Naomasa removed his hat as he stepped into Lava Java, a small, family owned cafe that stood at the corner of a fairly busy intersection near the police headquarters. He was a familiar face there, most policemen were, and so the smile from the woman behind the counter was genuine as she greeted him.

"Good evening, sir," she said. "What can I get you?"

Scanning the menu, he decided with a little shrug, "The house special for today sounds nice. And it'll be for here, I'm meeting up with a f- an associate."

"Of course sir, right away."

Naomasa was pulling out his wallet to pay when Tessa stalked over. She jumped in, saying with surprising sweetness, "Allow me to pay for your drink, Tsukauchi. It's the least I can do for the good news you're bringing me."

"Ah, well all right." He tucked his wallet away and allowed Tessa to pay. Then she led him back the table she had taken near a back window. There was evidence she had been there a while, with a half-eaten sandwich on a plate and more than half the table swamped in files and pictures. Naomasa reached down and picked up one of the pages.

"This is the whole file? Looks like you've doubled it since the last time I saw it."

Tessa sat down on her chair, legs folded so her feet didn't touch the floor. She gestured with the back of a pen, "All this over here are events I think are related that I've been going over. Over here I've been trying to compile a timeline for everything. I figure if I can track the activity, I can figure out what the point of all this was."

Naomasa sat down opposite her, resting his hat off to the side of the table and setting down a thin folder of his own. "I think I might have the answer to that question. I have reason to believe that, at least of the original six blood splatters, these are quirk tests."

"Well that's obvious," Tessa rolled her eyes, "The real question is what was being tested and by how many people."

"Most of the sightings had at least one person there, but some had two or more, correct?" Naomasa asked.

"And the only consistent trait is dark hair," Tessa confirmed with a nod of her head. She pulled out a collection of several pages and waved it. "I've gone over every testimony given and only Montaro gave anything halfway decent. Well, at least for the original six. If we broaden our search a little bit, you find this."

She dug through the papers until she found a set that was stapled together. Tessa handed that over along with a couple of pictures. "This was discovered less than a month after the last blood splatter. I came across it when I started looking through at some unsolved crimes and flat out mysteries in the area. It has all the markers of one of those events except for one thing."

Naomasa held the glossy crime scene photo in one hand. He'd seen plenty of awful things in his line of work, but dismemberment was always one of the uglier things he had to deal with.

The photos were taken near the back of a shrine, Naomasa could tell that much from them but he couldn't determine where or what shrine. The focus of the images was a large spray of blood, an arm with a jagged wound where it had separated from its body and a leg from the knee down with the same sort of wound.

"There were reports of explosions in the area. The shrine itself was empty for the weekend, but locals heard the noise and called it in. The local police deemed it dangerous enough to send in a Pro. When she got there, she discovered this." Tessa said, pointing to the scene photo. "The police collected all the limbs and still had them preserved when I came asking about them months later."

She handed over another photo, this one much cleaner but the sight of it made Naomasa's stomach drop. It was a lab table with the two limbs, cleaned up and labeled.

"You say it's someone testing their quirk?" Tessa said proudly, "I say it's a teenage boy without one. Look a little closer, Tsukauchi."

"Excuse me."

Naomasa looked up at the waitress. She gave a little bob of the head and deposited his drink on one of the few places where the table was visible. He nodded back to her and then turned his attention to Tessa as the other woman left.

"Explain."

Tessa produced, of all things, an x-ray. "The foot that was found was a left foot. The little toe still has its joint. Plus, with so much tissue, I was able to do a detailed analysis of the blood, bone, muscle, tendon, marrow, -everything, I was able to test everything." She spoke quickly, clearly excited about her discovery. "There isn't a bit of a quirk in this boy, whoever he was."

"Ah," Naomasa said thoughtfully. He drank his tea. Explosions and dark hair… "There weren't any limbs left at the other places. Do you have any theories or…?"

"Well the neighbors thought that there was a villain at the shrine so when the Pro Hero came, she surprised them. I have her witness statement around here somewhere. It's because of her that I think it's two people." Tessa began to shuffle through her papers again, searching for the witness statement.

At the same time, Naomasa picked up his folder and opened it up in his hands.

"Ah, here it is," She said, lifting it up. Her eyes skimmed the page until she found the section she was looking for, "Suspects were two teenagers, one blond, one with dark hair. Both scattered upon discovery and were unable to be located. Remains of a third person were found, as was large quantities of blood and evidence of explosions. A survey of the area noted that there was a local student with an explosive quirk, but he had a valid alibi. He was at his friend's house the entire afternoon, as corroborated by the friend and the friend's mother." Tessa set down the paper. Her mouth was open to continue talking, but when she saw Naomasa holding his meager folder open, she shut it with a snap.

Naomasa pulled out a small picture. It was the one that Toshinori had given him. Toshinori had gotten it from the school. It was Midoriya Izuku's photo that had been attached to his application. "This is Midoriya Izuku," he said while he handed over the image. "He was born without a quirk-"

"Toe joint and everything?" Tessa whispered eyes wide. She held the picture gingerly in her hands, as though she might destroy it with her touch.

"Toe joint and everything," Naomasa replied. "He is… extremely close friends with this boy, Bakugou Katsuki." He pulled out another image, the same type of picture as Midoriya's but with Bakugou's face. He had a sinking feeling that the boys had probably taken their pictures at the same time. If one were to set them right next to each other, the background was nearly seamless.

Tessa's eyes grew even wider as she took Bakugou's picture. "No way," she breathed. "And these two…"

"Bakugou has a quirk. His sweat contains a nitroglycerin like substance that he can ignite and use as an explosive." Naomasa explained. "The two are childhood friends. They live in the same neighborhood, attended the same school and are very, very close."

She didn't say anything in response, just stared from one picture to the other. Slowly, her gaze drifted down to the table, to the picture of the arm and the leg on the lab table. "...It makes sense for quirkless kids to band together, but being quirkless is so rare… How did they find another person without a quirk that they could... Do things to?"

There was a heavy beat of silence. Naomasa hesitated, not knowing exactly how to bring this up. However, Tessa read into his silence with a narrowed gaze. She lay Midoriya's picture down next to the dismembered limbs, "There's no… Unless someone else were to heal him…" Then she looked at Bakugou's picture again.

Tessa opened her mouth and took a breath, but ultimately closed it again, lips pressing into a thin line. She shook her head.

"What is it?" Naomasa asked.

She shook her head again, "Just an errant thought."

Frowning slightly, Naomasa said, "Given all this information, what I want to investigate is neither one of the boys, but, in fact, Midoriya's father." He tapped the top of Midoriya's picture. "There are some concerns about the man and not enough public information to assuage them. Midoriya's mother has a marriage certificate and a birth record for her son, and there is a man's name attached, but there are questions…"

Tessa shook her head, "What does the father matter? You investigate that yourself. I want to bring in the boys to test. I'm sure I can get Bakugou's family to agree… Midoriya will be harder to persuade."

"Once you get a direct sample of Midoriya's blood you'll be able to confirm whether or not he was the one leaving behind those marks, correct?"

"Obviously. The question is how a quirkless child can take that injury and come back. Tell me, was he missing an arm and a leg when you came to see him?"

"He was not," Naomasa said. "As far as I could tell he was whole." Given that he had his arms and practically a leg wrapped around Bakugou, Naomasa figured that Midoriya having all of his limbs was a given.

Tessa cupped her chin in her palm. Her eyes were downcast, looking at the two headshots. "...A quirkless boy and one with explosive sweat. How do the two of them come up with these plots? Who's quirk are they testing? What kind of quirk doesn't fully present in childhood?"

Naomasa sighed, a little relieved. He hadn't really worried that she wouldn't take up the work, but he had worried that her obsession with the bloodstains would have lead to another Incident. Tessa was still a registered Pro Hero, but she wasn't affiliated with any agencies because of her tendency to… obsess. Blood was, in many cases, her life.

"One more thing," Naomasa said, "I'm allowed to give you special dispensation for this one, Hamilton. Because of your quirk and your dedication to the case, you're allowed to investigate and determine Midoriya's status in conjunction with these events. If he is the source and he is responsible, measures need to be made. Keep in mind, though, that you'll be reporting back to me when this is all said and done."

Tessa smiled, showing a bit more teeth than Naomasa was comfortable with. "That doesn't change anything. I'll find out what's going on, Tsukauchi. You can bet on that."

A shiver ran down Naomasa's spine, but considering how often Tessa came off as eerie, he was used to it and paid it no mind this time.

Shouta's exhaustion levels were off the chart. They had long since fallen off the chart, rolled across the floor, out the door and to an elevator, where they passed out until the next morning where the janitor jarred them into consciousness with a nudge to the side.

He lay in his bed, eyes closed because opening them was too much effort, and did the two most effortless things he could manage: listen and breathe. Breathing was surprisingly easy. He had expected worse injuries than he'd gotten, to be frank, and was far more worried about the pounding headache behind his eyes.

Listening was even easier. He didn't even have to move to make that work. He could just lie there and listen to other people breathe, to the steady monitoring of different machines, and to the infrequent discussions that floated around him.

There was one of those going on now. It took a while for his brain to distinguish the voices (that took an effort to do through his headache) but once he did he found himself listening along, as attentive as he could manage now.

"...concerning. I mean, I'm sure I'm not the only one concerned. And there's no way that kind of thing is good around the other students. If they see it enough, there's no way they won't normalize it. I mean, I'm a casual guy, I understand you've got to let some people just live their life however they want, but they're kids. There's gotta be something we can do." That was Hizashi, who was never particularly good at talking quietly. Shouta didn't care so much about the volume, though, it just made it easier to pick out his words.

"I fear that we made a mistake in putting them in the same class," and that was Toshinori. Quieter and more somber. He was always that way when talking about his students. He also had that rasp to his voice that told Shouta he wasn't putting on any airs about his own health and body. "I had experience with Midoriya before school began, but saw he was only somewhat socially stunted. Bakugou was his closest friend and, at the time, there didn't seem to be any of this level of codependency to them."

"It couldn't have developed all at once. And there's no way that it'll last." Hizashi said, "So there has to be a way to separate them." He gave a sharp exhale and then asked, "Are you seeing any results in pairing them with other students for training exercises or group work?"

A muffled sound, a head shake perhaps? Without opening his eyes Shouta couldn't tell. Toshinori said, "They never react poorly to being given partners that aren't each other. Other than Bakugou's natural disagreeable personality, they get along well one on one with others. And, it turns out, the others rather like Midoriya when he's on his own. It's only that when they're together that they become hostile."

Shouta let out a deep breath, an almost sigh. He'd heard this conversation a dozen times at least already. It was exhausting. There was nothing that they could do from the outside, that was clear enough. The only way to fix the boys' relationship into something healthier would be to do it from the inside out.

If there was some way to reach into their minds and tweak their thoughts or memories… Not remove them, per say, but adjust their intensity. To make it so their world did not revolve around the other boy… Some treatment or quirk or something that could help...

Shouta's brain trailed off on that thought. He felt like he was grasping after something just within reach. An idea or a connection that slipped through his mental fingers like seawater, leaving behind a salty residue and a smell that hinted at something.

Plowing through his headache was too much work, though, and his body was too exhausted to push on. So he settled back and let his thoughts spin out into sleep again. It would come to him when he woke up again, he was sure.