My Hero Academia: The Dragon's Quirk

The cold, rhythmic lapping of the waves was the first thing to penetrate the darkness in Tatsumi's mind. Slowly, other sensations began to return: the sting of salt on his lips, a dull ache in all his joints as if every bone had been crushed and reset incorrectly, and most of all, a piercing cold that didn't seem to come from the seawater alone. This cold felt older, more fundamental.

He forced his eyes open. The first sight that greeted him was the turbulent night sky, illuminated by the distant flashes of fire from the battle on I-Island. The second, closer sight was a pair of sharp, worried golden eyes, surrounded by a wild, soaking wet blonde mane. Leone's face in her Lionel form was right above him, her expression a mixture of relief and the ferocity of a mother lion who had found her lost cub.

"He's awake!" Leone growled, her hoarse voice laced with relief.

Tatsumi tried to move, but his body felt like lead. The Incursio armor around him felt cold and dead, nothing more than a heavy metal cage. As he tried to move his arm, he saw it. Under a tear in his clothing, on the skin of his forearm, a faint, silvery spiderweb pattern—the permanent scar from his draconic backlash—was now glowing with a dim light, pulsing slowly in time with his weak heartbeat. It was a sign that his dragon's regeneration was working hard, fighting against the damage caused by the cryogenic escape and the hard impact.

Akame, sitting next to him in the cramped inflatable boat, noticed immediately. She placed her cold hand on Tatsumi's arm, not to comfort him, but to feel the energy pulse, a medical check-up only she could perform. "His regeneration is active, but slow," she said softly, more to herself. "His energy is almost completely drained."

"What matters is he's still breathing," Leone countered, her clawed hand steadily steering the boat away from the battle zone. "We need to get him back, now."

At the temporary command post on the coral island, Hawks paced like a caged animal. For a few minutes that felt like a lifetime, all his sensors went blind after the massive energy pulse from I-Island's main tower. Now, as his systems slowly came back online, the picture that emerged was chaotic.

"What was that?" he muttered to himself, analyzing the energy data he had managed to capture. "The energy signature doesn't match any registered Quirk. No Quirk factor, no recognizable emission pattern. It's... pure. Like a natural phenomenon, a thunderstorm or a volcanic eruption, but controlled and artificial."

His communicator crackled to life. "Hawks, I've got them." It was Leone's voice.

An overwhelming sense of relief washed over Hawks. "Status?"

"They're alive. Akame is exhausted and cold. Dragon Boy was out for a bit but he's conscious now. His armor is completely dead. We're on our way back, but these waters are getting crowded."

"I see it," Hawks said, now focusing on the tactical map. "I'll guide you through the safest route. There's an HPSC destroyer in sector two blocking the shortcut. Turn sharp to the southwest. Use the reefs as visual cover."

He now had to be a cheerleader for his own rescue team, while still trying to comprehend the power anomaly that had just changed the entire battlefield.

On I-Island, the chaos had two different faces.

Outside, on the front lines, the great battle had come to a sudden halt. Endeavor hovered in the air, his flames slightly dimmed, his eyes fixed on the main tower where the pale blue aurora was slowly fading. An unnatural chill still hung in the air. Below him, the other heroes and the PLF forces had both stopped, staring at the source of the strange phenomenon with a mixture of fear and confusion. The momentum of the attack was lost, replaced by a tense vigilance.

"All units, hold your positions!" Endeavor ordered through the hero communicator. "There's a large-scale energy anomaly from the main tower. Do not approach until we get a clear identification!"

Meanwhile, inside the tower, the chaos was far more panicked. In the sub-level laboratory, scientists and technicians were running around, trying to re-stabilize the containment field around 'Asset E'.

"Report!" Slither roared at a Yozakura technician.

"The energy pulse has stopped, but the main cryogenic containment system has sustained 30% damage!" the technician replied, his face pale. "The Yozakura containment field is still holding, but it's now having to work three times as hard to suppress the subject's passive energy output. She... she was awake for a moment."

Slither looked at the tube. The layer of ice on its surface was beginning to crack. "Pull all forces outside back to the tower!" he commanded. "Ignore the heroes for now! The top priority is to secure the Asset and this laboratory! No one gets in!"

The single energy pulse, a coincidence from Tatsumi's escape, had unintentionally changed the strategies of both sides. The PLF was now focused inward, while the Heroes were focused outward.

Leone's boat finally docked safely on the hidden beach of the coral island. They quickly carried the still-weak Tatsumi into the command tent. Hawks immediately checked him over, while Leone, her transformation slowly receding, finally collapsed into a chair, panting from exhaustion.

As Tatsumi's consciousness fully returned, he tried to sit up, helped by Akame. "That pulse..." he said, his voice hoarse. "I felt it when we were sinking. It wasn't just a wave of power. There was... there was an awareness in it. Like the echo of a dream."

His analytical mind began to work, connecting what he felt with what he saw. "It wasn't an attack. It was more like... a reaction. Something we did in the lab disturbed her."

Hawks looked at him, then at the tactical map which now showed the strange troop movements. "You're right, kid," he said after a moment of silence. "That pulse... it has accidentally given us what we needed: time and space."

He pointed to the map. "Look. The PLF is pulling their forces back to protect the tower. The Heroes are holding their attack, fearing a phenomenon they don't understand. A vacuum has been created between them. A neutral zone that no one is guarding."

Tatsumi followed Hawks' finger on the map, his tired eyes now lighting up with a new understanding. In the middle of all the chaos, between two giant armies staring at each other with suspicion, there was a gap. An opening.

"That vacuum..." he whispered, strength returning to his voice. "...that's our way in."

The storm had given them the most dangerous kind of calm. One last chance to finish what they had started.