Chapter 2: The Sinners, the Snare, and the Subterranean Secret
The Oku-Hida mountain range had once been a pristine jewel of the Japanese wilderness, a sprawling expanse of ancient pines, deep valleys, and rushing rivers. But like everything else on the surface world, it bore the scars of the Aegis War.
While the Sovereign's Vanguard had halted Tomura Shigaraki's apocalypse from consuming the oceans, the localized decay shockwaves had permanently altered the topography of the northern prefectures. Entire mountainsides had been cleanly sheared off, leaving sheer, gray cliffs of compressed ash. Rivers had been diverted by collapsed peaks, and the wildlife was only just beginning to return to the eerie, silent forests.
Hovering silently above a dense canopy of ancient evergreens, a sleek, hard-light transport craft designated by the Swarm descended toward a small clearing. The ramp lowered with a soft hiss, and three young heroes stepped out into the crisp, biting mountain air.
Class Zero had arrived.
Eri took a deep breath, the scent of damp earth and pine needles filling her lungs. She wore the official tactical uniform of the Academy of Stars—a streamlined, dark-blue suit reinforced with lightweight, kinetic-absorbing mesh. The small horn on the right side of her forehead was completely dormant, her Rewind held in perfect, practiced check.
To her right, Kota Izumi adjusted his red, Swarm-issued visor. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, his jaw set in a determined, defensive scowl. To her left, Katsuma Shimano nervously checked the holographic datapad strapped to his wrist, his large brown eyes scanning the dense, shadowy tree line.
"Transit craft returning to Aegis Prime," the automated voice of the ship announced before the hard-light vessel dissolved into shimmering blue particles, leaving the three teenagers completely alone in the wilderness.
"Well," Kota grunted, kicking a loose rock. "No turning back now. Aizawa-sensei wasn't kidding about the drop zone. We're in the middle of nowhere."
"Hope's Ridge is exactly three point two kilometers north-east of our current position," Katsuma reported, tapping his datapad. "The terrain looks unstable, though. The satellite telemetry shows a lot of subterranean voids left over from the decay tremors. We have to watch our step."
"We stick to the mission parameters," Eri said, her voice steady, carrying the quiet but undeniable authority of a squad leader. "We hike to the settlement, establish the communication relay to connect them to the Vanguard grid, and then we map the perimeter. No engaging hostile wildlife. No heroics unless civilian lives are in immediate danger. Let's move."
The hike through the dense forest was grueling. The ground was slick with mud from a recent rainstorm, and the towering pines blocked out most of the afternoon sun, casting the woods in a perpetual, eerie twilight.
After an hour of navigating steep inclines and overgrown trails, the dense foliage finally broke.
Nestled in a deep, sheltered valley was Hope's Ridge.
It was not a city, nor was it a gleaming utopia like Aegis Prime. It was a rugged, utilitarian frontier camp. Dozens of sturdy log cabins and reinforced canvas tents were arranged in a tight, defensive circle. Plumes of gray smoke rose from makeshift chimneys, and the sound of chopping wood echoed off the valley walls.
But as Class Zero stepped out of the tree line and approached the perimeter of the settlement, the ambient noise of the camp instantly died.
The inhabitants of Hope's Ridge stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at the intruders.
These were not standard refugees. They were the remnants of the Paranormal Liberation Front. They were former Tartarus inmates. They were men and women whose bodies bore horrific scars, illicit Quirk-mutations, and the unmistakable, hardened posture of people who had lived their entire lives in the violent, unforgiving shadows of the old world. They had surrendered to the Sovereign after the war, choosing a harsh life in the mountains over a prison cell, but they had not forgotten how to hate.
Eri kept her chin up, walking confidently toward the center of the camp, flanked by Kota and Katsuma.
A massive, towering man stepped into their path, completely blocking the main thoroughfare. He was easily seven feet tall, his skin covered in thick, reptilian scales, with two massive, curved tusks protruding from his lower jaw. He carried a heavy steel logging axe resting casually over his shoulder.
"You're lost, little birds," the scaled man rumbled, his voice a deep, vibrating threat that caused Katsuma to flinch backward. "The glass city is a long way from here."
"We are not lost," Eri replied evenly, stopping a respectful distance away. "We are Vanguard Cadets from the Academy of Stars. I am Squad Leader Eri. This is Kota and Katsuma. We have been dispatched by the Spire to install a high-frequency communication relay for your settlement and update the topographical maps of this sector."
A harsh, mocking laugh erupted from a woman sitting on a nearby porch, her arms crossed, her eyes glowing with an unsettling, radioactive green light. "The Sovereign sent children to babysit us? What's the matter? Were the big, scary heroes too busy polishing their medals in heaven to come check on the sinners?"
Kota's hands instantly clenched into fists. A faint, threatening aura of high-pressure water began to condense around his knuckles. "We aren't here to babysit you. We're here to make sure you don't freeze to death when winter hits because your comms are completely dead. So back off."
The scaled man's eyes narrowed into terrifying, reptilian slits. He gripped the handle of his massive axe with both hands, lowering it from his shoulder. The atmosphere in the camp violently shifted from cold suspicion to outright, lethal hostility. Dozens of former villains stepped out of their cabins, their Quirks flaring defensively.
"You've got a lot of mouth for a kid wearing a fancy uniform," the scaled man growled, taking a heavy step forward, the ground shaking beneath his boots. "The Sovereign told us we could live out here in peace. He promised us we wouldn't be hunted by the old world's dogs anymore. But you come marching in here, wearing his colors, acting like you own the dirt we bleed on. We don't need your radios. And we don't need your 'protection.'"
"Kota, stand down," Eri ordered sharply.
"He's threatening us, Eri!" Kota snapped, the water pressure around his hands spiraling faster. "Aizawa said we don't take risks!"
"I said stand down," Eri repeated, her voice dropping the authoritative tone, replacing it with a quiet, absolute sincerity that forced Kota to pause. The water around his hands dissipated.
Eri stepped forward. She didn't reach for a weapon. She didn't ignite the golden light of her Rewind. She walked directly up to the towering, scaled man until she was standing inches away from his massive axe.
She looked up into his reptilian eyes.
"You're right," Eri said softly, her voice carrying through the silent, tense camp. "We don't know what it's like to bleed for this dirt. And you don't need our protection to survive. You survived Tartarus. You survived the war. You are stronger than we are."
The scaled man blinked, clearly caught off guard by the total lack of ego from a Vanguard representative.
"But you are wrong about why we are here," Eri continued, her red eyes locked onto his, completely devoid of fear. "The Sovereign didn't send us to babysit you. He sent us because he knows what it feels like to be thrown away by the world. He knows what it feels like to be looked at as a monster."
Eri reached up, gently touching the dormant horn on her forehead.
"Before the Vanguard found me, I lived in a dark, concrete room deep underground," Eri whispered, the painful memories flashing behind her eyes, but she did not let them break her. "A man used my body to make weapons. He tore me apart and put me back together every single day. He told me that my Quirk was a curse. He told me that I was a disease, and that I belonged in the dark."
The former villains listening in the camp slowly lowered their defensive postures. They recognized the trauma in her voice. It was the same trauma that had driven many of them to villainy in the first place—the crushing, inescapable weight of a society that had labeled them as freaks.
"The Sovereign pulled me out of the dark," Eri said, a fierce, beautiful pride shining in her eyes. "He didn't look at my horn and see a weapon. He saw a girl. And he told me that my power could be used to heal. He gave me a home. And he promised that no one would ever be left to rot in the dark again."
Eri gestured to the rugged log cabins around them.
"You are not our prisoners," Eri declared, addressing the entire settlement. "You are citizens of the Swarm. The communication relay isn't a leash to monitor you. It is a lifeline. If the winter gets too harsh, or if the decay-quakes shatter this valley, that relay will call down a fleet of Vanguard medical ships in three minutes flat. We are here because the Winged Sovereign promised to protect you. And the Swarm does not break its promises."
For a long, heavy moment, the only sound in the valley was the wind whistling through the pines.
The massive, scaled man looked down at the small girl in the blue uniform. He saw no deception in her eyes. He saw the genuine, unyielding compassion of a true leader.
Slowly, the man let out a long, heavy sigh. He hoisted his massive logging axe back over his shoulder.
"The communication tower goes on the north ridge," the man rumbled, turning his back and walking toward his cabin. "The ground is most stable there. Don't trample the vegetable gardens on your way up."
The tension in the camp instantly evaporated. The former villains returned to their chores, offering Class Zero quiet, respectful nods as they passed.
Kota let out a breathless exhale, his shoulders dropping. "Holy crap, Eri. You totally defused them."
"She didn't defuse them," Katsuma smiled softly, looking at his squad leader with profound admiration. "She just reminded them that they aren't the bad guys anymore."
Eri offered a small, tired smile. "Come on. Let's get this relay set up before it gets dark. We still have a perimeter to map."
While Class Zero negotiated with the sinners in the light, the Vanguard's shadows were hunting in the dark.
Twenty miles south of Hope's Ridge, the Oku-Hida mountain forest was significantly denser, choked by thick underbrush and jagged ravines. The rain had intensified into a cold, driving downpour that washed away scents and turned the forest floor into a treacherous, muddy quagmire.
Chizome Akaguro—Stain—was on his hands and knees in the mud.
He wore no armor, only a dark, waterproof tactical cloak that blended perfectly with the shadows. The glowing silver rings of the Knight's Vow density-glass around his wrists were the only source of light. They were a constant, physical reminder that he was no longer the Hero Killer. He was entirely, biologically Quirkless.
Without Bloodcurdle, he had no paralyzing trump card. Without Phantom Tread, his footsteps displaced the mud, and his breath condensed in the freezing air. He was a mortal man.
But Chizome Akaguro had never relied solely on his Quirks to become a nightmare.
He leaned close to the ground, his white, pupilless eyes scanning a patch of disturbed moss at the base of a massive pine tree. He didn't just look; he analyzed the geometry of the forest.
"He passed through here no more than four hours ago," Stain rasped, his voice barely a whisper against the rain. He pointed a gloved finger at a microscopic indentation in the mud. "The stride length is irregular. He favors his right leg. He is carrying heavy equipment. And he is arrogant. He snapped a low-hanging branch instead of ducking beneath it. He thinks he owns these woods."
Fifty feet away, perched flawlessly on the thick branch of an ancient oak tree, Kaina Tsutsumi watched through the high-powered scope of her Swarm Rifle.
Lady Nagant was a ghost in the canopy. Her right arm, seamlessly morphed into the sleek, deadly sniper barrel, tracked Stain's movements perfectly.
"Arrogance gets you killed in the Vanguard's territory," Nagant murmured into her comms. "But he's fast, Chizome. To hit four different reconstruction zones in Tokyo and make it back to these mountains undetected... this 'Purge' copycat has military training. He's not just a fanatic with a knife."
Stain stood up, wiping the mud from his knees. "A fanatic believes in his cause. A soldier believes in his orders. This man is a blend of both. He murders the reformed villains because he views them as a spiritual contagion, but he executes the kills with tactical precision. He is building a narrative."
Stain began to move forward, his Quirkless body slipping through the dense brush with terrifying, practiced silence. "He wants the world to believe that the Sovereign's mercy is a mistake. He wants to prove that villains cannot be redeemed. He is trying to force the Vanguard back into the role of executioners."
"Well, he's about to find out that our executioners don't miss," Nagant replied coldly, adjusting the magnification on her scope.
They tracked the killer for another mile, ascending a steep, rocky incline. The rain began to turn into a miserable, freezing sleet.
Stain paused at the edge of a narrow ravine. A crude, rope-and-plank suspension bridge spanned the fifty-foot gap, leading to a dark, jagged cave entrance on the opposite cliff face. The scent of ozone and stale blood wafted from the cavern.
"The den," Stain muttered, his eyes locking onto the dark opening.
He stepped onto the first wooden plank of the bridge. It creaked under his weight.
High in the canopy, Nagant's sniper vision flared. The ambient light of the Swarm butterflies integrated into her retinas caught a microscopic glint of steel halfway across the bridge.
It wasn't a standard tripwire. It was a monofilament line, thinner than a human hair, stretched taut across the wooden planks. And it was connected to a massive, military-grade directional fragmentation mine bolted beneath the bridge.
The copycat hadn't just built a den. He had rigged it to annihilate anyone who followed him.
"Chizome, freeze!" Nagant screamed into the comms, abandoning all stealth protocols.
Stain froze, his foot hovering a millimeter above the monofilament line. He didn't flinch. He didn't look down. He knew exactly what had happened. He had let his psychological analysis of the target distract him from the physical environment for a fraction of a second. In the old world, his sheer speed would have allowed him to dodge the blast. But he was Quirkless now. If that mine detonated, the shrapnel would tear him to pieces.
"Directional frag mine. Under the third plank," Stain reported calmly, his voice completely devoid of fear. "If I shift my weight backward, the tension release on the bridge will trigger the secondary detonator. I am locked."
"I see it," Nagant said, her heart hammering against her ribs, but her breathing remained absolutely, flawlessly steady.
She zoomed in. The fragmentation mine was encased in heavy steel. The detonator mechanism was a tiny, pressure-sensitive pin hidden behind the monofilament line. To disarm the mine without triggering it, she had to completely sever the microscopic pin from the explosive charge without imparting any kinetic force to the surrounding casing.
It was a shot that defied the laws of physics. The wind was howling, the freezing sleet was distorting the optics, and she was aiming at a target the size of a grain of rice from three hundred yards away.
"I have to use a conceptual round," Nagant whispered, closing her left eye.
She didn't load a physical bullet. She reached inward, tapping into the Sovereign's Eternal Vitality recursive stability, blending it with the raw kinetic generation of her own Quirk. She synthesized a microscopic, needle-thin round designed to bypass physical matter and violently un-make the mechanical connection.
"Hold your breath, old man," Nagant murmured.
She pulled the trigger.
FSSST.
The sound was barely audible over the wind. The conceptual needle lanced through the air, completely ignoring the rain and the crosswinds. It struck the exact, microscopic space between the detonator pin and the explosive charge of the mine beneath the bridge.
The mechanical connection simply dissolved.
The monofilament line snapped, but the massive explosion never came. The mine was dead.
Stain slowly lowered his foot onto the plank, exhaling a quiet breath. He looked back over his shoulder, giving a single, respectful nod toward the canopy.
"Clear," Nagant confirmed, lowering her rifle, a bead of sweat mixing with the freezing rain on her forehead. "The Purge isn't just a copycat, Chizome. He has access to pre-war Commission armories. That was a black-ops fragmentation mine."
Stain drew a heavy, serrated combat knife from his belt—a physical weapon, but a deadly one in his hands. He crossed the bridge and entered the dark cavern.
Ten minutes later, Nagant dropped from the trees and joined him inside the cave.
The cavern was not a damp, natural formation. The deeper they walked, the more the rock gave way to smooth, rusted steel plating. Flickering, dying fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. It was a subterranean bunker.
But it was completely abandoned.
"He's not here," Stain growled, kicking over a makeshift table covered in maps and bloody combat knives. "This is just a staging area. A temporary camp."
Nagant walked over to the table. She picked up a large, heavily annotated topographical map of the Oku-Hida mountain range. A massive red circle was drawn around a specific valley.
"Chizome," Nagant said, her blood running completely cold.
Stain looked at the map. The red circle was drawn precisely around the coordinates of Hope's Ridge. The settlement of the reformed villains.
"He didn't come to the mountains to hide," Stain realized, the absolute horror of the situation dawning on him. "He came to the mountains to execute the ultimate purge. He is going to wipe out the entire settlement in one night."
Nagant looked at the secondary markings on the map. There was a path traced from the cavern leading deep into the subterranean crust of the mountain range, pointing toward an icon labeled with a horrific, familiar symbol: The stylized 'U' of Dr. Kyudai Garaki, the mad scientist known as Ujiko.
"This isn't just an empty cave," Nagant whispered, looking deeper into the dark tunnel. "This is an access tunnel. He found an abandoned Nomu laboratory. If he unleashes whatever Ujiko left down there..."
"Spire Command!" Nagant yelled into her comms, sprinting back toward the cave entrance. "We have a Code Black! The copycat killer is targeting Hope's Ridge, and he has access to pre-war bio-weapons! We need an immediate evac for Class Zero!"
Static hissed back.
"...Hound-One... signal interference... local seismic anomalies are blocking the..."
The comms died completely.
Stain and Nagant exchanged a terrifying look. They were twenty miles away. The comms were jammed. And the children of the Sovereign were standing directly in the crosshairs of a slaughter.
While the shadows realized the trap, Class Zero was already springing it.
The afternoon sun had dipped behind the towering peaks, casting the forest surrounding Hope's Ridge in deep, elongated shadows.
Eri, Kota, and Katsuma were two miles outside the settlement's perimeter, carefully mapping the dense, uneven terrain. The communication relay had been successfully installed, its blinking blue light visible on the ridge behind them.
"Topographical scan complete for Sector 4," Katsuma reported, tapping his wrist-pad. He frowned, tapping the screen a few more times. "That's weird."
"What is it?" Eri asked, adjusting the strap of her supply pack.
My Cell Activation Quirk... I usually use it to sense the biological health of the flora around me to gauge the soil stability," Katsuma explained, looking at the towering pine trees. "But the roots here... they're dead. Not decaying like Shigaraki's rot, but completely hollowed out. Something deep underground is generating a massive amount of heat and electromagnetic interference, killing the root systems from the bottom up."
Kota frowned, stepping closer to Katsuma. "Electromagnetic interference? Like a generator?"
Before Katsuma could answer, the forest went completely, terrifyingly silent. The birds stopped chirping. The wind died.
A low, guttural vibration hummed through the soles of their boots.
"Earthquake?" Eri gasped, grabbing a nearby tree trunk for balance as the ground began to violently shake.
"No!" Katsuma yelled, his eyes widening in sheer panic as he stared at his datapad. "It's not tectonic! It's structural! The ground beneath us is completely hollow!"
CRACK-BOOM!
The earth did not shake; it violently collapsed.
A massive, fifty-foot-wide sinkhole opened directly beneath Katsuma's feet. The soil, dead and brittle from the underground heat, instantly gave way, plummeting into a pitch-black abyss.
"Katsuma!" Kota roared, lunging forward. He managed to grab the edge of Katsuma's backpack, but the shifting dirt offered no leverage. The sheer weight of the collapsing earth pulled them both over the edge.
Eri didn't scream. She didn't freeze. The combat instincts drilled into her by Aizawa and Midoriya took over.
She dove headfirst into the collapsing sinkhole after her classmates.
The descent was a terrifying, chaotic slide through darkness, jagged rocks, and falling dirt. Eri kept her arms tucked, protecting her head, the kinetic-absorbing mesh of her Swarm suit preventing the debris from crushing her.
They slid for what felt like an eternity, descending hundreds of feet deep into the crust of the mountain.
Finally, the dirt slide abruptly ended.
They hit the ground hard, tumbling across a cold, unforgiving surface.
Eri groaned, pushing herself up onto her hands and knees. She coughed, waving away the thick cloud of dust. "Kota? Katsuma? Report!"
"I'm okay," Katsuma coughed, sitting up and rubbing his bruised shoulder. "Suit took the brunt of it."
"I'm fine," Kota grunted, standing up and dusting off his visor. He raised his hand, generating a concentrated, high-pressure sphere of water that refracted the ambient light, acting as a makeshift lantern. "Where the hell are we?"
Eri looked around. The light from Kota's water sphere illuminated their surroundings, and the blood instantly drained from her face.
They were not sitting at the bottom of a natural cavern.
The floor beneath them was made of smooth, rusted steel grating. Thick, heavy cables ran along the walls like mechanical veins. Ahead of them, looming in the darkness, was a massive, heavily reinforced blast door.
Painted on the center of the blast door, faded but unmistakable, was the chilling insignia of Dr. Kyudai Garaki.
"Oh, god," Katsuma whispered, recognizing the symbol from the Vanguard history briefings. "It's an old world laboratory. Ujiko's laboratory."
"It's completely abandoned," Kota said, trying to sound brave, though his voice trembled slightly. "The door is sealed. We just need to climb back up the dirt ramp before it collapses further."
Eri stepped toward the massive blast door, her red eyes locked on a small, blinking red light on the electronic keypad beside it.
"It's not abandoned, Kota," Eri said, a cold, suffocating dread settling over her chest. She pointed at the fresh, muddy boot prints leading directly up to the keypad. "Someone is down here. And they just turned the power back on."
A heavy, mechanical CLUNK echoed through the subterranean corridor.
The massive blast doors slowly, agonizingly began to slide open, grinding against years of rust.
From the pitch-black depths of the laboratory, a low, guttural, multi-toned shriek echoed out into the corridor. It was the sound of a nightmare waking up. The sound of a High-End Nomu.
Class Zero was trapped in the abyss. And the monsters adjusting the strap of her supply pack.
"were off their leashes.