Might be so errors, updating this from my phone.
Next Milestone 800PS? Too much?
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"Do you know about the HPSC?" Nezu asked.
Nezu sat on the plastic chair, looking like an interviewer conducting an interview.
Akira took a long, slow drag from the dical pipe. And thought about the question for a mont.
"The Hero Public Safety Commission," Akira recounted. "Official governnt body managing heroes, licensing exams, agency regulations, and overseeing the hero society at large. Basically, the HR departnt for heroes. They decide who gets to wear the spandex and who gets arrested for vigilantism."
"In short," Nezu nodded, "the governnt body responsible for all hero-related activity in Japan."
"Sure," Akira shrugged, exhaling a plu of blue smoke that drifted lazily toward the ceiling. "They sign the checks and make the rules. What about them?"
Nezu didn't answer imdiately. He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a small, black device. It looked like a car key.
He placed it on the bedside table and clicked the center button.
Hummmmm.
A low-frequency vibration filled the air. It wasn't loud, but Akira felt it in his teeth. The air in the room seed to shimr for a split second, becoming denser, static. The ambient sounds from the hallway — the nurses paging doctors, the squeak of gurney wheels, the voice of the elevator — vanished instantly. It was as if the rest of the world had simply ceased to exist, leaving only this room suspended in a void of white noise.
Akira looked at the device, then at Nezu.
"Let guess," Akira said, raising an eyebrow. "Anti-noise field?"
"Bingo," Nezu smiled, his whiskers twitching. "High-frequency sound isolation barrier. Nothing said inside this bubble can be recorded or heard from the outside. Not even by quirk-enhanced ears. It creates a localized vacuum for sound waves at the periter."
He tilted his head. "How did you know?"
Akira took another hit from the pipe, tapping the brass stem against his chin. "I have seen too many movies, Nezu. The 'Secret Governnt eting' scene always starts with a jamr. It's a classic trope. Next, you're going to tell this conversation never happened."
"It is scary," Nezu mused, "how often fiction inadvertently mirrors the classified reality. Perhaps writers have a quirk for intuition."
Akira let out a chill giggle. It was a strange sound coming from him — relaxed, almost lazy, but with zero warmth. "Or maybe governnts are just predictable. Power protects itself. Secrets require silence."
"Precisely," Nezu said.
The Principal hopped off the chair and began to pace around the room.
"You are right about the governing aspect of the HPSC," Nezu continued. "They manage the day-to-day operations. They handle the PR, the rchandise licensing, and the disaster relief budgets. But there is another side to the Commission. A side that does not appear on the website. A side that the public does not know about, because if they did, the fragile illusion of our perfect superhuman society would crack."
Akira had read enough spy thrillers and conspiracy theories to know where this was going. So he took a guess.
"Let guess," Akira drawled, swirling the pipe smoke with his finger.
"They have a black-ops division? A top-secret assassination squad that takes out 'Enemies of the State' who are too dangerous for jail but too public for a trial?"
He ant it as a joke.
But nobody laughed.
He looked at Nezu. Who was frozen. He looked at Honoka. She was looking at her lap, refusing to et his eyes. He looked at Recovery Girl. She too looked away and began to whistle.
The smile slid off his face.
"Bloody hell," he whispered. "The movies are scarily close to the actual world."
"They are," Nezu confird.
The Principal stopped pacing and looked directly at Akira.
"The HPSC employs several heroes who work... exclusively for them. These individuals do not appear on rankings. They do not have rchandise. They do not give interviews. They address the threats that pose a risk to the nation's stability. Terrorists. Radical ideology groups. Corrupt heroes who have fallen too far to be redeed."
Nezu's voice dropped an octave.
"To run a society smoothly, sotis you need a blade, not a hamr. Sotis, you need to cut out the cancer before the patient even knows they are sick. Even though there are corruption cases from ti to ti —power tends to corrupt, after all — most of the ti, they do their work efficiently. They keep the peace by waging a silent war."
Akira processed the information. It made sense. Of course it did. You don't maintain a utopia with just smiles and punches. Soone has to take out the trash. Soone has to do the dirty work so All Might can keep smiling for the general public.
He looked at his mother. He looked at his grandmother.
"So," Akira asked, his voice low. "Why do all three of you know about this? Nezu, I get. You're the smartest being in Japan. You probably know what the Pri Minister had for breakfast. But..."
He gestured to the two won.
"Why them?"
"Good question," Nezu said. "For myself, as you surmised, I am a strategic asset. I send them recomndations from ti to ti — promising students, potential threats, logistical advice. I play the ga because U.A. needs political protection."
He gestured toward Honoka and Chiyo.
"As for them... they are the best doctors in Japan. And because they know closely, and because they are trustworthy, I recomnded them for a specific role."
"Health Care Directors of the HPSC's Special Division."
Akira's eyes widened slightly. "So... you work for the assassins?"
"We heal them," Honoka said quickly, finally looking up. Her eyes were desperate for him to understand. "We don't do the spy stuff, Akira. We don't plan the missions."
"We patch them up," Recovery Girl added gruffly. "When they co back broken, bleeding, or dying, we fix them. They are still people. And because soone has to. If we didn't, they would just die in a dark room sowhere."
"We don't ask questions," Honoka whispered. "That's the deal. We heal, we sign the NDAs, and we go ho. The extra pay is just a bonus."
Akira nodded.
"Okay," He said, taking a puff from the pipe. "I get it. You're the dics for the shadow governnt. Cool."
"Now that you know," Nezu said, stepping closer to the bed. "I have a proposal."
The rat looked up at him, extending a paw.
"Would you like to join it?"
The room went silent again.
"Join the HPSC?" Akira asked.
"Join the program," Nezu corrected. "I think it would be perfect for soone like you. You have the mindset. You have the power. You have the willingness to do what is necessary."
Nezu smiled, trying to be reassuring.
"And don't worry. You wouldn't be a faceless drone. You would be working directly under . I would handle your training. I would handle your assignnts. No need to worry about the stupid corruption or the bureaucracy. You would be my personal student, operating in the shadows to protect the light."
"Nezu!" Honoka started to protest, sitting up and wincing. "He's just a boy! He just survived a villain attack! You can't ask him to beco a hitman!"
"I am asking him to be a hero!" Nezu argued. "Just a different kind!"
"He needs to make a decision for himself," Recovery Girl interrupted, placing a hand on her daughter's arm to calm her down. She looked at Akira with sad, wise eyes. "He's not a child anymore, I an, he is technically, but you know what I an. We can't make this choice for him. He's seen too much."
Akira sat there, the pipe smoke curling around his head like a halo.
Join the shadows. Beco a secret agent. Use his Red Fla to burn the villains that the law couldn't touch.
It was tempting. It was exactly what Wade, in his old life, would have thought was "cool."
But then, a mory surfaced.
Not of cool movie scenes. But of reality.
He thought of the Hida Mountains. He thought of the village square.
He thought of Sasha Izumi, glowing with water, fighting a losing battle. He thought of Shino Izumi, broken against a rock, telling him to run.
Why did they die?
Was it because they were weak? No. They were pros. Was it because Muscular was strong? Yes, but that wasn't the whole story.
They died because they were heroes in the traditional sense. They died because they were reactive. They waited for the villain to attack. They threw themselves in the way to buy ti. They sacrificed themselves because that is what the "Symbol of Peace" philosophy taught them.
Save the innocent. Die trying.
And Muscular? Muscular laughed at them. He called them weak. He wasn't afraid of them. He wasn't afraid of the police. He wasn't afraid of jail.
If they had been different... if they had been ruthless... would they have survived?
If the society were different... if heroes were brutal against villains, instead of being symbols of peace... would Muscular have dared to co out of his hole?
All Might, Akira thought. The Symbol of Peace.
All Might suppressed cri by smiling. He made people feel safe. But he also made villains complacent.
If All Might haunted the villains, Akira mused, his eyes narrowing. If the Symbol wasn't a smile, but a warning... they wouldn't dare breathe.
But to change that... to change the fundantal philosophy of an entire society... you couldn't do it from the shadows.
Shadows keep the status under the table. Shadows clean up the ss. They don't stop the ss from happening. The HPSC wanted him to be a janitor, mopping up blood in the dark so the public could keep pretending the world was clean.
To change the system, you have to stand at the top. You have to be the one everyone looks at. You have to be the sun, even if that sun burns.
Akira took one last, long drag of the dical pipe. He held the smoke in his lungs, feeling the calm settle deep into his bones.
He exhaled a long, thin stream of blue vapor.
He looked at Nezu.
"Your proposal..." Akira said softly.
He paused.
"I refuse."
Nezu blinked. His ears dropped.
Honoka let out a breath she had been holding, slumping back against her pillows in relief. Recovery Girl closed her eyes, murmuring a silent prayer.
Nezu tilted his head, his curiosity piqued.
"If you don't mind sharing," Nezu asked, "could you tell why you declined the offer? I was 97.5% sure you would agree. It fits your cynicism perfectly."
"That's the problem, Nezu," Akira said, handing the pipe back to his grandmother. "You're looking at my cynicism. You're not looking at my ambition."
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, looking at his hands.
"The system," Akira began, "is built to mold heroes into martyrs. It teaches them to be self-sacrificing. To be shields. Just like Sasha and Shino. They died because they played by the rules of a ga that villains don't respect."
He looked up, his red eyes burning with resolve.
"Working in the shadows just maintains that system. It cleans up the spills. I don't want to be a janitor. I don't want to hide in the dark while good people die in the light."
"Then what do you want?" Nezu asked.
"I want to change the ga," Akira stated.
"To do that, I have to reach the peak. I have to be the Number One Hero. I have to stand where All Might stands."
Honoka stared at him. "You want to be the Symbol of Peace?"
Akira laughed.
"No," he said. "The world will always have people like All Might. People who smile and wave and kiss babies."
He leaned forward, his gaze locking with Nezu's.
"I will beco the Symbol of Fear."
Shock rippled through the room.
"I will be the hero that villains tell stories about in the dark," Akira vowed. "I won't just stop them. I will break them. I will make them so terrified of stepping out of line that they will police themselves. I want them to look at a cri scene and pray that All Might shows up, because if I show up, they aren't walking away."
He clenched his fist, a small spark of red fla dancing between his fingers.
"I will save people," Akira finished, his voice dropping to a whisper. "But I won't do it with a smile. I'll do it with fire. I will make the concept of 'Villainy' a death sentence."
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Now our MC has a target. What do think of the symbol of fear title?
Let know.
Plus if you want, you can read up to 10 chapters (It's 9 right now, the final advanced chapter will be up soon) and support you can alway join my P@treaon. (Just search up Joe_Mama p@treon on google.)
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