CHAPTER 23: The Uncalculated Fourth Variable
The alleyway was a tomb of shadows, smelling of damp concrete, trash, and the metallic tang of fresh blood. Tenya Iida lay face-down in the dirt, his pride shattered more thoroughly than his brother's body had ever been. Above him, Izuku Midoriya stood with his legs trembling but his spirit roaring, the green sparks of Full Cowl flickering like a dying candle in a storm.
Stain moved with a jagged, supernatural grace. He didn't run; he flowed across the walls of the alleyway, his serrated katana humming as it sliced through the air. Midoriya leaped, his movements a desperate imitation of Gran Torino's speed, but every time he tried to land a blow, Stain was already a shadow away.
"You have the soul of a hero, boy," Stain rasped, his eyes gleaming with a terrifying, bloodthirsty respect. "But your body cannot keep up with your conviction!"
With a flick of his wrist, Stain sent a hidden dagger whistling through the air. It grazed Midoriya's arm—a shallow cut, barely a scratch—but it was all the Hero Killer needed. Stain caught the blade as it returned to him, his long, grotesque tongue darting out to lick the crimson smear from the metal.
Instantly, Midoriya's body locked. The green sparks vanished. He collapsed next to Iida, his muscles twitching but refusing to obey.
"No... not yet..." Midoriya gasped, his face hitting the pavement.
"Your sacrifice will serve as the foundation for a better world," Stain said, raising his sword over Midoriya's head. "Sleep now, young hero."
I. THE ARRIVAL OF THE FROST AND FLAME
The alleyway was a suffocating pocket of despair. Just as the Hero Killer's blade began its lethal descent toward Izuku Midoriya's neck, a violent, cracking sound echoed from the entrance of the narrow passage. A massive wave of jagged ice erupted across the pavement, moving with the speed of an avalanche. It raced toward the center of the conflict, forcing Stain to abandon his execution and leap backward onto the vertical face of the brick wall to avoid being frozen solid.
"Midoriya," a cold, even voice called out through the rising mist. "You need to be more specific in your location pins. I almost didn't make the turn."
Shoto Todoroki stepped into the dim light, his presence immediately altering the temperature of the alley. His right side was covered in a frost that glittered like diamonds, while a low, intense steam began to vent from his left shoulder. He didn't waste time with questions. His heterochromatic eyes swept the scene, instantly calculating the stakes: Native and Iida were incapacitated, and Midoriya was struggling to stand.
Stain narrowed his eyes, a twisted grin forming beneath his mask. "The son of Endeavor. Another one born into the legacy of a 'fake.' Let us see if your convictions are as hollow as your father's flames."
The air ignited. Shoto thrust his left arm forward, unleashing a localized blast of fire that illuminated the dark alleyway like a miniature sun. The heat was so intense it began to melt the very ice he had just created, creating a thick, blinding fog. Stain, however, was a master of using the environment. He used the verticality of the ice as a series of platforms, leaping through the steam with impossible agility.
Shoto struggled to keep the distance. He knew he couldn't let the Hero Killer get close, but the alley was too narrow for a massive AOE attack without hitting his friends. He flicked his right hand, sending a barrage of ice spears, but Stain parried them mid-air with his serrated katana.
"You're too reliant on your Quirk!" Stain hissed, appearing in the smoke like a phantom. A hidden dagger whistled through the air, slicing a shallow line across Shoto's cheek. Shoto tried to ignite his fire to counter, but his body suddenly felt heavy.
"Midoriya... Todoroki-kun..." Iida sobbed from the ground. "Stop! Run away! This is my fight!"
"If you want us to stop," Shoto replied, his fire flickering as he struggled against the creeping paralysis, "then get up! Because a hero doesn't just watch his friends bleed!"
The situation had reached a critical mass of failure. Stain had tasted the blood of Native, Midoriya, and now a graze from Shoto. He stood in the center of the alley, his tattered red scarf fluttering like the wings of a vulture. He raised his katana, preparing to end the standoff by carving through the children who dared to challenge his "cleansing" of society.
"Your math was wrong, boy," Stain rasped, looking at Shoto. "You thought power was enough to change the world. But power without soul is just noise."
He flicked a killing dagger toward Shoto's throat.
CLINK.
The sound was sharp and metallic, but it didn't come from Shoto's ice. A flash of black and white Card whistled through the air, striking Stain's dagger mid-flight with the force of a high-caliber bullet. The dagger was knocked off course, embedding itself harmlessly into a wooden crate.
"The variables in this alleyway are becoming increasingly cluttered," a smooth, analytical voice drifted down from above.
High on the rusted fire escape, draped in the shifting shadows of the moon, stood Sherlock Sheets. He didn't look like the lazy, bored student who had slept through the Sports Festival. He looked like an apparition of pure logic. His black compression suit hummed with the high-frequency vibration of his Shikigami Dance, and his emerald eyes glowed with a terrifying, calculated intensity.
"Sheets-kun?" Midoriya gasped, his eyes wide with hope.
Sherlock didn't answer. He didn't need to. He stepped off the ledge, but he didn't fall. He glided. Using the microscopic paper-lattices he had engineered during his training with Thomas, he offset his own mass, descending in a slow, ghostly spiral. Thousands of micro-thin, black-edged sheets swirled around him like a swarm of angry wasps, acting as air-bearings that allowed him to land silently between Shoto and the Hero Killer.
"You're late," Shoto muttered, his body beginning to stiffen as the paralysis took hold.
"I was busy deploying my scouts to ensure no other variables interfered," Sherlock replied, his hands already blurred as he manifested a fan of Hardened Cards. "Now, let's talk about your logic, Hero Killer. You claim to judge fakes based on conviction, yet your own method relies on the biological coincidence of blood types. That's not a philosophy—that's just a messy algorithm."
Stain's red eyes narrowed. He sensed a different kind of threat from Sherlock—a coldness that matched the precision of his own blades. He lowered his stance, his muscles coiling. "Another child? Or a student of the truth?"
"I'm a Magician," Sherlock said, his voice devoid of emotion as the cards in his hand began to hum with a lethal, high-frequency vibration. "And the trick tonight is making you disappear."
II. THE MAGICIAN VS. THE KILLER
The atmosphere in the alleyway shifted instantly. While Midoriya's power was a roaring engine and Todoroki's was a crashing storm, Sherlock's presence was a cold, silent vacuum. He stood in a low, loose stance, his fingers dancing across the edges of his cards with a mechanical fluidity. Stain, sensing the shift in the "predatory hierarchy" of the alley, didn't hesitate. He lunged, his body low to the ground, moving like a jagged shadow.
"Paper Art: Shikigami Dance!" Sherlock whispered.
His body flickered. To the paralyzed students on the ground, it looked as though Sherlock had simply blurred out of existence. Using the 60% speed boost from his lightened mass, Sherlock sidestepped Stain's horizontal slash with a grace that was almost sickening. He didn't just dodge; he moved with the minimum required effort, his eyes never leaving Stain's hands.
"Your speed... it's artificial," Stain rasped, spinning mid-air to deliver a follow-up kick. "You're hiding behind the physics of your medium!"
"Speed is a variable," Sherlock replied, his voice a flat monotone. "And I have more of it than you."
Sherlock flicked his wrist, releasing a volley of Hardened Shuriken. Stain swiped them away with the flat of his blade, but as they struck the brick walls behind him, they didn't just thud. They hummed. Sherlock snapped his fingers, and the four scouts he had hidden in the alley's rafters detonated.
BOOM.
The Paper Blasts weren't meant to kill; they were a tactical interference. A cloud of micro-fine paper shards and pressurized air filled the narrow space, creating a "Stolen Second." In that window of sensory deprivation, Sherlock closed the distance. He manifested a high-density Paper Kunai in his right hand, the edge glowing with the black sheen of his molecular glaze.
He struck at Stain's throat. Stain, reacting with the instincts of a man who had survived a thousand battles, twisted his body at an impossible angle. The kunai missed the jugular but sliced through the Hero Killer's tattered red scarf.
Stain roared, a sound of primal fury, and unleashed a flurry of strikes. His katana and daggers became a whirlwind of steel. Sherlock was forced into a high-speed defensive, his hands moving in a blur as he manifested Reinforced Shields for a split second before they were shredded by Stain's sheer physical power.
The two moved like ghosts through the fog of the paper shards. Sherlock was calculating every swing, every footfall. He favors his left hip. His center of gravity shifts when he prepares a throwing knife. Sherlock was "reading" the Hero Killer like a technical manual. But the more he calculated, the more he realized the terrifying truth: Stain wasn't following a pattern. He was reacting to the "soul" of the fight.
"You're empty!" Stain screamed, his blade clashing against a hardened paper gauntlet Sherlock had formed over his forearm. "You have the tools, you have the brain, but you have no conviction! You're just a machine trying to play God!"
Sherlock didn't answer. He couldn't. The 1.5x stamina tax of the Shikigami Dance was starting to burn through his reserves. His heart was hammering against his ribs, and the "Mental Fatigue" was beginning to fog the edges of his vision. He needed to end this in the next three exchanges.
III. THE RED VARIABLE
The alleyway seemed to shrink, the walls closing in as the two predators circled one another. Sherlock's Shikigami Dance kept him in a state of hyper-agility, his body lightened by the microscopic paper lattices, but Stain was a master of the "Close-Quarter Variable." Every time Sherlock flicked a Hardened Shuriken, Stain parried it with a jagged dagger without breaking his stride.
"Your movements are precise, boy," Stain rasped, his voice echoing off the damp brick. "You calculate every inch, every breath. But that is your weakness. You treat this battle like a game of chess, while I am the storm that breaks the board."
Sherlock's emerald eyes didn't blink. "Chess is a game of fixed rules. I prefer to think of this as a fluid equation. You are an anomaly, Stain—a virus in the system that believes it's the cure. But even a virus has a signature that can be deleted."
Stain roared, a sound of guttural fury, and lunged. He was faster than his tattered appearance suggested. Sherlock threw up his arms, manifesting a High-Density Cellulose Shield, a reinforced barrier glazed with his internal molecular grout. It was a defense that had stopped Thomas's friction-blasts.
CRACK.
Stain's serrated katana didn't just hit the shield; it found the microscopic fault lines in the paper's weave. With a surge of raw, murderous intent, Stain twisted the blade. The "unbreakable" paper shattered into thousands of white shards.
Sherlock's eyes widened. He had calculated the shield's durability, but he hadn't accounted for Stain's ability to find the "soul" of a weapon's weakness. Before Sherlock could retreat, Stain was inside his guard. The distance between them vanished.
"You're too far in your head, Magician!" Stain hissed.
With a movement too fast for the paralyzed heroes to follow, Stain drove his katana forward. There was no flourish, no hesitation. The cold steel pierced through Sherlock's compression suit, through the skin, and sank deep into the left side of his chest.
The blade buried itself directly into Sherlock's heart.
"NO!" Midoriya's scream was a raw, broken sound from the pavement.
"SHEETS-KUN!" Iida wailed, his eyes fixed on the hilt of the sword protruding from his classmate's chest. Even Shoto, usually a mountain of ice and stoicism, felt a cold shiver of horror. To them, the math was finished. A heart-strike was the end of the line.
Stain let go of the hilt and leaped backward, creating distance. He stood in the center of the alley, breathing heavily, his red scarf fluttering like a funeral shroud. He looked at the boy who stood motionless, the sword still buried in his torso.
"You had potential," Stain said, his voice carrying a dark, funereal respect. "But you tried to solve a world of blood with a brain of paper. The heart is the only variable that matters, and now, yours has stopped. Sleep, Magician. You are the last sacrifice of this night."
Silence fell over the alley. Midoriya was sobbing, his fingers clawing at the stone. Iida's face was buried in the dirt, the guilt of another death added to his burden.
Then, the silence was broken by a sound that didn't fit the scene. A soft, dry chuckle.
Sherlock's head tilted up. A thin trail of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, but his lips were curled into a faint, mocking smile. He reached up with his right hand—not to pull the sword out, but to touch the hilt.
"You talk... a lot about the heart, Stain," Sherlock whispered, his voice steady, devoid of the tremors of a dying man.
He reached into the inner lining of his suit and pulled out a high-density paper charm. . Sherlock crushed the charred paper in his palm, and as he did, the skin on his right arm suddenly split open in three places, blood spraying onto the floor.
Sherlock didn't flinch at the new injuries on his arm. Instead, the color returned to his face. The "death" in his eyes vanished.
"But you forgot the Magician's first rule," Sherlock said, his smile widening into something terrifyingly sharp. "Never trust what you see. You didn't strike my heart. You struck a placeholder. I redirected the lethality of your blow to a peripheral variable."
He gripped the blade and pulled it out of his chest with a wet, metallic slide. There was a wound, and it was bleeding, but it wasn't fatal. The "data" of the killing blow had been shifted to his arm through the Damage Transfer.
"The trick is over, Hero Killer," Sherlock said, his emerald eyes glowing with a renewed, predatory light. "Now... let's see how you handle the prestige."
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