The penthouse was deathly still, save for the low hum of the life support systems that kept his scorched lungs operational. A flickering monitor beside him displayed Kurogiri’s static silhouette and Tomura’s twitchy scowl in grainy grayscale. They’d been bickering again—Tomura’s lack of patience grating on the warp gate’s dispassionate tone. He let them talk, his own voice rising only when he’d had enough.

“Focus, Tomura. Hatred without direction is as pathetic as a broken blade.”

Tomura’s scowl deepened, lip twitching. “But Sensei—!”

He clicked the feed off mid-retort. He had no time to waste on his apprentice, he needs to let the boy grow on his own. The screen flickered, showing the UA students scrambling through the first event—a race, trivial and beneath his notice. But his mind wasn’t on them. It was on the ghost that haunted him, the one whose Quirk still eluded him, still taunted him from the hands of that brother thief, All Might.

His fingers twitched, the holes in his palms aching faintly with the phantom memory of stolen Quirks, of power slipping through his grasp. His thoughts, as they so often did, drifted to him.

Yoichi.

His brother. His twin. His possession.

On the feed- The first event—the race—had just ended. He could sense the collective excitement radiating through the city. Foolish. All of it.

A bitter chuckle rasped from his throat, the sound distorted by the mask. He should have taken the quirk from All Might years ago, should have torn it from his broken body when he had the chance. But the fight had left him crippled, forced into hiding, forced to watch from the shadows as his empire fractured.

No matter. He would reclaim him. He would reclaim everything.

Rising from his seat, he moved toward the floor-to-ceiling window, the city sprawling beneath him like a conquered kingdom. His infrared vision painted the world in shifting hues of heat, the vibrations of distant life humming against his senses.

Though, he noticed something was off on his balcony, behind the glass doors.