The fighter jets unleashed a constellation of lasers. Light rained downward in straight, disciplined spears.
Shigaraki's body convulsed—and the beams arced away from him, bending unnaturally.
Reflect. Scatter.
Two stolen Quirks working in perfect, mocking harmony.
One powered the other. One amplified the next. He wasn't a villain; he was a malfunctioning god.
But Star raised her hand.
"The reflected laser will stop."
And though it should have been impossible, though physics itself should have protested—the beam froze inches before her face, halted like a guilty child caught mid-misdeed.
Elias exhaled, astonished. Even knowing what was coming did nothing to dull the awe.
Shigaraki lunged.
He had learned enough of her limitations to test them. Star met him mid-sky, fist glowing with the force of a rewritten law. When her punch landed, the shockwave rippled outward, rolling the clouds into spirals.
For a moment—one razor-thin moment—she looked victorious.
But victory is a fragile thing.
Star's next command cut through the air.
"Shigaraki Tomura's heart will stop."
The world hesitated.
And the rule failed.
Because he was not Tomura Shigaraki, not fully, not anymore. Because All For One's parasitic will rotted inside him like a cancer of identity. Because even his name could no longer decide who it belonged to.
Her power could not grasp something so fractured.
Shigaraki laughed. A broken, echoing sound that felt like the ocean itself recoiling.
Elias's throat tightened. There was something hideous in that laughter. Not just cruelty—certainty.
Star didn't falter.
She raised both hands to the heavens.
The sky tore open.
From the sundered clouds, air condensed—folding, shaping, obeying her—until a colossal figure descended. A construct of atmosphere, a thousand times her size, a titan molded in her own image.
Her final gambit.
Her masterpiece.
"Fist Bump to the Earth."
The giant's hand slammed downward. The ocean erupted, spraying salt and debris across the screen. Every sound in Elias's house disappeared beneath the quake of impact.
The second strike came with the fighter jets channeling energy through the construct's arms, condensing into a weapon that stretched from sea to stratosphere.
"Keraunos!"
A lightning-laced beam tore through Shigaraki and pinned him to the ocean floor.
For a heartbeat, the screen glowed white.
And Elias thought—
She's done it. She really—
But Shigaraki crawled through the beam.
Half his face was ash. His arm hung in tatters. Parts of him were so destroyed he should have ceased functioning altogether.
Yet he moved.
Not through willpower.
Through inevitability.
He reached her.
His hand clamped over her face.
The sound that followed was not a beam or explosion.
It was softer.
The sound of something being stolen.
Her skin cracked. Her hair dissolved. Her body decayed like a flag left too long in the sun. But even as death claimed her, even as his hand molded around her skull—
Her eyes burned like twin suns.
"New Order... will revolt… against all other Quirks…"
The rule branded itself onto Shigaraki's soul.
And chaos followed.
Internal, unending, catastrophic chaos.
Quirks turned on each other. Powers cannibalized powers. His body contorted, rejecting the impossible weight of rebellion inside him. He staggered, flesh tearing from the inside out.
And then, finally—
He fled.
Not defeated, but wounded in a way nothing else in his life had ever achieved.
The ocean settled.
The sky dimmed.
Star's remains scattered into the wind like embers.
Elias didn't realize his cheeks were wet until he tasted salt.
The episode ended.
Silence returned.
But the silence felt wrong—as if the absence of sound were merely the shadow of something enormous waiting just beyond the edge of comprehension.
Elias wiped his face with his sleeve.
He whispered, barely audible:
"I would've used it better."
The words didn't come from arrogance.
They came from desperation.
From the hollow place inside him that had grown year after year—empty space where dreams and power should have been.
He clicked the TV off and walked to his room. The darkness felt heavier than usual, as if the echo of Star's last rule still lingered in the air, clinging to him.
He lay on his bed, scrolling his email, trying to forget the feeling of helplessness gnawing at him.
Then he saw it.
YOUR ADVENTURE AWAITS.
The message wasn't flashy. It wasn't decorated with graphics or gimmicks.
Just a link.
A link he absolutely should not click.
But his finger moved on its own.
The page loaded to a black screen.
WELCOME, PLAYER.BUILD YOUR ADVENTURE.
He sat up straighter.
SELECT A POWER.
He scrolled.
Past Blast.Past Fire Manipulation.Past Telekinesis.
Then—
NEW ORDER.
His breath stilled.
He clicked.
A gold shimmer pulsed across the screen, like a heartbeat syncing with his own.
Next:
SELECT A WORLD.SPIN THE WHEEL?
He hesitated only long enough to feel foolish for hesitating.
Tap.
The wheel spun, colors smearing into a kaleidoscope. The sound it made was not digital. It was the grinding of ancient machinery. Something old, patient, watching.
Elias felt dizzy.
The wheel slowed.
Tick.
Tick.
Stopped.
JUJUTSU KAISEN.
He opened his mouth to laugh—or gasp—or scream—
But his phone vibrated violently in his hand.
New text appeared.
ADVENTURE CONFIRMED.BEGIN TRANSFER.
The light from the screen surged, swallowing the room.
The ceiling folded inward like origami. The walls melted into drifting paper talismans, ink
bleeding into the air. A cold wind swept through him though his window was closed.
His body lifted.
His voice broke.
The world peeled away.
And the last thought Elias had before consciousness dissolved was not fear—
It was longing.
Finally—finally—
something was happening to him.