My Mangekyo Sharingan Can't Save My Hero Academia

Chapter 191 188 Tales Of The White Fang 1

Two Days Later, U.A. High School, Faculty Conference Room.

The sound of paper hitting wood echoed through the room. SLAM. "This is insane." Vlad King roared, throwing the thick, stapled stack of Commission directives onto the center of the large oval table.

The heavy paper skidded across the polished wood, stopping just short of Principal Nezu's tea set.

That outburst expressed his feelings on the matter more clearly than his next several sentences would.

"We just had twenty students sitting on a mountain watching a creature that makes the USJ Nomu look like a playground incident. Half of them nearly died in those mountains. And the HPSC's response to all of that is to take those same students and put them into the field?" He spread his hands. "That's their answer? More exposure?"

"Vlad," Aizawa said from the far end of the table. His leg was in a proper cast now, the result of Recovery Girl's work over the past three days. He didn't look particularly comfortable. Despite being medically cleared only yesterday, he had somehow already resumed work. "Sit down."

The room remained silent. Nobody disagreed with him. The room simply waited for the rest of it. "Yelling at the paperwork isn't going to rewrite the administrative codes. The edict has already passed the Ministry of Justice. What we need to decide is how we respond."

"But the risks, Shota!" Vlad countered, his fists clenching as he remained standing. "Third-years? Fine. Even second-years have the structural foundation to assist with localized logistical support. But the first-years are entirely unconditioned for a volatile societal environment. We are throwing them directly into a meat grinder!"

Everyone present had thought the exact same thing. At the head of the table, Nezu calmly sipped from a teacup.

Beside him, All Might sat with his arms folded tightly.

Midnight leaned back in her chair. Present Mic had his feet planted on the table. Snipe remained motionless beneath his hat.

"That's true. However .. we can't really do much about that, can we?"

"What we need to decide," Midnight said, from her position two seats down with the document open in front of her and one finger tracking a specific line, "is whether we're going to pretend this is something other than what it is."

"'Expanded practical education initiative,'" Present Mic read from his own copy, with the tone of someone reading a particularly creative piece of fiction. "That's genuinely beautiful writing. Someone in the commission's communications office earned their salary this week."

Midnight flipped through "They can dress it up however they want. Because what this is, stripped of every careful word the commission used, is a forced work study program. They've taken the concept, removed the voluntary element, added the word 'initiative,' and announced it as policy."

She tossed the report back onto the table.

"This is work studies. In everything but name."

"Pretty much."

Present Mic sighed. "I mean..." He scratched the back of his head. "I get that things are bad. But Japan already has what?"

'Thousands of heroes?"

"Sure, we've taken hits. Bad ones. But the system hasn't collapsed. We're eight days out from the worst single incident in modern hero history and the agencies are still functioning." He looked at Nezu. "Do we really need to throw first years into the field? Because this report is practically saying that Japan's previously oversaturated heroes are currently understaffed."

"In terms of high-tier, specialized combat deterrence? Yes," Principal Nezu replied. His voice retained its characteristic, polite cheerfulness, but his black, bead-like eyes were entirely cold as he turned a digital page on his tablet.

"The situation is somewhat different than previous crises as the statistics sent over by the Commission's internal auditing division paint a rather distinct picture. The public version of this information is considerably more optimistic."

The documents made their way around the table.

"The prison break numbers are higher than publicly reported," Nezu continued. "The official figure is approximately three thousand released inmates across all facilities. The actual figure, accounting for facilities that have not yet completed their assessments, is closer to forty-eight hundred. Of those, roughly twenty five percent have been recaptured or confirmed neutralized. The remaining seventy five percent are still at large."

"That's thirty six hundred high-quirk criminals," Midnight said.

"Yes. And the distribution matters more than the raw number." Nezu tapped the relevant section. "The majority of facilities that were breached were not low-security facilities. The Kamino operation during those four hours specifically targeted containment sites holding long-sentence, high-power offenders. The people currently at large are not petty criminals. They're people who were in those facilities for serious reasons."

"Many are repeat violent offenders."

"Others possess highly destructive quirks."

"Several have already formed cooperative organizations."

"So not only is the quantity high, but the quality is just as good." Aizawa said.

"Correct. These are criminals caught individually over a period of years. Under normal circumstances, a high-quirk offender requires significant hero resources to contain. Multiple heroes, coordinated response, often specialized equipment. Either that or a high tier hero responding."

"Which Japan currently doesn't have." Vlad King muttered gravely.

"Indeed. When you have thirty six hundred of them distributed across the country, just a crime wave isn't enough to categorize it. Even if only twenty five percent of those criminals were truly strong by our standards, that means Japan is dealing with more than a thousand individual incidents each requiring resources the system previously allocated to far fewer simultaneous crises."

"Furthermore, hidden criminal organizations that previously remained dormant have become considerably more active."

"Illegal support equipment has flooded black markets. Kinetic dampeners, energy blasters, laser emitters, items that used to take months to smuggle are appearing on common street criminals. Dozens of mid-tier hero agencies have already been completely compromised or hospitalized trying to suppress basic territorial riots. Several hero agencies have reported encountering criminals with combat equipment substantially exceeding what their quirk classification would normally warrant."

All Might's jaw was set. "And that's before you factor in the opportunistic activity."

"Yes." Nezu nodded. "The commission's internal assessment indicates that criminal activity by individuals with no prior serious record has increased by approximately three hundred percent in the past week. The social signal sent by the prison breaks and the public collapse of the hero rankings has been received by a significant portion of the population that was previously deterred by consequences. That deterrence has weakened considerably."

Nezu closed the folder. "So to answer your question directly: the system is not on the verge of collapse. But the gap between what the system can currently provide and what the situation requires is widening, and the commission's projections suggest it continues widening for at least another four to twelve weeks before the recapture rate catches up."

The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence.

"Even then," Cementoss spoke up, his stone brow furrowing as he leaned forward, "a system built over several decades shouldn't be pushed to the brink of absolute collapse this quickly."

"I agree ..." Midnight spoke up. "For now at least, with hero numbers working overtime, we should have more buffer period than the current situation implies. At least enough for the Commission to take things at the proper rate. Our students haven't even taken the licensing exams."

Nezu nodded. "Correct."

That answer drew everyone's attention.

The principal's expression became slightly more serious. "Which is precisely why I find the Commission's decision interesting."

Aizawa raised an eyebrow.

"You think they know something."

"I do." Nezu turned to another page.

"If conditions were exactly as reported, Japan should still possess sufficient operational capacity for at least another month."

"Perhaps two. Instead..." His eyes narrowed.

"The Commission has accelerated emergency measures after only eight days."

Silence.

"Meaning?" Snipe asked.

Nezu smiled faintly. "My hypothesis is that they've discovered something."

"Something significant enough that they aren't willing to wait." The room became noticeably heavier.

Nobody liked that answer. Because everyone immediately understood what it implied.

The HPSC President had survived Tokyo. She had access to information almost nobody else possessed and was currently playing her cards incredibly close to her chest, which means whatever she's looking at up ahead... it's worse than what they were seeing on the news. If she wasn't willing to reveal everything...

"Like Kayama said," Nezu continued. "This initiative is effectively forced work studies. It is surprising that the situation remains this unstable, especially considering the substantial... unpaid help the HPSC has been receiving beneath the surface."

Aizawa raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean by that?"

Nezu smiled.

"Oh. Nothing major." He showed another file from the police reports. It carried a photograph of a masked figure with white hair, a dark mask, and a green tactical jacket. "It's just that the Commission's enforcement logistics have been heavily supplemented by the actions of a certain rogue entity who made his debut not long ago."

"...That vigilante." Aizawa's eyes narrowed.

"You don't mean..." Snipe trailed off, his gloved hand moving instinctively toward his holster.

"Indeed," Nezu confirmed. "The vigilante who first surfaced during the Hosu City incident. He has been making an extraordinary amount of waves ever since your final battle in Tokyo, All Might."

All Might blinked, his gaunt face registering genuine surprise. "Huh? Hosu? I thought the authorities lost his trail after he subdued the Hero Killer."

"They did," Midnight interjected, her eyes narrowing in recollection. "I remember the brief. But I thought that was a singular, isolated occurrence. Has he resurfaced?"

Nezu chuckled. "That was actually his second public appearance."

The room paused. Second?

Nezu continued. "And far from his last."

There was an additional file attached to it.

Everyone glanced through it, soon having their expressions changed. Arrests. Hospital reports. Captured fugitives. Confiscated weapons. The number in the corner steadily climbed.

Thirty-two. Fifty-one. Seventy-eight. One hundred. One hundred twenty-eight. Two hundred and forty six. Three hundred and thirty three ...

All Might stared. "...What am I looking at?"

Nezu clicked again. "Confirmed captures."

The room froze. "Two hundred and thirty-three escaped convicts."

"Three trafficking operations. Seven robbery crews."

"Multiple violent offenders. All apprehended by a single individual within a span of less than eight days."

Nobody spoke. Even Vlad looked stunned. Staring at the sheer volume of apprehensions. It was an operational yield that would have taken an entire metropolitan precinct months to coordinate.

Then Nezu reached the final page. The medical reports.

That silence vanished immediately.

"...Good lord." Snipe stared at the documents.

Midnight grimaced slightly. The files were not pleasant. Broken vertebrae. Severed mobility. Permanent paralysis. Crushed joints. Spinal trauma.

These had happened to almost all apprehended victims.

"He doesn't kill them," Nezu said. "From what I've seen, he seems to follow a moral code and hasn't let a single individual he has gone after die in the process. But he appears quite comfortable ensuring they never walk again."