I've seen a lot of bad days. The kind that starts with a bullet and ends with a crater, the kind where the sky falls and nobody bothers to put up an umbrella.
But standing there, rooftop cracked under my boots, Void Chain smiling like the smug black hole he is, and Omega Null dropping out of the sky like reality's personal executioner?
Yeah. This one's charting in the Top 3.
And the night wasn't even over.
My earpiece crackled, Rai's voice cutting through the static, sharp and clipped:
"Kael. Listen. Do not engage. Omega Null isn't like Void Chain — you don't get second chances."
That's cute, Rai. Real sweet. Like I ever had first chances.
Omega Null straightened from the impact crater, lifting their head slow and deliberate, like a horror movie monster that knows the jump scare's already done its job. Their visor flickered — a single red line tracing me like a sniper scope.
TARGET LOCKED: FRAMEBREAKER.QUICK TERMINATION: AUTHORIZED.
I flexed my hands, feeling the faint buzz of stored Fa Jin coiled in my legs, the bruised ache of Muscle Augmentation wearing off, and the sharp edges of New Order's last override still clinging to the air like a dying wi-fi signal.
My head was already screaming: Move, idiot.
But my mouth? My mouth had other priorities.
"So, I'm guessing you're not here for the scenic tour," I quipped, leaning casually against the bent rebar like I wasn't about two seconds from getting deleted from existence.
Omega Null tilted their head. Their voice came out flat. Robotic. Almost bored.
"Resistance unnecessary. Probability of your survival: 0%."
Void Chain let out a soft chuckle behind them. "Told you, Kael. The world doesn't need a cheat code like you running loose."
I cracked my neck, rolling my shoulders, and for once the snark almost didn't reach my lips. Almost.
"Funny," I muttered. "I was about to say the same."
And then I moved.
The second I kicked off the ground, the world twisted into that Overclock slow-motion haze — where thoughts run at light speed, but your body's just barely scraping to keep up. Every muscle, every tendon, locked into perfect sync.
Jet flared in controlled bursts, Gearshift snapped my momentum like I'd yanked gravity's leash, and I shot past Omega Null at an angle sharp enough to make a mathematician cry.
I didn't aim for the kill. Not yet.
Because I already knew the truth: that thing didn't dodge. It didn't need to.
The air behind me ruptured as Omega Null's containment field pulsed wide — like someone took reality, crumpled it up, and tried smoothing it back out again. That was their quirk in action. Quirk nullification on an absolute scale. A living dead zone.
One touch? Game over. Doesn't matter how many quirks you stack, how fast you move, how hard you hit. Null erases all of it.
And me? I was skating centimeters from that kill zone, counting the microseconds until Void Chain inevitably made his move too.
"Rai," I barked through the comms, "gimme a sitrep!"
"Not good," he answered, voice sharp and low. "Null's field radius is expanding every second. You've got about fifteen before the whole block's a quirkless graveyard."
Fifteen seconds.
Yeah, that tracks.
Omega Null pivoted, head snapping toward me with mechanical precision. No emotion. No hesitation. Just a living physics error, hunting down the last cheat code the Hero Bureau couldn't delete.
[TARGET: WITHIN ENGAGEMENT RANGE.][NULL FIELD EXPANSION: PHASE 2.]
The skyline started folding in on itself, light bending around Null's silhouette like the universe was buffering. My quirk stack flickered — like flipping through a dying playlist of superpowers.
Super Regeneration? Offline.Hardening? Barely holding.Overclock? Dimming.
New Order? Still active... but I could feel the cracks.
I gritted my teeth.
Not yet. Not until I got the timing perfect.
Every fight's just a math problem, and I've always been good at math.
I juked left, then right, snapping my velocity with Gearshift so hard my bones nearly filed a complaint. Jet burst roared from my heels, and Fa Jin's stored power uncoiled, hurling me onto the side of a cracked office tower — wall-running like gravity was just a polite suggestion.
Null's field was chasing me. Not Omega Null, the field. Space around me warped like a drunk funhouse mirror, and even through Overclock's ultra-slow filter, I saw the lines where my quirks were starting to die off.
I'd been playing chicken with the end of my existence for... what, nine seconds now?
A new personal best.
But I wasn't the only one moving.
Void Chain finally joined the dance, his silhouette warping like someone took the concept of distance and threw it in the trash. His black hole quirk was a nightmare even without Null as backup. Proximity meant erasure, plain and simple. Space didn't exist around him, just absence.
And now I was trapped between the two of them.
Null in front. Chain behind. And me? I was the bug on the windshield.
For about half a second, I considered surrender. Lay down. Let the walking paradox delete me.
But then I remembered who I was.
I'm Kael Arashi. Codename: FRAMEBREAKER. The Tyrant the Hero Bureau couldn't leash. I don't bend. I snap reality over my knee.
My lips curled into a grin.
"Alright," I whispered to myself, "time for Plan: Screw It."
Fa Jin released the last of its coiled kinetic charge, launching me high into the air like a spring-loaded warhead. Mid-arc, I felt my quirks flicker back online for just a moment — enough.
New Order, whispered low but sharp in my head, locked and loaded:
"The next hit I land will break all defensive properties."
Didn't matter if I hit skin, armor, a quirk field, or the crust of the planet. The next thing I touched? Breaking. Period.
I rotated midair, eyes locking onto Omega Null's chest plate.
Target acquired.
Time didn't slow. My mind just went faster.
Overclock at full burn. Jet locked for precision. Gearshift prepped to snap my momentum right before impact. Springlike Limbs coiled so tight my joints felt like loaded gun chambers.
And New Order — the big gun — humming in the back of my skull, waiting for contact.
Omega Null rotated its upper torso to meet me midair, all inhuman efficiency and dead stare.
[NULL FIELD: MAXIMUM OUTPUT.]
That field pulsed outward — a sphere of pure quirk erasure — stretching toward me like the jaws of some cosmic predator. The gap between us collapsed, and for one glorious heartbeat, it felt like the universe held its breath.
And then I hit.
Fist met chassis. Flesh met machine. Rule met reality.
New Order engaged."The next hit I land will break all defensive properties."
The instant contact happened, I felt the law snap like a brittle twig.
Omega Null's armor caved inward like paper. Its quirk field blinked out. The space-warping, quirk-erasing pressure vanished, and for the first time since the fight began, the world around me stopped glitching.
I dropped out of Overclock's headspace, breathing hard, hands trembling. That punch should've shattered the entire block — but I'd told New Order to focus on breaking the target's defense, not the surroundings.
Big difference between "destroy" and "override." One leaves a crater. The other leaves nothing to defend.
But the victory high barely had time to kick in.
Because behind me, space hissed.
Void Chain's voice cut the air like a guillotine.
"You hit the puppet, Framebreaker. Now deal with the puppeteer."
Void Chain didn't move.He didn't need to.
The air between us bent inward like reality was being slurped through a straw. The black hole effect around his body shimmered, writhing like a living shadow, and my instincts screamed even before Overclock could put the math together.
One step. One twitch. One wrong exhale, and I'd get deleted from existence, quirk stack and all.
And me?Still falling from that last attack. Midair. Wide open.
Fantastic.
I triggered Jet, blasting sideways with a microburst to kill my downward momentum, but the black hole field's event horizon was already licking at the edges of my boots, warping the soles like melting plastic. Gearshift flipped my velocity like a coin, pulling me out of the gravity trap — barely.
I hit the side of a broken apartment block like a wrecking ball, bones creaking even through Hardening and Shock Absorption. Super Regeneration kicked in, patching up the hairline fractures that'd started the moment I'd gotten too close to Void Chain's zone.
My mind was racing, my body running on muscle memory and stubbornness. This wasn't a fight anymore.
This was survival.
Chain stepped forward, black hole quirk flickering, voice low.
"You're running out of space to dodge."
I wiped the blood from my mouth, flexing my hand. I could feel the pulse of New Order still cooling down — reality takes a second to forgive you when you bend it too far.
But I wasn't done.
Not even close.
I pushed off the wall, planting both feet firm. My body felt like it weighed a thousand tons, every muscle straining to stay upright in the warping gravity zone, but I locked my stance anyway.
"You ever hear the phrase," I said through gritted teeth, "speed kills?"
Void Chain tilted his head.
I grinned, even as my legs buckled.
"Good. Because next time I move, you won't even know I did."
[New Order: Loading.]
"The moment I move, all other motion within 20 meters freezes for 3 seconds."
Void Chain's eyes finally narrowed.
The black hole field surged.
And then I moved.