The island had been nice. His grandmother was right: just getting away from it all, from the bullshit about his tattoos being taboo, to the whole drama that living the Yakuza life seemed to bring, was really relaxing. But it was nice to be back home. It was nice to be in Japan again.
Those were Izuku's thoughts right up until he exited the plane and was greeted by the mother of all heatwaves with humidity so high it might as well have been raining.
"I hate this place," Hanabi growled and marched forward, looking no worse for wear while wearing her usual business kimono. "Even when you're basically immune to fire, this shit will still fuck you up!"
"Can we go back?" Ori let out a soft whine, pulling on her loose summer tank top to get some sort of ventilation in between her boobs. "I feel like I can cook ramen in my tits."
Eva just stood in her shorts and T-shirt, her own bag strapped to her shoulder as well as Ori's. The expression on her face was one of pure defiance to the intense Japanese heat she was experiencing. A bit of sweat dripped down her cheek and fell near her lips, which she casually licked up like she was desperate to preserve liquids. She glanced at Ori for a moment and then her eyes went wide.
"Give me a snowflake."
"Tried that," Ori turned over her wrist to show the tattoo. "Doesn't work."
Eva growled.
"Hurry up!" Hanabi barked. "I wanna know if someone did something stupid so I can kick their ass!"
Their trip back home was in the comfort of Sho's air-conditioned car before they were promptly assaulted by the heat again.
XXXX
For most of the summer, Japan was choked by a heatwave that was enough to stop most villains from bothering to do much of anything. Sure, a few deals probably took place, but it was just a slow, dull time of year that just dragged its feet. The miserable heat affected the heroes as well, with heroes like Gang Orca taking a sudden trip to Hokkaido for business. He was part whale; if he just said that he was peacing out because it was too hot for him, no one would say shit.
Then again, he did look like he belonged in the Yakuza.
Despite the heat, and despite the slowness, the world never really stopped moving.
And that was true for the Amagi family as well.
"Are you sure?" Izuku asked for the umpteenth time as he followed his grandmother to her car, several of the Amagi elders he had come to know by name were already sitting inside or in other cars, they all wore formal summer yukatas or suits that were just begging to cause a heat stroke. "I mean, what if they try something?"
"Then I'll burn the bitch down," Hanabi grunted and smiled at him. "But no, I've known Rojin since before your father was even born. He's an old hardass, but he follows the code closer than anyone."
"There's a code?"
"Of course!" She grabbed him by his shirt and buttoned the first two buttons on his shirt and scowled at him. "Part of which is making sure you're dressing the part. Why do you think I put Tanaka in a suit?"
Izuku just shrugged then shook his head, "Look, don't change the subject, you're going into the Shie Hassakai territory. Without Tanaka, without me, without—"
"Pfft, don't act like you're the only muscle I have, Izuku." She placed a hand on his shoulder and patted his cheek. "I spoke to Rojin over the phone, and he wants this police investigation over with as much as anyone. I'm just going there as a favor to both him and the police. We'll still need to get to the bottom of the trigger supplier."
"Do you really believe that Rojin isn't involved?" Izuku extended his arms out wide. "That the Shie Hassakai isn't involved? That this isn't a trap?"
"Not for a second, and that's why I'm going." She placed a bony finger into his chest and glared at him. Her confidence was almost enough to persuade him. "Don't worry, this is just a meeting, and Rojin won't risk a war with us over this. Not when we'd be backed by both the heroes and the police."
Hanabi let out a sigh and looked down towards Izuku. "Look, I understand why you think this is stupid, but Rojin was a good friend, and the Shie Hassakai have been our steadfast allies. If it wasn't for certain events, we would have been on the path to merge into one. I told you once Izuku, there's a storm coming, and we're going to need all the allies we can get to weather it. That includes Rojin and his punks."
He stood there and said nothing.
"You understand, right?"
"Then let me go. That's my job, right? To—"
"Nope." She waved a hand at him and headed into her car. She paused and turned back to him with a smile. "Look, consider this a test: for the next twenty-four hours, you're in charge here. Try not to start a war." She swished her lips and grinned brightly. "Or do, I'm sure you'll want to clobber your punk-ass-bitch of a former friend."
"Wait what? I'm not ready for that!"
"Yes you are, we've been training for a month."
"More like two weeks!"
"Same thing." Hanabi rolled her eyes and stepped back out of the car. "Guh, fine, here." She grabbed him by the back of his head and pulled him down so she could kiss his forehead. "There, grandma loves you and she'll be back before you can say 'Cho-Han'!"
She flopped back into the car with an evil laugh and slammed the door shut.
Izuku watched as the cars moved down the street in a three-wide caravan, a growing pit gnawing at his stomach.
He conjured a handful of crows, their ephemeral forms wavering in the summer sun. "Follow them."
XXXX
Hanabi glared at the skinny young man wearing a mask that she had seen hanging around Rojin in the past. Kai Chisaki was completely loyal to Rojin after that old fart had taken him in just after the underworld war. Ever since Ori's and Tanaka's older brother passed away, and Rojin's daughter ran away, there was no doubt that Kai would be the next to lead the Shie Hassakai.
He was older than Izuku; not by much, less than a decade, but more than five years. It wouldn't have been surprising to find out that Rojin was giving Kai more and more control over the operations of the Shie Hassaki, but how much slack was he given? How much control did Rojin have?
And more importantly—
"Where the hell is that old fart?" She slammed Sarutobi's useless walking stick against the ground with a huff and glared at Kai again.
Kai and the other members of the Shie Hassaki stiffened at her remark.
"Oh please, don't act like I'm insulting your boss. I came here to talk to him, not you, Kai." She pointed a finger and glared. "So where is he?"
"He's…" Kai rubbed the back of his neck with a gloved hand. What was with those gloves? And that mask? And why was everyone else wearing a mask? Such needlessly edgy apparel. Kai took in a breath and sighed. "The boss, he's, he's fallen into a coma."
"What?" Hanabi growled, doing her best not to set the whole room on fire. "I just talked to him last week! How is he just now in a coma?" She stood, feeling flames lick her ears. "What happened to Rojin?"
Kai placed both hands in his laps and stared at her calmly. His calmness just wanted to make her punch him in the face more. "I apologize for not contacting you about his condition sooner, but we didn't want word to get out."
That was equal parts frustrating and understandable. "So where is he?"
"Resting." Kai reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a phone. "He's currently at our base, and I have a live feed to a monitor there." He tapped a few things on the phone slowly as though to show he was posing no real threat. He placed the phone down on the table that sat between them and nudged it more than halfway towards them. "Have a look."
Hanabi glanced at the phone and felt a bitter bit of bile rise up in her stomach as she looked at him. Time really could bring down giants. Shame, he had been such a force back in his prime, fully capable of taking on even the best heroes. She'd been aware of the curtain closing on their era for quite some time, but this just sealed the deal.
Without a word, she pressed the phone back towards Kai.
"Now then," the lines on Kai's face showed that he was smiling, "shall we get down to business?"
"Right." Hanabi took in a deep breath that left her throat with flames. "I'm going to make this very clear."
Kai nodded.
"Stop producing Trigger behind your boss's back unless you want to see your whole family get swallowed up."
Kai tilted his head to the side. "I assure you, we have no idea where the trigger is coming from. We—"
"Are the producers." Hanabi kept her tone neutral, despite how furious she was feeling. "Oh, I'm sure that Rojin had no idea where it was coming from. I trust him. But I don't trust you, you little upstart."
"Oh, and what proof do you have?"
She reached into a hidden pocket in her sleeve, pulled out a vial of trigger, and placed it onto the table, earning shocked gasps from both sides of the table. Maybe she was too fucking old to have a flair for the dramatic, but she wasn't getting any younger. "We found one of your distributors. You were clever, clever enough that the police could do nothing but suspect you. At least for now."
"I am here as a favor to your boss." Hanabi placed her hand on the wooden table and watched as the lacquer began to curl and smoke began to rise. "I will not let you destroy what he and I sacrificed so much to build."
Kai reached for the vial and examined it carefully. "This is one of ours. You must have some very skilled members in your group."
She kept her glare up. Part of her wanted to nod and acknowledge Sho and Ita's hard work, but that would just needlessly endanger them.
"I have a proposal." Kai placed the Trigger back down. The dry look in his eyes was the same kind of ruthlessness she'd expect from a villain. "We join forces on this."
With a sharp inhale, Hanabi was heavily considering walking out. Even if she wasn't wearing a wire, the evidence she already had and Kai's own words were enough for the police and heroes to start their efforts in full. Her sentimental nature towards that old hard-ass Rojin was in the way, and was the only thing stopping her from burning this punk-ass bitch into the ground.
"There was a time when the Shei Hassakai and the Amagi were set to unify under the marriage of Mohaya and Satsuei, with Mohaya set to take over both families once you and the boss retired." Kai continued, either completely unaware that he should shut up, or just not giving a damn. "I'd be willing to do the same. The boss has adopted me as his own son, and if I'm not mistaken, Mohaya had a sister. Ori, wasn't it? We could—"
"Arranged marriages are out of style." Hanabi ground her teeth as she thought about that brief period of happiness not too long ago. Though it was only a few years ago that Mohaya had vanished and Satsuei took her own life, it felt closer to a decade. "What they had was real."
Besides, her grandson was currently boning Ori. They were a good couple, but Hanabi had suspected that the prospect of great-grandchildren was near zero. Izuku needed Ori's unique brand of not giving a fuck that reminded Hanabi ever so slightly of herself at her age.
"Truly?" Kai folded his hands for a moment and began to take off the leather gloves he was wearing in this heat. "Still, that was the reason for the talk of merging, wasn't it?"
"Pfft," she snorted and crossed her own arms, and glared at Kai's fingers. Why the gloves? Why the mask? She heard he was a germaphobe in the past, so why would he take off his gloves here? She didn't see any marks on his hands that denoted a quirk. "That was little more than drunken rambling at a wedding."
"Oh, I see. Well that's a shame. You see, the Amagi have a large amount of territory and more than a few profitable ventures that would be ideal for us to have access to." Kai hummed calmly and reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a small bottle of hand sanitizer.
Ahh, that explained why he took off his gloves.
Almost.
"The casino you pride yourselves so much on, the fighting pit, the redlight district, and a frankly impressive narcotics network." Kai rubbed the sanitary liquid on his hands and smiled at them. "I'd quite like to have access to them."
"Ha!" Sarutobi laughed and clacked his cane against the ground. "And why would we do that? What would we gain?"
"Power." Kai stated like he was speaking some absolute truth of the universe. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bullet that had been painted red. "This is just a prototype, but I've been developing a quirk-erasing drug."
"You." Hanabi pressed her hand to the table and glared at Kai. "You're walking a dangerous path, Kai."
"As opposed to the safe path you've been walking?" Kai asked and pocketed the drug once more. "You and the Boss have been letting the Yakuza slip away. Your Amagi group is little more than the angry lapdog of the police and heroes! Just waiting for them to put you down. This is our chance, I will rewrite this world so that once again it is the Yakuza people fear and not some unorganized villain groups."
"We're done here." Hanabi stood, the rest of her old guard standing with her.
"If you're not with us, Amagi," Kai's voice held a bit of chill to it. "You're against us."
The warehouse they were in shifted. The ground roiled like the sea at storm while the very air seemed to waver for a moment.
Quirks.
Hanabi acted first, lashing out with a blast of fire towards Kai, only for his body to be swallowed up by the couch itself, shielding him from this blast. Sarutobi leaped into action, the cane in his hand extending long enough to smack one of Kai's men in the head as the battle started in earnest.
So much for not starting a war.
But then again, this was why she left Wakan behind.
A bit of insurance.
She tried to burn her way out of the building, but nothing stayed still. Not only was the building moving and blocking her attacks, her entire body felt off-balanced like she had just gotten drunk off her ass without any of the fun parts. Still, she had fought in worse conditions. And Sarutobi was a natural drunken brawler.
For a few moments, it felt like they might win, that they had lived up to their reputation as warriors of old.
That dream was shattered by gunfire, and she felt a bullet press into her stomach.
The pain was nothing.
She had been shot before.
But the absence of her quirk.
That filled her with fear.
"It only lasts for thirty minutes right now," Kai informed her as he casually dropped the gun to the side. A large mask-wearing man that outweighed Tanaka placed a beaten and bruised Sarutobi to the side. "But, that's plenty of time against you."
With a light touch against Sarutobi's head, Kai ended one of her oldest allies in a puff of blood.
Kai stood in front of her, his eyes smiling behind his mask. "Don't worry, I'll be sure to take care of your Amagi."
She spat on him, a bit of her blood landing on his cheek. The furious look of disgust on his face was a satisfying final image.
Sorry Izuku, looks like I won't be around much longer.
XXXX
Why was her phone going off?
Sae pushed her head out of her pillow and glared at her phone. Her work phone.
Sleep tried to pull her back into its embrace, telling her that it could wait until morning, telling her that it wasn't anything important. She wasn't on call, after all. And she needed rest for the upcoming investigations. That thought vanished when she saw who exactly was calling her.
Izuku.
"Amagi?" she asked as she pushed herself firmly out of sleep's grasp. She answered the phone and placed it against her ear. "Izuku? What's up? It's like 2 AM?"
If he was arrested, he could sleep in the jail cell.
"Hey," his voice cracked. "You're part of the investigation into the Shei Hassakai, right?"
"Yeah, are you okay?"
"I want to help."
"Oh! That's good, I can arrange a meeting with the hero we commissioned to—"
"Tomorrow. I want to meet them tomorrow."
"Uhh, okay, I think that should be possible." Sir Nighteye might not like it though, he was a bit fiddly. "But, why so urgent?"
"They killed my grandmother."
"Oh."
That night she didn't get back to sleep. But she was certain that Izuku got less.
AN: This is the kind of chapter where normally I wouldn't say anything. But, but I was having a hard time with this chapter, just deciding what to do with it. I was torn between writing filler, content, Ori and Izuku going to a festival, maybe some random fight where Izuku teams up with some one A students, but nothing felt right. Nothing felt good for this point in the story. So I pushed the plot forward and that's where we are now. Some of you might think that this is jaring for this fic, but I think it's in line with what I've written so far, especially with all all the deathflags I gave Hanabi.
That said, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I promise that the pay off for this will be amazing. Also please keep the Eri comments to a minimum. They frustrate me.