Return on Earth

(POV Anna)

He left...

He said he'd be back soon, but is it true? Will he leave me here alone?

I've been living here for a year already. It's so empty and cold, if it wasn't for Hayato-nii I would feel like I'm alone in the world.

But he is almost always busy, we hardly talk. He says he is working so that we can go back home as soon as possible.

But I don't have a home to go back to, there's no one waiting for me to come back.

He's been working like crazy every day for a year now, doing experiments in his lab, reading complicated books in the big library and spending a lot of time training in the training rooms.

I wonder why he puts in so much effort, what's so important there? He is already so strong, why does he want to get even stronger?

I hope he comes back soon...

.....

(General POV)

While Anna was waiting impatiently for Hayato to return and the few prisoners still alive were praying for a quick death, the person in question had just appeared in a dark alley in Tokyo.

(Tokyo-21H43-1 years after the disaster)

In a dark alley in Tokyo, the air began to ripple.

The ripples intensified until one foot emerged from the void before the whole body followed. This person was followed by a blue monster about twice the size of an ordinary human.

The first one then started to observe the surroundings and seeing that nobody had noticed them, he turned to the blue monster

"Nomu, go hide. Come and get me when I call you."

The Nomu didn't answer but took a simple step forward and disappeared in concentric ripples.

Once the Nomu was gone, Hayato sighed before saying with a slight smile

"This quirk is really useful. It's been a year since I left, I wonder how the world has changed in my absence? Well let's start with a little sightseeing."

As he began to walk, like magic, a simple black coat covered the black T-shirt he was wearing.

He then slammed his palms together before separating them, revealing a black hat that he placed on his head.

He needed to hide his face after all, he was a real celebrity in Japan.

"I really like the color black" Hayato murmured.

He then put his hands in his pockets as he walked out of the alley and began his tour of the city.

...

(POV Hayato)

Okay, what's wrong with this city?

I mean it's barely 10pm and the streets are empty. No cars running, stores closed, no one out. If I didn't feel the people in their houses with my domain I could have thought that Tokyo had become a ghost town.

First thing to do, find information. And for that, the fastest way is to ask questions.

So I went to a house which seemed to be in a rather good state, and without knocking at the door, I directly unlocked the lock to enter discreetly. Without forgetting to close the door behind me of course, we are not savages.

The lights of the house were off, but I could feel the inhabitants thanks to my domain.

There was a man and an woman in one room and two children in another room.

I went to the parents' room upstairs, opened the door and entered as if I were at home before preventing any sound from leaving the room with my domain.

Once that was done, I approached the couple who was still sleeping, the man looked ordinary except for his slightly pointed ears that would make you think of an elf and the woman had nothing out of the ordinary.

I pulled out some of my favorite ropes before starting to tie them tightly. Once that was done, I shook the man awake.

"Sir, sir, wake up," I said.

The man then slowly opened his eyes and once he saw me, all sleepiness left his eyes. And just as he was about to scream in panic, I grabbed his mouth with my hand preventing him from making any sound.

"Don't make any noise, it would be a shame to wake your children from their slumber, don't you think?"

His eyes widened at the threat before he shook his head violently with an imploring look.

"Don't worry, nothing will happen to you. You just have to answer my questions and I'll leave quietly. Okay?"

Once he nodded his head to show agreement, I withdrew my hand to let him speak.

"Alright then first question, why is the street empty?" I asked directly.

He looked at me strangely but I didn't care, I just needed the information.

"We're not allowed to go outside, there's a curfew," he said, stammering.

Oh? a curfew? Interesting.

"Explain."

He swallowed nervously

"W-Well, after all the other countries in the world disappeared, there was no news of Lucifer or our team. So the government announced that we were the winners. But to prevent a situation like this from happening again, the government decided to maintain strict control over the population. The heroes have been integrated into a special force unit, food is rationed, communications are controlled, and going out at night is forbidden," he explained.

I expected the country to be in a state of total chaos after all this time, but a totalitarian government is not very surprising either. I guess that makes it easier for me.

"All right, what about the Vilains? Have they all been eliminated?"

The man looked increasingly nervous and after a few seconds he answered in a low voice

"N-No, the villains are being hunted down. Most of them are quickly caught, the others hide in the dark areas. However, unlike them, the larger criminal organizations work for the government in the shadows. Everyone knows this but it's taboo to talk about it or you could disappear overnight without even know about it."

I started to think about the implications this new informations might have on my plans.

But after thinking about it, it shouldn't be a problem after all, the organization I'm looking for is pretty big

"I see, thank you. You can go back to sleep" I said as the man passed out

Once this was done, I untied them before putting my hand on the man's head.

*gzzt*gzzt*

A few sparks appeared around his head as I erased the memories of the last few minutes from his mind.

This is a very complex manipulation to do and it took me a long time to master it. Moreover I can't target the memories to be erased, I can only do it with the most recent ones. And the more memories I erase, the more I hurt the victim's brain.

Then I silently left the room and went into their kitchen. I was hungry and wanted to see if I could find something to eat.

I turned on the light and opened the fridge. I was surprised that there was still electricity but they had a full year to fix their problems so it should be fine.

I quickly located all the ingredients to make myself a sandwich, so let's get to work ~

It's been a long time since I've had fresh food. All the food stored in the moon base was optimized for long term storage, so it didn't taste the best.

So I was a bit impatient to eat.

Once my sandwich was ready, with a glass of orange juice in hand, I sat down at the table before starting to eat.

And damn it, it felt good to eat something fresh. I had almost forgotten what real food tastes like.

Now that I have a Nomu with a teleportation quirk, I won't have to endure this anymore.

But that's not the important thing, in the past year I've had time to think about a lot of things and as I thought about them I realized more and more how stupid I was.

So I'm here to rectify that. I'm also going to take the opportunity to collect as many interesting quirks as possible.

*sigh*

The more time passes, the more I feel like I'm playing Pokemon.

Once I finished eating, I quickly left the house before heading straight to UA.

...

(General POV)

In front of a closed metal gate was a young man dressed in a black coat. Just behind this gate was the famous UA high school.

Hayato, who was standing in front of the gate, began to rise into the air, flying over the gate with ease before landing on the other side.

But strangely enough, even once he set foot on the ground, no alarm sounded. No sensors seemed to be able to detect him.

Seeing this, a slight smile appeared on his face. He then began to walk towards the imposing building.

He passed through the front doors and through many corridors without being detected before arriving at a door.

He opened it and entered without waiting.

The inside of the room was full of shelves where countless files of all kinds were stored. Some were compiling student records, others financial expenses. But Hayato was looking for something else, so he began to browse through the files.

File after file, shelf after shelf.

Until he came across some documents. Looking at them, Hayato smiled slightly.

The documents were titled "Shihai Kuroiro" and "Mirai Sasaki" respectively.

He put the documents away in one of his pockets before putting everything back in place and leaving the room.

"Now that that's done, let's go see our dear Sir Nighteye."