Purgatory- May 1st- Afternoon

"Holy shit. This place is Heaven!"

"Purgatory, actually."

Ignoring his boss's lame joke, Izuku took in everything that Purgatory had to offer with a gleam in his eye.

Unlike the modern urban glitz of the city up above, Purgatory's luster seemed like a love letter to the pleasure districts of yore.

Paper lanterns lined the ceiling, cool colors of Heliotrope and Ultramarine pulsing and fading and giving the impression of a smoky night sky.

Beautiful women cooed and beckoned from the buildings to the side of the long, branching bridge.

Izuku's grin grew dopey as he recalled a few kimono shoots from the shrink-wrapped treasure he'd been given so long ago, and his eyes began to glaze over as he began subbing out some of the women from the photos and replacing them with the women in his immediate vicinity, not once losing pace with his employer.

Hehehehe-

Smack!

"Ow! Why, Chief?!"

"You're drooling and we need to focus."

"You coulda just said somethin'."

"Like what, 'Red Rocket'?"

"Or maybe just a 'Hey, we're here.'"

"Hey, we're here."

"Yeah, like tha-"

THUD!

To his credit, Izuku had only one thing to say after quite painfully crashing into the large ornate doors leading to The Florist's office.

"Oh hey, we are here."

"That's odd, I would've thought that a place like that would've been shut down by now."

"Purgatory's kind of a historic place in Kamurocho. Trying to shut it down would be like trying to tear down Sunpu Castle in Shizuoka, at least to people in the know."

"I feel like Bleach Japan might have some words to say with you about that."

"Yeah, sure. And the minute I start giving a damn about what those self-righteous thumbsuckers have to say, feel free to have me committed."

"What is your issue with them?"

"If I told you all of them, we'd be here till next Christmas. Now anyway, back to the story..."

Purgatory, Florist's Den- May 1st- Afternoon

Izuku didn't know what he was expecting from the man named the Florist.

Really, he didn't.

It was such a vague name.

Not much to glean from a word that literally just meant, 'One in the business of raising or selling flowers and ornamental plants.'

So, it's not that expectations were low, he quite simply didn't have any.

And yet, he still found himself slightly disappointed when he came face-to-face with a balding, gray haired man in a robe and slippers.

Still, he was there to ask the man for a favor, so his disappointment took an immediate backseat to his desire for information.

So he listened attentively to the exchange between the two older men, eyes flicking between them when they spoke as if he were watching a tennis rally.

"So what brings you here?"

"I'm calling in my favor."

"I owe you a favor?"

"That you do."

"And how do you figure that?"

"On account of Takashi-kun. Tell me, how's he doing?"

"Tch, still a cheeky bastard."

"And you're still stingy as ever. I'm willing to bet that if I didn't come here with that nifty piece of leverage on hand, you'd've thrown the kid and I into the coliseum before we could blink."

Coliseum?

"Not my fault that it gets boring down here."

"Ever consider investing in NexFlix?"

"Hmph, just tell me what you're here for. We're square after this."

"Alright, you're up Izuku."

"Right." He turned to the information broker and walked closer to the desk that he sat behind. For all of Izuku's disappointment earlier, he was warming up to the man rather quickly after that exchange.

"I need to know if we can get footage from the Champion's District, anything to do with creeps in white robes or a woman carrying and hiding a baby. Can you find that?"

"Of course. Who the hell do you think I am?"

That's cool. I like it. I'm stealing that.

The Florist laid one hand on his desk, kept it there for a moment, and Izuku had to keep himself from jumping when the ground began to sink.

His surprise seemingly went unnoticed, likely unshared if Akiyama's lack of surprise were any indication.

Nonchalance seemed to be the name of the man's game as he spoke to the elder man.

"Still running with handprint security?"

"Of course. It's never been broke, so why would I fix it? Though I've added voice recognition, facial recognition, key phrase locking, and weight sensors just in case."

The moneylender whistled.

"Overkill much?"

"Never hurts to be prepared, especially nowadays."

"Guess you're right about that."

The Florist didn't respond, he didn't need to. The elevator had reached its destination.

"Okay, now hold on. I've been meaning ask, but who is The Florist, really?"

"From what I've been told, he's an ex-cop turned information broker. He used to deliver info on bouquet cards, so people took callin' him 'The Florist'. He helped out one of my uncles a lot back in the day, though I only heard about that after the fact."

"Sounds like an interesting guy."

"He is. Now do me a favor and keep quiet, or we'll never get through this damned story. We've still got two to go after this."

"Alright, alright. Go on."

"There's your 'creeps in white robes', though I'm guessing this isn't the footage you're looking for."

"Well as pretty I am, I'm definitely not a woman, so…"

"Well, it never hurts to ask nowadays. Assuming's considered pretty offensive."

"Hm, think we could go back about thirty minutes or so? The kid couldn't've been there for more'n an hour."

"You've got it."

Below The Florist's office lied a surveillance room the likes that Izuku had never seen before.

An entire wall lined with expensive-looking monitors, each of them showing a place that Izuku had seen before, along a few police scanners, and a number of digital maps of Kamurocho.

If they somehow couldn't find the baby's mother among all that footage, Izuku would've admitted that it was likely a lost cause.

Fortunately, that wasn't the case.

"Look, right there."

On one of the screens, there walked a woman with long dark hair clutching a small bundle close to her chest.

She looked around nervously before kneeling down and moving something around just out of frame.

When she stood up again, she looked behind her and began running, this time, with nothing in her arms.

The Florist stopped the footage there.

"So that's our Hanako Yamada*, huh?"

"I guess so. Any chance these things have facial recognition software?"

"Of course they do. What do you take me for, a caveman?"

"Alright, alright. What are we waiting for? Let's have it, then."

"Well, that's the problem."

"Nani?"

"It should've kicked in by now. Whether it be on the police database or a social media site, it should've recognized her face and matched up with at least one picture. But that hasn't happened. So, fact of the matter is-"

Akiyama cut in, "We've got a ghost on our hands. She doesn't look Japanese, not from this distance at least. Maybe an illegal immigrant?"

Well shit. We've got a face with no name and likely a baby with no records. But wait-

"What happened after she went off screen?"

"Hm?"

"Even people in Kamurocho are likely to say something if they see someone being carried off in broad daylight, and I was at Earth Angel with the Mama at that point, so I likely would've heard a gunshot or a commotion if there was one. So she must've been taken where no one could see her and without too much a struggle."

"That's a lot to glean from a few seconds of footage."

"I read a lot of crime manga."

"Riiight."

It took some doing, but after looking through several different feeds and speeding them up, they finally found three figures in white robes.

Two men, one woman.

"Well look at that, Edogawa-kun. You were right."

"Well, with a keen eye for detail, one truth always prevails."

"Hm. Looks like we've got a ping. Guy on the left is Juzo Suzuki, apparently he was picked up a couple times a few years ago for gang activity. Little league stuff, fighting and vandalism, but he's apparently been squeaky clean since then."

"Aside from kidnapping and involvement in a creepy murder cult, you mean."

"Pretty much."

"He wasn't one of the guys I saw there, the guy to his right though..."

"Keiichi Tanaka. Squeaky clean record, though apparently, someone put out a missing person's report for him in Ijincho just the other month."

"Hm."

No doubt about it, that's the smiley bastard from the Champion's District.

"And filtering the search for him specifically through the other cameras' feeds after his confrontation with you, his last known location is…"

Izuku blinked.

"That abandoned soapland on East Taihei?"

"Yeah. Going back a bit, you can see a lot more of those guys in white robes walking into this one building too. I'm willing to bet five million yen that that's where they've made base."

"Huh. Well, I'm not the mood to make any sucker bets, but I do have a plan."

"You do?"

"I do, Chief. And I'm gonna need your help for it to go smoothly."

"Oh boy, here we go."

Some time later…

Izuku hoisted himself through a slightly open window, landing on the linoleum on the other side with a soft Thud!

He looked side-to-side, noting that he had landed in some kind of dimly lit storeroom, before speaking into his earpiece.

"Oi, chief. I'm in. You made contact yet?"

"Just about to. You're sure that they'll let me in if I say this gibberish?"

"Weeelll, 'sure' is a bit of a relative term."

"If this doesn't work, you're on your own."

"It'll work… probably… I think. Anyway, I'm gonna see what I can find, so it's radio silent from here on out."

"Right, I'll see if I can make my way to you if I get in. Out."

Alright… now-

Infiltration

Off in the distance, he people chanting something. He strained his ears, to get a better listen.

"Shooreh Pippi! Shooreh Pippi! Shooreh Pippi!"

The fu-?

CREAK!

He stopped that thought immediately, ducking behind a nearby stack of miscellaneous rubbish for cover.

He kept his body and breathing low, watching as another man in white robes trudged in.

The man was hardly important, if he needed to, Izuku could've taken him out with no problem.

What was important, was the secret wall passage that he revealed.

Well, that's interesting.

He quickly pulled out his phone, shooting his boss an incredibly quick and concise text, and followed.

Okay, this is going way too smooth right now.

Indeed it was, he had tailed the man through the secret passageway and followed him all the way down to a below-ground subcomplex.

Truth be told, the boy was impressed. He never would've thought that such an unassuming building could hold such an imposing secret.

Now if only it weren't being used for creepy shit.

It all seemed better kept than the place outside, so it must have been a new edition.

The floors and walls were pristine and it definitely smelled better than the rank-ass storeroom he had climbed into.

It was all hallways and corners with at least five doors to a wall.

He could hear people moving about and speaking in the rooms around him, but he couldn't quite make out what they were saying.

He had stopped shadowing the man he had followed in a while ago, but he still had no idea where to start.

So he did the most sensible thing he could think of.

Pick a door and start rummaging.

He realized that it would take him more than a few tries to find what he was looking for, but what was the worst that could happen?

With that foolish thought in mind, he reached for the nearest door handle, turned it(surprisingly, it was unlocked), and stepped into the room.

Well… shit.

All before coming face-to-face with several mean-looking men in black, who all blinked at the greenette's sudden appearance.

And four parties stood staring at each other for a minute.

Realizing that his cover was likely blown and he was probably stuck in enemy territory with back-up, he used his wits to come up with a cunning plan.

Raising his hand and wiggling his fingers, he said, "Munaaaaaancho~" and pulled the door shut.

3, 2, 1…

"CHIMIPZA!(Intruder!)"

Well, it was a good plan in theory.

Now the next chapter will be the end of this substory and then we'll finally get to the next two, which are much shorter, I swear.

Thank you all for being so patient with me, I appreciate you all.

*Hanako Yamada- Japanese equivalent of Jane Doe.