Chapter 33: The Labyrinth and the Clock
The traditional tatami mats and paper screens of the Shie Hassaikai mansion were a lie. The moment the combined strike team of the Vanguard and the Underground Heroes crossed the threshold, the illusion shattered.
The floor beneath their boots did not just give way; it turned into a violent, churning ocean of solid concrete.
"The walls are moving!" Fat Gum roared, his massive frame shifting as the hallway violently contracted, the ceiling plunging downward like a hydraulic press.
Mimic. Joi Irinaka, Overhaul's labyrinth manager, had merged his body with the subterranean concrete. He was treating the sprawling basement network like a living, breathing digestive tract, intent on chewing the heroes to pieces.
"Hold the line!" Aizawa shouted, his eyes flashing red as he desperately scanned the shifting walls to find the user. But Irinaka was buried too deep.
With a deafening, grinding screech, a massive slab of the floor suddenly tilted vertically.
The strike team was violently cleaved in half. Kenji, Giulio, Tensei, Fat Gum, and Aizawa were thrown down a sloping corridor to the left. Rin, Shinso, Akio, and Sir Nighteye were separated by a three-foot-thick wall of rising concrete to the right.
And Rei Arata—the Winged Sovereign—was swallowed whole.
The floor directly beneath Nocturne simply vanished. He plummeted into the pitch-black abyss of the labyrinth. He channeled the golden energy of Prismatic Flight to slow his descent, hovering gently until his boots touched the cold, damp stone of a subterranean fighting pit.
The heavy stone ceiling slammed shut above him, sealing him in absolute darkness.
"GateL0ck?" Nocturne asked into his encrypted comms. Static hissed back. The concrete was lined with lead and signal jammers. He was completely cut off from the Swarm.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Heavy, wet footsteps echoed in the darkness. A pair of manic, bloodshot eyes illuminated the gloom, glowing with an unnatural, toxic green hue.
Stepping into the faint light of a single emergency bulb was Kendo Rappa. But the underground brawler was no longer just a man. Overhaul had done to Rappa what he did to the Shie Hassaikai's enemies: he had dismantled him and put him back together. Only this time, he had spliced Rappa's DNA with the stolen genetic material of a high-tier Nomu.
Rappa's torso was grotesquely swollen, thick cables of bio-engineered muscle pulsing beneath his skin. His arms ended in massive, multi-jointed fists, and a localized, rapid-regeneration factor steamed from his pores.
"They said you took my punch at the warehouse!" Rappa's voice was a wet, distorted roar, his sanity entirely gone, replaced by an endless hunger for violence. "But I'm faster now! I'm stronger now! OVERHAUL FIXED ME!"
Nocturne didn't move. Without Kenji's indestructible Knight's Vow layered over him, a direct hit from a Nomu-spliced brawler would shatter his civilian ribs instantly. He had the Swarm's Quirks locked in his chest, but channeling their absolute physical extremes tore at his own muscles. He had to fight smarter, not harder.
Rappa lunged. The air ripped apart as the brawler unleashed a terrifying barrage of hyper-speed punches, moving so fast his fists blurred into a wall of solid kinetic force.
Nocturne didn't block. He ignited Prismatic Flight, propelling himself backward in a flawless, golden glide. Rappa's fists pulverized the stone wall where the Sovereign had been standing a microsecond prior, the entire chamber shaking from the impact.
"Stand still and die!" Rappa screamed, bounding off the wall like a rabid animal and diving at the hovering Sovereign.
"Your master didn't fix you, Rappa," Nocturne's distorted voice echoed from the shadows above. "He hollowed you out."
Nocturne raised his palm. Instead of a golden laser, he channeled the raw, concussive violet force of his cosmic energy. He fired a localized, hyper-dense blast not at Rappa, but at the structural support pillars of the concrete pit.
The ceiling groaned. Massive chunks of heavy stone rained down, violently burying the Nomu-spliced brawler under tons of rubble. It wouldn't kill him—his regeneration was too strong—but it would trap him.
Nocturne landed softly on a fallen pillar, his chest heaving slightly. "The King does not brawl with pawns."
Three levels above the pit, the shifting concrete had dumped Aizawa, Fat Gum, Kenji, Giulio, and Tensei into a massive, sterile antechamber.
The walls were lined with pristine white tiles, leading to heavy vault doors that led deeper into Overhaul's sanctuary. Standing in the center of the room, adjusting the long, clock-hand-like extensions of his hair, was Hari Kurono. Chronostasis.
"You've come quite far, heroes," Chronostasis said, his voice muffled by his plague mask. He pulled a syringe of a shimmering red liquid from his coat—a concentrated dose of the Yakuza's Trigger drug. He didn't hesitate; he plunged the needle directly into his own neck.
Chronostasis's eyes rolled back. The veins on his neck bulged, glowing with a toxic red light. His Quirk—normally limited to the physical reach of his hair—was violently amplified.
"Time is a disease," Chronostasis gasped, extending his arms. "And I am the cure."
A massive, invisible shockwave of temporal energy erupted from Chronostasis's body, instantly flooding the entire antechamber.
The effect was instantaneous and absolute.
Aizawa, who was mid-sprint, suddenly found his foot hanging in the air. The heavy, thudding footsteps of Fat Gum slowed to an agonizing, microscopic crawl. Kenji's silver armor rippled as if submerged in thick syrup. Giulio's cybernetic arm stopped whirring, frozen mid-rotation. Even the dust falling from the ceiling hung perfectly suspended in the air.
Chronostasis had dilated time to an absolute standstill. To the heroes, a single second would feel like an hour.
Chronostasis calmly drew a high-caliber pistol, walking casually toward the frozen form of Eraserhead. "Checkmate."
Vrrrrrrrr.
A sound like a dying star whining into existence cut through the absolute silence.
Chronostasis froze. He turned his head slowly.
Standing amidst the suspended, slow-motion statues of the heroes was Tensei Iida. The Celestial Engine on his legs wasn't frozen. It was burning with a blinding, terrifying emerald fire.
Because Tensei's speed was not a biological Quirk subject to the normal laws of temporal physics. It was a cosmic mutation granted by the Winged Sovereign. The sheer, unadulterated horsepower of the emerald energy was literally burning away the temporal sludge trying to anchor him.
Tensei slowly turned his head. His emerald eyes locked onto the Yakuza lieutenant. To Tensei, the world wasn't frozen; it was just waiting for him to lap it.
"You..." Chronostasis gasped, raising his pistol. "How are you moving?!"
Chronostasis pulled the trigger. The bullet exited the barrel, suspended in the dilated air, inching toward Tensei at the speed of a dying snail.
Tensei didn't just step out of the way. He ignited the engines.
BOOM!
Tensei broke the sound barrier inside a frozen room. He vanished, leaving a trail of emerald afterimages. He reappeared instantly behind Chronostasis, grabbing the Yakuza lieutenant by the collar of his pristine white coat.
"Time isn't a disease," Tensei whispered, his voice vibrating with absolute, untouchable speed. "It's a track. And you're in my lane."
Tensei threw a devastating, emerald-infused punch directly into Chronostasis's gut. The kinetic impact was so massive it shattered the time-dilation field entirely.
Reality violently snapped back into normal speed.
Aizawa's foot hit the floor. Fat Gum stumbled forward. The bullet Chronostasis had fired slammed harmlessly into the far wall. And Chronostasis himself was launched across the antechamber, crashing into the white tiles and falling unconscious before he even realized he had been hit.
The time lock was broken.
"What... what just happened?" Aizawa blinked, looking at the unconscious Yakuza on the floor, then at Tensei, whose engines were venting superheated plasma.
"He tried to freeze the clock," Tensei said, offering the Underground Hero a sharp, confident smile. "I just sped it up. We need to keep moving. The Sovereign is trapped below us!"
Giulio Gandini didn't waste a breath. He marched to the center of the antechamber, his golden eye burning with intense loyalty. He raised his cybernetic arm, the Crimson Arsenal manifesting as a massive, heavy-duty pile-bunker.
"Then let us make a door," Giulio declared.
He slammed the crimson pile-bunker directly into the floor tiles. The sheer concussive force shattered the concrete, blowing a massive, jagged hole through the ceiling of the level below.
Down in the pit, Rappa had just begun to dig himself out from the rubble, his Nomu muscles tearing through the heavy stones. He let out a wet, furious roar, preparing to charge the Sovereign again.
Suddenly, the ceiling above the brawler exploded.
A barrage of crimson energy blasts, silver-plated shockwaves, and binding capture-scarf fabric rained down from the hole, slamming into the Nomu-spliced brawler simultaneously. Rappa was violently crushed back into the rubble, completely incapacitated by the combined might of the Vanguard and Eraserhead.
Giulio and Kenji dropped through the hole, immediately taking defensive positions on either side of Nocturne.
"Apologies for the delay, Sovereign," Giulio bowed slightly, his broadsword crackling. "We encountered a minor temporal inconvenience."
Nocturne looked at his reunited Swarm, the violet cosmic light burning proudly on his cloak. He looked past them, to the heavy, reinforced vault door at the end of the pit.
Behind that door was the operating theater. Behind that door was Overhaul.
"The maze is broken," Nocturne declared, his voice echoing with chilling finality. "Open the vault. We end this now."