Naomasa had been in a flurry of motion since Saito had called. She had been tasked with organizing people to send to the training camp, which meant he was free to go check on things himself. The location he was given was an hour's drive, but with his lights and sirens (and some reckless driving), that time was cut in half.
The camp was a mess when he arrived. People were everywhere - students being evaluated and interviewed, while others were being whisked away in ambulances. Naomasa checked every ambulance, every group of people he saw, and even a few trees, but Midoriay wasn't there. Had he been hurt so badly he'd been rushed to the hospital? How was Naomasa going to tell Inko?
His anxiety eased a fraction when he spotted a familiar face in the crowd. "Vlad King, I'm glad you're okay. Do you know where Midoriya is?"
The hero looked hesitant. "Midoriya, the EMT kid? The quirkless one?"
An unexpected flare of irritation flashed through Naomasa, but he pushed it down. "He's a field medic, actually. Where is he? Was he in one of the ambulances that already left?"
"Midoriya… Midoriya is-"
"Midoriya is the only reason all of our students are safe," Eraserhead interjected, looking dead on his feet even as he approached them. "From what we can gather, the problem child traded himself off to the League of Villains so they would leave before they really hurt anyone."
Naomasa's blood ran cold. "No. No, it can't be."
"Detective!" a familiar voice called. Mori and Sohma had arrived finally after driving a (slightly) more legal speed. "Is everything okay?"
He felt his jaw clench. "I need statements from everyone that was here, now. Throw my name around, throw Tsuragamae's name around. Do whatever it takes."
"Naomasa," Sohma said quietly, placing a hand on the detective's shoulder, "Is everything okay?"
"The League of Villains has Midoriya," he said, feeling like the words were choking him. "They took Izuku."
Mori snorted. "Midoriya is like a cockroach. We can't get rid of him that easily."
While it was true that Mori had been sent to their particular police station to "refine" him and "make use of his potential," currently Naomasa saw none. He wanted nothing more than to fire the man, or better yet demote him to meter maid duty and litter patrol for the rest of his life.
"I need those statements now," Naomasa said frigidly. "You can start getting them from the same kids you did at the USJ incident, starting with the kid with the electricity quirk, Mori."
Mori clearly wanted to protest, knowing that Kaminari had likely overused his quirk again. But even he was perceptive enough to know that now was not the time. Sohma slipped away, dragging his younger partner behind him, likely to give Mori the talking to of his life.
Things were spiralling out of control. He felt sick just thinking about Midoriya in the hands of villains, but there was no time for that. Naomasa rested a hand on Aizawa's shoulder. "Your job is to take care of the students. I'll let you know what happens as the plan progresses, but Midoriya is my responsibility now."
The underground hero was unreadable as ever, but Naomasa had a good idea of what he was feeling. Eraserhead nodded slowly. "I need to inform my students of what's happened. So far only Bakugou and Todoroki know. Do you have any objections?"
"Just tell them to keep it quiet, there's no need for this to go public. Midoriya is a minor, and if he wants to be a detective, publicity like this would do him no favors."
Aizawa nodded, disappearing into the night. Naomasa sighed, calling Saito yet again.
"Detective? How is Little Midoriya? Did he get stabbed again?" she asked immediately.
"The villains kidnapped him," Naomasa said tersely. "I need you to try and track his cell phone. I doubt these villains would be stupid enough not to check for one, but-"
"Wait!" she screeched. "Just a minute-"
What followed was the sound of hurried footsteps and what Naomasa would have thought someone ransacking a house would have sounded like. Then came a strangled cry of excitement.
He could picture her sprinting to the phone and in a slightly-too-loud voice she said, "I found it! Tsukauchi, I found it!"
"Found what?"
"Kimura and I did it as a joke, mostly to 'conveniently' pop in on Little Midoriya when he was on a date, that is if he ever got up the courage to-"
"Saito, what is it?" the detective demanded.
"We put a tracking device in the Don't Rape Me Kit! They probably took it from Little Midoriya, but I doubt they would have taken it to a different location."
"Saito, I have never been so happy for your utter disregard for personal boundaries. We;re going to get all the information we can here, and in the meantime to start gathering information about where he is, what's happening in that area, anything you can find. Then call in as many units and heroes as you can. We'll finish as soon as possible over here, and then we'll head back to make a strategy and move out."
"Come back soon, Detective. Do you.. Do you want me to call Mrs. Midoriya?"
Naomasa closed his eyes. "Thank you Saito, but I think we both know it needs to be me. Get that location and call as many pro heroes up as you can."
His hands shook as he hung up on Saito and dialed the next number. It was even worse as the phone rang and rang until Inko's soft voice answered. "Sorry I missed your call, please leave a message."
When the beep sounded, it seemed to do so with a sense of finality, and it took Naomasa a moment to find his voice. "Mrs. Midoriya, it's Detective Tsukauchi. I… It's about Izuku, call me as soon as you can."
He hung up feeling empty and numb - but he had a job to do. Naomasa hated using his connections for his personal gain, but he would sell his soul if that was what it took to retrieve Midoriya safely.
At first he doubted his call would be answered, but after what felt like an eternity, the other person picked up. "Sorry I took so long to answer, Naomasa, I was busy making lesson plans, and then-"
"Toshinori, there's a situation," the detective interrupted, voice cracking with emotion.
Across the camp Aizawa's eyes were burning - the fire quirk user in conjunction with his dry eye was wreaking havoc on him, he definitely was not about to cry. He had assembled the members of his class that hadn't been seriously injured, everyone but Jirou, Hagakure, Yaoyorozu and Shoji.
"Mr. Aizawa? Is everyone going to be okay?" Tsuyu asked hesitantly.
"Everyone in Class A and Class B will make a full recovery," the teacher said slowly. "But Midoriya was taken by the League of Villains. There are already plans to retrieve him, but the powers that be have decided that you should all be informed. You aren't allowed to tell anyone outside of the class, this is being kept confidential."
Ochako stared at her teacher, not fully comprehending the words he was saying. Midoriya was gone. The same boy who had just been joking about taking her on a date was stolen, taken from the grasp of heroes.
"You all need to be checked out by health professionals, so once you have given your statement to the police get on an ambulance," Aizawa said before briskly walking away. He couldn't let them see the emotions that were raging within him.
He was stopped by a small hand tugging on his sleeve. "You're one of those heroes, right? You're a good one."
Kota stood there, hands desperately clutching… something. Even though he didn't feel like it was the truth anymore, Aizawa nodded.
"You'll save Midoriya, won't you? I just… I don't want to lose him too."
Oh, that was right. Kota would be the son of the Water Hose Duo, and Midoriya was the first person he had really had any attachment to since that whole fiasco. Shota had known he'd been missing something.
He crouched down, doubtful that he could give the child any comfort at all, but he said, "I promise there are a lot of people doing everything they can to help Midoriya. I won't promise you that he'll be safe, but I will do my very best to make sure he is."
Kota nodded before hesitantly offering up what he had been clutching, a notebook. "I found this. Will you keep it safe for him? He said it was important."
Aizawa nodded, and when he accepted the notebook, he couldn't help the slightest bit of curiosity that made him open the book. A pencil had been left between the most recent pages Midoriya had worked on, and Aizawa was confronted with a sketch of him, with a mess of scribbles around it.
He snapped the notebook closed as soon as he realized what it was. This was intimate, no one saw inside his notebooks, not even Tsukauchi or Meiji. If you were lucky Midoriya would read your entry to you, but that was the closest anyone ever got.
But this wouldn't be his last entry. Shota would make sure of that.
At that very moment miles and miles away, one Midoriya Izuku stared down his captors. They milled around as the weight of the chains hung on him. That he barely noticed, instead focusing on the familiar shock of pale blue hair that framed red eyes.
"You're really going to want to let me go," Izuku said for what felt like the fiftieth time that night.
"No, I think this is the perfect opportunity to convince you to join our cause," Shigaraki said gleefully. "I'll help open your eyes to how faulty these heroes are."
"Really, it's best for everyone if you let me go. You don't understand."
"And what don't I understand?" Shigaraki asked, somewhat amused.
"That keeping me is more trouble than it's worth. I'm not going to join you, and there are people that are probably already planning a full-scale attack. I give them twelve hours before they storm the place, possibly less." Especially if Saito put a tracker in the fanny pack like I assumed, Izuku thought.
"If you kill me, they will hunt you down. You may be confident in your abilities, but if I die, they will pick apart your every flaw and weakness until you don't have a leg to stand on."
Izuku was shocked to find that he fully believed every word he spoke. In fact, he was certain that at this very moment Tsukauchi was assembling a squad to retrieve him.
"And you want us to what? Send you on your way?"
"I'll give you eight hours," Izuku said, staring into Shigaraki's eyes.
"Eight hours for what?"
"Eight hours to try to convince me to join you, ask me questions, things like that. IF by the end of the eight hours I'm not convinced, you take everything of value and leave. The police will find an empty bar with me chained up in it. I won't know anything about where you went."
"And why would we take such an offer?" Mr. Compress said before Shigaraki could say anything.
"You've got some momentum going right now," Izuku explained. "People are scared, and doubting the heroes a bit. Right now the public doesn't know you kidnapped me. You haven't gotten any notifications on your phones- don't even ask, it's common sense that you all would have it set to notify you whenever you were mentioned in the news. There are people that will keep this quiet as long as I'm retrieved in the next twenty-four hours. But if you keep me long enough to be found out though, perceptions of the League will be changed. People aren't going to be impressed you took the oby who brought down Stain, they're going to see me as a defenseless, quirkless child and you'll be seen as no better than a school bully."
"If you're so sure about all of this, why aren't you just waiting us out? You could just sit here and wait to be saved," Dabi said lazily.
Izuku slowly met eyes with the League member he'd intentionally been not thinking about, the scarred man. He had eyes like Endeavor's, but instead of burning with anger, they were numb, numb to the pain and suffering still left in the world. When he did speak, he chose his words carefully.
"In a way we are similar, all of us. We've all been hurt or neglected by heroes, we just given different opportunities. Frankly, the hero society needs to be reformed, though I don't agree with your methods." Izuku thought for a heartbeat before he added, "And I believe in second chances."
He was acutely aware of every eye on him until Shigaraki walked over to a screen mounted on the wall. "What should I do, Master?"
A voice that felt ancient to Izuku crackled over the speakers. "It's still your game, Tomura. You can do as you choose, although we've been presented with a unique opportunity. All Might has yet to find a successor, and there's an intriguing case study right before us. If you agree, I think it would be wise to observe the progress of young Midoriya and his devotion to heroes. In the meantime, our Symbol of Peace will weaken by the day."
Izuku's mind was working in overdrive as the League members huddled together, discussing potential means of recruiting him. He hadn't had a clear view of the screen, but the voice was unlike anything he'd ever heard before. Just his voice was embedded with power and depth that Izuku had never even dreamed of existing. Thinking of the actual man was terrifying.
"We already have Ragdoll, so we can shake the faith in heroes that way," Kurogiri intoned. "The Wild Wild Pussycats are popular enough that having one of their quirks taken away will shake the hero society. We could begin a different plan."
He found his mind screeching to a halt. Kacchan hadn't been the only target. Ragdoll didn't have her quirk anymore because of his negligence. How did he not notice?! The more he thought, the more he realized he was in over his head.
Excerpts from Izuku's Analysis
Name: Sasaki Sakura
Age: 27
Height: 158 cm (5'2")
Occupation: Police Officer, Partners with Officer Kondo
Physical Description: Sasaki is referred to as the darling of the police (out of her hearing range). Due to her short stature and large, violet eyes, she is often mistaken for a teenager, or even a child. She has long blonde hair that is usually kept in a braid, and fluffy lavender wings.
Personality: Sasaki is an innately kind individual, truly one of the most generous people on this earth. However, she does have a scheming side to her, generally when she is around Saito, but she is much less dangerous than Saito in that regard. However, if you insult her height or threaten her loved ones in any way, there will be no way to stop her.
Quirk: Angel; A mutation-type quirk that grants Sasaki her lavender wings. They are surprisingly dexterous, and she can fly, though only for a few meters at a time.
Notes: NEVER call Sasaki short. The recordings of such encounters have since been destroyed for the safety of those involved in the skirmishes.
A/N: This would have been out sooner, but work has been crazy and I went to a family reunion last week, which meant there was an overabundance of screaming children and no time to write. However, I find it significant to note that at said family reunion, I had not one, not two, but three adult cousins get legitimately stuck in a Chinese finger trap. So all you naysayers (I.E. Kit) can deal with it. This is a valid way to incapacitate a person without killing or seriously maiming them, KIT.
But regardless, all of you are lovely. The response to this fanfiction has been bigger than I ever thought possible, and I want to thank each of you for it. I haven't said this in a while, but I write to get feedback so I can improve, but anything you have to say makes my day!