"The seed of conviction lies within you… I will let you live for now."
Tomura would be shaking with rage if he could move a muscle. This damn fucking lunatic had fucking stabbed him! Stabbed him!
"Now, send me back to where I was before. My crusade isn't over in Hosu City."
Tomura growled from his spot on the floor as the signature black smoke of Kurogiri's portals appeared behind Stain.
Stain instantly stepped to the side, watching the portal with his sword already out of its sheath, faster than Tomura had been able to follow. He tried to move his body again, grinning as he felt his muscles loosen up.
Darting to his feet, he got ready to dust Stain, but before he could do anything, he heard Sensei's voice. "Tomura. Allow him to leave. Stain, you are free to go if you wish. Please contact us if you change your mind."
Stain huffed, and Tomura knew that he wasn't going to change his mind at any stage. Stain backed his way through Kurogiri's portal, vanishing. Rolling his shoulders, trying to stop the cuts from hurting as much, Tomura turned to the TV screen and scratched his neck.
"Sensei… why didn't you let me kill him? He stabbed me, right in my fucking arm! I hate him! And I'm allowed to destroy things I hate, right?"
There was silence for a moment before All for One's voice came through the screen. "Young Shigaraki. Even if the Hero Killer declined your offer, is there no other way he can be useful to you?"
Tomura paused, his brain whirling to try to answer Sensei's question. After a moment, something hit him. "Sensei… I think I get it. We don't need him, we just need everyone to think he's on our side, right?"
Tomura couldn't help the smile that came onto his face as Sensei chuckled from the other side of the screen. "Exactly, Young Shigaraki. Now, what are you going to do to make this happen?"
Tomura's smile turned feral.
"I'm going to need some Nomu."
Emi hummed as she jumped onto the next roof of her patrol route.
Being a semi-underground hero meant that most of her work was at night, or right at the time when the sun started to dip behind the tall buildings of Hosu City. She landed on the next building and rolled, popping back up onto her feet.
She watched as her intern followed her, his roll ending almost as well as her own. She noticed that his shoes had done something when he landed too. He had obviously had some training with this stuff before, and she knew who had probably taught him.
"So, Eraser's got you learning all sorts of underground hero stuff, right? I would think that he'd be sharing his scarf thingy-ma jiggy with you as well."
Izuku chuckled, and Emi grinned as she saw the golden eyes on his mask upturn into stereotypical anime smile eyes. It was literally her favourite bit about his suit. Maybe she could look into getting something like that for her own mask? Not that she wore it often.
"Nah, Eraser hasn't told me anything about how his scarf works. I'm fairly certain it has to do with pressure points and stuff for some bits, but the only person he's told anything to is Hitoshi, and Eraser has him sworn to secrecy."
Emi smiled, hopping up and down on her feet to try and keep the cold of the night from seeping into her exposed arms. "Yea, that makes sense. I've only ever met Hitoshi a few times, but if I didn't know beforehand that he was adopted, I'd have thought my future husband had a secret lover!"
Izuku laughed at that, and Emi continued forward, leaping over the next gap between buildings and doing a quick scan of the alleyway as she did. She rolled as she landed again, and hummed as her Quirk showed her a pair of people down the alleyway to their right.
"Gridlock, I can sense two people down in the alleyway there. Can you tell if they're using their Quirks?"
Izuku stopped for a moment, and she guessed he was focusing on that Quirk 'sight' bit of his Quirk that he had told her about. After a moment, he nodded. "Yep, one has a Quirk that feels a bit like Kaminari's, so it's probably something to do with electricity, and the other seems to be shifting, I can't really tell what it is."
Emi nodded. "That's good enough. Now stay back, but if I give you this" -She held up a hand signal, from an old superhero movie about a wall-climbing hero- "then I'm telling you to shut down both of their Quirks, alright?"
Izuku nodded, copying the hand signal to show that he understood. Emi smiled and walked to the side of the building, and suddenly the sound of laughter echoed up to them.
Emi smirked, dropping down onto the fire escape and sliding down to the ground, her brass knuckles glinting in the streetlight.
"Hey there, boys! Awfully loud for a couple of troublemakers, aren't we?!"
Hitoshi watched from just in front of the police line as Hierophant's quirk stopped a rampaging villain in its tracks.
The woman, who had some sort of gigantification quirk, had just… stopped moving. Was this what it was like to other people when he used his Quirk? He was usually so focused on keeping his control he never really noticed the look on a brainwashed person's face…
"Kid, you good?"
Hitoshi jumped as he heard Hierophant speak. "Yea, I'm good. Sorry about that. Was just thinking…"
Hierophant nodded, smiling. "Don't worry about it! Now, as we continue with our patrol, I want you to tell me every good thing you saw me do in that fight, and every bad thing."
Hitoshi raised his eyebrow, giving Hierophant a quizzical look. "Aren't you the one meant to give me feedback and advice?"
Hierophant chuckled. "Yea, I guess that's true, but trust me with this. Pointing out what someone with a similar Quirk did wrong during a fight can be really good for getting ideas for things you can do better as well! Why do you think so many people with Speed Quirks watch Ingenium footage, or Strength Quirks, All Might?"
Hitoshi hummed, thinking over what Hierophant said as the hero spoke with the nearby police officers, before giving a small comment to the local news crew that had shown up near the end of the fight.
It made sense when Hitoshi thought about it. But what had Hierophant done wrong? He hadn't really spotted anything like that from where he was.
He'd have to pay even more attention next time.
Izuku couldn't help but laugh alongside Emi as she slapped a pair of bright pink handcuffs onto each of the fighters, before slapping a smiley face sticker onto their cheeks.
She did a flourish with her wrist and Izuku watched as the screen came to life, a man's face appearing on it. "Ah, Mrs Joke. Lovely to hear from you. Where do we need to go this time?"
Emi smirked. "Officer Lowka! Got a couple of ruffians for you and your pals to Lowka-p! In an alleyway next to 'Crimson Demon Pyrotechnics'. Two guys, fairly average build, so no need to get the big van."
The man on the screen nodded, before seemingly trying to look over her shoulder. "Oh, do you have an intern with you?"
Emi yanked Izuku into view. "Yep! From UA. Got good feelings about this one too! Gonna really make a splash."
Izuku rubbed the back of his head, smiling. "Ah, I certainly hope so. Although, not too big of a splash. I want to be an underground hero."
Officer Lowka seemed surprised. "Good for you kid. Too many hero students are focused on the flashier side of heroics these days, to me. Nice to see some can appreciate the less glorious bits. Anyway, gotta go. Pickup is en route, Joke, ETA within 5 minutes."
Emi's watch flicked off and she smiled. She dragged the unconscious bodies of the people who had been fighting to lean up against the wall, before sitting cross-legged on the ground.
"Alright, since we've got about 5 minutes until they get here, I wanted to talk to you about something. I had to read your file when I sent my offer in, and I noticed that your quirk listing is a bit different to how you actually use it."
Izuku tilted his head, a bit confused. "What do you mean?"
Emi put one of her elbows to her knees and held her head up, and reached into her vest with the other, bringing out a small sheet of paper. Unfolding it, she started to read. "Quirk: Dominion. Cool name by the way. Allows the user to manipulate and affect the quirks of anyone within his range."
Izuku nodded, smiling at the compliment. "Yea… that's my quirk. What don't you get about it?"
Emi tapped the paper again. "It says here you can manipulate and affect, not just turn them off. If you can do more stuff with your Quirk, why do you stick with just shutting them down? If you wanted to sow chaos in a fight you could try forcibly activating them to throw them off, or even use it to make them attack each other."
Izuku raised his finger to point out why he couldn't do that… and stopped. Could he do that? He had never really tried to… other than in his fight with Bakugou, where he had boosted Bakugou's quirk at random to mess with him.
He hadn't pushed it too hard, because he knew that boosting drained his stamina like nothing else, but what if he did? Could he do something like that? It would be a great help in the future, any new techniques or moves were always helpful!
He reached out with his Quirk 'sight' and felt Emi's right in front of him, full of bright green, joy, and an underlying feeling of dread that he only understood now that he had seen her Quirk used on someone.
He grabbed onto her Quirk and heard her shuffle around a bit as he instinctively clamped down on it a bit. Stopping himself, he let the quirk in his 'grip' free, before pushing into it again, this time offering up his energy.
He knew quirks didn't really have personalities, but it still felt like her Quirk happily accepted the energy he was giving it. He could feel the draw of power between him and Emi's Quirk, his stamina slowly trickling down through it.
He grabbed onto the connection and forced as much power as he could through it at once.
"Ha!"
For a briefest of instants, he felt Emi's Quirk latch onto him and force him to laugh, and even after the Quirk-based compulsion disappeared, the smile on his face didn't. It had taken a lot more stamina than he had expected, but that was fine!
Emi clapped him on the shoulder as he let the connection go. "Alright kid, that was some good stuff! Glad I could rock your worldview a bit!-"
"-We'll make a top-tier hero out of you yet!"
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you all I worked here."
Momo pouted as she walked alongside Mirio, both of them in their hero costumes. Momo was still getting used to revealing so much skin in public, but at least this costume was leagues above what she had before.
How had anyone thought a leotard with a big hole down the front was a good idea?
She fiddled with her goggles, practising switching through various blueprints. "It's fine. I assume you kept it to yourself so Zu didn't bug you about getting Sir Nighteye's autograph?"
Mirio smiled, nodding. "Yep! It's an ace I'm keeping up my sleeve if I ever need to get him a gift all of a sudden. And if his school time so far has told us anything, it's that he's got a tendency to be in situations where he gets hurt. Hospital visits usually mean bringing 'get well soon' gifts."
Momo raised an eyebrow at that for a moment before chuckling. "I would argue against planning for that but… you're right. Trouble seems to find him. It's something I'll be trying to help him avoid in the future."
Mirio laughed. "Good luck with that. But seriously, I'm glad you two finally worked things out. It was pretty much torture watching you both dance around each other for years."
Momo blushed. "Yes, well. I'm glad too. Now, can we focus, Lemillion? You're meant to be explaining to me what we're doing as we're doing it."
Mirio smirked. "As you wish, Izanami. Right now we're just making sure that everyone around us knows that there is a Hero presence in these few blocks. It helps out people in trouble, as they know they can call for help and actually reach a hero who can."
Momo nodded. "Right, so us being here makes everyone know that they can call on us if they need to, while also doubling as a deterrent for any potential villains?"
Mirio clicked his tongue and winked, giving her a thumbs up. "10/10, you got it right! Now, Sir wanted me to take you around a couple of blocks, just to give you the feel of the streets in this part of town. Keep an eye out for alleyways and where the exits and entrances are. It's important to know how to navigate an urban landscape quickly if you want to help people."
Momo hummed but started glancing around at the streets, keeping alleyways in mind. "It must be easy for you, buildings aren't really a problem for someone who can just walk through them."
Mirio huffed, seeming upset. "You'd think, right? But no. Sir says that I'm not actually allowed to permeate through buildings because I'm not allowed to enter private property without permission or a warrant. Means I have to use my pseudo-warping trick a lot to get around town."
Nodding her head, Momo thought about that. "That does make sense. Unless you had permission from every single person in every single building, you would open yourself up to be sued, and possibly punished for 'breaking and entering' people's homes and businesses."
Mirio was about to continue when his phone went off. "Sorry, Izanami, gotta take this, it's Sir. Hello? Sir? What's the problem?"
A moment later, Mirio nodded, ending the call. "Izanami. We need to head back immediately. Sir just got some information on a case with his Quirk and we need to get ready to head out ASAP."
Momo yelped as Mirio started sprinting off towards the Nighteye agency, and pushed herself to catch up. "What's wrong? Where are we headed?"
Mirio's breath wasn't even laboured as he ran. "Sir couldn't say everything but told me where we're going tonight. Apparently-"
"Something big is going down in Hosu tonight."
Iida frowned as he looked around the street, half-listening to Manual as he talked about paperwork.
He didn't need to learn how to do paperwork. He needed to study all of the alleys and backways in the city so he could find Stain quicker. Needed to know where criminals hung out so that he could get his revenge.
His eyes roamed the streets around him as Manual walked ahead of him, taking note of every nook and cranny he could remember. He would find Stain, and he would bring him to justice.
It was what Tensei deserved.