nucmednet Chapter 192 189 Tales Of The White Fang 2
Chapter 192 189 Tales Of The White Fang 2
"He doesn't kill them," Nezu said. "From what I've seen, he seems to follow a moral code and hasn't let a single individual he has gone after die in the process. But he appears quite comfortable ensuring they never walk again."
Midnight leaned back, her brow furrowing as she looked at the principal. "Nezu... how long have you been tracking this guy so closely?"
"Since the moment he captured Kurogiri," Nezu said, his voice dropping to a rare, serious register. "The League's primary warp gate was secured by the White Fang during the mountain skirmish and hasn't been seen since. The public transport networks, mainly the train stations remain paralyzed because the government is terrified of another localized warp event."
Nobody knew how to respond. Eventually All Might spoke.
"He has removed many dangerous criminals from the streets."
His voice remained thoughtful. "But..." He frowned.
"I find myself struggling to admire his methods."
"Not really surprised. His methodology is pretty brutal, even for me." The marksman tapped the document.
Midnight looked at the reports, brows heavily knit together. "This can be considered a preferred approach. Or perhaps an intentional symbol to signal his handiwork. Is this the same across all his victims?"
"In the majority of cases, yes. More than half of the villains he has apprehended have been diagnosed with irreversible spinal trauma. The medical documentation on the apprehended individuals confirms cervical or lumbar impact consistent with applied targeted force rather than incidental combat injury. He knows what he's doing and he's choosing to do it." Nezu added, his tone conversational despite the horrific nature of the data. "Biologically speaking, they will never walk again."
A collective wave of discomfort rippled through the faculty. As pro heroes, their entire moral framework was built on the preservation of life and the reliance on the judicial system. To hear of a singular entity enacting such absolute, permanent violence on such a massive scale was inherently horrifying—yet, under the current state of martial law, the practical results were undeniable.
Snipe set down the document. "I've seen a lot of vigilantes over my time on the field. Many who were driven by rage, or a twisted sense of justice. Some were genuinely well-intentioned people who just couldn't work within the system and others desired a different kind of fame." He shook his head slowly. "I've never seen one with this kind of output."
Ectoplasm nodded in his deep voice. "Agreed. His actions remind me of the early reports of the Hero Killer stain before he set his sights on heroes."
He looked at Nezu. "The commission is aware of all of this?"
"Very much so."
Nezu folded his paws atop the table. "They've been aware for some time."
Vlad frowned. "And they're doing... what, exactly?"
The principal smiled.
"Nothing."
The room fell silent.
"Nothing?" Vlad repeated.
"Essentially." Nezu tapped the side of his tablet.
"The White Fang remains classified as a vigilante. His actions are technically illegal. However, the Commission has yet to issue any major public directive concerning his apprehension."
"Hmph. That's unlike them." Aizawa replied without a change in expression.
"Quite." Nezu nodded. "Under ordinary circumstances they would have already deployed a dedicated task force."
"It's not really surprising though." Midnight sighed. "The commission is already stretched. Deploying resources to chase someone who's actively reducing their workload would be counterproductive. Even they can do that math."
Japan was currently bleeding manpower.
The Commission could scarcely afford to spare personnel hunting a vigilante who was simultaneously removing hundreds of violent offenders from circulation. Even if they wanted to.
"Especially when the numbers look like this." Snipe added, tapping the stack of arrest records.
"He has removed over two hundred violent offenders from circulation." Ectoplasm rumbled. "Most agencies would consider that an exceptional annual record. It's unlikely they'll go after him in the meantime, especially in times like this."
Nobody disagreed. Whether they approved of the vigilante's methods or not was one discussion.
Whether he was helping was another. And the second discussion was much harder to argue against.
Nezu quietly sipped his tea. "That's a good deduction. I however, disagree with you."
"Hmm? Why do you say that?"
"Perhaps that would be the case under normal circumstances. However, from the Commission's perspective, the White Fang currently represents a rather inconvenient problem."
"Inconvenient?" Vlad frowned.
"Oh yes."
Nezu set down his cup.
"Legally speaking, he is a vigilante. His actions are unauthorized. His methods are excessive. And most importantly, as of early four days ago, his existence had begun challenging the authority of licensed heroes."
'Huh?' Those words stunned the entire room.
All Might in particular. "Principal, please clarify what you mean by that."
"Well, it's not really hard to say." Nezu reached for his tea. "The White Fang has been operating throughout Japan for the past eight days. The first significant coverage appeared four days ago. A journalist named Chisote Kizuki, publishing through Shoowaysha Publishing, ran a detailed profile on the vigilante's activity since Tokyo." He set the cup down without drinking. "The piece was thorough. Detailed in ways that suggested either exceptional investigative work or exceptional access to information that isn't publicly available."
Vlad's brow furrowed. "Shoowaysha Publishing. That's the outlet that sent someone to our press conference."
"The very same journalist, yes," Nezu confirmed. "It seems ever since her unsatisfactory gain on the 716, Kizuki-san has been covering the hero system crisis. Her work is consistently well-sourced and her editorial position has been increasingly critical of institutional hero society."
Aizawa's visible eye narrowed slightly. "Critical how?"
Nezu went silent for a moment, pondering how best to explain it. Ultimately, he took out his tablet, swiped the screen several times and presented the results to the faculty staff.
Under their gazes, several article headlines appeared. Some came from mainstream news organizations. Most came from online publications, discussion boards and independent media sites.
The same themes appeared repeatedly.
HEROES FAIL AGAIN.
WHO IS THE WHITE FANG?
WHY IS A VIGILANTE DOING WHAT PRO HEROES CANNOT?
THE MAN CLEANING JAPAN'S STREETS.
The room immediately grew quieter. Everyone watched from one news report to another, their faces growing graver with each passing second.
"Initially," Nezu explained, "the discussion was relatively harmless. Curiosity. Speculation. The usual fascination that accompanies the appearance of an unknown actor."
Another graph appeared.
This one tracked online engagement.
The curve rose high. Then continued rising.
Then rose even further.
"The problem is that the conversation soon grew out of hand. All of this compounded on day four when Miss Kizuki published the piece she wrote on the subject four days ago," Nezu continued, his voice dropping into a cadence that held the room's absolute focus "It was titled 'The Illusion of Monopoly: Efficiency in the Vacuum.' An exposé that listed the White Fang's apprehensions and proceeded to meticulously contrast them against the operational recovery times of our top fifty agencies."
"The argument goes roughly like this. Heroes have a licensing system. The licensing system exists to maintain public safety and institutional accountability. That system just visibly failed to prevent Tokyo and is now visibly strained. And meanwhile there's a person operating outside that system who is demonstrably handling threats that the system isn't getting to."
He paused. "The result was that people talked less about the original subject, and transferred their discussions to heroes as a whole."
Nezu swiped again. Thousands of comments appeared beneath the articles. Questions. Arguments. Polls. Opinion pieces. Discussion threads numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
"She provided a side-by-side analysis of territory management. On the left, the regional hero offices in Kanto, working triple shifts, struggling to suppress localized riots and taking forty-percent personnel casualties. On the right, the White Fang. One individual. Zero bureaucratic overhead. A hundred percent permanent neutralization rate in every district he entered. She phrased it rather elegantly: 'While the state begs for patience and counts its injured, a singular ghost proves that peace was never expensive; it was merely over-regulated.'"
"Now people are asking whether the system is the problem."
BANH!
A fist slammed the conference table the moment Nezu finished. "Dammit," Vlad King growled, his fist tightening against the armrest. "That's an explicit incitement to anarchy. She's actively telling civilians that the law is the only thing keeping them unsafe."
The room was silent, with everyone realising the gravity of the situation.
The public's confidence in Heroes and the Hero system in general had taken a massive hit after Tokyo. The city had a giant hole that practically reminded everyone about the darkest day in Hero history. The destruction caused in Kamino ward was still far from being repaired.
The prison breaks.
The riots. The curfews. The loss of heroes. It was no exaggeration to say that Hero society was the closest to the brink of destruction it had ever been.
This was clearly visible particularly among people who've spent the last week watching the news from inside curfew-restricted homes and wondering why the heroes who are supposed to protect them are apparently overwhelmed. In this scenario that fully displayed Hero Society's incompetence and weakness, a report is placed of one vigilante running around the country with no support staff, sidekick, or any perk available to professional pros, yet stacking up arrests faster than entire agencies.
"The impact of this ... Could be devastating." Cementoss who had been silent all this while, uttered in a grave tone.
Meanwhile, All Might didn't utter a word, his gaze fixed on the comments left behind on several posts.
"'If one man can capture two hundred criminals in eight days, why are entire agencies failing?'"
"'Why are civilians expected to obey laws that prevent them from defending themselves while a vigilante is accomplishing more than licensed heroes?'"
"'What exactly are we paying hero agencies for?'"
The direction of public opinion left the previous number one hero feeling chilled to the bone.
"This is hard to go against. There's no explicit argument. She's just laying out numbers. Hero response. His response. Outcome. Outcome." Aizawa said, looking up with narrowed eyes. "She doesn't have to say anything. The comparison does the work for her."
"That's the part that concerns me," Midnight said. She had the article now, her eyes moving through it quickly. "Any propagandist will tell you that the most effective material doesn't argue. You present information and let the audience draw the conclusion you're steering them toward." She set it down. "This is very well constructed. How has the situation deteriorated to such an extent?"
This by all accounts, should be impossible. As adults, they were all aware that Hero Society rested on the premise of the world needing heroes. This was practically made ironclad since the early quirk era, to prevent chaos. It was why hero laws had been put into practice in the first place and why Quirk laws were exceedingly strict.
This movement however, threatened everything Hero society stood for. Such content, even if the Commission was a shadow of its former self, should have been thoroughly dealt with not long after its inception. There was no way the president would let herself lose control of the narrative like this.
"Exactly," Nezu said, nodding his small head. "The digital filters maintained by the Commission should have flagged and suppressed the article within three minutes under the National Security Compliance Act. Yet, it remained online. It was systematically boosted across every major algorithm on the domestic web, bypassing the government's firewalls entirely. Which suggests Miss Kizuki is not merely an ambitious journalist—she is the public mouthpiece for an organization with an informational infrastructure massive enough to rival the state itself."
Everyone felt a headache coming on. Yet another problem had surfaced.
"Regardless, this can't go on." Snipe uttered. Even if the Commission was hated for causing this entire scenario, the last thing anyone wanted was the public conversation shifting from 'heroes are struggling right now' to 'maybe we don't need heroes the way we thought we did.'
"I agree. That shift would take years to reverse if it took hold," Midnight said quietly. "If people start believing the institutional structure is optional rather than necessary—" She stopped. "The entire framework depends on public trust."
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