Derrick discovered that wealth was louder than power.
Affluent districts hid behind walls, biometric gates, private security firms staffed by retired heroes and quirked mercenaries who believed money insulated them from extinction.
To Derrick, these neighborhoods were libraries dense with secrets, lineage quirks, political influence, and access codes whispered over wine and inherited arrogance.
He entered as a guest.
A catered gala. A charity fundraiser. A discreet family dinner overlooking the city.
Derrick wore tailored suits and borrowed smiles, his presence slipping into the social circles like a practiced sin.
Cameras ignore him, Guards overlooked him and People remembered him only after he was gone and even then,
vaguely.
Consumption here was intimate.
He took entire families in soundproof panic rooms, absorbing generations of genetic quirks refined by selective breeding: pheromonal influence, probability skewing, cognitive acceleration, subtle mind-framing abilities prized by politicians and CEOs alike.
Blacklight rewrote them all—stacked, refined, merged.
From a defense contractor's wife, he learned of subterranean data vaults beneath Musutafu,
These vaults of data are overseen jointly by the Commission and foreign observers.
From a minister's son, he learned of the very off-book, quirk prisons and that one was very interesting.
From a financier who funded hero tech, he learned where the backups were stored.
By the time the bodies were gone—houses scrubbed clean, alarms rewritten, memories erased from surviving staff, Derrick had already infiltrated government systems using credentials harvested directly from brains, his consumption ability has increased drastically since he's entered this world.
Firewalls parted like wet tissue. Classified maps unfolded in his thoughts.
Useful quirks were no longer as difficult to hunt, thanks to this new found information, he realized.
The heroes felt the pressure mounting after the discovery of missing wealthy families and individuals.
U.A. implemented lockdown-level drills.
Aizawa trained rotating tech based Erasure teams designed to operate blind spots, denying Derrick observational data.
Mei Hatsume who was recruited and the national support divisions accelerated development of quirk-isolation weapons, devices meant not to kill, but to desynchronize abilities from the biological hosts.
Endeavor pushed for decisive action.
"We're losing ground," he growled during a closed meeting. "Every day we wait, it gets smarter."
All Might disagreed quietly. "Every move we make teaches it something."
They compromised on a third option.
Bait.
The villains watched with sharper eyes.
The League of Villains met in uneasy silence.
Tomura Shigaraki paced, fingers twitching. "It eats quirks," he muttered. "Not steals. Eats. That's not competition, that's erasure."
Dabi scoffed, but there was tension beneath the flames. "Let it come. I want to see if it burns."
Toga tilted her head, smiling nervously. "If it drinks people… does it become them forever?"
Only All For One, listening through shadows and proxies, smiled knowingly.
"A predator above the food chain," he mused. "Fascinating."
Other organizations adapted differently.
The Meta Liberation Army shifted underground, abandoning open mobilization.
Assassins declined contracts involving Derrick outright.
Black-market quirk traders vanished or armed themselves with suicide failsafes.
Across the sea, governments took notice.
The States, the red flags, and the European Union all deployed covert teams which were quirk-enhanced operatives and experimental Nomu analogies.
each seeking the same prize: a sample.
Satellites tracked Derrick's movements.
Agents infiltrated Japan under diplomatic cover.
None returned.
Derrick consumed one such team in an underground transit hub, absorbing foreign quirks unfamiliar in structure, psionic dampening, localized time dilation.
His Blacklight core adjusting eagerly fusing and enhancing the abilities
(psionic dampening become psionic shock wave, range being 5 to 15 meters)
(localized time dilation becomes offensive time lag ) .
He stood amid the remains of the subway, face calm, eyes reflecting a world that was finally paying attention.
"They're afraid," he said softly. "Good."
Above him, heroes prepared their trap.
Below him, villains sharpened their ambitions.
And between them all, Derrick continued his quiet work of eating the foundations of society, one family, one secret, one future at a time.
End of the chapter