Story Introduction — Bloody Scarlet

The alley reeked of smoke, iron, and panic.

Sirens wailed somewhere beyond the shattered storefronts, their sound warped by the concussive booms of an ongoing villain attack. Civilians had already been evacuated, but heroes—especially the lower-ranked ones—were still scattered across the district, wounded and overwhelmed.

Himiko Toga knelt in a widening pool of blood, completely calm.

Her crimson-and-white U.A. medical uniform was already stained darker at the knees, but she didn’t seem to notice—or care. Latex gloves snapped tight around her hands as she leaned over the injured pro hero sprawled against a cracked concrete wall. He was young, barely past sidekick status, his costume torn open at the abdomen where shrapnel and a villain’s Quirk had done their work.

“Hey, hey—don’t fall asleep,” she chirped softly, voice light and almost playful. “That’s when people get really hard to fix.”

The hero groaned, eyes unfocused. “Y-You’re… U.A.?”

“Mm-hmm! Support Course—medical track,” Himiko replied, pulling a compact injector from her kit with practiced ease. A red cross was stitched into the scarf around her neck, the fabric reinforced with tubing and small blood-storage canisters. “Hero name’s Bloody Scarlet. Cute, right?”

She pressed two fingers to his neck, counting the pulse. Rapid. Weak. Blood loss was severe.

Good thing blood had always fascinated her.

Himiko’s Quirk—Transform—was infamous in the villain databases: by ingesting another person’s blood, she could perfectly assume their physical appearance. In this world, however, that same obsession had been redirected, reshaped under U.A.’s supervision into something… useful. With minute blood samples, she could analyze compatibility, stabilize clotting, and even temporarily mimic a patient’s physiology to predict complications before they happened.

A medic who understood blood better than anyone alive.

She injected the coagulant, then applied pressure with swift, precise movements. Her eyes lit up—not with madness, but focus—as she watched the bleeding slow.

“There we go,” she murmured happily. “See? Your blood was just screaming for attention.”

The hero stared at her, equal parts terrified and relieved. “You’re… smiling.”

Himiko tilted her head, ponytails swaying. A faint blush dusted her cheeks beneath the soot. “Well, yeah. Saving people is exciting. Their hearts beat so loud when they’re scared. It’s kind of beautiful.”

A shadow passed overhead—another villain leaping between rooftops—and the ground shook again. Himiko didn’t flinch. She secured the final bandage, slapped a tracking beacon onto the hero’s collar, and gave him a quick, reassuring pat.

“Evac team will find you soon. Try not to bleed anywhere else without me, okay?”

She rose to her feet as explosions echoed down the street, red eyes gleaming beneath the emergency lights. Bloody Scarlet adjusted her scarf, fingers brushing the warm canisters at her throat.

Some heroes fought villains with fists.

Others fought them by making sure people lived long enough to matter.

And Himiko Toga—once a girl consumed by bloodlust—ran headfirst into the chaos, smiling, ready to save the next bleeding soul she found.