I-Island

I-Island floats and travels, an entirely constructed landmass funded by every business with a stake in the Pro Hero trade. Their money bought a technological haven where Quirks and the support gear built around them could be studied without interference.

Better than ten thousand researchers live there with their families, spread across the island's main cities, and the arrangement is meant to be a peaceful one: pool the best minds in the world, put them somewhere nothing can reach them, and let them work.

That safety has a price. Confidentiality is enforced by keeping the scientists from leaving at all. Protective measures run deep enough that the island's security matches Tartarus, the prison built for the worst villains alive, and many buildings are made tougher than bomb shelters. Until Wolfram's invasion, no villain had ever moved against the place.

Its public face is the I-Expo, an island-wide showcase of everything the research has produced. Sponsors extend invitations to Pro Heroes, and for the duration the usual prohibition lifts, letting people use their Quirks out in the open.

Iron makes up most of the structure, yet the surface reads as anything but industrial. Four separate cities sit apart from one another, divided by wide stretches of water and planted greenery, with beaches, lakes, housing districts, a business quarter, and schools among them. Nothing arrives except by air, through the airport on the outer ring, and everyone entering from outside submits to a security inspection first.

Two hundred stories of Central Tower dominate the middle of the island and serve as its command center. Its hundred-plus floors each answer to a different purpose, reachable by stairs or by an elevator with restricted access. Shutter doors and emergency roof hatches seal each level. A reception hall occupies the second floor, the eightieth holds a plant factory studying how Quirks affect plant life, secret projects sit in storage, and the tower's security signal goes out from the server room. Wind turbines supply the power.

Elsewhere, a pavilion opens when the I-Expo holds its pre-opening, admitting anyone with the right pass, displaying advanced hero equipment inside a blue museum space. I-Island Academy trains future scientists, and Melissa Shield, a third-year there, rates a private laboratory of her own.

The security system ties the whole island together, running the electrical grid along with every communication line, and it answers only from the control room at the top of Central Tower. Whoever holds that room controls shutters, cameras, and the central elevator, and the command post itself is fortified past the point of being broken into. Drones patrol in numbers, built to withstand Quirks and to work around their limits. Raise the alert and civilian cable and cellular service dies, bots enforce a curfew with the power to arrest people in the street, and restraints strong enough to hold All Might come into play. Turned against its owners, the system hands one person near total command of the island.

The scientists and their families are the permanent population, researching Quirks and building the tools heroes rely on. Melissa Shield studies at the island's academy and works out of her own lab there.

Pro Heroes appear as guests of the I-Expo's sponsors rather than residents. Wolfram is the exception to everything the island was designed around, the first villain to attack it, in the incident that unfolds across Two Heroes.