Chapter 82: Echoes in the Darkness

The click of the doorknob turning was the loudest sound Toru Hagakure had ever heard. She pressed herself against the hallway wall, her body invisible, her heart a wild drum against her ribs. She wished, with every fiber of her being, that her invisibility were more than just a refraction of light; that it could erase her sound, her scent, her very existence from the universe.

The hidden office door opened. The agile, black-clad figure stepped into the silent hallway, moving with the grace of a panther. Then, she stopped. Her head, covered by a black mask, turned slowly, like an animal sensing a presence it cannot see. The figure looked directly at the empty space where Toru held her breath.

"Toru, what's happening? Report," Izuku's voice, a tense whisper in her earpiece, nearly made her jump.

"Someone else is here," she replied, her lips barely moving, her voice a bare whisper. "She came out of the office. Got the data. She's… she's looking right at me. I think she saw me."

"Impossible. Your Quirk is perfect. Stay calm. Don't move. Don't breathe," Izuku ordered, though Toru could hear a note of contained panic in his tone.

The masked figure took a deliberate step in her direction. Toru squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the attack, for the cry of alarm, for the catastrophic failure of her first real mission. The tension was an icy blade pressed against her throat.

The figure didn't attack. Instead, in an incredibly fast and silent motion, she turned and walked away down the hall, disappearing into the shadows. It wasn't a retreat. It was a test. Bait.

"She didn't see you," Izuku whispered in her ear, his voice a mix of relief and frantic analysis. "If she had, she would have attacked already. She's testing to see if anyone's there. She knows something is wrong. Don't move. Don't breathe. Be a statue. Be a shadow."

Toru's heart was beating so loudly she was sure the figure could hear it from the other end of the hall. She followed Izuku's orders, her body petrified against the wall.

After a minute that felt like an eternity, Izuku's voice came again, firmer this time.

"Okay, she's gone. But we can't assume the danger has passed. Follow her. At a safe distance. Don't try to engage. Just observe. You're our eyes. I need to know who she is and where she's going. You're a ghost, Toru. Float."

With a new mission, Toru forced herself to move. She glided down the carpeted hallway, her steps as silent as a cat's. She saw the figure at the end of the corridor, moving with an inhuman agility. She wasn't running; she propelled herself from wall to wall, using the environment to move without a single sound, her feet barely touching the ground.

"She's moving… like an animal," Toru whispered, her voice full of awe and fear. "Fast. Powerful. This isn't a normal thug. She's a high-level professional. She uses powerful kicks against the walls to change direction…"

"Wait…" Izuku's voice in her earpiece changed abruptly. The strategist's calm was replaced by a flash of his more analytical and encyclopedic side. "You're saying she jumps off the walls? With her legs? Like a rabbit?"

"Yes… exactly like that," Toru confirmed, a little confused by the strange question. "How do you know?"

There was a second of silence on the line. Then, Izuku's voice returned, now laced with a pure, absolute panic, ten times worse than before.

"Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no."

"Izuku? What's wrong?"

"Toru, listen to me very, very carefully! Get out of there! Abort the follow mission! Do not go near her! Get back to the ballroom! NOW!"

In the bright, noisy ballroom, Momo was still locked in her tense conversation with Taniguchi, maintaining her facade as an art expert with a calmness that was costing her every last drop of self-control.

"So tell me, Ms. Yaoyorozu," Taniguchi was saying, his predatory smile never wavering. "Aside from the obvious mastery of the classics, what do you think of my collection of post-Quirk sculptures? I find the way the artist used self-assembling polymers to be… revolutionary."

"It's… an impressive application of material chemistry, Taniguchi-san," Momo replied, keeping her composure while her mind raced to sound convincing.

But her attention was divided. She could hear the rising panic in Izuku's voice through her earpiece. Across the room, she saw her young leader had gone pale as a ghost, his free hand clenching into a fist so tight his knuckles were white. Something was terribly wrong.

Mt. Lady noticed it too. She slid up to Izuku's side with the grace of a panther, pretending to adjust his tuxedo's bow tie.

"Wonder boy," she whispered, her voice low and dangerous, her celebrity smile never faltering. "You're pale as a ghost and you look like you're about to puke on the ambassador's three-hundred-thousand-yen shoes. What's happening up there? Talk. Now."

"We have competition," Izuku replied without taking his eyes off an invisible spot on the wall, his voice a taut thread. "The worst possible kind. A variable that wasn't in my calculations."

Toru tried to back away silently, following Izuku's panicked order, but it was too late. The figure in the hallway stopped again, her back to her.

"I know you're there," the figure said. Her voice was female, strong, and filled with a predatory amusement that chilled Toru's blood. "I can smell your fear. It's sweet. Like clover."

In a blur of motion impossible to follow, the figure launched herself, not at Toru, but toward the end of the hall. With a devastating kick that seemed to shake the entire building, she shattered a reinforced window and leaped out into the night.

Toru, her heart in her throat, ran to the broken window. She peered out carefully and saw the figure leaping from rooftop to rooftop under the moon, a now-unmistakable silhouette: a woman with an incredibly muscular physique, white hair, and long, powerful rabbit ears.

"Izuku…" she said, breathless, into the comms. "It… it was her. Hero Number Five. Mirko."

There was a long sigh of defeat and resignation on Izuku's line.

"I know. The Rabbit Hero: Mirko. Her Quirk gives her the abilities of a rabbit, but on a superhuman level. She works alone, hates rules and agencies, and loves violence. She is the worst possible opponent for a stealth mission. Shit."

Minutes later, the team had discreetly regrouped on a balcony overlooking the mansion's gardens. The gala's festive atmosphere now felt like a cruel mockery. The night breeze was cold.

Toru, still trembling, told them what she had seen: the flash drive, Mirko's escape, and the fact that she had somehow been detected.

"But she's a hero!" Ochako exclaimed, confused and scandalized. "Why would she steal data from a philanthropist? And why would she act secretly, like a villain?"

Mt. Lady, who had joined their secret meeting, crossed her arms, her expression grim.

"Because Mirko plays by her own rules," she explained, her voice devoid of all glamour. "She's a lone wolf. She doesn't trust anyone, and even less the system. She probably has her own suspicions about Taniguchi and decided to do her own off-the-books investigation."

"Which means we can't call the police," Momo concluded, analyzing the new, disastrous situation. "And we can't confront her directly. A fight between heroes at a high-society party like this… it would be a scandal of biblical proportions. The media would eat us alive."

"So our mission has changed," Ochako said, taking in the gravity of the problem. "It's not just about stealing Taniguchi's data anymore. Now we have to figure out what data Mirko stole, why she stole it, and potentially… get it back from one of the fastest and most dangerous heroes in Japan without anyone ever knowing we were here."

Izuku looked at his team. Their faces reflected a mixture of fear and a strange, new determination. The mission had gone from difficult to nearly impossible.