Two days of tense quiet followed. The agency increased security. Patrols were doubled. Mina was never alone. Monoma trained harder, pushing his Copy to its limits—holding quirks for five minutes, then six, experimenting with memory-copy on small objects.
He could now lift a pen from across the room by recalling Mina's telekinesis. It left him dizzy, nose bleeding if he pushed too far, but it worked.
On the third evening, the calm shattered.
Monoma was in the gym with Hiroshi, practicing close-combat counters, when the windows bent.
Not shattered—bent, like reality itself warped. Then silence, deep and absolute, before a pressure wave blew the glass inward in perfect, slow-motion spirals. The shards hovered mid-air, glittering like frozen rain.
And through the hole in the world stepped Yuki Nahota.
He wore a tailored grey coat, hair white as ash, eyes hollow. He didn't speak. He just looked at Mina, who stood frozen in the middle of the observatory, her usual calm shattered into wide-eyed shock.
"Mina, behind me!" Togi shouted. Telekinetic shields bloomed around them, layered and dense.
Yuki raised a hand—not toward Togi, but toward Mina. She gasped. Her own telekinetic energy—a familiar gold shimmer—flickered around her, then streaked across the room, drawn into Yuki's palm like smoke to a fan.
"Quirk Synchronization," Yuki said, his voice soft, almost tender. "I don't take. I harmonize."
And then, he pulled.
Mina's power, amplified through him, erupted. A torrent of telekinetic force ripped the reinforced floor apart, lifted entire sections of the ceiling, and sent Hiroshi and Soo-Yun crashing into walls. Jae-Hyun tried to summon a sonic barrier, but Yuki synced with his quirk too, turning the sound into a screeching vortex that shattered the remaining windows.
Togi strained, his own telekinesis clashing against Yuki's amplified version, but he was being pushed back, step by step.
Monoma tried to reach Mina, but Yuki flicked a finger—a gravity spike, dense and invisible, slammed Monoma into a pillar. Ribs cracked. Blood filled his mouth.
He saw Mina, eyes wide, struggling as her own power crushed the room around her. She was trying to resist, to pull back, but Yuki's sync was a vice. Tears streaked her face. She's going to die. And it'll be her own quirk that kills her.
No.
Memories flashed, rapid and bright:
—Star and Stripe on an international news feed, declaring a new rule upon the sky, reality bending to her words.
—Nejire Hado at the UA Festival, golden spirals of energy swallowing the stadium, her smile radiant.
—Mina, smiling, lifting a drone with a thought, explaining intention over force.
—Satoru Gojo, standing untouched, infinity between him and the world, a realm of impossible defense.
Monoma didn't speak.
Inside his mind, he imposed a rule, silent and absolute: My body moves beyond pain.
He stood.
Blood dripped from his lip. He ignored it.
He didn't touch Yuki. He didn't speak. He remembered.
Wave Motion + Telekinesis + Gravity.
Golden light spiraled silently from his palms—not attacking Yuki, but wrapping around the space between Yuki and Mina. The air thickened, distorted. Gravity bent light into prismatic halos, creating a visible field of warped reality. Yuki's sync connection wavered, like a radio signal losing frequency.
Mina gasped, collapsing as the feedback broke. Her power snapped back to her.
Yuki stared at Monoma, for the first time with something like surprise, even fascination.
"You… hear them too," Yuki whispered. "The voices of the quirks you copy. They whisper, don't they?"
Monoma didn't answer. He held the field—a silent, swirling gravity well containing Yuki's amplified power—but he was burning up. Blood dripped from his nose. His vision blurred at the edges. He felt the echo of Star's rule straining his cells, the ghost of Nejire's energy drain sapping his stamina.
With a final, silent push, he tore the sync completely.
Yuki staggered, the stolen power dissipating. He looked at his hands, then at Monoma, and smiled—a cold, fascinated smile. "Next time, little hero. We'll harmonize properly."
He stepped backward into a shadow—Soo-Yun's quirk, copied and twisted—and vanished.
The silence that followed was deafening. Dust settled. Alarms blared in the distance.
Monoma's knees buckled. Mina caught him before he hit the ground.
"You… you used my power," she whispered, holding him, her own hands trembling. "Without touching me."
He couldn't answer. Darkness swallowed him, but not before he felt her tears on his cheek.