● I. THE DEPARTURE: LOGIC AND LEGACY
The morning mist at the Sheets estate was thick enough to obscure the towering gates, turning the meticulously manicured gardens into a world of ghosts. Inside his room, Sherlock stood before a full-length mirror, adjusting the high collar of his civilian jacket. His suitcase sat by the door, packed with the clinical efficiency of a man who viewed travel as a series of weight-to-volume equations.
He took a final glance at his desk, where a single, perfectly folded paper rose sat—a relic of a childhood he was finally reclaiming. He tucked it into his pocket and headed for his father's study. Arthur Sheets was already awake, silhouetted against a floor-to-ceiling window.
"The train departs in forty minutes," Sherlock said, breaking the silence. "I wanted to ask you one last thing before I go off the grid. Uncle Thomas. Why did you suggest him? And why has he been a ghost in this family since I was six years old?"
Arthur didn't turn around. "Thomas Itadori doesn't belong to the world of corporate heroes or flashing cameras, Sherlock. He belongs to the shadows that keep the light from flickering out. He was your mother's anchor, and after she died, he became a man who couldn't stand the sight of the world he failed to protect." Arthur finally turned, his gaze heavy. "He will teach you what UA cannot. He will teach you how to survive when the math stops making sense."
The journey took Sherlock deep into the mountainous prefecture neighboring Hosu City. As the high-speed rail gave way to a rusted bus, and the bus gave way to a winding dirt path, the air grew thin. The "Paper Magician" felt out of place in his designer gear, surrounded by ancient cedars and the scent of damp earth.
He pulled out his phone, the signal bars dancing on the edge of extinction. A notification popped up: a video call from Momo Yaoyorozu.
He answered, and her face filled the screen. She was in her hero costume, looking professional yet visibly drained. "Sherlock! You're actually in the mountains? It looks... primitive."
"The oxygen density is currently at 85% of sea level," Sherlock noted, holding the phone up to show the jagged peaks. "It is the perfect environment for respiratory stress testing. How is your internship with Uwabami?"
Momo sighed, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "It's... a lot of hair and makeup. We've done three talk show appearances this morning. I'm starting to think I'm more of a fashion accessory than a hero-in-training. But I'm observing her situational awareness. She uses her 'celebrity' to manipulate crowd flow. It's fascinating, but I miss the field."
"Misdirection is the core of any good magic act, Momo," Sherlock said. "Don't underestimate the power of being watched. You're learning the 'social' physics of being a hero."
"And you?" Momo's voice softened. "Be careful. My research into Thomas Itadori was... limited. The Commission has his files under a 'Black Box' seal. Whatever he is, he isn't a typical pro."
"Logic dictates I need an unorthodox catalyst to evolve," Sherlock replied. "I'll contact you when I reach the summit—if my phone survives the 'primitive' conditions."
"Stay safe," she whispered. "And don't forget to eat. You get mathematically impatient when your glucose drops."
"I do not," Sherlock countered, though a small smile touched his lips. The signal flickered into a static blur, and the screen went black. Sherlock pocketed the phone, looked at the looming peaks above Hosu, and began the climb.
● II. THE ASCENT INTO THE UNKNOWN: FRICTION AND FURY
The climb was an exercise in physical and mental endurance. For three hours, Sherlock navigated narrow ridgelines where the path was often no wider than a sheet of A4 paper. The silence of the mountain was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic crunch of gravel and the distant, haunting cry of a hawk.
As he reached a plateau roughly five thousand feet up, the air changed. It didn't just feel cold; it felt viscous. Every step felt like walking through thick syrup, and Sherlock's lungs burned as they struggled to extract oxygen from the thinning atmosphere.
Finally, he saw it: a traditional Japanese house nestled against a cascading waterfall. It looked like a postcard of tranquility. But as Sherlock stepped onto the porch, his analytical mind screamed a warning. The wooden floorboards weren't weathered; they were polished to a mirror sheen, and the air around the house was vibrating with a low-frequency hum.
WHAM.
A blur of movement erupted from the shadows of the eaves. Sherlock's instincts, sharpened by his fights with midoriya and Todoroki, took over. He flicked two black-edged cards from his wrist holsters—reinforced with his High-Gloss Glaze—to block whatever was coming.
But the moment the cards touched the air near the attacker, something impossible happened. They didn't fly. They didn't glide. The cards caught fire in mid-air, incinerated by the sheer friction of the atmosphere itself before they could travel a meter.
A massive hand, calloused and scarred, gripped Sherlock's face and slammed him into the wooden porch. The impact didn't splinter the wood; it felt like being slammed into a slab of vibrating, high-density steel.
"You're slow," a raspy voice growled. "You rely on pre-made tools. You're a pampered prince playing with confetti."
Sherlock rolled, gasping for air, and tried to launch a flurry of cards to create a defensive perimeter.
"Mechanical Art: Paper—"
Before he could finish the command, the attacker was on him again. The man didn't move like a normal human. He moved with a terrifying, sliding efficiency, as if the ground beneath his feet offered zero resistance. He swept Sherlock's legs out, and as Sherlock hit the floor, the man planted a heavy boot on his chest.
The pressure was immense. Sherlock looked up into the eyes of a man who looked like a rugged, battle-hardened version of his mother. He had graying hair, a jagged scar running from his jaw to his ear, and eyes that held the cold, unyielding weight of the mountain.
"Uncle... Thomas?" Sherlock choked out, his hands clawing at the man's heavy combat boot.
Thomas Itadori looked down with a sneer. He released the pressure, allowing Sherlock to collapse into a coughing fit. "Why wasn't I there for the last ten years? Because your father wanted to build a birdcage, and I didn't want to see my sister's son chirping behind gold bars. But you... you stepped out of the cage at that festival. You showed a bit of her fire."
Thomas walked to the edge of the porch, looking out over the cliffs of Hosu. "My Quirk is Friction Mastery. I can make the air so rough it shreds your paper before it leaves your hand. I can make the ground so slick you'll break your neck just trying to stand. I don't care about your 'Mechanical Arts.' In the real world, the environment is your first enemy."
Sherlock stood up, his legs shaking, his expensive civilian clothes ruined. He reached for his holsters, only to find them empty. Thomas had destroyed his entire stock of specialty paper in less than five seconds.
"You have no paper left, Magician," Thomas challenged, his hands glowing with a faint, shimmering light. "What does your logic say now? How do you fight when your 'tools' are gone?"
Sherlock wiped a streak of blood from his lip. The emerald spark in his eyes flared into a roar. He realized now why his father had sent him here. He had been a technician who relied on a supply chain. He needed to become a hero who was the supply.
"It says that the variables have changed," Sherlock said, his voice regaining its sharp edge. "I'm not leaving this mountain until I can hit you, Uncle."
"Good," Thomas smirked. "Then let's see how much 'Pulp' you can sweat out before your spirit snaps."
● III. THE FIRST AWAKENING: PERSPIRATION AND THE PROMISE
The air on the mountain didn't just feel thin; it felt hostile. Following the initial confrontation, Thomas didn't allow Sherlock a moment to recover. He led him to a sheer, vertical cliff face on the north side of the house—a wall of jagged granite that seemed to touch the clouds.
"Climb," Thomas commanded.
Sherlock looked at the rock. "Without equipment? The probability of a fatal fall is—"
"The probability of you being a hero is zero if you can't get up a hill," Thomas interrupted. He snapped his fingers. Suddenly, the surface of the granite began to shimmer. Sherlock reached out to grab a handhold, but his fingers slid off as if the rock were coated in industrial grease. "I've removed the friction from the stone. You can't climb this with your hands, and you have no cards left to build a ladder. What now, Magician?"
Sherlock tried again and again, his fingernails clawing uselessly at the frictionless stone. He fell, tumbling into the dirt, over and over until his knees were raw and his breathing was a series of ragged stabs in his chest. The sun began to dip behind the peaks, casting the mountain in a bruised, violet light.
"You're trying to use what you had," Thomas shouted from a ledge above. "You're reaching for your holsters. They're empty! You're a technician without a factory! A hero who runs out of ammo is just a corpse with a costume!"
Sherlock lay in the dirt, his heart hammering against his ribs. His mental fatigue was reaching a critical threshold. He was dehydrated, exhausted, and for the first time in his life, his calculations were yielding nothing but a recurring zero. Think. There has to be a source.
He closed his eyes, forcing his analytical mind to turn inward, away from the external environment and into the biological mechanics of his own body. His mother's Quirk wasn't just about "manipulating" paper; it was about the biological synthesis of cellulose-based fibers through the endocrine system. The glaze his father provided was a chemical coating, but the paper... the paper was him.
He felt the sweat pouring off his body—the salt stinging his eyes, the moisture slicking his neck. Under the extreme physical stress and the low atmospheric pressure, his sweat glands were working in overdrive.
If the Quirk is part of my DNA, then the catalyst must be in the fluid, Sherlock realized.
He focused. He didn't try to "reach" for paper; he tried to become it. He channeled the energy of his Quirk into the perspiration on his palms. He imagined the water molecules bonding with the biological fibers in his sweat, spinning them into microscopic threads, weaving them into a structural lattice.
"Generate," Sherlock whispered, his voice cracking. "Bind. Refine."
Initially, nothing happened. But then, a strange, cooling sensation washed over his hands. The sweat on his palms began to thicken, turning from a clear liquid into a viscous, white paste. It felt like wet clay at first, but as Sherlock pushed his stamina into the process, the paste hardened.
Slowly, a thin, rugged film of white material formed over his fingers. It wasn't the smooth, factory-pressed cardstock he was used to. It was raw. It was textured. It was a biological graft of paper, fused directly to his skin.
"He did it," Thomas murmured from above, his eyes widening in genuine shock. "He's generating from his own pores."
Sherlock didn't stop at his hands. He pushed the process further, sweating through his boots, creating a high-friction paper grip on his soles. With a primal roar that tore through the mountain silence, Sherlock lunged at the frictionless cliff. The bio-paper on his hands acted like a gecko's feet, the micro-fibers snagging on the microscopic imperfections of the stone that even Thomas's Quirk couldn't fully erase.
He climbed. One agonizing inch at a time. He wasn't using a "Mechanical Art"; he was using his own life force. By the time he reached the ledge where Thomas stood, Sherlock was trembling so violently he could barely stand. The paper on his hands flaked off like dead skin, his body having used every drop of available moisture to create the medium.
He collapsed at Thomas's feet, gasping for air, his eyes bloodshot but glowing with a new, terrifying emerald intensity.
"I... I hit the mark," Sherlock wheezed.
Thomas looked down at his nephew. The sneer was gone, replaced by a look of grim, heavy-weighted respect. He reached down and gripped Sherlock's shoulder, pulling him up.
"You did more than hit a mark, Sherlock. You broke the cycle of the 'Sheets' limitation. Your mother always feared that if she ran out of paper, she would be helpless. You just proved that as long as you have a heartbeat, you have a weapon."
Thomas looked out toward the horizon, where the lights of Hosu City were beginning to twinkle like fallen stars.
"Rest now," Thomas said, his voice dropping into a tone of deep, ancient gravity. "Tomorrow, the real tempering begins. Because after seeing that... I'm going to tell you about your potential. You aren't just a support hero or a technician, Sherlock. If you can survive what I have planned next, you have the potential to become someone who can become the greatest hero in the world."
Sherlock looked at his scarred, empty hands, then back at his uncle. The "Magician" had found his source. Now, he just had to survive the training.