"Back so soon?" she smiled, sweet. "I can't afford giving you free meals every day of the week, you know."

It was a weeknight, and it was raining, which was a rarity in March. The raindrops were a steady pitter-patter against Shouta's dark umbrella. "This is not a social call."

She barely paused. "Oh?"

"I need to talk to him."

Yanli regarded him coolly. The scent of earth meshed with smoke, concrete, and a special concoction of perfume and alcohol-sweet staleness you could only get in Kabukicho.

"Him?" Yanli echoed.

"The boy," Shouta said.

"You'd have to specify."

He didn't specify. He knew he didn't need to, or he wouldn't be in business with Yanli in the first place. Shouta hated when she feigned ignorance.

The street was alive around them. The background noise of pans and sizzling oil, wet footsteps and human chatter. The rain made the neon lights reflect like rainbows on walls, concrete, glass. A gritty kaleidoscope.

"No," Yanli said.

Shouta smiled. It was not a nice smile—Shouta rarely ever smiled if not for a threat.

Beats and the low hum of raunchy music trembled the cold air. The rain was getting progressively heavier. "And why is that?" he asked, a dark drawl.

It was useless to demand answers from Yanli. It was even more useless to demand reasons. The arrangement that the both of them had was charity-based: Shouta's bleeding-heart in exchange for her—though perhaps less—bleeding-heart. If either of them were compromised, both of them were compromised. It was precarious, and there was not really any cost-benefit that would make sense, from an outsider point of view. But it worked. It had worked for years.

In Shouta's world, information was legal tender. And trust was not something you could afford without debts.

She leaned against the doorframe. The interior of the restaurant was apparent in the glass window, busy as it always was. It was almost midnight, and Shouta had no doubts that the kids had been tucked into bed.

"I think you are mistaken, Hero," she said. "That boy is not one of mine."

The rain was a downpour, now, water splashing to Shouta's coat and Yanli's apron. Neither bothered for cover. "You're not sheltering him," Shouta said, a curious conclusion.

"I did say he was a helper," she said. "He helps."

And what the hell did that mean?

The boy was not one of Yanli's kids. He was not under her protection, he was not with her. But Shouta thought—but then—then what had the boy been doing for the past ten years? Where had he been? Who had been—

A bitter, foreboding taste welled on his tongue. He swallowed it.

"He is an important witness," Shouta said, as if it was what mattered. And then, with urgency, "he is just a kid."

A kid. A kid who was wronged. A kid who had been given up. A kid who had been alone for all those years, doing god knows what, with god knows who. A kid who deserved—

"It would be a lie to say that he is safe."

Shouta looked at her, sharp. She looked back, still unreadable, and continued, "it would be a bigger lie to say that he lives a good, normal life as a child, or as a teen. But he is free. Do you understand?"

This arrangement had always worked between the both of them. Because while neither particularly—or implicitly, at least—trusted each other, they trusted each other to follow their own principle. And for both of them, there was one common denominator in their list of vague, askew moral alignments.

"I need to find him." Now. As soon as possible. It was a debt long due. One of his first failures.

"And what would you do, then?" she tilted her head. "Put him in an orphanage? Enroll him to one of your Hero schools? Assign him an expensive therapist with your Hero paycheck?" her smile was sweet still. "Or perhaps your teacher benefits, hm?"

"Yanli."

"I can't help you, Hero. I said he was free. And I will not be the one to take that away from him. Not again."

"He is fifteen," Shouta seethed. And who's to say that this league was done with him? "Fifteen and alone, and they could—"

Her smile was gone. Yanli's lips curled into a fanged sneer. "You think I don't know that?"

There was an ugly silence. Shouta's hand was numb from holding the umbrella too long, but he couldn't even register that. After a beat, Yanli took a cigarette and a lighter from underneath her apron. Clink, inhale. She sighed smoke, and then turned to look at him. Unreadable.

"Even if I was willing," she said. "I can't help you. But do not worry. Like I said. You will know soon enough."

She flicked her cig, a piece of amber dying in a puddle. Through Shouta's silence, she said, "I wish he were one of mine, Hero."

That told everything Shouta needed to know. He walked away.

Shouta trusted his guts.

The rain had calmed down, though still splattered throughout the city like a mellow fit of tears. He walked away from the red light district, passing miles of the colorful neons and dazzling lights, the vendors and the music. End of the block, take a left. Away from the crowd. Take another right, and then left.

He was still in Shinjuku, but that was fine—this part of the ward was quiet. Not nearly respectable enough to be a coveted neighborhood, but not dubious enough to be crawled over with gangs and seedy bars. There was an empty plot and an empty building next to a silent gas station. Shouta checked for cameras—none. He entered the construction and sat on a piece of concrete block.

He waited. And then out came his stalker number eight.

This one was different from the others, too—but all of them had one thing in common: rugged, filthy, and very poor clothes.

This one had no visible Quirk manifestation. The man looked old—late forties, perhaps. But homelessness made you look older than you were.

The man walked carefully into the dark building, and jumped with surprise when Shouta said from the dark, lowly, "what do you want?"

Capture weapon ready at his bid, and Shouta could feel his Quirk shimmering behind his eyes, ready to activate. Shouta considered the stranger. He wasn't hostile—at least not yet. There was a good distance between the two of them and Shouta intended to keep it that way. He could not legally attack civilians, after all. "What does your boss want?"

The stranger didn't answer. Instead, he raised both hands in a universal gesture of unthreatening. And then, very slowly, he brought down one hand and inserted it to the folds of his pockets.

Shouta's binding cloth whipped in one quickdraw, stopping the hand from moving further. Shouta's hair rose around him, eyes ablaze. "Keep your hands where I can see them."

He could feel no resistance—the man did not have his Quirk activated. The man did not pull his arm from Shouta's bind either. He said, "they want to give you a gift."

The man's voice was rough and haggard—from nicotine, or disuse. "'They'?" Shouta drawled. After eight days of tailing him to kingdom come, this they—whoever had been sending men to tail him—decided to give him a gift ? How cute. "I don't accept gifts from strangers."

"They would like to amend that," he said. He was calm, but this was the kind of calm of someone who had nothing to lose. He did not sound like he particularly cared about the outcome of this meeting. A messenger. "This is an invitation. They would like to meet."

"And to whom," Shouta said, his cloth tightening, "am I speaking?"

Right after Shouta began to investigate Kitaku, the cold case—this happened. It was too much a coincidence. The timing was too perfect. There were two possibilities. Either this was the league, or this was—

"They don't have a name," the man said.

Ah.

So that's how it was.

This was not the first time Shouta had been offered a liaison with a less than savory company. With a less than legal company. Yanli had a list of red ledgers to her name, but now she was nothing but a restaurant owner who knew too much with a room of kids underneath. Shouta was well aware that what he did was not orthodox to the dazzling, capricious world of Heroics. He was an underground, after all. But that didn't mean he would be willing to join forces with a Vigilante.

Not even one that had an alarmingly interminable power throughout the dredges of Musutafu.

"Why should I accept?"

"You don't have to."

His capture weapon loosened a fraction. "Put it slowly on the ground. And leave."

He arrived at the location precisely at midnight, as the invitation instructed.

The coordinates—35°41′49″N 139°46′13″E—turned out to be an abandoned train station at the outskirts of Musutafu. It had been an old train station that had been using outdated train lines. It was due for refurbishment, but stopped mid-construction a few years back because of extensive delays and cost overruns. Now, it was a sad brutalist building standing in the middle of nowhere.

Unusable as a train station. But as a sleeping bed, it seemed to be fitting enough. There was an elderly woman sleeping over tarps and newspaper on a mezzanine, a filthy bucket hat draped over her whitening head. She was the only other living person in the whole area aside from Shouta—the surroundings had been overrun with weed and molding buildings, and the nearest signs of civilization were at least five blocks away.

There was a rusty metal mug next to her. Shouta walked up and put several yens into it along with a jack of diamonds card.

She took him inside.

Their footsteps echoed softly on the floor. The building was thoroughly empty, still with construction tools scattered about—it looked like no one had touched it in years. It was dark, which made Shouta cautious, but she took her steps with practiced ease.

She was wordless, and so was he. She was only as tall as Shouta's chest, but her walk was sure and quick despite her limp. She led him to an underground tunnel inside the building—a very old one, still taking on 21st century design—and they trotted down the stairs.

The air was cold above ground, and Shouta expected it to be colder underground—but surprisingly, it wasn't. And even more surprisingly, there were lights. Flickering, fluorescent tubes cascading on the ceiling.

The tunnel led them into what must once had been an underground railway station. Old design, just like the tunnel itself. The yellow paint of the writing MIND THE GAP was chipped and fading on the ceramic floorings. It was dimmer here, but there was lighting too—the signs of train lines and the red lights on the train tracks were on, casting an eerie glow to the whole site. Stray electricity, perhaps, converted conveniently to power this makeshift home.

Home, because there were people.

There were a lot of people.

Huddling around in corners here and there, conversing lowly to each other. With makeshift tents out of tarps and newspaper. There were several trashcan bonfire—perhaps the source of warmth of the place—people held out their hands to it, and the fire allowed Shouta to take a better look of their faces. Rugged, filthy. Poor clothes.

Homeless people, banded together in an abandoned train station.

They were not just people. They were kids, too, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Shouta caught glimpses marbles being played, its glass catching the lights of neon and fire. There were families, here. The train tracks continued on far ahead, and Shouta could see signs of people even there, signs of life, dancing lights. There was an entire goddamn village. There must be at least—thirty, forty of them. Perhaps, if Shouta walked further along the tracks, he would find more than fifty.

And every single one of them was looking at him.

Never show weakness, even if you were outnumbered. Never show your cards, even when you didn't know what the fuck was going on.

It made sense, really. This explained the seemingly—seemingly boundless network. Explained how this Vigilante always somehow knew every single fucking thing, every single fucking shit that went down in Musutafu. It explained—the manpower. The infinite web of information they seemed to possess. The everything.

Shouta knew he had walked into a lion's den, but he didn't expect a whole fucking jungle.

The people were quiet suddenly, as they came to be aware of his presence—a single anomaly in the harmony of their communal. Even the kids stopped playing to look at him. There wasn't enough light for Shouta to parse the expressions on them—hostility? Curiosity? Mere wariness?

No one spoke. No one, until one.

"Hello."

Shouta turned, cautiously, and Midoriya Inko's face greeted him.

It was unmistakable. The doe eyes, the freckles. The waifish figure.

"Welcome," the boy said, a soft tenor. His eyes were dark in the sparse light, and his tone wasn't friendly so much as demure. "I believe we've met before."

Shouta stared. Shouta felt sick.

That boy is not one of mine. I wish he were one of mine, Hero.

So this Vigilante used kids as their messenger too.

"Take me to them."

Shouta's voice was quiet, but it echoed throughout the tall ceilings and the silence of the tunnel. He could feel eyes on his back. Many eyes.

"'Them'?" Midoriya Izuku echoed.

"I was invited here. Where are they? The one who sent you."

There was a moment where Midoriya considered him, quiet doe eyes. Shouta recalled the way Midoriya had shyly looked away under Shouta's attention back in Kabukicho—the fidgety nature that the kid had. There was none of it, now. Not really.

"Of course," Midoriya said. And smiled. "They'd love to talk to you. They're a big fan of yours, you see. Please follow me."

As if on cue, the hustle bustle in the tunnel continued on.

It was the strangest, most disquieting thing—one moment their gaze on Shouta was immovable, and the next it was as if they'd lost interest. The kids continued to play, and the adults continued to chatter. No one gave them another glance. The abrupt dissonance was unsettling, but Midoriya had started walking along the train tracks. Shouta bit the urge to look behind his shoulders as he followed.

Shouta watched Midoriya's back as he walked behind him. Waifish. Small build. From genetics or possibly malnutrition. Did the kid even know his own name? He had been five. Did he even remember—all that had happened? Did he know who his mother was?

Thousands of scenarios of what could have been. Free, Yanli had said—so he must have escaped the clutches of the league. And then what? The streets?

It must be. Look where he was now.

Shouta was right—as they walked further, they passed another communal. The people glanced at Shouta, but as soon as they saw who he was with—Midoriya— they looked away, as if disinterested. They knew the boy. Midoriya must held some level of importance among this ... this group. To call it an organization seemed remiss. This group, this faction. This makeshift village of abandoned people.

And who was their leader? The Vigilante? And what did that mean about Midoriya?

Shouta could imagine it. A child thrown to the streets, who had been involved with Villain ought to be noticed. Such a child to be taken under the wing of a Vigilante was not unlikely.

A bitter, foreboding taste welled on his tongue.

It was ugly. It was sad, and it was deplorable—Midoriya Izuku deserved a better life than becoming a brainwashed pawn of some Vigilante with self-important, moral high ground. Moral quandary aside, Midoriya didn't deserve to be placed into any danger at all. Midoriya Izuku should have a normal life as a teen, as a kid. He deserved so much more. He didn't deserve to be used. Not by Villains, and not by this Vigilante.

But that was naive talk. The ugly truth was right in front of his eyes—right around him, in this tunnel, this city. The system decided that some people weren't worth saving. The system decided that Heroics equaled profit, and these people were not profitable. Not Yanli's children. Not these families living under concrete and rusted metal. Not Midoriya.

Whatever was going to come out of this meeting between Shouta and this Vigilante, Shouta was going to try his damndest to bring the kid out of this.

They had walked in silence for a long while. The communal was sparser in this area—only a handful of people, holding out their hands to small fire on metal barrels. Shouta had been right—there were at least fifty people living here. And they were organized—they had food, they had clothes, places to live. They even had electricity, and some of them had phones—the shining squares of light were unmistakable. Shouta was even sure that he passed a spot that looked like a workshop. These people had tools. These people lived here.

Ahead, one of the old track lights shone red-yellow, illuminating a train car. Even from this distance, Shouta could see that it was a bullet train—an ancient model, just like the station. The aluminium alloy did not rust, though, even through time. The interior of it had light—from what, Shouta was not sure. Midoriya seemed to lead him towards it, which meant that—

"Are they your leader?" Shouta said. "Or are they one of you?"

It was the first time either of them said something throughout their walk. Midoriya didn't bother to look back as he replied, a soft remark. "You seem to refer to this they a lot, sir."

Heroics were not the explosive spectacle that children so adored—It wasn't as simple as saying I am here. Shouta was not in the field of entertainment—this was a field of violence, schemery, years and years of groundwork. The kind of heroics that Shouta did was grueling and frustrating. These things take time, and Shouta bid his often.

Shouta was a patient man. The sort of patience that had been tempered through time and experience. But he found himself getting sick of these tired games.

"The Vigilante," Shouta said. "The one with no name. Are they your leader?"

Midoriya stopped, and turned. "After you, sir."

When Shouta didn't make a move, the boy merely shrugged, and climbed inside the train car.

Shouta considered his options. He didn't have much.

The only way out that he knew was the way they came in. He was surrounded and outnumbered. If worse comes to worst, he knew he could ping Hizashi and Nemuri his whereabouts at any given moment—they hadn't searched him or taken his weapons, which was a small comfort. He had gotten this far, he had walked this far, and the wealth of information being offered to him was painstakingly indispensable.

At the moment, Shouta was the only Pro-Hero who could attain crucial information regarding the phantom Vigilante of Musutafu and the up and coming league . There was no way in hell that he could afford to give that away. Shouta climbed inside.

The light in the train car was, as it turned out, from a generator. Half of the car was occupied with an electric generator that gave a low hum as it functioned. Shouta eyed the sea of cables that crawled over the walls, out the window—that explained the electricity, the heat too. There were no seats in the car—they were taken out, along with the safety handles.

There was, however, a table. An incongruous, battered coffee table with two seats across each other. There was nothing else. The train car had somehow been made into a small, sparse living room.

Midoriya was standing idle in the middle of it, patiently, as if he was waiting for Shouta. With the light illuminating the car, Shouta could see him better. His outfit was similar with the last time Shouta had seen him—a hoodie and pair of jeans, both rather worn. There was a faded All Might cartoon printed on it with an english phrase underneath: do with all you might!

Shouta had thought that the leader—the Vigilante—was waiting for him there, but there was no one else in the car—just the two of them, and the electric generator.

No one else. Shouta said to the boy, "you don't have to do this."

The boy blinked back at him. Green, doe eyes. Same ones that Shouta had seen on Midoriya Inko's file. "Do what?"

Shouta gritted his teeth. Where did he even start? He wasn't even sure if Midoriya knew his own name. Shouta was never one to comfort, but he attempted to be soft. "This. This life," Shouta tried. "Your leader, this Vigilante—whatever they told you, they're wrong. You can leave. You deserve to leave. You could have a normal life. You don't have to do what they tell you to."

The boy stared back at him. He was short, barely Shouta's shoulders. Shouta wasn't sure what expression was on the boy's face—it was mild, a little blank.

Missing for ten years. Doing god knows what, with god knows who. Izuku was a wonderful kid. So cheerful, so smart. Forgotten by a neglectful system.

Shouta continued despite himself. "I could help you," and it was a moment of weakness, but there were only the two of them. One should never show their cards, especially not in a potential enemy territory. One should never show emotions. And yet, Shouta sounded desperate even to himself. "I can get you out of here."

The boy looked at him. Shouta wasn't sure—he wasn't sure about any of this. He had to get this boy out of here—he couldn't save everyone, but he might be able to save Midoriya Izuku. He just had to convince him. Shouta opened his mouth to do so, but he was cut short by the boy's laughter.

The laugh was quiet, reserved. Short. And then the boy said, "I see now why you get along with Yanli-san so well. You have a soft spot for children, don't you?"

Surprise blindsided him. Shouta stared. Midoriya had his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, head tilted at Shouta. Watching. Gone was the quiet, the demureness. His stance was not confident, exactly, but it was fearless. Before Shouta could gather himself, the boy spoke again.

"I think that's admirable. I think it's sweet. I was wondering why you were so hung up on the missing kids," he said, glibly. Like he was not talking about himself. "Maybe it's because you're a teacher."

Every word that came out of his mouth felt like a punch to the face.

The boy didn't seem to mind Shouta's lack of participation in this conversation. His hands were out of his pockets, now, moving animatedly as he talked. "Speaking of. You had an accident when you were in UA yourself, didn't you?" he said. His smile was persistently polite on his round, boyish face. "My condolences. It was tragic, what happened to your classmate."

Shouta's blood ran cold.

He had fucked up.

"Was that why you decided to teach?" the boy said, curiously. "Some sense of duty? Of guilt?"

There was something like nausea coiling in Shouta's gut. This was wrong. Shouta had made a miscalculation. Shouta had missed something that was right in front of his fucking face. Over a decade of Hero experience and he had been played like a fucking fiddle.

"Sorry, am I talking too much?" the boy laughed a little at himself, and the bashfulness on his face looked so real. So real. He looked grotesquely unthreatening. "It's just that I'm such a big fan, you see. "

Shouta's stomach felt like ice. The boy walked, his steps light and easy, to the table. He gestured, still with that carefully constructed politeness. "After you, sir."

When Shouta didn't make a move, he sighed heavily, as if Shouta was being difficult. "Cheer up a little bit. Weren't you looking for me? Haven't you been looking for Midoriya Izuku? "

A wonderful kid. So cheerful, so smart. The boy dragged a chair for himself and sat down, making himself comfortable. "Weren't you looking for—oh, what did they say about me? The mysterious, phantom Vigilante of Musutafu. The one without a name. There you have it," Midoriya waved his arms grandly, as if saying tadah. "You found him. We should celebrate your success, I think."

That boy is not one of mine. Shouta miscalculated what that meant. It would be a lie to say he's safe. But he is free. Do you understand ?

The generator light behind him shone the edges of the boy's wild hair into bright green. Doe eyes. Freckles.

Ten years. This was what he had been doing for ten fucking years.

With a flourish, the boy waved his palm on the table—and as if by magic, produced a deck of cards, face down, in a perfect circle. He looked back up at Shouta. Wide-eyed, round-cheeked. The boy smiled. A bland, vague smile.

Just the most wonderful smile, Bakugou Mitsuki had said. So cheerful, so smart.

"Well, Eraserhead-san," said Midoriya Izuku, Vigilante of Musutafu, the one without a name. "What about a game of cards?"