Monoma tugged his coat tighter around his frame as he turned into the next street, the sound of his own footsteps echoing too loudly in his ears now that the night air had begun biting much sharper than before
He hadn’t meant to talk to that stranger for more than a few seconds but something about that boy’s steady eyes still hung in his mind like a stubborn echo.
He had kind yet naïve eyes. The type that believed the world could still be fixed with enough discipline and decency.
If only he knew.
Monoma shook the thought away and exhaled. His nerves finally relaxed as the crowd thinned and the city noise dulled. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small black case in which laid the three flash drives he had acquired over the span of the last month.
They clinked softly inside, labeled in faded pen:
E&T-A1
E&T-C3
PROJECT SOLACE
“Three keys,” he murmured to himself. “Now I just need the lock.”
He found the place he had been looking for. It was a quiet spot behind an abandoned pharmacy, one of Tensei usual data safehouses.
Its backroom still hummed faintly with old network lines and his own makeshift terminal. Monoma plugged in the first drive, fingers hovering over the keys as the screen flickered to life.
ACCESSING…
ENCRYPTION LEVEL: HIGH
Of course it was. Bad guys didn't rarely made anything easy, did they?
“Fine,” he whispered. “Let’s dance.”
Lines of code filled the screen as he bypassed firewalls one after another. The glow painted his face in cold blues and greens, eyes darting with intensity. Sweat rolled down his temple as his heart thudded.
The screen blinked once. Then twice.
ACCESS GRANTED.
What loaded next wasn’t what he expected. Rows upon rows of names. Codenames. Coordinates. Payment logs. Cross-references between hero agencies, law firms… and vigilante activity.
His breath hitched. They weren’t just hunting Hex.
They were hunting the one who had probably made their entire secret operations known to the hero commission.
“Shadow… Vixen… Hex…” Monoma whispered the names under his breath, eyes wide. His own alias was right there on the list. And beside it, the word: Candidate.
“What the hell does that mean?”
He scrolled further, and a single phrase made his stomach turn: ‘Project Solace — Field Test Phase: Initiate psychological fragmentation in vigilante subjects.’
He didn’t understand all of it yet, but one thing was clear about the whole situation. Eisen and Thorn weren’t bounty hunters or lawyers.
They were Villains.
And somehow, he and Hex were in the same web.
Monoma slammed the laptop shut, the sound echoing in the empty room. His pulse was wild now, but his expression was steel.
“So,” he muttered, slipping the drives back into his pocket. “It’s not just about the bounty anymore.”
He turned toward the shattered window, mask half-lowered, eyes glowing faintly from the reflected city lights.
“Looks like the fox found the hunter’s den.”
And with that, he vanished into the night — unaware that somewhere across the city, another screen flickered to life with his image tagged in red:
TARGET ACQUIRED.
~~~~•~~~~
Somewhere in the Lower District of the city was the faint hum of computers that filled the underground bunker.
Green code danced across three cracked monitors, reflected in the eyes of the boy hunched over the desk.
Izuku Midoriya hadn’t slept in thirty-two hours. His gloves were still smudged with graphite from his custom arrow rig, and a faint scar cut down the side of his jaw, a reminder of the last bounty hunter who got too close.
He should’ve been resting but the network didn’t sleep so then how could he? His screen suddenly flickered with a strange pulse.
“...No way.” His fingers froze above the keys, eyes narrowing. The terminal flared with a digital trail so faint that it would’ve gone unnoticed to anyone else. But Hex recognized the encryption signature being touched manipulated, not destroyed.
Someone had accessed the data he had stolen.
He pulled up the feed, hands flying. Each keystroke hit like a gunshot in the silence. The map expanded — pings appearing like veins lighting up across the city grid. One of them blinked red, steady and deliberate.
“Sector 12-B… old pharmacy district.” He leaned closer, muttering, “That’s… not the the law firm or Hit Ringer. This person is too clean and fast.”
For a moment, he hesitated. Whoever cracked those drives wasn’t an amateur. That level of infiltration wasn’t random curiosity but rather filled with nothing but intent.
Then he saw it. A tag with his very own codename, HEX written as a candidate. And below it others were written as well but the one that stood out…
VIXEN & SHADOW.
The same phrase which Monoma had found moments ago suddenly burned across his screen.
Initiate psychological fragmentation in vigilante subjects.
Izuku’s jaw tightened. “Fragmentation?” His pulse kicked. “So they’re not just tracking me… they’re studying us.”
He rose, pulling his hood up, the faint glow of his bow rig catching the dim light. His mind was already spiraling — patterns, connections, cause and effect all colliding in a single thought:
Someone’s trying to turn us into weapons.
The monitors blinked again as static morphed into a frame-by-frame glitch of a face. The image was blurred yet held the silhouette of a fox-like creature
“You’re the one who triggered it…” The image cleared up and revealed an individual's half-mask caught in mid-turn, city light glinting off the curve of his grin.
Izuku didn’t know whether to feel alarmed or impressed. But either way, this meant one thing. He wasn’t the only ghost haunting the city anymore.
“Alright, Vixen” he murmured, grabbing his bow and slinging it across his back. “If you’re digging into the same mess I am… we either need to talk—”
He stepped into the night, eyes cold and focused.
“—or non of us are making it out of this alive.”
The door shut behind him, screens fading to black except for one line flashing red at the bottom of the main monitor.
PROJECT SOLACE — TRACKING ENGAGED. SUBJECT: HEX.
STATUS: MOVING.
YOU ARE READING
Can We Be Heroes?
FanfictionLife has always been unfortunate, unfair and unkind. Especially for three particular boys.
