PART ONE

1 THE PROSPECT

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"We've found a new prospect," said Shouta Aizawa.

Hitoshi Shinsou leaned back in his chair. They were seated in Aizawa's cramped office on the tenth floor of the Tokyo Intelligence Directorate. Afternoon sunlight was streaming into the room, and outside, the faint hum of traffic could be heard. Aizawa's two cats, Nariko and Tamako, were sprawled in a nearby chair.

"Oh?" Shinsou said.

"We've just received the brief because the Quirk was only registered in January this year," said Aizawa.

Shinsou lifted his eyebrows.

"January?" he said coldly, "How old is this person? Are you pairing me up with an infant?"

"It's a long story," said Aizawa. He pushed two folders stuffed full of papers forward. "Some of the background is here."

Shinsou eyed the folders warily. "Am I supposed to read through all that?"

"Most of it is the Iideyama massacre," said Aizawa.

Shinsou looked up.

"I've heard about that," he said slowly, "Half the town and nearly all the heroes present died …"

Aizawa nodded. "Our prospect was working as a hero in that village. She wasn't listed among the deceased, but our scouts weren't able to locate her when they visited."

"She?" said Shinsou.

"Yes, 'she'," said Aizawa, "It's a woman. Anything wrong with that?"

Shinsou, who had been leaning forward, leaned back in his chair again.

"Nothing," he said. "Just that the dynamics of working with women are different. So, she's missing? How does that give us a prospect?"

"Well, I thought you could go there and look for her," said Aizawa.

Shinsou stared at him.

"It's a very rural village," said Aizawa, "The scouts said the villagers were close-mouthed when they went there. They didn't want to talk about the massacre, or why the girl had disappeared."

"You want me to go on a wild-goose chase searching for a missing hero," said Shinsou.

"It'll be easy for you," answered Aizawa, "With your Quirk, you can get all the information you want out of them in minutes. Besides, it's a sidekick for you, after all. You can assess whether or not you can work with her when you find her."

Nariko gave a small leap and settled in Shinsou's lap. Aizawa waited until the cat had settled down, before continuing.

"This seems to be the best prospect we've found so far. You're well aware that we've already assessed seven people, and all weren't suitable. Either their Quirks didn't have the features we needed, or their personalities were too erratic or indiscreet for intelligence work, or hero work was totally alien to them."

Shinsou was nodding impatiently. "I can continue solo," he said.

"We've already discussed that," said Aizawa. "We're reaching a dead end when it comes to the Hikari case. We need someone who can get people in and out easily for you to do the interrogation. If you try it alone, there's not much chance it'll work."

Shinsou frowned. He pulled one of the folders over, and began to flip through it. "There should be a stats page, at least."

"It's the first sheet," said Aizawa.

Shinsou pulled it out.

"There's no photo," he said, " 'Misa Arakawa'. Age, twenty? Why was her Quirk only registered in January?"

"As I said, it's a long story," said Aizawa. "The village is in a very remote and isolated region. There was only one hero agency responsible for a huge tract of land – most agencies are located in urban areas, where there's more crime. Usually if one starts an agency in such a rural place, it would be almost impossible for it to survive – there are too few villains to provide any profitable work. The reason this particular agency survived was because they had a teleporter."

Shinsou looked interested.

"Yes," said Aizawa, "one of the heroes could translocate not only himself, but other people as well. The agency could cover a vast area of land that way – they only had to receive a call about a villain, and the teleporter could transfer all the heroes to the desired location. In that way they were able to dispose of villains over a large area. That was how the agency was able to survive."

"Fascinating," said Shinsou, "but I don't see what this has to do with Quirk registration being done at age twenty."

"Well, the villagers there have a lax record of registering Quirks," said Aizawa, "and if someone doesn't register a Quirk, the Quirk Registration Authority simply assumes he is Quirkless.

"The hero agency owner was a man called Nobuyuki Kusano. He ran the agency with two licensed heroes, but he also employed unlicensed villagers to join in the hero work – whom he could pay a pittance. Those whom he assessed to have suitable Quirks were roped in. The villagers feared him, because if they crossed him he would refuse to protect their households. Apparently he even made many of them tithe to him regularly, in exchange for protection."

Shinsou was looking disapproving.

"Yes, he became quite rich," said Aizawa. "Not only did the Iideyama villagers tithe to him, but villages from the lands around as well. This nonsense went on for a long time, because it was so remote and the authorities didn't detect anything during audits– none of the villagers dared tell on him. Things came to light last year, though, and not only was the tithing done away with, but he was finally forced to get all those unlicensed heroes licensed. In the process those heroes who were found to have unregistered Quirks had to register them as well. That's why your prospective partner surfaced."

Shinsou scowled. "They should have jailed him."

"They were going to," said Aizawa, "but he was out on bail initially, and then the massacre happened."

He leaned forward and looked intently at Shinsou. "There's something else you should know, Shinsou. Arakawa was Kusano's daughter."

Shinsou was surprised. "But the name… "

"Adopted," said Aizawa, "She and the brother, both. The brother was the teleporter. Kusano adopted them at age five because he thought their Quirks would be useful for the agency. He made them do hero work from the age of twelve."

"Twelve?" said Shinsou, appalled.

"I very much doubt they were adopted out of love," agreed Aizawa, "Kusano didn't even bother to change his daughter's surname to his own, although he did it for the boy. He was consumed by his desire to keep the hero agency going. No doubt you will uncover the remaining sad details when you reach Iideyama."

There was a silence for a few moments.

"What do I need to know about the massacre?" asked Shinsou.

"Most of the details are in those folders," answered Aizawa, "The village was attacked by the villain Inferno. He had some grievance against Kusano ... came to the village in the dead of night and set half of it on fire. Killed all the heroes, including Kusano … I doubt many of these heroes had ever had to handle a villain of this calibre. Arakawa's brother died. Arakawa herself was not in the village that night, for unknown reasons. Otherwise she might have died as well."

Shinsou was frowning at Aizawa. "The villain Inferno …"

"He got put away some weeks later," said Aizawa. "After the massacre, there was a concerted effort to track him down."

Shinsou sighed. He stroked Nariko, gently placed her on the floor, and began tidying the papers on the desk.

"I expect I'll be gone a couple of weeks," he said, getting to his feet, and gathering the folders up.

"Take your time," said Aizawa, "and, Shinsou – "

Shinsou had reached the door. He stopped, and turned and looked at Aizawa.

"Don't frighten the girl," said Aizawa, "I imagine what she went through may well have been traumatic."

Shinsou's eyes glinted. "I am frightening, am I not?"

"You are," said Aizawa, "Go easy on her."

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NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

This is a story about Shinsou after he's graduated from UA and been working for Japan's Intelligence Agency as a covert operative for about seven years. He's a less combative and abrasive individual now, since he has already achieved his goal of obtaining a hero licence. He has become a consummate professional, and is now more mature and better at handling people.

The difficulty in writing this fanfic is, of course, that Shinsou is due to make a return to the manga later this year, and so a lot of what I have written may well end up inaccurate. He will probably be given a combat skill similar to Aizawa's scarves. I had to give him one in the story, and so I created a multi-thonged whip, which he switched to when he became an intelligence agent because he found it more convenient.

There are also cameo roles by Midoriya, Kendou, Tokoyami and others in some of the chapters. This was also difficult because Shinsou may well end up joining class 1A or 1B, and we don't know what his interactions with his classmates is going to be like. He may or may not establish friendships with some of them. I had to decide how he was going to behave toward them in the story, and I chose to be consistent with what has been observed so far, which is that he is generally hostile to most of those in heroics.

I had to make some assumptions about his Quirk that may or may not turn out to be true, e.g. that he can brainwash a room full of people when talking to them using a microphone, and that he can brainwash someone he is speaking to over a communications device like a walkie-talkie.

I'd thought of waiting until he had made his reappearance in the manga before publishing this work, but decided to go ahead and publish it now anyway and then perhaps do some rewriting if the errors are too glaring (Although I have to admit, once I've completed a story I normally don't like touching it again).

A comment on Misa's Quirk: it is essentially the X-man Shadowcat's power, except that she can activate and deactivate it in more detail. I chose it because it has been my favourite super power for a long time, and it worked its way surprisingly well into the story.

Mirio makes a cameo appearance in chapter 6 and it is assumed he has managed to recover his Quirk again. The same applies for whoever else in the fanfic might be going to lose their Quirks in the manga for whatever reason …

Some trivia about the names used: I cannot choose names the way Horikoshi does, but I wanted them to be meaningful to me, and so they are mostly taken from people I know or names I have come into contact with in my work in the atmospheric sciences. Hence, to name a few, Arakawa was actually taken from the Arakawa-Schubert cumulus parameterization scheme, Fujiwara from the Fujiwara effect in tropical cyclones, and Fujita from the tornado F-scale.

Tomonaga's name is taken from the physics Nobel laureate Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Nobuyuki Kusano was my homestay host in Toyama (he is actually a very sweet guy), and Tanabe's name came from my friend Hiro whom I met when I was studying in England. Hideo was a character I liked in Lesley Downer's book Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World.

I'd like to thank Naomi Ichikawa for giving me much advice on making the story more authentic, Japanese-wise.

This story is dedicated to all Shinsou fans, and I hope they will enjoy reading it while waiting for him to make his reappearance. Shinsou is a character I'm quite sympathetic to, and the fanfic pretty much expresses the kind of future I hope he will eventually attain.

Starlight

October 2017

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