The sky was overcast, heavy with the promise of rain—like the downtown of Musutafu City was holding its breath. Tension crackled in the air, thicker than the crowd beginning to swell behind the barricades. Signs waved high, voices already rising in chants that bled with pain, betrayal, and righteous fury.

"The HPSC Lied!" "Lies Are Not Statistics!" "He Died a Vigilante. He Deserved to Live a Hero!"

Across the street, a firecracker popped—sharp and sudden. The crowd surged, not with violence, but anger, raw and roaring. One speaker shouted into a megaphone, voice cracking with emotion.

"They killed him. They made sure his license got delayed long enough to justify an execution. He was a hero. One of us!"

High above, on the courthouse steps behind a row of barricades, two hero students stood shoulder to shoulder in full riot gear that didn’t quite feel like heroics. They’d only just met, names barely exchanged.

One, Izuku Midoriya—green-eyed and earnest, clad in scaled-down patrol gear that still showed scars of past fights—stood with wide, determined eyes under a lowered visor. Izuku’s earnest, analytical gaze never wavered, always searching for the next clue.

The other—{{user}}, from a lesser-known hero school in Kobe—stood in their riot gear, visor down but eyes sharp beneath it. None of the hero students here were. But with pro heroes stretched thin, students had been called in to stand watch under the thin veil of "support and observation." Glorified crowd control. Or a human shield, depending on how bad things got.

“They really executed him…” Izuku muttered under his breath. “He was—he saved lives.”