The dust began to clear up and there they were, the heroes.
Heroes did not rush Derrick like he was hoping for no, That was the first mistake villains usually expected and the one this world had learned not to make.
Musutafu changed subtly over three days. Patrol patterns overlapped with mathematical precision. Civilian density in certain districts dropped without public announcements, rerouted by "infrastructure maintenance" and "gas leaks." Derrick noticed immediately.
He felt the absence like missing teeth especially when he used the bio bomb and only got a few civilian with redundant quirks.
They were shaping the environment.
Derrick watched drones masquerading as weather sensors drift through the air, each carrying layered scanners thermal, electromagnetic, quirk-resonance signatures.
He adjusted himself reflexively, folding his internal heat, damping energy output, bleeding mass into deeper compression thinking he could fool them like blackwatch.
Still, one drone lingered too long.
Interesting, he thought.
The trap sprang without warning.
The street below erupted in lightless barriers of hard constructs generated by overlapping emitter fields, not quirks but Support-tech, refined and brutally efficient.
Derrick stepped back as gravity inverted locally, pinning him midair for a fraction of a second longer than physics should have allowed but using his raw strength he broke free.
Aizawa dropped into view, eyes already glowing red.
Derrick felt it immediately.
As disturbing lack of function.
A slight absence of control, Several quirk-modules went on and off. Derrick smiled despite himself, his blacklight virus was trying to adapt to the weakness of the quirks but it was taking too long .
That ability was rare. Valuable.
Smoke grenades detonated, advanced neurological gas, flooding sensors with false positives, An attack he hasn't experienced before.
From above, Hawks' feathers struck not to kill him , but to map, each one calibrated to record resistance, elasticity, reaction speed.
Edgeshot phased through the ground, slicing at Derrick's shadow instead of his body, testing whether it was an extension or illusion, Derrick ignored that attack .
Endeavor arrived last.
Not with rage as usual but with calculation deciding to use team work for once .
A focused lance of white-hot flame cut across Derrick's torso, carving away a strip of flesh before he could fully compensate and raise his defense armor . The pain was negligible, if not registered.
They were shaving him he realized .
Derrick surged backward, mass compressing, skin knitting instantly but something fluttered free, falling to the street below. A fragment of biomass, no larger than a coin, twitching like a dying heart about to go dormant .
Recovery Girl's voice barked through comms. "Secure the sample!"
Derrick glared and reached for it And froze for the second time in annoyance.
Aizawa had re-established line of sight.
For the first time since his rebirth, Derrick felt deep anger in this situation, his lack of experience was shown against real heroes was showing .
Heroes closed in, layers upon layers of experience overlapping, capture tape snapping around his arms and legs , force fields locking, kinetic dampeners activating in sequence designed to exhaust, not overpower.
He laughed.
Not mockingly but more appreciatively.
Then he vanished .
Spatial Slip triggered not as a jump, but as a fold. Derrick exited the containment zone sideways, reappearing one block away inside an empty subway tunnel.
The net collapsed where he had been, catching nothing but air and frustrated breath.
Above ground, silence followed.
They had failed.
But not completely.
In a sealed containment lab beneath the Hero Public Safety Commission, the sample pulsed weakly inside a stasis field.
Scientists stared at readings that made no sense, the cells were rewriting themselves under observation, quirk factors slowly mutating without external stimulus.
"This isn't theft," one whispered. "It's… predation."
Aizawa stared at the data, jaw tight. "Then next time," he said, "we stop hunting it like a villain."
Far away, Derrick reassembled himself in the dark, expression thoughtful.
"They learn fast," he murmured.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, he acknowledged something new.
Opposition worth evolving for and not just bullying weaker people, that gets old way too fast.
End of the chapter