Location: Musutafu – Industrial Sector (Training Ground Delta)
Date: Tuesday | 05:00 AM
BUZZZZZT.
The high-pressure sodium lamps overhead hummed with a dull sound.
The air in the industrial lot was thick with chemical tang of pre-heated asphalt.
It was far too early in the morning but the ground was already radiating uncomfortable heat.
Thirty sidekicks were scattered across the lot. They weren't in the usual military lines they formed for Endeavor.
Some were leaning against rusted shipping containers, checking their gear; others were pacing, their boots crunching on loose gravel.
They looked exhausted, but the way they kept their eyes on the entrance showed they were waiting for a reason to be there. They arrived early and had been doing drills and helped setting up the training grounds.
Endeavor had placed countless raging fire in the vicinity for practice.
SPLAT.
Kaito stepped over a dark puddle of oil. He had his charcoal vest open over a white shirt, sleeves rolled up revealing his forearms.
"You've been the most effective agency in Japan for a decade," Kaito said. "But you're still working ineffectively. You're treating your Quirks like hammers."
SFFFFFT.
Burnin' pulled a handful of green fire from her hair, the sparks hitting the ground.
"We've been running drills since four, Arisaka!" Burnin' shouted.
She was bouncing on her heels, her hair flickering with a restless, jagged energy. "The guys are already talking about the 'Recoil' theory you last talked about. But how do we apply it to a full squad? We aren't all fire-types."
"That's exactly why the current system is failing," Kaito said. He turned to the wider group. "Coolant Unit. Uma Uma-san, front and center."
Ten sidekicks moved forward.
Uma Uma, the hero with the horse-head mutation, looked at Kaito with a mix of curiosity and caution. He wasn't a rookie; he'd been on the streets for years.
"Usually, you stay two blocks back until the fire is out, right?" Kaito asked.
"Correct," Uma Uma said, his voice deep. "If I get too close while the Boss is firing, I just get in the way of the blast. I wait for the cleanup."
"From now on, you're part of the Thermal Sink," Kaito said.
He pointed toward a row of industrial burners. "You don't wait for the cleanup. You move with the combat team. Your job isn't to put out the fire; it's to swallow the ambient heat while it's being generated. If you keep the air at a breathable temperature around the fighters, they don't hit their physiological limit. You're the radiator for the whole machine. Can you handle that intensity?"
Uma Uma looked at the burners, his ears twitching. "If I'm moving while the Boss is firing... the timing has to be perfect. If I lag, I'm cooked."
"That's why you're training for it today," Kaito said.
He looked at the Logistics Unit. "Speedsters. Why are you still running on the asphalt during a Grade 5 fire?"
"It's the fastest route to the civilians," a sidekick in a light-weight suit answered.
"It's the hottest route," Kaito corrected. "The asphalt melts your boots and kills your traction. Look up. The fire makes the air rise. Use the Thermal Updraft. I want you to practice 'Thermal Gliding.' Catch the rising heat and use it to propel your jumps. You'll save forty percent of your kinetic energy. You won't be out of breath when you finally reach the victim."
"....."
"....."
The speedsters started whispering, eyeing the height of the nearby cranes.
They weren't stupid, they were calculating the vectors.
WHIISH.
"Combat team. You're up," Kaito barked.
Burnin', Kido, and Onima stepped into the center.
They looked focused, their eyes sharp.
"Burnin', I want see the Ignition Interval," Kaito said. "No more long, steady streams. Use twenty-second high-intensity bursts. Treat the fire as a valve for momentum. Try the 90-degree snap on that crane."
BOOM. BAAM.
Burnin' shot into the air, her green hair roaring. She headed for the crane, but she held the flame a second too long.
Her momentum carried her past the turn, and she went spinning out of control.
THUD.
She slammed into a massive stack of discarded tires, disappearing in a cloud of black dust.
"Again!" Kaito yelled. "You're fighting your own weight, Kamiji-san! Cut the flame, let the gravity pull the pivot, then snap the valve to catch the turn!"
KRR-CHAK.
Kido was up next.
He was trying to weave a Thermal Spiral theory with his bandages.
WHIISH. Whoosh. Swoosh.
He spun his arms, trying to catch the heat from a nearby industrial burner, but the air was too wild. The fire snapped his bandages like dry twigs.
"It's not catching, Manager!" Kido shouted, looking at his singed gear. "It's just air! There's nothing to grab onto!"
"Watch the soot, Kido-san!" Kaito pointed at the black smoke swirling in the heat. "The air moves where the heat tells it to. Trap the soot in the vortex and the heat will follow the trail. Stop trying to muscle the flame and start inviting it into the spin!"
"...."
Kido paused. He looked at the soot dancing in the air.
He didn't question, he adjusted his stance, pulling his center of gravity lower.
HUU-HAA.
Further back, Onima was standing in the center of a shallow fire pit.
He was drenched in sweat, his skin turning a dark, angry red.
He was trying the Total Concentration breathing Kaito had described, but every time he took a breath, he doubled over, coughing.
"The air... it's like lead..." Onima gasped.
"You're breathing the smoke, Onima," Kaito said, walking to the very edge of the pit.
The heat was sharp, singeing the hair on his arms, but he didn't flinch. "The oxygen is at the edges of the flame. Breathe through the center of the heat, not against it. If you can't regulate your core from the inside, you're just a slow-cooking steak. Stay rooted. You're the anchor. If you move, the building falls."
CRACKLE.
The other 27 sidekicks who were also training in the distance were silent. They watched their leaders struggle.
It was messy. It was physically demanding. But the knowledge and ideas Kaito suggested to them were really that good.
"Come on, just follow the instructions."
"How do do we do this again?"
"Didn't you properly listen",
"I think im getting there"
In the distance, the Heat Management squad was practicing "sync-breathing" to stay calm near the open flames, while the Capture unit was testing how soot-heavy air affected their binding wires.
They weren't just background characters; they were pieces of a machine finally learning how to mesh.
For the past 2 hours Kaito moved between the 30 them, correcting a wrist angle here, a breathing count there.
He didn't use big words. He just showed them why the physics weren't working.
"None of you are even close to the Standard," Kaito said, looking at the exhausted group. "Get up. We're doing it until your boss tells you to stop."
_-_-_-_-_
Location: Training Ground Delta – Edge of the Lot
Endeavor stood in the shadows of a rusted warehouse, his arms crossed over his chest.
His mask was flickering with a low, jagged orange flame.
He watched Kaito training. He watched the sidekicks sweat and bleed and fail.
It was the first time he had ever seen his agency look this messy.
Usually, they followed his lead, and if they couldn't keep up, they stayed out of the way.
But Kaito was forcing them to be a part of the fight.
THUD. THUD.
Endeavor walked toward the center of the lot. The sidekicks scrambled to clear a path, the temperature in the area spiking instantly. He stopped in front of Kaito.
"They're struggling," Endeavor said. "You're asking them to change their entire biological rhythm in a morning. Is this your 'Standard,' Arisaka? Watching my people fail?"
"Failure is the only way they learn where the floor is, Endeavor," Kaito said, not looking up from his tablet. "They've been flying on your fumes for years. Now, they're learning to carry their own weight."
Kaito looked at Endeavor. "Your turn, I've been coaching them for hours. What about the Fire-Armor move I talked to you about?"
Endeavor's eyes narrowed. "Internalizing the heat. It's a theory, Arisaka. My body is designed to emit, not to contain."
"Your body is a heat engine," Kaito countered. "Every engine has a cooling system and a pressure vessel. If you keep venting your energy as light and noise, you're losing thirty percent of your potential kinetic force. Pull it in. Create a thermal haze 10^{6}K thick. Make it so nothing can touch your skin because the air itself collapses before it reaches you."
Endeavor took a deep breath.
He planted his feet, the asphalt under his boots beginning to smoke and liquify. He closed his eyes.
SHHHHHHH.
He pulled the flames back. The orange wreath on his shoulders vanished.
The fire on his mask died down to a faint, blue glow. His skin began to turn a deep, bruised purple, the heat trapped beneath his muscles.
H-ZTT.
A ripple of distorted air shimmered around him. It wasn't fire; it was a wall of pure, invisible pressure.
But after five seconds, Endeavor's eyes flew open. His chest began to heave, and a vein in his forehead throbbed violently.
BOOM.
He couldn't hold it. He vented a massive, horizontal pillar of blue flame into the empty sky just to keep his heart from seizing.
The shockwave knocked two nearby sidekicks off their feet.
PANT-pant. HUUF-puff.
Endeavor leaned on his knees, steam rising from his costume in thick, white clouds. He looked at Kaito, his pride stinging more than the heat.
"It... it feels like my blood is boiling," Endeavor rasped.
"That's the point," Kaito said. "You're learning the limit of your vessel. Once you master the armor, you don't need a Prominence Burn to win a fight. You just need to walk toward the enemy. They'll melt before you even raise a hand."
Endeavor wiped sweat from his jaw. He looked at the sidekicks, then back at Kaito.
"At the Sky Egg incident," Endeavor said, his voice low. "That villain called Nine and that vigilante... Hero X. They made me look like a joke, especially Hero X. He made my fire look so useless. Dragging me in another reality or dimension-like space."
Kaito felt a sharp prickle of awkwardness in his chest. He remembered the look of pure rage on Endeavor's face.
'I probably shouldn't had rage-baited him last time' Kaito thought.
"Vigilantes are usually arrogant, Endeavor," Kaito said, his voice perfectly neutral. "He was probably just bored. Don't worry if you, perfect all the theories we discussed, you'll be able to contend against Nine by yourself. Again. Pull the heat in."
Endeavor feels something off with that reply, but he stood back up.
He didn't argue. He had seen what Hero X could do with a snap of his fingers, and he knew that raw power wasn't enough anymore. He needed other diverse and complicated techniques.
_-_-_-_-_-_
Location: Training Ground Delta – Break Area
Date: Tuesday | 02:00 PM
CLINK.
A crushed aluminum can hit the concrete. The sidekicks were slumped against the barriers, their chests heaving.
Burnin' was sitting on a crate, her green hair looking like a smoldering wick.
She was rubbing a large, dark bruise on her shoulder.
DRIP.
Sweat hit the hot asphalt and vanished. Kido was re-wrapping his arms in fresh bandages, his hands shaking.
A few yards away, the younger sidekicks were passed out in the sliver of shade provided by a shipping container.
"I'm so tired," a rookie muttered, dumping a bottle of water over his head.
"Endure now and get rewarded later," Onima grunted, leaning his back against the brick wall.
Kaito was scrolling through the morning's data on his tablet.
BZZZT. BZZZT.
Kaito felt the vibration in his pocket. He pulled out the phone and saw the international prefix. +1. New York.
He stood up and walked away from the group. He headed toward the far end of the lot.
He tapped the screen.
"Hello?" Kaito said.
"Is this Arisaka Kaito?" A man's voice came through, loud and clear over the roar of a jet engine in the background. "This is Ethan Drive, lead pilot for the 1-A Squadron in New York."
"Speaking," Kaito replied.
"Wow," Ethan said, his tone shifting to genuine surprise. "Your English is... incredibly fluent, Mr. Arisaka. I was prepared to use a translator app. You sounds like you grew up in the States."
"I spent some time learning it," Kaito said "What can I do for you, Mr. Ethan?"
"I'm calling on behalf of Star and Stripe," Ethan said. The background noise of the hangar dipped as if he had moved into an office.
"She's been keeping a close eye on your work in Japan. The Best Jeanist shift caught everyone's attention, but the Endeavor rollout is the talk of the New York agencies. Star is interested. She wants to see if we can book a consultation slot once you're free."
"I appreciate the interest," Kaito said. He looked back at the sidekicks. Kido was finally standing up, stretching his arms. "But I'm currently under a three-month exclusive contract with the Endeavor Agency. My focus is entirely on Mr. Todoriki. I don't take on new projects until the current one is stable."
"We understand that," Ethan said quickly. "We aren't trying to pull you away early. We just wanted to put in an advance booking. Star wants the Arisaka Standard for her own squadron drills. She thinks the 'New Order' could use the kind of logic you're applying to the agencies over there."
"Tell her I'm open to a discussion once my time here is finished. I'll have my office send over a preliminary questionnaire for her team to fill out. It'll save us time when the contract ends." Kaito replied.
"That sounds perfect," Ethan replied, his voice full of relief. "We'll wait for the documents. It was a pleasure speaking with you, Mr. Arisaka. Good luck with Endeavor. I hear he's a handful."
"He's a professional," Kaito said. "We'll speak in a few months. Have a good evening, Ethan."
"You too. Goodbye."
CLICK.
Kaito put the phone back in his pocket. He stood by the pipes for a second, watching the heat waves rise off the asphalt.
"I didn't expect the current number 2 pro-hero in America is asking for a consultation. We'll just focus on this contract first. Let them wait." Kaito pondered
He turned and walked back toward the break area.
The sidekicks were starting to pull themselves together.
Burnin' was standing up, her hair flickering back into a bright, healthy green.
"Break's over," Kaito said as he reached them.
"Kido, Onima—get the burners ready. We're going to work on the sync-timing for the Thermal Sink."
The sidekicks didn't ask about the call. They just grabbed their gear and headed back into the heat.
_-_-_-_-_
Location: Minato Ward – Shoowaysha Headquarters
Date: Friday | 08:00 PM
SCRATCH. SCRATCH.
The sound of a fountain pen moving across heavy paper was the only noise in Chitose Kizuki's private office.
Curious sat behind her desk, the blue light of her computer screen reflecting in her sharp, narrow eyes.
She was looking at a series of surveillance photos. They weren't of villains or heroes.
They were of a nineteen-year-old girl working as a teacher and a fifteen-year-old boy sitting in a library.
Fuyumi and Natsuo Todoroki.
"The number 3 hero isn't just his agency," Curious whispered to herself.
She tapped a finger against her chin, her blue skin shimmering. "It's his legacy. And Enji Todoroki's legacy is a house full of cracks."
She had her best investigators digging for three days.
They hadn't found a single photo of Rei Todoroki in ten years.
No grocery store sightings. No sightings at hero galas. Nothing.
"He's paying for a private medical wing through a shell company," Curious noted, tapping a finger on a bank transfer log. "You can hide a person, Enji, but you can't hide the money it takes to keep them silent."
She picked up her phone and dialed a secure line.
BZZZT. BZZZT.
"Kaito," she said when the call connected. "I've been thinking about your 'Biographical Stories' idea. Well, I found it. I'm choosing Endeavor. It's not in his agency budget. It's in his lineage. There's a wife and a mother who doesn't exist and an eldest son who vanished from the records entirely."
"...."
"Chitose," Kaito's voice came through.
"I told you to start a project, not to start a war. I'm currently trying to keep the man from melting his sidekicks. If you poke that nest, it's going to be a headache."
"Which is exactly why the public will eat it up," Curious said, a sharp smile touching her lips.
"He can't stop the internet, Kaito," she replied. She felt a surge of predatory excitement. "I'm not waiting for his permission. I've already started the first 'Teaser' for the biography. It's going live on the Shoowaysha digital front in a few days. It's titled The Relentless Shield: The Man Behind the Flame."
"He's probably going to burn your reporters," Kaito said.
"Haha, you're exaggerating. Heroes don't kill" she laughed. "Because if he does, he proves the story is true. I'm framing him as a tragic, misunderstood father who is 'finally opening his doors.' By the time he sees the notification on his phone in a few days, the hashtag will be at the top of the trending list. He'll be forced to play the part or lose everything."
"You're something else, Chitose-san," Kaito said.
There was no praise in his voice, just a tired realization. "We aren't on the same side of this. If you blow his lid off, I'm the one who will probably manage it."
"Then start prepping your cooling gear, Kaito. Because once this goes viral, the Number Three hero is going to have to learn how to smile for a camera while he's eating dinner with kids who hate him. It's going to be a masterpiece."
"Fine," Kaito said. "But be careful with the children, Chitose. They've been through enough."
"I'm a professional, Kaito. I know how to get the truth without breaking the glass."
CLICK.
Curious set the phone down.
She looked back at the photo of Shoto Todoroki.
She didn't see a weapon or a future hero.
She saw a story that was going to change the world. She saw a mirror that would force Japan to look at its own darkness.
She picked up her pen and began to write the first chapter outline.
_-_-_-_
Location: Naruhata Apartment
CLACK.
Kaito set the phone down on the nightstand.
He just sat on the edge of the mattress.
Outside, Naruhata was finally starting to settle down.
"I really didn't expect her to choose Endeavor. I don't know if its going to be good or bad" Kaito pondered.
He knew exactly what she would find. He remembered the details of the Todoroki family from his past life.
By suggesting the "Biographical Stories" project to her, he had effectively handed her a sledgehammer to use on that household.
'Is this really the only way to do it?' Kaito wondered.
He felt guilt in his chest when he thought about it.
Kaito knew Todoroki family hadn't asked for a media circus. They hadn't asked for their private trauma to be turned into a bestseller for the whole country to read.
But then he thought about Endeavor. The man was a volcano that didn't know how to turn off.
"Endeavor's obsession with being Number 1 is his greatest weakness.." Kaito whispered to the empty room.
He knew the family hadn't asked for this, but the "Infrastructure of Peace" required a stable foundation.
If he couldn't make Endeavor a good man through choice, he would make him one through the pressure of public expectation.
It was a forced reconciliation.
SWISH.
"Let's see how it goes. After all it's an issue I accidentally created myself."
Kaito pulled the thin blanket back and lay down.
Once the first teaser for the biography hit the news, there would be no turning back.
WHIII.
A gust of wind caught the window screen, making a thin, whistling sound.
Kaito closed his eyes.
_-_-_-_-_
[Author's Note]
Hope everyone had a great Easter holiday!
Now that the holiday weekend is done, the regular upload schedule will resume! Updates will be back at daily reset (or about 1 hour after Webnovel reset).
.....
Support the journey here:
patreon.com/Dr_Chad
(9 Advanced Chapters)