All Clear

He hadn't even realized that he had worked all night until the door to his office opened, and Inari stood there surprised to already see him at work. Endeavor normally made it a point to come to work early and leave late, he was a workaholic after all. But Inari was an early riser, so, in the early morning, disregarding whichever sidekick would have the night shift that day, he would normally be the first to open up the agency, even before Endeavor arrived. It was surely not unheard of that Endeavor would arrive before him, but it was still rare.

Inari looked at him surprised for a moment, then he moved to open one of the windows to let some air in. Enji hadn't even realized how stale the air had become.

"You've been here all night?" he asked, turning back to his boss.

Endeavor shrugged, "I finished the list." He pressed the print button and waited for the printer to spit out the final product. "I'm not sure about inviting Mirko still, the same goes for Edgeshot. I would like to have them here, but I feel uncomfortable pulling so many top heroes off the street." He hesitated for a moment.

With his own quirk related problems, he had no illusions over where he currently stood. Without a doubt, the Lurkers, the team Edgeshot had formed with Kamui Woods, Mt. Lady and their respective sidekicks, was currently the strongest team in Japan. He would feel safer leaving that team mostly intact for the duration of the meeting, when so many other heroes would be away from their duty.

"Well, we need somebody from his team," Inari muttered scanning the list quickly. "Mt. Lady?"

Endeavor looked down at his hand where he could still see the tiny little bruises the woman's nails had left there when he saved her and her family from the fire. "She's still in the area because of that fire."

Yesterday the investigation into that fire had revealed that a quirk was involved in starting it. Since they still didn't know if it was arson, they had requested hero protection during the first stages of the investigation. Mt. Lady had been the first hero at the scene of the fire, so she was an obvious choice for the protection detail, while the rest of her team currently worked in Yokohama.

Inari only needed a few seconds to read and comprehend the entire list of almost 150 names. "I'll get the guys from Hero Coordination working on this," he waved the list shortly in his right hand, then he looked a bit more serious. "On a different matter, I got news from Interrogation."

Endeavor, who was just about to shut down his computer, looked up questioningly. "Did they find anything?"

"No. Today they'll talk to Brazen, he's the last one they didn't get to talk to yet. As for the others…," he shook his head, "nothing. As far as they are concerned, Interrogation all but cleared all five of all suspicions."

Endeavor's brows furrowed in thought. "So, it's either Brazen, or we missed something, or…"

"Or we'll have to look into Hawks' Agency," Inari ended.

Endeavor hummed standing up and moving to the closet behind his desk. "That makes things a lot more difficult. Don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy that there seems to be no leak in my agency…" Truth be told, finding out one of his own colleagues had betrayed him to the League like that might have been the straw to break the camel's back. With everything falling apart around him, the fact that his agency still worked like a well-oiled machine was one of the few things he could find relief in these days. He wouldn't know how to deal with that trust crumbling away, but still… "He's in Fukuoka…"

"Finding a spy on the other side of the country," Inari nodded, understanding his employer's plight. "We might want to consider bringing in a second agency."

"I'd rather not," Endeavor muttered. He needed a plan, but he couldn't risk his suspicions coming out. Every hero he involved was one more possible leak to the public, and the public had lost enough trust into their heroes as it was. To find out the current number one hero suspected the number two or somebody working for the number two, of treason… That wouldn't bode well. Hawks was far more well-liked than him, he had even been more well-liked back before Endeavor had been declared the media's enemy number one. They wouldn't believe him, and he'd lose even more authority… or worse, yet, they would believe him, and Hawks would also lose their trust only to be cleared of all suspicions later. At the moment, Hawks was the only top three hero with his reputation and skills still intact, although…

"What is he even doing down there in Fukuoka?" Enji muttered to himself. If recent news reports were right, Hawks had for some reason decided to decrease his patrols through the city. He was still seen regularly, and his sidekicks kept the streets mostly safe, but compared to his normal patrol schedule, he seemed notably absent. Endeavor had even seen one particularly ridiculous article claiming the young number two hero had a new girlfriend, explaining his absence.

"If everything goes well, he'll be there on Monday, so maybe we can start from there," Inari suggested.

Endeavor nodded. He had pulled a new suit from his commode and turned to face Inari. "How did the other five we interrogated so far react to their interrogation?"

Inari shrugged half-heartedly. "How you'd expect them to, I guess? Angry, confused and a bit disappointed. Tatsumaki may quit this week, so we might have a free position in Marketing, but the others I'm sure will calm down eventually. We've instructed them not to tell anybody about what happened, and they seem sensible enough to follow through."

Endeavor nodded. If Tatsumaki quit, that made 24 open positions in his agency. That was a problem for another day. He should really think about restructuring the agency. So far most of his work had been taking care of emergency calls and individual requests by civilians and private clients. Now, civilians called his agency less and less, preferring other agencies to deal with their problems and emergencies. They also had almost zero requests for internships. Instead, he was sure the legal department, the guys taking care of complaints, as well as Public Relations were drowning in work.

"Wasn't Tatsumaki's job mostly to approve merchandise and organize some fund-raising publicity stunts?" he asked to make sure.

"Yes," Inari nodded. "Surely not the most important position to fill at the moment. Endeavor merchandise is just collecting dust on the shelves these days."

Endeavor grunted in response. "What are the most important positions to fill at the moment? Apart from getting two more sidekicks?" He really needed two more sidekicks. His interns had mostly quit, as had three other young sidekicks he had just employed fresh out of high school. He knew the night shifts were especially hard on his sidekicks who all had to pull extra shifts recently.

"We need at least one more to bolster our PR department, and Nakamura has requested help several times, so I think a new lawyer wouldn't be bad."

Endeavor nodded, "Tell Human Resources to publish a job ad. I don't know if it will help, but we can only try. As for Nakamura, if we don't get any useful applicants, tell him he can consult a freelancer. There are enough lawyers out there waiting for a well-paying client." He yawned. "I'll take Avalanche with me on Patrol."

Inari frowned at him, then he nodded and left.

A few hours later Avalanche was staring at the newspaper in his hand. "I can't believe this," he muttered, throwing the paper at Endeavor. "Catch!"

Endeavor caught it a bit awkwardly. He had his lunch in one hand and just barely prevented the paper from knocking the rice balls out of his hands. He shook the paper open one-handed and glanced at the title page.

There was a picture of the burning building from three days ago taking up almost half of the page. He read the title and the short summary at the top. "What is it?"

Avalanche's chopsticks pointed at a paragraph a bit further down. It was another complaint about Endeavor using his fire against the public. Right after the catastrophe, the news reports had still been fairly objective. He'd even been surprised to find some people defending his actions. Those voices had quickly died down. The expert telling the viewers that Endeavor's actions had been 'rough but vitally important' had been turned into a meme of some sorts. The poor man had been made a fool of, and it was probably his luck that there wasn't another big fire recently to bring him back on screen to make a mockery of himself again.

Endeavor hadn't really seen those memes, as he couldn't care less for those stupid pictures, but his PR-department had informed him the day before that there was a whole string of pictures of international criminals, villains or most prominently — widely known incidents of police and hero violence posted on the internet with the capture 'Rough but vitally important' in bold letters below the picture.

Since then, no news agency that wanted to keep their readership even dared to insinuate that Endeavor's actions might have been justified. At least the police didn't cave that easily, as they had informed him this morning that they saw no reason to investigate against him for use of excessive force.

Well, and then there was still that captain from the fire department insisting that Endeavor's actions had in fact been important and right. At least nobody dared to mock him, after a video of him rescuing a three-year-old from the third floor had gone viral. It seemed you can't simultaneously praise somebody with the caption 'any man can be a hero', and then ridicule him in the same breath. So, they mostly left him at least alone — no matter how much he praised Endeavor.

At least that was a good thing, Endeavor thought; though it also made him mad. There was another video that had garnered quite some popularity before it was taken off the internet because of the gruesome imagery, showing him jumping from the fourth floor with the blue-skinned man on his shoulder and then coughing his lungs out. People had posted and reposted that video asking why Endeavor acted as if he weren't immune to the fire, and that he looked really weak and nobody had ever seen All Might all but vomiting from just a little smoke like that. Later on, it had been revealed that the man had in fact already been dead, when Endeavor had pulled him out of the smoke, so people had started asking if Endeavor couldn't tell a dead man from a living and if maybe somebody had died in the time he spent 'rescuing a dead guy'. At least then they had quickly decided that further mocking Endeavor for his mistake was in bad taste, considering the feelings of the deceased's family and most of the videos had been deleted a bit later. Of course, if one wanted to, they could still find it.

Again, Endeavor hadn't actually seen the video, but he had read a short summary courtesy of his PR-team.

Endeavor didn't even bother reading the rest of the article. He turned the page, just to see if there was more. Then he paused. "Is that…?" He wondered out loud.

Avalanche looked over his shoulder. "Ah, that… yeah, I heard about it this morning on the radio. It's a statistic of how many rescues can be attributed to which hero during the fire."

Endeavor glanced at Avalanche, then back at the newspaper.

Statistics similar to those were not really all that rare. Every six months, when the new Japanese Hero Billboard Charts were about to be released, the newspapers started collecting statistics making their assumptions on how the ranking might have changed: which heroes were the biggest winners or losers of the semester? Who might surprise the audience? For these statistics, they often consulted experts and let them guess the total number of civilians saved, criminals apprehended, and property damage prevented. They might even include an educated guess on who was the most inspiring for the youth in that year – a statistic, Endeavor was sure, All Might would lead even years into his retirement.

Normally he would always do rather well in those statistics, as in terms of just raw numbers, he often beat out even All Might himself. This one was different though. This was one particular incident… They normally would not do this.

'Number One Hero not pulling his weight?' the caption read. Below was a little graphic showing that experts had determined Backdraft to be the most vital hero at the scene. Without his hard work, keeping the fire from spreading any further, they determined the death toll might have easily risen to three digits. It was mentioned that the fire department and paramedics on the scene were just as vital, but since this statistic was meant to compare heroes, they wouldn't go any deeper into estimating their contribution. Next, they recommended Mt. Lady, estimating that she had saved a grand total of 118 people from the upper floors. They credited Death Arms with having saved 81 people and Shrinking Girl with saving at least 22. Avalanche was credited for his fire-fighting efforts that had helped bring the fire under control. They argued that it was impossible to say for sure how many lives he had saved, but they credited him with saving at least eleven people and the overall structural integrity of the building that still had at least a dozen people inside at the time when he and the fire department got the fire under control. Finally, they credited Endeavor with having saved ten people of which two were still in critical condition.

"It's a ridiculous statistic," Avalanche muttered with a dark scowl on his face.

Endeavor scowled, irritated, then gave a short lopsided smile that immediately died from his face again. "At least they mentioned that the ten people I saved were generally considered to be in the greatest danger," he muttered sarcastically.

"They did?" Avalanche wondered glancing down at the last paragraph Endeavor pointed at. "Huh… I must have missed that."

Endeavor doubted Avalanche was the only one. He angrily crumpled the paper in his hands and let it go up in flames, incinerating it to a point that the ash was so wispy, the next breeze carried it away without a trace. "Let's get back to work."

Avalanche was in a bad mood the rest of the day. Endeavor didn't really care, as he wasn't in a particularly good mood either. At least the day was comparatively calm. They took down three villains all in all, one of which attacked Endeavor outright, cursing his name in the process.

As they made their way back to the agency, Endeavor was already so tired, he could hardly stay upright. He shouldn't have stayed up the entire night, he knew. Avalanche was on his phone. Enji just threw a quick glance at his phone as he pulled off his gloves. He saw enough to know Avalanche was scrolling through his Twitter-feed, but he didn't care for what his sidekick was writing or reading there.

He left Avalanche with whatever trouble he had found on Twitter that made him scowl so darkly and made to go to his office.

He saw Brazen the moment he stepped out of the elevator on the thirty-fourth floor. The young hero stood leaning against the wall with crossed arms and an angry scowl that would make Avalanche proud. Seeing Brazen of all people in such a dark mood was uncommon, but Endeavor could easily think of why he would be so angry.

He glanced at Inari, who sat at his desk looking up at him.

"He's been cleared," he informed Endeavor who nodded in understanding.

"Of course, I've been cleared!" Brazen exclaimed angrily. "What is going on? Dammit!"

Instead of answering, Endeavor went into his office and waved the sidekick to follow. Gods, he was too tired for this. As soon as the door closed behind his young sidekick, Endeavor killed off his quirk, because at this point, even just retaining the flames on his face, which was normally a very casual matter, was exhausting work.


So this is a bit of a wrap up for the public reaction to the fire incident a few chapters ago. The News coverage went from reluctantly giving Endeavor credit while arguing about whether or not he acted correctly to now follow the public opinion and criticize him a lot more than would be fair. So, most of the officials (like Police, Firefighters, emergency services, etc.) stand firmly behind Endeavor's actions, but the public doesn't quite see it that way. I also decided to incorporate social media and the internet a bit more, because I think it's in this day and age an important aspect of public relations.

Also, this chapter I realized there may be a bit of a discrepancy between how this hero society treats 'professional heroes' compared to people who help others in any other capacity, be that because they are just nice people, or because they are maybe police, emergency services, doctors, firefighters, etc. I started to think that maybe over time, the more the public started to idolize heroes, the more they might have stopped acknowledging the deeds of for example that captain of the fire department who is mentioned in this chapter. In a way, this would pit the emergency services against the heroes. This will not be a major part of this story...or any part really. I just started to wonder, if maybe a firefighter or paramedic or police officer would feel underappreciated in a world like this...
What do you think?