In this chapter:
Aizawa minds other people's business and will probably get a headache later.

1 – Night Time Hero

He hadn't set out that night to do hero work. Sometimes it felt like he had caught the whatever virus it was his students had that kept attracting trouble.

"Understood, sir."

Aizawa glanced at the hero running past him from the corner of his eyes.

"Roger. I will contact you if I find any leads," the young looking pro hero continued talking to the radio in his ear, soon exiting Aizawa's field of vision and hearing range as they continued heading the street to their opposite directions.

That makes it three times, he thought to himself, scanning the street with his senses and recounting his thoughts of what he knew. It's an almost unusually quiet night for this area, but that's only as far as civilians are concerned. The heroes are on the move. He had seen at least three heroes running around like the fellow just eyes stopped briefly to the police officers discussing with each other under a bright neon light sign on the other side of the road. The police have been mobilised as well. What is happening? There is no commotion or proof of villains as far as I can tell. They appear to be searching for something, in which case there is a chance something has been stolen or that an apprehended villain has escaped…

"Unbelievable. How could they have found out again?"

A more familiar voice brought Aizawa's interest to the man walking out of a building in front of him and he stopped to listen.

Detective Tsukauchi stepped out of the doors of a police station, talking to his phone, a frown on his face. "We must take further precautions and stay vigilant."

Aizawa stood by the edge of a streetlight, listening to the detective instruct the person on the other end of the call. …Should I?

"Yes. Clearly they can somewhat track our movements and conversations, but we must also consider the possibility we somehow have spies among us."

Aizawa's brow furrowed.

"What are you saying? We can't do that. They've already foreseen two rescue attempts. We can't afford a third time or the boy will be in danger."

Listening to the detective finish his call, Aizawa squinted in slight distaste. A kidnapping then. As Tsukauchi lowered his phone and turned to walk away, the pro hero stepped out of the shadows. "Hey," he said, rather as an attempt to catch Tsukauchi's attention than a greeting.

The detective startled slightly and turned around to face him. "You're UA's…"

"What's this about failed rescues?"

"Eraserhead… You were listening?" Tsukauchi replied and turned properly around to talk to him. "I must be getting tired. I was sure no one was close."

"Blending into the shadows is in my job description," Aizawa replied. "Think nothing of it. So?"

Tsukauchi frowned and lowered his voice. "Yes, well…"

"If it's too confidential to talk about or you have things covered here, I can go home."

The detective shook his head. "No. We could use assistance." It was clear on his face he was thinking furiously and after glancing between Aizawa and the police station a couple of times, he had reached a decision. "Not here. I'm afraid this is not so simple. Could you follow me? If you have time to help, I will fill you in."

.

.

Since the kidnapping had happened around five in the afternoon, both the police and the heroes involved had worked to locate the kidnappers and save the child. The problem was that twice now a lead had been followed all the way to what had been believed to be the kidnappers' hideout. Using witness testimonies, passer-by hints, police data space, the hero network and an aerial survey quirk as their basis, a rescue team had been assembled. Both times the raid had ended empty-handed and a piece of paper had been left behind for the heroes to find. A note telling the rescuers how close and yet so far they were. Both times it had included an order to prepare an extra sum to be added to the amount the kidnappers had initially asked for ransom. The second time the note had also warned them that after the next attempt, they might not get the boy back in one piece either way.

The time limit to pay had only been until morning. It was around an hour past midnight now as Aizawa navigated his way through the darker back allies of the city. Somewhere out there, a young boy was waiting for someone to save him. He had spent a lot of time staring at a computer screen memorizing everything that could prove even remotely useful. Now it was time to move before it was too late. Along with his own research, from the intel he had gotten from detective Tsukauchi and the pro hero Kamui Woods, who was one of the heroes handling the case, he now had the most recent updates of the case.

In a normal situation, he would have worked along with the other heroes and the police. However, since Tsukauchi had reasons to suspect the police networks had in some way been compromised, the detective had requested a different kind of help from him. Specifically something that wouldn't be tracked. The villains were knowledgeable enough to know about the rescue attempts to their locations before they occurred and escape without any detection along with their victim. Their ways could include hacking, tapping phones, listening devices, actual spies or a quirk that allowed one or more of these things. It was also possible they had planned ahead and constructed witness testimonies that would lead the rescuers into wrong places. The police now needed an investigator separate from all their main networks: a person experienced enough on stealth and solo missions to cover ground in a way the villains couldn't detect.

Hopefully.

Leaving how they know about the rescue attempts beforehand to the police to worry about... Aizawa took a sharp turn to a new street and continued running. I should concern myself with the question: how do they escape. The aerial survey all but confirmed someone was indeed at the first two sites before the heroes arrived. So between that gap of the place being found and the heroes arriving, where did they go?

While running, he looked down at his phone that displayed a map of the area where he had marked the first two sites. The distance between the first two locations is almost three kilometres. In between is a big shopping district. Even though it was late, that's not something you'd expect someone trying to hide could easily traverse through while dragging along a kidnapped child. The traffic was already under police surveillance at the time and judging how soon after the first one the second hideout was discovered, they couldn't have taken a long detour either.

He halted his run, having reached his destination. On the other side of the street before him was an unused office building, standing abandoned in a wait of a new buyer after the previous owner had gone bankrupt. It was the villains' first hideout. If I can figure out the way they move, I can narrow down places where they could have gone from the next location. Aizawa huffed between his teeth. I hope we're not dealing with another annoying warp like ability. Having one villain like that is worrisome enough...

He changed the map on his phone to another file he had searched up during his investigations. Seeing the place in real life helped him convert this architect blueprint of the joint into more valuable data. Aizawa eyed the blueprint and the building along with its surrounding area, forcing his thoughts into a path of creating and rejecting new possibilities for escape. The more he thought about it, the more he started to reject the possibility of a warp ability. With one the kidnappers could have travelled to a much further or well-hidden place than their second hideout.

Yet there was one thing bothering him: the notes. They hadn't been hastily written threats whilst making an escape. If his thinking was right, the villains had been prepared to be found and had had an escape route and a ransom increase note ready. As a result of two failed attempts, the ransom had already almost doubled.

Perhaps more importantly, the first note had contained a p.s., almost kindly clarifying to the rescuers something the police had wondered during the evening. It had been a clarification of the time limit they had and served as further proof that the kidnappers somehow tracked the police. 'Until dawn' had been slightly raised up to debate among the investigation team as far as definite time limits go, so the villains had kindly corrected it to six in the morning. But Aizawa's interest was in the fact that not the writer (which wouldn't be inconceivable even in a hasty situation) but the pen had changed between sentences. It wasn't too obvious of a detail, the colours were almost the same, and since the writer had changed, it didn't draw much attention. But as a teacher, Aizawa had a acquired an eye for spotting details among handwriting. As far as he could tell from the short time he had had with the note, the writer, the pen and the surface under the paper had changed between the two sentences.

It didn't proof anything by itself or course. But by the time Aizawa had crossed the street a bit further away and circled to the back of the office building, he was getting more and more certain of his theory that getting almost caught was part of the villains' plan. The notes had been made ready beforehand. Walking in the darkness along wall, he steadily closed in on the voices of the police ahead on the busier street.

If I go with that for now, the next problem is how do they pull the escape off, he thought and threw his capture cloth around to lasso a police officer from the street towards himself. He recognised this officer as someone Tsukauchi had pointed out to him as a person he could trust and talk to at the scene. The officer tensed and let out a little surprised and panicked sound, thinking he was being attacked. But as soon as he was close, Aizawa released the scarf. Before the officer could turn around to see who he was dealing with or open his mouth to speak after the cloth in front of it loosened, Aizawa grunted him to stay quiet.

"Open a back window on the first floor," he simply said, leaning his back closer to the officer's to keep quiet and handed the officer a little stack of papers over their shoulders. "A search warrant, an investigation request with a letter of instructions and a copy of my hero's license. There's no time so outside these direct your questions to detective Tsukauchi after the case is closed. I'm counting on you."

"Hey, you okay?!" another police officer asked, running around the corner to see what was going on. She frowned. "Hm? Was there someone with you?"

"No," the first policeman replied and walked back to the street, folding the papers in his hands to fit inside his pocket. "Sorry, I thought I saw something too. It was just a cat."

Thinking about it logically, Aizawa thought to himself as he climbed inside from an open back window a moment later and dropped down to the floor. First time aside, the second time the heroes tried to learn from their first plunder and approached the location from all sides. Breaking through without being seen should have been difficult. Of course this included the air survey, in which case... He soon found what he was looking for thanks to the blueprint he had examined and stood before the door to the cellar. Underground becomes the most obvious escape route. This area doesn't have subway tunnels, but the soil above bedrock is thick. The police found no tunnel entrances or signs of digging and thus dismissed this option, but if I assume they had time for proper preparations, with the right quirk it might well be possible.

The police attention was on finding the third hideout in a hurry, so the first one didn't have nearly as tight a security as one could have expected from a crime scene. Aizawa had seen three police officers outside and from the sounds he concluded at least two more were on the floor above him, where the room with the first note had been found from.

Perhaps to fool the investigators into thinking escaping underground wasn't the most obvious route, Aizawa guessed silently as he walked down the stairs to underground floor. This floor featured storage rooms and the main power room, as well as a small employee gym with two changing rooms and a toilet. Aizawa stopped in the corridor connecting them all and tried to think like a villain. The police and the heroes are investigating all the other possibilities but have come up with no theories that hold water to the end. There is still approximately five hours until dawn. One way or another, I'll find that child.

In the next chapter:
Class 1-A discuss the news and All Might disagrees on how Aizawa does things

A/N: This story can also be read in AO3. I decided to post it here as well to hopefully give myself the push I needed to finish it. Up to 13 chapters have been posted by the time of me writing this. I will update the story here until that chapter most likely weekly and hopefully have more to post by the time I reach 14 (which I have already written actually, I'm just not happy with it).