Chapter III - National Tournament

Eva White, the Space Manipulating legendary hero whose very existence keeps thousands of villains from stepping out of line. That very same legendary and myth-like figure was now staring down Darius like she's a black mamba, docile and waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Well, at least this is what he himself felt was going on as her glaring stare was nearly penetrating his soul.

While it was no means nearly as petrifying and uncomfortable as Kaito's, who just happened to be standing next to her not making this any better; it was still uncomfortable to have such a powerful aura imposed upon you through someone's eyes and their eyes alone. Regardless, there wasn't much being said at first as Kaito, Eve and Todd all could tell that he needed a moment to register what was going on.

So, just what exactly was going through Darius's mind? He was reflecting on the current image of quirks and how they affect someone's social standing. It's already theorized that quirks have gotten stronger within the past 6 decades due to the wielder of One For All changing and the quirk itself getting stronger.

This changed the standard entirely as now, Quirkless people aren't looked down upon until the owner of One For All is nearing the end of their hero career, as it became law for the OFA wielder to only choose a quirkless successor due to it becoming common knowledge that someone with a quirk inheriting it could lead to their lifespan being dramatically cut proportional to the number of OFA wielder there have been.

This being said, quirkless people were no longer looked down upon, but the rejects of society still needed a "little guy" to pick on, and they picked the next best thing: useless quirks. Darius has been labeled as one of those guys with a useless quirk and yet here he was in front of two of the most influential figures for his generation, along with the main star of the generation that isn't the OFA wielder. Just what sort of occasion could draw this much attention to someone with a publicly announced useless quirk?

"You're probably wondering why I had you brought here."

These were the first words spoken by the critically acclaimed and internationally known principle. The words were spoken in a soft, gentle tone, the opposite to the personality she shows when in hero action. As opposed to when she's in the field, it's known how aggressive and demanding she can be if pushed to that point or possibly having a bad day before reaching the field.

Regardless, she didn't really give him any time to respond. She'd just explain to him the situation behind the scenes of the school along with the situation going on in the hero world as a whole. As most of the society knows, 6 years ago marked the start of the infamous villain's uprising, and through those years many of the known and respected heroes had lost their lives while others had gained fame and glory for successfully putting an end to those tormenting years.

However, what most people don't know is that the villain uprising occurred for more than simply Izuku Midoriya's lack of a publicly announced successor and had to do with an abundant amount of mainstream villains being assassinated. Darius showed clear shock when he first heard that, due to it being a highly kept secret that not even the president knew. It was only known by the higher ups of the hero society and the fact that even the simple petty criminals knew about these deaths meant there was a rat within the higher ups, and an investigation was run on just who exactly that could have been.

There were a few people who had potential motives along with the authorial position to be aware of those deaths to begin with, despite what you may believe just the higher ups being aware of these deaths did not limit just how many people would have knowledge of it by any means.

There are thousands of higher ups in the hero society, as even some across seas were notified of this just in case someone on their side had any potential information regarding someone resembling them in case those villains somehow faked their own deaths. Regardless, Eve along with many others had eventually ended those 6 years of villains running rampant and terrorizing the country and yes, she protected more than simply the city she defended the country from international villains that had tried to invade.

With that being in mind, since they still had only realized the timing of the uprising matched the timing of the assassinations AFTER the uprising ended, they had lost precious time to catch whoever the mole was in the midst of the leaking of that precious information. The main suspect is a former higher up who went missing during the uprising which was originally announced as a death, Jonathan River. He was the head of all technology, which happened to have media outlets as their sub-branch, along with many different forms of technology to send messages long-distances in short times.

Besides Jonathan, there were also a few other people that disappeared during the uprising from other countries but their names haven't been released to anyone outside of that country except the villains as they have to assume the villains are aware of that person's identity, assuming that person is indeed the mole.

Ontop of all of that going on, in a few weeks there would be an internationally broadcasted announcement, announcing a new event that would start happening every three years. That announcement would be about the International High School Tournament, a tournament between four countries, with each country sending in two young students from their most prestigious hero school. It has to be a student that is seen by the pro heroes of that country to represent them in the tournament.

The reason this has become an issue is because the top heroes for each country have to come to Japan and be witness to this tournament while also providing the best security possible, which in turn would make their 3 other countries vulnerable to another possible villain uprising. Despite the villains being in check because of Eve, there's been a rumor going around that the United States has a young rising villain who might have the power to fight against her.

The only thing truly known about the villain is that his quirk allows him to create a black form of lightning with light blue outlinings and that lightning has been shown to disintegrate just about everything that it has come into contact with on record. While that is indeed a threatening and dangerous quirk, 1 person alone wasn't enough to threaten her which has led the countries to believe there might be at least 4 villains, one in each of the 4 countries with the potential to overpower Japan's #1 hero since the #1 hero for America, who is the only other hero on par with her, hasn't been in anyone's contact for 3 years all the major issues for these countries have dropped onto her shoulders.

These factors have all led to the possible complete cancellation of such an event, that was until Kaito Sasaki came to UA and reported to the principal about what he saw during the short interaction time him and Darius crossed paths. What he said was that Darius practiced an ancient form of martial arts that could potentially make him the most dangerous person on the planet at the very least, and that would be a given if he was to have enough time. There were a few reasons as to why this news suddenly caused the number 1 hero to pay attention to, as the first reason was that Kaito is the only person to date at his age, to take down villains that would require a hero on the top 10 rankings. This meant not only did he have the power to take down these villains, he was already on par with at the very least number 8 in raw, unrefined power alone.

The second reason was because he was also under the direct tutelage of three ranked heroes, giving him a very wide and broad perspective of how to gauge one's strength. For him to out right without a hesitating thought or breath say Darius had the potential to overthrow and overpower all of them was a CATACLYSMIC-scale type of announcement and had to be kept secret. The final reason is, Eve herself has been wanting to take on a disciple for the longest but nobody had ever caught her attention, until now. Not even the Sasaski child who was leagues above him had caught her attention, but Darius did simply because of the words spoken by that same Sasaski child.

"Now that I have told you all of this, what is your -"

"I'll do it!"

As she was seemingly about to ask a question about god knows what, Darius cut her off. Would this be a rushed decision he'd regret later? Maybe, but that is now in the past. Let's take a look at the perspective of the young boy and what was happening in his mind during this entire monologue. When she first started speaking, it was very true that he wondered why he was brought here and then she'd go on to talk about the villains being assassinated and this only shook him to his core.

Not only were their assassinations a fact shaking him up, but the fact that they were still being kept in prisons despite being decades older and probably physically unable to do anything close to what they did when their bodies were in their prime, which seemed a bit cruel to him but he still somewhat understood it as some of them could effortlessly cause devastation to any country in the world.

The big ice breaker however, was that not even the Isenguard Penitentiary could find out just what or who it was that was able to pull off these assassinations and then release the information about said assassinations. It seemed so surreal to him and like something out of a book that it shook him much more than anything else. Putting that aside, easing into the tournament, just the mention of a tournament put a smile on his face especially seeing as there were currently two young students within this room and of course he assumed they would be the two representatives from Japan.

Despite the fact he himself is actually from America but he currently resides in Japan, resulting in him being one of its representatives. Furthermore, hearing the fact that there's even such a rumor, that there are currently, at the very least, FOUR people with the possible capability to rival or even beat THE Eve White was easily the most terrifying thing he has ever heard in his life.

She was like a figure that stood above the current threshold and now it seemed that every country had such a person, they just needed to hope that the word about those people's existence was just that, rumors with no merit to them. For a villain to have abilities like that in the first place is terrifying, let alone four of them. After finally getting over that, he kept in mind just how high of a status Kaito held outside of the school and even kept in mind the fact he hadn't fully disclosed what exactly it was he could and was doing to obtain that over scaled level of power.

He knew how powerful this cultivation he was practicing could become after all, he was still a teenager and had the physical feats of a professional athlete and that was only in the early stages of the Human Realm, just imagine what he could do in the Earth Realm or even the Heaven Realm.

He agreed though, as he had earlier theorized someone in the early to mid Earth Realm would already be considered a ranking hero, so the Heaven Realm would easily be unfathomable power compared to anyone else. That's not taking into account the factor of his quirk allowing him to obtain much more and much stronger heavenly qi than a normal person within any realm he'd be a part of could naturally do.

Putting this and a few other thoughts aside, it was a relatively quick decision for him to accept being a representative in this tournament, he needed to put on the best show of his life in front of as many people as he could.

"You seem like a man that has made up his mind, good. A man should be that decisive."

To the surprise of just about everyone there, Todd Angel had spoken up and said this. It was pretty well known that Todd wasn't a very social hero, nonetheless a social person. Similar to how Kaito was infamous in his school for being extremely powerful, Todd was infamous around the entire hero society of Japan for being extremely barebones and lazy.

Despite that, he still had a feared reputation because of how versatile his quirk allowed his combat to be, close or long range it didn't matter. It was a terrifying thought that he had even believed he could make an escape from Todd's grasp when he was grabbed from his school. At the end of the day however, this was about the national tournament.

"Since you're such a decisive person, I'll take you in as my disciple and teach you about martial arts and fix up those sloppy fighting forms of yours. I'll make you so good that you could create your own martial arts." It seemed that the lazy hero had a very arrogant side to him, to be expected of someone from the Angel family.

Same time at a Dark Alleyway inside the United States of America

Despite being a student, Brianna Hall was a menace to society and anyone else around her. She was praised for being extremely talented and smart, but also for her calculative nature along with many other things. The nature of her Quirk, "Lock-On" however made her a terrifying person despite being viewed as an extreme talent.

Lock-On gave her the ability to activate a long range radar effect as well as a separate activation effect that causes their ranged attacks to immediately teleport within a very close proximity to their target allowing for an almost guaranteed hit. Even with that, many people praised her for not using this Quirk for villainous reasons or anything of the sorts, little did they know she was actually doing those things. Laying there, dead on the floor under her feet was a group of professional assassins that were hired and now being silenced by the ultimate assassin of New York's Colombo crime family. She'd used an M1895 Nagant Revolver for this job, the best pistol in the world for any form of sniper-ranged assassination.

The range of the gun was less than 100 yards, but that was more than what she needed to deal with these clowns. She did this simply because the bullets would always connect from close-range and be the bullet from a pistol, leading any and all investigators to look into petty and regular criminals instead of villains. A villain is someone that uses their quirk for evil while a criminal is a regular person doing petty crimes, a difference that she has been using to her advantage for the past few months.

On top of that, she's also lied to her school about the range limit of her quirk, which she said has to be in her direct eyesight which is not true. It simply has to be something she can see in live-time, meaning live videos or live cameras extend the range of this quirk. She's the perfect assassin for the Colombo crime family and she enjoys making the money from it to support her family and friends. What else was she doing in this alley though?

"It's time for you to come out." As she said this, a boy around the same height as her came out from the shadows, every inch of his skin covered in black clothing.

This was also a student, that goes by the name Nova Hall. He was her twin brother, and was the oldest of the two siblings, though by a few minutes. Despite their family ties, Nova was not someone that used his quirk for such reasons, as his quirk had the potential to destroy the entire planet if perfected and mastered. What would be the point of destroying the planet over small things that make no difference to his overall situation? If he destroyed the planet, not only would he die, but his precious little sister would as well.

His quirk was called "Newman" and had a unique effect as it allowed him to create violent vibrations and shockwaves, resulting in quakes being sent out if need be. Even with this being the case, it wasn't a quirk he could freely use all willy nilly like everyone else, as even the smallest mistake would result in devastating side effects. Luckily, he wasn't the type to joke around nor be playful to begin with and he had long ago grown to have control over his quirk to a dangerous level.

Among the few people that do know of his quirk control, some have even speculated that in the future he might be able to grow with the potential to rival the current number 1 hero, Eva White. He stared at his sister, who seemed to be having fun with her assassinations and tapped the ground with his foot, sending a nearly unnoticeable shockwave through the ground, shattering the bodies of the victims that had already been dead. He always cleaned up behind his sister's messes despite not agreeing with them, as he himself wanted to be a hero yet even then, he would never bring himself to harm his sister in any form, so he helps make sure she doesn't get caught by anyone or anything.

It's rare for him to openly help her, which she noticed he had done this time, meaning there was some important news. Nova had heard word on the street that there was talk of a nation wide-scale tournament to be announced within the upcoming weeks and while he didn't know the specifics or any details, he knew his sister enjoyed putting herself up against those who are considered "talented" or "prodigies".

Which he had assumed the aforementioned tournament would be filled with, due to its scale and how much of a secret it was kept, but where did he get this information from to begin with? He never shares that with his sister, but she never asks more than once since it wouldn't affect her ability to do anything based on what she heard anyways.

"Knowing you, we'll be leaving for Tokyo within a few days won't we?" Nova said, smiling at the excitement on his sister's face.

"Oh my dear big brother, you know me so well~!" A tsundere-like smile took over the girl's face, she had a serious thing for fighting strong people, almost like a certain pink clown from an anime that's been lost to time 6 decades ago.

What Nova had not accounted for just now however, was that there was a group of people that were planning to attack his sister just now and he's now in their sights as well. After all, who the hell would have the balls and would dare attack a Colombo family associate in New York of all places?

Soon, around five men would surround the two Hall siblings, each and every one of them exerting a killing intent so thick that it actually began to look like smoke despite not physically being there. Nova was too close to his sister to use his full power as he didn't want to risk hurting her, and speaking of his sister, she did not have a huge advantage in close ranged combat, in fact it was the exact opposite.

She had a huge disadvantage, as people would be able to focus on her and evade her attacks even if they did appear within close proximity of their target(s). The dark area soon began to light up as a truck would turn into the alleyway, the two siblings sighing with relief once they had seen the five men retreat, knowing this truck was going to be from the Colombo family...or was it?