’Stupid heroes. You’re only assets. Your flashy powers don’t make you any better than street rats.’ A wide grin spread across Ronald’s face, his eyes sharpening with murderous intent as he watched the dart shoot forward.

Nicholas sensed the change in Ronald’s demeanor. The fear vanished, replaced by his usual arrogance. he could instantly tell, that something was wrong.

Nicholas didn’t even bother turning around. Just before the dart reached him, the space in front of it tore open, as though reality itself had split apart. The dart disappeared into the tear and reappeared an instant later, still carrying the same momentum as it drove straight into Ronald’s neck.

"Huh?" Ronald’s eyes widened as he felt the sharp needle pierce his skin.

"You’re a crafty bastard" Nicholas muttered, his gaze darkening as he looked at Ronald.

Ronald couldn’t reply.

His eyes went wide, and his body stiffened. He desperately tried to remove the dart from his neck.

However he felt a sharp pain run through his body, his fingers falling to the floor with a wet thud.

But even with his severed fingers Ronald desperately tried to remove the dart from his neck as his body convulsed. His mouth twisted helplessly, words refusing to come out.

His eyes were desperately glancing at the dart.

"Why are you in such a hurry to remove it? I’d love to see the gift you had for me" Nicholas said staring down at him with his sharp blue eyes.

Ronald struggled to speak, but the words gurgled up in his mouth. The veins crawling up his neck darkened. and his body began shaking violently.

Nicholas clicked his tongue, ’He can’t answer me like this... But he’s stubborn, he wouldn’t talk easily even if the dart didn’t hit him’

"Hey you" Nicholas turned his gaze to Gina, who was on the floor, staring at the pool of her own blood.

Her gaze snapped to meet Nicholas as he called her, fear gripping her very soul. She didn’t know what he’d do next.

The fear completely overshadowed the pain of her missing limb.

"Where are my sisters?" Nicholas asked coldly as he walked up to her.

"T-they a-are in the middle floor" Gina stammered, her eyes never leaving his, despite the chilling cold spreading through her body as she lost more blood.

"Are they injured?" Nicholas asked, his voice dropping by an octave.

"N-no! They are not" Gina shivered sensing the danger behind his words.

"Here," Nicholas tossed her a handkerchief, "Close the wound or you’ll die in a few minutes. You should last long enough. And one more thing, what was in that dart?"

’He can’t just die from the dart, I’d have loved to beat him up after all this mess’ Nicholas thought slightly disappointed, ’That doesn’t look like a poison dart I’ve seen before though’ Nicholas thought as he glanced at Ronald whose hands had finally stopped twitching and his body slowly collapsed from whatever poison had been inside the dart.

The black substance could be seen running through all his veins.

Nicholas turned his gaze back to Gina, who still hadn’t picked up the handkerchief. Probably too scared to get an inch closer to him.

"It’s plague X it was an item th—" Gina’s words hung in her mouth as she saw the large shadow forming behind Nicholas, her eyes going wide in terror.

-----

The sirens echoed through the street even before Eric’s car did.

By the time he stepped out, three police vehicles were already positioned around the Raystar Association building, officers behind them with their hands on weapons they clearly hoped not to use. Two ambulances sat further back, rear doors open, paramedics moving quickly with stretchers.

And directly across from the building’s main entrance, three news vans had set up cameras.

Eric took it all in over approximately four seconds.

Then he walked straight toward the nearest camera crew.

The reporter spotted him and immediately brightened.

Mightman arriving at the scene of a hero incident was exactly the kind of footage that made careers.

She raised the microphone.

Eric lowered it with one hand, gently but with the absolute finality of someone who was not asking.

"Cameras off," he said quietly. "Everyone from press, behind the cordon, now."

"Sir, the public has a right to—"

"The public has a right to accurate information," Eric said, still quiet, still pleasant. "Right now you don’t have any. You have footage of a building with broken windows and a lot of police. That’s not a story. That’s speculation." He looked at her directly.

"If you broadcast speculation about a hero, I will personally ensure the association reviews your network’s licensing. Off. Now."

The camera lowered.

He turned and found Selena at his shoulder.

She was watching the upper floors of the building with an expression that was doing everything it could to remain professional and not quite managing it.

"He’s been there since before we arrived," she said.

"I know."

"Ronald’s already framed it. Every second Nicholas spends in that building the story writes itself. Hero goes rogue, attacks legitimate business, association loses control of its own people." Her voice was controlled but tight. "And nobody outside knows why. Nobody knows what Ronald did."

"Ronald won’t let them know," Eric said simply. He looked at the building. "That’s what he does. He creates situations where the other person’s response is the only thing anyone sees."

He started toward the entrance.

"Sir Eric." Selena kept pace. "What do we do?"

"We make sure Nicholas doesn’t kill him."

"And if he deserves it?"

Eric didn’t answer immediately. He stepped through the main doors, badge already out for the officers inside, his eyes moving across the lobby.

The lobby had seen better days.

Several security personnel were being attended to by paramedics none appeared critical, but none of them looked like they’d had a good afternoon either.

A reception desk had been separated from its previous location. The elevator doors on the far wall had been pried open and bent outward.

A police officer approached Eric immediately.

"Manager we have multiple casualties on floors two through six. Whoever went through here moved fast. Our officers who tried to intervene were..." He paused. "Moved. No fatalities confirmed but several serious injuries."

Eric nodded. "Keep everyone on this floor. Nobody goes up."

"Sir, we have a legal obligation to—"

"I understand your obligation." Eric met his eyes. "I’m asking you to extend me thirty minutes before you fulfill it. After that, you have my full cooperation." He held the look. "Thirty minutes."

The officer hesitated.

Then stepped back.

Eric turned to the three heroes he’d brought alongside him two B-ranks.

"With me," Eric said. "We contain, we don’t engage. Whatever you see up there, you don’t fight him unless I give the word."

They moved to the stairs.

---

Outside, Selena stood on the pavement and looked up at the building.

She’d been told to wait out here. She understood why Eric needed people he could direct, not people whose judgment might be compromised.

And her judgment was compromised. She knew that. She could feel it in the specific quality of her anger, which was not the clean professional frustration she usually carried but something considerably less manageable.

Ronald had kidnapped a child.

He had waited until Nicholas was occupied saving an entire town, saving his heroes, saving civilians, nearly dying doing it, and he had sent men to the house and taken two girls who had nothing to do with any of it.

Marina, who had worked double shifts at seventeen to keep her family alive and never asked anyone for anything.

Katherine, who cheered for her brother through a television screen with both fists raised.

Ronald had taken them to make Nicholas sign a contract.

’A contract.’ the thought made her squeeze her fist tightly.

Selena had spent years navigating the council’s politics. She’d learned to manage her reactions to them.

The entitlement, the manipulation, the casual treatment of heroes as assets rather than people. She’d been trained to see it as institutional reality. Unpleasant but manageable.

This was not manageable.

She stood on the pavement and breathed through her nose and told herself that Eric had it under control and that the most useful thing she could do was stay out here and ensure the situation didn’t escalate further on the street level.

She was doing a reasonable job of believing this.

Then the top floor exploded.

Not an explosion exactly — no fire, no blast. But the floor-to-ceiling glass that lined the uppermost level of the Raystar building shattered simultaneously, a wall of glass becoming a cascade of falling fragments that caught the afternoon light on the way down.

The sound reached the street a half second later, a single enormous crack followed by the sustained musical rain of glass on concrete.

Every civilian who’d been kept behind the cordon tape stared upward.

Every police officer’s hand moved.

Selena stared.

Three figures had come into view against the broken frame of the top floor.

One was Nicholas.

She recognized him immediately.

His coat, his posture and the complete absence of urgency in how he stood despite everything around him.

He was carrying someone.

She couldn’t tell who from this angle, a figure, limp, held with one hand in a way that made clear Nicholas was not particularly concerned with their comfort.

And the third figure—

’Is that Councilor Ronald?’

[A/N: Why aren’t you in the discord yet? ༎ຶ⁠‿⁠༎ຶ please join the discord. Also, sorry I won’t be able to upload a second Chapter today. My migraine struck again]