The room was dark—not dim, not shaded by lazy morning light, but dark. Thick blackout curtains choked out any trace of dawn, and what little glow crept around the edges of the fabric was weak, unmotivated. The digital clock on his desk flickered 05:42 in cold blue digits, the only sharp thing in the whole place.
It still wasn't much of a home, but it was his. A single bed with its frame jammed against the wall, sheets half-tangled, the rest of the place about as lived-in as a halfway station. A desk cluttered with old notebooks, maintenance reports on his gear, a few still-unread letters from somewhere he didn't care to name.
Shinji lay on the bed, not asleep—not anymore. He'd shot upright a good twenty minutes ago, chest tight, sweat clinging to his skin. Not from fear. Not really. Fear was clean. This was heavier. It sat in your bones, lodged in the space between your ribs and refused to let go.
Another nightmare.
Same as every night since the hallway incident. Since the kid with the sharp tongue and smug face said the wrong thing in front of the wrong person. Since Shinji had grabbed him, slammed him against the wall, and nearly throttled the soul out of him in front of half the school. And maybe the part that stuck more than it should've was how no one stopped him. Not until it was over.
And the Specter…
The Specter had been quiet.
Too quiet.
Where there used to be constant muttering—remarks, unwanted advice, occasional threats he was sure tried to be veiled as wisdom—now there was just… silence. Not an absence. Shinji could still feel it. Still knew it was there, buried somewhere in the architecture of his mind like a sickness he couldn't quite cut out. But it hadn't said a word in seven days.
That silence was worse than the nightmares.
He pulled in a breath, wiped a hand down his face, and sat on the edge of the bed. Muscles stiff, skin clammy. The cold from the room clung to him, a thin film of reality that was almost a relief. At least it proved he was still here. Still in control. Still breathing. Barely.
Shinji didn't bother turning on the lights. He liked the dark. It meant nothing could sneak up on him without announcing itself. The shadows were old friends, their edges familiar.
He grabbed a bottle of water from the desk, took a long pull, and then another.
"Got nothing to say, huh?" Shinji muttered aloud, voice rough with sleep and something older. It sounded too loud in the dead room.
Nothing.
He stood and paced once, then twice. The walls felt close. The air heavier than usual. A week left till the Sports Festival. Seven days to pull himself together. Seven days to prove to the world—and to himself—that he belonged here.
Or to burn out trying.
Another glance at the clock. 05:51.
The routine was the only thing keeping him steady.
After so many years of chaos, blood, and noise, the ritual of small, simple actions was an anchor. Wake up, drink water, stretch, wash his face with freezing water from the sink, repeat the same old, faded mantra in the mirror that didn't mean a goddamn thing anymore. "You're here. You're still here." And then get moving.
The room was still too quiet. The air too heavy. The Specter's absence pressed down on him, a wrongness so tangible it almost felt like a weight across his shoulders.
Shinji dressed in the standard UA uniform, his shirt clung to him, still damp from sweat that hadn't cooled right. He tugged the hem down, slid his wristbands into place. The right arm twitched faintly—a useless, uncooperative thing—and his lips thinned in irritation.
Move, damn you.
It didn't.
He stepped out into the dawn light, the campus bathed in that ghostly gray of early morning. The trees stood as bare silhouettes against the sky, the training domes in the distance already illuminated like sleeping titans waiting for blood to stir them. Shinji's boots crunched against gravel as he made his way to the main training ground—Ground Beta, his usual haunt on open days.
Today was one of those rare things Aizawa threw them every so often: a free training day. No drills, no lectures, no assigned pairs. Just a full day of unrestricted access to one of the main grounds, a chance to grind yourself into the dirt until your body screamed and your mind followed.
And it was already too loud in his head.
Half-thoughts clawed at the corners of his mind as he walked. Bitter, traitorous things with no voice and no shape but somehow, impossibly loud.
Do you truly belong here?
He scowled, shook his head as if that could dislodge it, quickened his pace. His jaw clenched hard enough it ached, but he didn't stop walking. Didn't look at anyone else out here this early. Didn't need to see their faces.
Because the worst part was it wasn't the Specter's voice. Not anymore.
It was his.
If you say you belong here, do you?
Are you sure?
By the time he reached the entrance to Ground Beta, his pulse was steady but his skin prickled with heat beneath his uniform. The building loomed ahead, the massive reinforced doors cracked open, light bleeding out onto the stone path like a challenge.
He paused at the threshold. Another sharp thought stabbed at him, colder than the rest.
Go in. Prove it. Or don't. Who would notice?
Shinji sucked in a sharp breath through his nose and stepped inside.
It was empty, of course it was, school didn't start for another hour, but part of him expected Lida to be here.
He moved straight for his usual corner—the one by the reinforced impact walls, the one where no one would bother him unless they really meant to.
He dropped his bag, rolled his shoulders, and stretched out the muscles that still complained from yesterday's drills. His right arm barely shifted.
That old itch started again at the base of his skull. The urge to talk to something, to pick a fight, to burn it all down just to feel the noise again.
But there was no Specter.
Just him.
And those half-thoughts, carving new scars behind his eyes.
You belong here.
do you?
He clenched his jaw again and grabbed the training gauntlets, slipping them over his fingers with practiced ease. The fabric bit against his skin, grounding him.
One week. Seven days till the Sports Festival.
Prove it. Or don't. But you better fucking try.
Without a word to anyone, Shinji stepped out onto the mats and started his first set—slow, methodical, fighting stance drills, fists cutting through the air, left arm steady, right one dragging like a dead weight.
It was a start.
He wasn't here for simulated hero fights.
He moved through the drills methodically, like muscle memory made flesh. A sharp pivot to the side, low roll, shoulder up to absorb an invisible blow. His left arm moved with precision, his right still hanging like dead weight against his side. Every movement was deliberate, calculated—the exact same ones he had used in fights that no one here would ever see, against things no one here could imagine.
A feint left, a sharp elbow forward, a spin to avoid an unseen tail whipping toward him. He planted his feet and thrust his open palm forward, a blow meant for a soft spot beneath bone-plated hide.
In his mind's eye it was there—the shadow of something towering, impossible, jaws lined with teeth like train cars. The crunch of metal, the roar of water, the thick, chemical stink of breached coolant systems. The kind of chaos no quirk could prepare you for.
To anyone else, it would look like standard hand-to-hand drills. The kind you might run in a defense class. But to Shinji, each strike was a memory. Every movement a countermeasure against creatures whose names didn't exist in this world.
He didn't slow, didn't speak. The only sound was the steady thud of his feet, the soft exhale with each strike. The useless sway of his right arm, always a reminder, always in his peripheral.
And worse than the silence of the training grounds was the silence inside his head. The Specter hadn't spoken in days. Not since that confrontation in the hallway. Not since the fight. And its absence was like a splinter under Shinji's skin.
Because for all his hatred of the thing, for all his distrust, it had always been there. Always a voice at his shoulder. Always goading, mocking, advising. And now—nothing. Like a piece of himself had gone missing.
His jaw clenched as he pivoted, delivering a hard elbow to the air where a Kaiju's thoracic joint would have been, twisting his torso to avoid a phantom claw.
You don't belong here.
The traitorous thought surfaced again, as it had every day since that fight. Whispered in his own voice, a toxic echo. You're not one of them.
He threw a hard punch toward empty space, his knuckles popping as they hit nothing but the cool morning air.
"Shut up," he muttered aloud, though no one was there to hear it.
But the thought lingered, hanging over him like the specter's absence—a weight he couldn't shake.
He launched into another sequence without stopping. Dive, rise, jab, sidestep, heel kick. Muscle memory carrying him through battles no one else could see. And he knew he'd keep doing this until his body gave out, until the sun rose fully, or until someone else finally wandered in.
Because if he stopped moving, stopped fighting things no one else could see—the silence would be unbearable.
Time blurred in the steady rhythm of movement — strike, pivot, dodge, roll — and somewhere between one moment and the next, the sun had risen fully over the campus walls. The early morning hush gave way to the distant hum of voices and the shuffle of footsteps as students finally began trickling into the training grounds. First one, then three, then a dozen. A few Class 1-A students arrived in groups, chatting quietly, breaking apart when they saw Shinji already there.
He didn't stop.
The others gave him a wide berth, whether out of respect or discomfort he couldn't tell. A few watched from a distance as he moved like a man possessed, the sweat darkening his shirt in streaks, left hand clenching and releasing, jaw set in the kind of grim focus most of them had only seen during their close brush with death at the USJ. And even then — Shinji had fought like someone who'd done it a thousand times before.
Midoriya whispered something to Uraraka, and Iida's sharp eyes followed Shinji's movements like a coach analyzing footage. Bakugo showed up not long after, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, a sharp-toothed grin flashing when he saw Shinji still at it.
"Bastard," Bakugo muttered, a note of something like approval in his voice.
But Shinji barely registered any of them.
His mind was elsewhere—running over every inch of his quirk's mechanics, the strange, power that ever since the USJ, things had changed. He could feel it. Where once there had been a clear limit to how many of the Jaeger forms he could access, how many times he could switch before the backlash set in—that boundary was blurring.
And since then, the pressure in his head had felt… different. Every time he called one, it was like reaching into a deeper well, like something below the surface was stretching out to meet him.
He wasn't sure how many more were down there now.
Or how many times he could switch before his body gave out. Every change brought a price—strain on his mind, muscle fatigue, phantom pain in places he hadn't injured. Each Jaeger came with its own weight, its own demands, and no manual to tell him what would happen if he pushed too far.
Shinji ducked low, spinning with a sharp kick that would've taken a head off if anyone had been standing there.
1B had begun to wander in, apparently today was joint training. He could see the way they looked at him now. After the USJ. After the hallway incident. Like a weapon on a hair trigger. And maybe that was fair. Even the Specter had gone disturbingly silent in the aftermath, leaving Shinji alone with a quirk that felt increasingly alien, a creeping suspicion that it was no longer entirely his.
But Shinji wasn't here for peace.
Every movement was precise, a memory made flesh, a reenactment of wars fought in places no one in this world would ever see.
And when he let the power bleed through, it came as naturally as drawing breath.
Tactic Ronin.
The sleek, agile warrior. Shinji's form tightened, movements sharpening into exacting, rapid strikes, short-range evasion, and counterattacks. He fought shadows only he could see, kaiju shapes etched into the back of his mind from nights spent surviving. It wasn't drills. It wasn't training. It was survival.
Cherno Alpha.
A seismic shift. Slow, punishing strength. Every footfall felt heavier, and in his mind, the room shrank to a battlefield. Defensive, deliberate strikes followed, wide sweeps meant to create distance, to hold a line. It was the Jaeger meant to outlast storms, and in this shape, Shinji felt that crushing weight settle across his shoulders again, the burden of holding back the dark long enough for others to escape.
Crimson Typhoon.
Fast. Frenzied. Like a storm in a cage. Shinji's movements blurred, kicks and elbow strikes chaining together in a fluid, merciless rhythm. A few of the 1B students watched, wide-eyed, uncertain if they were witnessing a training exercise or a breakdown.
Titan Redeemer.
Clean. Precise. Measured brutality. A titan that didn't need to move fast because it would break whatever reached it first. Shinji's stance changed, shoulders squaring, left arm leading while the Heavy, hammering strikes paired with defensive shifts—a Jaeger built for urban combat, for brawling in collapsed cities where every step could be a trap.
Saber Athena.
Faster. Leaner. A predator. Shinji's body seemed to flow between positions now, every strike an elegant blur, evasions honed from desperate, close-quarters scraps. His breathing deepened, pupils narrowing as the memory of shattered glass and Kaiju blood filled his senses. Athena had been becoming his favorite, fast, Razor-sharp and ruthless.
His breath caught in his chest for a beat too long. His vision narrowed, corners dimming like a curtain had started to fall.
And he knew it.
That limit.
Not the arbitrary walls teachers set in a classroom, not the limits his classmates thought they understood about quirks and stamina. This was the deeper one, the dangerous one. The one you only felt when you reached the cliff's edge and leaned just a little too far.
Five.
Saber Athena was the fifth. And his limit.
Not maybe. Not probably. Five was it. He felt it deep in his marrow—in the trembling of his hands when he went to reset his stance, in the hollow ache blooming behind his eyes, in the phantom numbness creeping along his ribs. He knew what came next. He'd lived it before.
He'd lived it before.
Nothing.
Not exhaustion. Not true pain. Not even unconsciousness. Just an absolute, suffocating absence. Like something had reached in and ripped the quirk from his blood, left him hollow. If he tried to go past, tried to switch to a sixth Jaeger, the result wasn't an overexerted burst or a catastrophic overload like you'd see in other students when they pushed too far.
It was as if he'd never had a quirk at all.
The transformations wouldn't come. The neural-links he forged between mind and memory and those titanic forms would cut dead, like a severed cord. His body would respond like any other human's would, weak, aching, trembling and alone in a fight meant for monsters. It was a void he could still remember stumbling through back when he first discovered that ceiling.
And that was the part no one else understood. Not the teachers. Not his classmates. Not even the Specter.
Because it wasn't just a limit.
It was a sentence.
In a world of powers, to be made powerless, even temporarily, was a death sentence in any real fight. If he crossed that line during a mission, during the Festival, during another breach… there would be no hail-mary surge, no comeback. Just a soft thud as his body hit the ground and the world kept turning.
And worse still—that empty silence inside his head when it happened. The utter lack of the Specter's ever-present whisper, the numbness of his own thoughts scraping against the edges of panic.
He wasn't even sure if it was his quirk doing it. He didn't know where the Jaegers came from anymore. He had ideas. Theories. Dark, half-formed possibilities he'd shoved into the corners of his mind because if he said them aloud, if he named them, then they'd be real.
Shinji flexed his hand—once, twice—felt the sluggish burn in his palm, the way his body protested, how every muscle felt frayed, stretched too thin. He stood, rolling his shoulder with a hiss, scanning the training ground. More students had trickled in. Some stretching, others chatting, a few already running drills. Not one of them looking his way.
Good.
He didn't need them to.
He didn't need anyone to see the way his hand still trembled, or how the ghosts of Saber Athena's speed lingered in his nerves like aftershocks.
Five. That's it.
But a part of him, a cruel, jagged part, was already asking:
And what happens when five isn't enough?
When the day comes where it takes six to survive.
Shinji turned back toward the mats.
And started again.