II. Combust
"Miss Yaoyorozu."
"Ah, the investigator with the peculiar hair. Todoroki, was it not?" Even when behind a set of spell-reinforced steel bars, Momo Yaoyorozu held an air of grace and dignity. She tilted her head slightly, her brows furrowing. "Can I assume you're here because you inspected my desk?"
"Something like that. There was one document in particular I wanted to ask you about." He slipped a folder through the gaps of the bars. "You insisted that the damage was not caused by a fire spell, but the spell described on page 24 sounds like it'd fit the bill, wouldn't you agree?"
Miss Yaoyorozu opened the folder with a confused expression, lips pulled into a thin line of scrutiny. She flipped to page 24, eyes scanning the page until they landed on the bottom right corner.
Where he had written a short message for her in faint pencil lines. Her brows relaxed slightly, eyes flitting upwards to meet his. "I see. However, if you had bothered reading the previous chapter, you would know that this spell is merely hypothetical. Let me show you."
She turned back a few pages, pointing towards a paragraph. More specifically, she was pointing to the line '...thanks to the correlation of radius and energy…', tapping on the word "thanks".
"I'm afraid that even so, your circumstances don't change much. Until another explanation for the sudden large burst of magic can be found, you're still the primary suspect."
"...I understand." She conceded, folding her hands elegantly. She suddenly seemed a bit livelier - and relieved. "Mr. Todoroki, can I ask one thing of you?"
"What is it?"
"Please look after my research papers and subjects. If any of them became public prematurely, it could cause some ... trouble."
"Don't worry, I'll keep them safe."
He left the detention centre with mixed feelings. What on earth was he supposed to do with the egg?
"Excuse me, you're the ones who investigated Miss Yaoyorozu's office, are you not?"
"Don't pile me in with this dipshit, he's the one who broke the lock and went through her stuff." Once again, Bakugou's strange obedience of regulations came to light.
"I didn't break the lock, though. But yes, that was me." Shouto conceded. "I was not aware that there were restrictions of any kind."
The woman held up her hands quickly. "Ah, that's not the issue here. You see, Miss Yaoyorozu was storing a research product in her office, but we can't seem to find it. It's an important specimen, and even with the incident, we'd hate to set back our research." She rattled the clearly practiced speech down like a recording.
"I only took some papers from her desk… They're all stored in our evidence vault, if you wish to check." That was, of course, a blatant lie. The egg and folder he had written in were securely hidden away in his apartment.
The woman seemed distressed, gnawing on her bottom lip as her eyebrows arched inwards. "That's… unfortunate."
"Ain't it possible that this thing of yours got destroyed in the fire?" Bakugou quipped in. "Just look this fucking mess here."
"Ah, well, we were under the impression the Miss Yaoyorozu's office was spared from any damage."
"Maybe this specimen wasn't in the office at the time? I'm not all too familiar with scientific procedures, but I'm sure it must have left her office during certain periods." Shouto continued. Luckily for him, the scenario gave him many opportunities to make plausible lies.
"P-perhaps. Sorry for taking up your time." With those words, she shuffled away, looking so pitiful that Shouto almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
"Geez, what the hell was her problem? She looked like you told her the world was about to end." His partner crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. "But between the two of us… the amount of papers you brought to the vault…" He glanced over with a sceptical gaze of crimson. "...maybe it was just my imagination. You just take responsibility for whatever trouble you get your moronic ass into."
"Sure, whatever." He responded in kind. This was probably why he was still partnered with Bakugou, even after all these years of dealing with his unlikeable attitude. It was because under all those layers of anger and insults, the two of them had a good understanding of each other. And with it some kind of deformed trust and respect for each other.
"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. Aizawa wanted to see you regarding something."
"He did? I'll go see if he's in, then. Know what it's about?"
"How the hell should I know?"
"Fair point, I'll be right back."
"That is if he doesn't decide to eat you for being an incompetent moron."
"We'd both be on his dinner menu if he wanted to do that."
"Hmpf."
Shouto didn't bother responding to that, merely lifting a hand as he exited their shared office.
Shouta Aizawa was a peculiar man. He gauged his actions by how much of a pain in the ass they were, and he was thoroughly convinced that sleeping through a conversation spared him from any responsibility towards anything mentioned in it.
He didn't believe in conventional office equipment either, deeming his outrageously mustard yellow-coloured sleeping bag his only necessity. Said piece of polyester was surrounded by chaotically ordered stacks of paper that could only be navigated through by the man himself or after taking three J-005 pills and downing a bottle of booze.
Additionally, he was Shouto's boss.
Which is why he was standing in the doorway to the pandemonium of paperwork, keeping an eye out for the pop of yellow that was sure to be concealing his superior. "Mr. Aizawa?" He called into the room, knocking his fist against the doorframe in an attempt to get an answer.
It took a few seconds, but the paper in the far left corner started rattling and shifting, a mustard caterpillar emerging soon after. Except that it wasn't an insect, it was just his slothful boss worming his way out of the cellulose mountains.
"Todoroki. Good afternoon." Aizawa's lacklustre greeting was muffled by the fact that the man was too lazy to fully sit upright when speaking to him. "I need you to do some regulation check-ups in the east side of town. Been getting some complaints about a restaurant there lately." The sleeping bag was unzipped just enough to allow one hand to leave it, pick up a seemingly random handful of papers and hold them out to Shouto. "Take these with you."
After crossing the room with careful, long strides and accepting the documents, the sleeping bag was zipped up again in a flash. "You're dismissed, bring me your report when you're back."
"Yeah." Shouto didn't get any further than the one-word answer, seeing as Aizawa had disappeared among the paper once again. A quick glance at the letters in his hands told him that somehow, his boss had given him the correct documents despite the mess in here.
It was a common occurrence that never failed to fascinate him. To be honest, most people in the department were waiting for the man to slip up, just so that could complain about his unconventional way of dealing with bureaucracy, but that had yet to happen. All in all, he was used to these working conditions.
Shouto walked back down the hallway, passing by the secretary's desk on the way back to his own office. "Ashido." He greeted the woman behind said desk, who was most definitely not doing her work at the moment. She looked up at him, raising a brow.
"Need something, Todoroki? I'm kinda busy." She nodded towards her splayed hand, which was currently getting a complicated manicure done by a very focussed fairy.
"Don't move." The fairy hissed in a shrill voice, the constant hum of her flapping wings almost drowning out her small voice.
"Sorry." Ashido apologised quickly. "I'll have him come back later."
"Or he can never come back." The fairy sneered, pausing her work to glance at him quickly.
"I'll come back in half an hour." Shouto announced instead, readily leaving the premise. He didn't get along with fairies all that well, after all. "Just need some permits, but your, uh, business should be done by then."
"See ya then, Todor- ooooh that looks so cute!"
Shouto left her to her gushing and headed back to his own office. On the way, he flew over the lawsuit filed against the restaurant in question, apparently a case of illegal magic booster marketing.
He sighed, there were more of those than usual during these times of dwindling magic resources. Ever since the thesis was made that magic might not be usable soon in the future, everybody had begun panicking. Magic-enhancing drugs, or at least ones claiming to do so, burst onto th black market in the blink of an eye, forcing everybody in law enforcement to rack in that overtime and spend countless nights trying to get the situation under control.
Luckily, people soon started accepting that a thing such as a "magic-enhancing drug" did not exist and the drug traffic died down significantly, but the same couldn't be said for potions.
Skilled witches could actually make potions that momentarily increased magic input and output - they were pricey and the ingredients were near impossible to find, but they existed.
Shouto pushed the door handle down with his elbow, entering the office while still going over the files. Without bothering to look up at his partner, he asked, "Code 447 in a restaurant in the east. You wanna come or stay here and write reports?"
"...ngh." The growl was preceded by incoherent mumbling, but going on experience it was something like "fucking paperwork can go to hell and die". Bakugou's heavy boots dragged across the desk, making sure to drop to the ground heavily as he stood up. "So, what fucked up joint is it this time?"
"Some restaurant and bar called The Black Mist. You ever been there?"
"No."
"Well, then it'll be the first time for both of us." Shouto muttered, draping his jacket over his shoulder after stuffing his important things into his trouser pockets. "You driving or should I?"
"You drive like a retard, we're taking my car."
"We're from the Magic Bureau, Special Investigations. We have a permit to search the premises. Please cooperate with u-"
"Where are the fucking goods, Shadow Man?" Katsuki hated wasting time with formalities. He could see the malicious glint in the shadowkin's eyes, enough to tell him that the man was hiding something of importance.
And from experience he knew that you shouldn't bother being nice to these kind of people.
"I'm not entirely sure what the Bureau is doing here, but if you insist…" The bartender finished drying off a glass and stacked it back into place, taking his own fucking sweet time wiping his hands off on a towel before finally stepping out of the bar. "Please call me by my name, Kurogiri. I'm the owner of this humble place."
"Investigator Todoroki, and my colleague here is Investigator Bakugou. Thank you for your cooperation, we are merely following protocol."
Katsuki couldn't help but roll his eyes at Todoroki's bland-, half-assed attempt at diplomacy. Honestly, they were better off shaking up the shadowkin with flashlights and matches. Or better yet, glow pixies. He shuddered a bit at the thought himself, recalling one particularly unpleasant encounter with one of those lightbulb mosquito bitches.
Never. Fucking. Again.
The shadowkin, Koro-whatever, lead them to the kitchen and storage areas, explaining the functionalities of the dump to them. He didn't care, though. he just wanted to locate the damn spell potions and get back to his office in order to not write their investigation reports. He still had a pot of freshly made coffee sitting on his desk, after all.
"What do you think?" Half-n-half leaned over to him in a whisper.
"I could really go for coffee and a wyvern meat sandwich right about now." Katsuki cracked his knuckles, glancing at the kitchen staff they just passed. "That, and they're definitely hiding something here."
"Don't do anything stupid, Bakugou."
It was a rare sight to see Shouta Aizawa outside of his office. It was even rarer to see him outside of the Bureau's building.
And rarest of all was the sight of him with his arms crossed, scolding two of his subordinates outside the burning remains of a restaurant in the east side of Musutafu.
"You two are nothing but reckless fools, you can be expecting your salaries to take a dip because of this." Aizawa gritted out between his teeth. "I'm going to have to deal with PR and media because you don't know the term 'self-restraint'!"
"In my defense, I asked Bakugou not to anything stupid." Shouto chimed in. "But after the first pillar broke and a full fight had broken out, I saw it necessary to intervene with force as well."
"I didn't do anything stupid. I acted on my instinct and I was right because that fucking shadow piece of shit was hiding the potions among the whiskey and refused to let us touch them so I used my authority to c-"
"I don't care about any of that. What I care about is the fact that the public will have a very good reason to think the Special Investigations Department is full of nothing but empty-headed, trigger-happy morons. A.k.a. you two." Aizawa's glare was cold enough to bring back the Ice Ages, his pointed finger sharper than any blade out there. "If you think I'm letting either of you explain yourselves to the press, you're dead wrong. Once the medics give you permission to leave, I'm expecting a full report including a reflection on your behaviours, and I want it in my office first thing in the morning."
"...Yes, Mr. Aizawa." Shouto and Bakugou answered in near perfect sync. Their boss nodded, then slouched away towards the gathering reporters behind the yellow tape.
"I petition that you write the report, since you are the one who attacked first." He turned to his partner. "And before you say I'm just a scared weakling, I prefer the term 'tactical evasion of conflict'."
"You can take that tactical evasion of conflict of yours and shove it up your ass."
"I'd really rather not."
Bakugou clicked his tongue, pushing himself to his feet and walking towards the collection of vials they had secured from inside the restaurant. "Pathetic. People who can't face reality are just so fucking pathetic." He spit on the ground, then looked back up at the still burning building behind them.
Shouto watched from afar, recalling how unusually angry Bakugou had been in there. His partner had always disliked certain types of jobs more than others, but these last few days, it was worse than usual.
If he had to pinpoint a time his mood began to worsen, it'd be… around the time that one lab was destroyed...
"What are you staring at the air for like an idiot, Todoroki?"
It wasn't often that Bakugou called him by name, and when he did, it was usually something important. "Just thinking. What is it?"
"... I want to ask you about something. But not here." He held up a hand, his car keys dangling from it. "I'll ask you on the way back."
"If you say so." Shouto glanced back to make sure the paramedics were distracted, then followed his partner to the car.
"So, what is it?" He inquired once they were on the road again. "Something about this case come to your mind?"
"Not exactly. The explosion back there… it wasn't one of mine." Bakugou's knuckles gripped the steering wheel tightly, so much so that his skin was white with tension. "What kind of level of stupid does it take to set off explosions in the basement when you're still there?"
"I know they weren't yours." Shouto replied. "But nobody else present should have been able to set off a spell like that."
Bakugou went silent for a few minutes after that, lips pressed into a tight line. His eyes were trained on the road, but his mind was elsewhere. Finally, he let out a low growl. "...sounds familiar, doesn't it?"
"You mean Miss Yaoyorozu?"
"Todoroki, what did you find in that office of hers?"
"I thought you didn't care."
"... you're right. I also thought I didn't. But you and I both know you're not the kind of person to take back research materials from a crime scene and then only bring in half of them to the evidence vault. Where's that other half?"
"Does it matter?"
"Evidently."
"It was air. Bad space management. You're overthinking this."
"And you're a bad liar." The car came to a sudden halt as the traffic light switched to red, and Bakugou went silent again. "Don't do anything stupid. If you kick the bucket, I'll be forced to write all these stupid reports on my own."
When Shouto came home that day, the first thing he needed was a cold glass of water. There was still a huge dragon egg sitting in the middle of his living room, but he walked past it into the kitchen. Once sufficiently rehydrated, he decided to face the problem once more.
The egg.
Something was making Shouto feel uneasy. It wasn't the egg itself, it was the amount of people that had been clearly searching for it. He knew in his gut that it was only a matter of time until they came to his apartment and started looking here.
After he and Bakugou had returned to their office, a total of three groups of people had asked him about what was inside Miss Yaoyorozu's office, two of them even looking into the evidence vault.
And throughout the whole thing Bakugou had been sitting there, that pensive scowl of his never leaving his brows.
An annoying tapping sound broke Shouto out of his thoughts, and much to his own horror he discovered it was his leg, shaking up and down against his own will.
He had told Miss Yaoyorozu he'd keep an eye on it. Protect it. But he knew nothing about it. Additionally, today's events further cemented the feeling that the woman was innocent. There was something out there that could cause spells to go off without incantation.
He leaned his arm onto his shaking leg, hoping that shifting his body weight onto it might keep it in place. It didn't quite go as he had planned. His eyes roamed the living room, landing on the egg eventually, where his gaze stayed.
The real problem was that he knew nothing about it. The more he thought about it, the more he knew he needed somebody who did.
And that was when the stupidest, most ridiculous idea he had conjured up in his adulthood crossed his mind.
But at its core, it was simple.
At this point in time, it was more likely that they were keeping an innocent woman in the detention center than her actually being the culprit. Simple, right? That woman also happened to know about the egg. Even simpler.
He stood up with determination, his next destination clear in his mind: the detention centre.