MHA: I Am Homelander

It started in the backstreets of Musutafu.

Two thugs, hooded and twitchy, loitered near the shadows of a quiet parking garage.

Their eyes locked onto a well-dressed woman walking toward a sleek, obsidian-colored sports car, its paint catching the orange glow of a nearby streetlamp.

"She's alone," one of them muttered, cracking his knuckles.

"She's rich. That purse alone could pay off our tab at Marlo's," the other said, grinning.

They crept forward, timing her steps, waiting until she unlocked the car. Their bodies tensed, ready to pounce—

"Hey, losers."

The voice came from behind. Sharp, casual, arrogant.

The two men turned slowly to find a blond teen leaning against the alley wall, arms crossed.

His slicked-back hair caught the streetlight, and his piercing blue eyes gleamed with something between boredom and menace.

"Who the hell—" one started.

"—Who am I?" the boy interrupted with a dramatic sigh.

"That's what you're going to ask, right? I mean, it's a no-brainer considering I'm a stranger, but I've gotten sick of hearing it the last half dozen times because none of you live long enough for it to even matter."

The woman behind them, forgotten, climbed into her car and sped off, the tires screeching against the asphalt catching the thugs' attention once again.

"Damn it!" one of the thugs cursed, punching the brick wall in frustration.

The other turned to Loid. "You better compensate us for losing that score, brat, or you're dead."

Loid raised both hands, mock fear in his expression. "Oooh..." he whispered—

ZMMM!

—and a beam of searing red light shot from his eyes, lancing through the first thug's stomach.

The man screamed and collapsed to the ground, clutching his burning gut.

Loid rolled his neck. "Alright, you, come on. Let's see what you've got."

The second thug growled, his fear leaking through a fragile mask of anger, his Quirk activating—his arm expanded grotesquely, doubling in size, veins bulging across the flesh.

With a roar, he lunged forward.

SMACK!

Loid didn't flinch. He simply backhanded the man mid-charge.

The thug's neck twisted with a crack-crack-crack, his eyes spinning wildly before he dropped to the pavement like a sack of bricks.

Loid exhaled, hands on hips. "Another bust."

He grabbed the thug's corpse by the ankle. "Pretty sure I sent the last ones south... so you guys go north."

With an effortless motion, he hurled the body skyward. It vanished into the clouds.

He turned to the sobbing, wounded thug still twitching on the floor.

"Stop whining, you big baby," Loid muttered, grabbing him, clicking his teeth at the blood smeared onto his hand. He wiped his hand on the thug's shirt. "Gross."

Then whoosh!—he threw him in the same direction. His scream cut off into the distance.

Loid sighed, pulling out a black ski mask. He slipped it over his face and crouched low, launching into the air.

He soared from rooftop to rooftop, each leap breaking the tiles beneath his boots.

Landing on a tall building, he perched on the ledge like a gargoyle, surveying the dark veins of alleyways below.

"This can't be the best way to do this," he muttered. "I've been at this for hours, and all I've found are glorified purse-snatchers."

He clenched a fist.

"The chances of finding someone strong out here... it's like trying to find a lion in a pet store."

He wasn't just chasing strength.

He wanted a challenge.

Something—or someone—who could push him hard enough to, at the very least, trigger his flight.

He still hadn't cracked that code. All he could do was leap like a grasshopper on steroids despite testing it in his free time.

It wasn't as simple as putting himself in tough positions like when unlocking his other abilities, because anything that required flight, like leaping off a building, didn't matter to him since he'd ultimately survive the fall.

Frustrating.

Then, movement caught his eye.

A cloaked figure moved through an alley below. Hood up. Silent. Purposeful.

Loid's eyes narrowed.

"Don't care who you are," he muttered, crouching low. "I'm picking this fight."

He launched from the roof, ski mask still on his face.

BOOM!

Bricks cracked and crumbled beneath his takeoff, alerting the cloaked man.

The figure spun aside just in time as Loid crashed into the alley floor, concrete splintering from the force.

Loid stood, stretching his arms. "Hope it's clear I'm here to kill you. That way we don't have to do the whole 'who are you, what do you want' dance."

The man said nothing. He reached up and pulled down his hood, revealing a sleek, mirrored mask beneath.

Loid raised a brow. "A silent type? I like you already."

The man moved first—his Quirk activating in a shimmer of distortion around him. His body became hazy, like heat waves dancing off asphalt. Light bent around him unnaturally.

Loid frowned. "Camouflage? No... some kind of refraction. Maybe even displacement."

The man struck fast. Loid dodged effortlessly, analyzing every motion. He threw a punch, but it phased through. Again. His hits kept missing.

[Name: Unknown]

[Quirk: Light Refraction]

[Description: The user bends light and subtly displaces their physical position while maintaining an illusionary afterimage, creating the effect of attacks phasing through them. It's not true intangibility, but a disorienting shift in perception. Attacks aimed directly at the user's image strike only light and air, while the real body is always slightly offset.]

Loid blinked slowly. "I get it. He's refracting light to disguise his true position. Smart... If my senses weren't enhanced, I'd be too disoriented to land a hit."

And it was also because of his senses that he could more or less tell the figure's position within their distortion now that he understood the Quirk.

He sidestepped another swipe, unfazed. "But that's too easy."

Loid muttered, the thought of simply grabbing the figure's head and crushing it occurring to him.

He was holding back. Purposefully.

Otherwise, what was the point?

He needed something to test him and this was the best opponent he'd gotten all night, so he wasn't going to waste it.

Loid began cycling through his abilities in his head. Super strength? Useless if it never connects. Durability? Not relevant. Heat vision?

He paused, a random thought occurring to him.

"Heat vision is a highly focused laser—maybe the focus is because of the temperature. Higher temperature equals greater beam intensity. But what if I lower the temperature?"

He narrowed his eyes. "Would the beam lose focus? Become unstable? Would it become more like a blast...?"

He raised his chin.

He tested it. Focused. Opened his eyes wide—

BOOOOM!

A red wave burst from his eyes, wider than his shoulders. It caught the cloaked man's shoulder and clipped through his defenses.

Loid smirked. "Nice."

The lower temperature meant lower focus and less heat—but now the energy dispersed outward. The result? A concussive beam.

Despite losing its temperature, it now possessed blunt force, wide coverage and area-of-effect.

He didn't need to see the exact location of his enemy anymore.

He just needed to hit everywhere.

Loid let loose again.

A wave of scarlet light engulfed the alley. The blast slammed into the man, sending him crashing into the brick wall behind.

The distortion vanished.

His Quirk deactivated.

The masked figure groaned as he slumped to the ground.

Loid approached, hands on his hips. "Best fight I've had since Siesmurge. And my Heat Vision now? Upon increasing its power, I don't see why I wouldn't be able to mow down a whole neighbourhood in seconds with it. Seriously, man, that was—"

Groan

Loid blinked. "Oh, sorry..."

ZMMM!

A thin laser lanced straight through the man's chest.

He went still.

"Better," Loid said cheerfully.

He bent down to grab the body—and something dropped.

A folded flyer.

Loid picked it up, brushing off soot. He read the bold, blocky letters:

FIGHT CLUB – DIVISION 4 ENTRY 

That's it. That's all that was on the black paper.

Despite this, Loid's grin widened.

"Well, well... now this could be interesting."

He stood and closed his eyes, tilting his head slightly as he focused on his hearing.

A whir of sounds filtered through the night—distant cars, barking dogs, the hum of neon lights—and then…

Roars. Cheering. Punches landing. Feral screams.

Loid's eyes snapped open, a smirk crawling across his lips.

"Gotcha."

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As I said, two chapters today because I missed out on one yesterday. Enjoy