Chapter 12

Aizawa hadn't been lying about the restaurant being a long walk from his apartment.

"This is actually stamina training, isn't it," Hitoshi griped as they trudged down the sidewalk. "You're just using this as an excuse to build up my stamina." His legs burned, sore from walking so much, especially since part of the journey involved going uphill. They'd had to scale two sets of stairs so far, and he dreaded reaching another one.

Aizawa seemed more amused by his pain than anything. "It's really not, but if you're this winded already you definitely need it."

Hitoshi could only groan, unable to really argue the point. "Hate inclines, so much," he panted, having to take large pauses between words as he struggled to regain his breath. "Stairs suck, so bad. Gotta move, some place, without hills. Or stairs. Just, flat land. Horizontal walking. Only."

He had to stop again—both talking and walking—and take a moment to catch his breath. He actually bent over, hands on his knees as he panted. Aizawa graciously stopped beside him, allowing the brief break. "You do realize you will probably be climbing a lot steeper environments if you become a hero, right?" he pointed out. "I regularly travel by rooftop on my patrols. And just wait until youʼre climbing mountains of debris."

Hitoshi looked at him in horror, almost asking if that was a thing. But then he remembered the USJ, and the fiery slice of urban life he and Ojiro had been warped to. Most of the buildings were intact, but a few had piles of debris in the entrances and interiors to simulate collapses. He distinctly remembered scaling one mound to reach a window at one point while trying to avoid villains.

So he saved the breath he would have wasted asking that. "Are we, at least, close?" he asked instead, and Aizawa hummed.

"Yes. Thereʼs only two blocks left." Hitoshi started to brighten with relief until Aizawa added, "But we'll have to climb one more set of stairs to reach it."

He outright smirked at Hitoshiʼs cry of utter despair.

A few of the nearby pedestrians shot the duo strange looks, one mother even tugging her young sonʼs hand and hastening her pace when he paused to watch them. For once Hitoshi didn't care about all the attention though. "Kill me now," he groaned. "Just put me out of my misery."

He knew Aizawa wouldn't kill him. He was a hero, and murder, even requested by the would-be victim, was pretty strictly against their ethical code. He did decide to take mercy on Hitoshi though. "Come on, thereʼs a park with a bench over there. Go sit down and Iʼll grab us some water from nearby. I assume you can at least get there without collapsing," he added dryly. "I mean, there arenʼt any stairs."

Predictably, he was unmoved by Hitoshiʼs death glare. "Hate you," he grumbled, and then recoiled when Aizawa grinned at him. Okay, time to go.

A few minutes after scurrying to the bench Aizawa joined him, plopping down next to him and handing him a water bottle. By that point Hitoshi had some time to regain his breath, so he was able to say "thank you" like a normal person before practically ripping the lid off and guzzling down the contents. Aizawa didn't comment on his drinking habits, just unscrewed the lid of his own bottle and calmly drank it like a civilized human being.

"Sorry Iʼm so bad at this," Hitoshi said once he finished half the bottle. "My middle school and house were both pretty close to train stations so I didn't have to walk too much back then, and I havenʼt been able to exercise much lately so I guess Iʼm a little out of shape."

"Itʼs fine," Aizawa assured him. "I already knew you wouldn't have gold medal levels of endurance or strength when I saw your performance in the entrance exam. If I knew it was this bad, I would have suggested a different place for lunch, though."

Hitoshi groaned, hanging his head in shame. "Iʼm going to be a horrible hero at this rate. I canʼt even make myself finish two blocks without a break just because there are stairs."

"Better to take a break than push yourself too hard. I already said this isnʼt meant to be training. Although," and here Aizawa paused, seeming to actually hesitate, "It sounds like you don't plan to drop out."

Hitoshi frowned and glanced at him, noting Aizawa avoided his gaze as he took another sip from his bottle. "Did you really think I'd quit?" he asked quietly, feeling a twinge of betrayal at the thought his teacher didn't have faith in him.

Aizawa just shrugged, admitting, "Honestly, I wasn't sure. You seem tough and determined, so I was hoping you would stick with it. After what you've seen, I wouldn't blame you if you didn't though. You've seen the most out of your classmates." The statement had Hitoshi pausing, realizing the truth of it. He had been one of only three students to see the arm in Bakugou's upstairs bathroom, and then yesterday...

Well, that was too recent to think about.

Still, it was surprising to realize. At this point, the only death he hadn't witnessed directly was Fukidashi. "I guess I have really bad luck, huh," he said weakly, and Aizawa hummed.

"I don't know if I believe in luck that way, but there's a reason I agreed to watch you until your parents could come back." Hitoshi took that to mean he agreed, Hitoshi just had really bad luck.

The teen sighed and took another gulp of his water. "Do you think anyone else will drop out?" he asked, figuring he might as well.

"No one's withdrawn yet, though to be fair, the news just broke last night. And as a teacher, I don't think I'm supposed to speculate on whether students intend to drop out with another student."

Hitoshi noticed a slight opening in his wording. "You're not supposed to, but...?"

He didn't fully expect an answer, but surprisingly Aizawa gave into the pressure. "I expect that if the murderer isn't caught soon, several people will," he sighed, shoulders slumping heavily as he frowned. "Whether because the students are uncomfortable, or their parents no longer feel UA is a safe environment for them. There's just been too many incidents this year, and we're still not even two months in."

Hitoshi could only nod. This year had been a whirlwind of disasters, just one after another. Class 1-A was down from twenty students to sixteen, 1-B had one student drop out and two get murdered... Just, this whole year seemed to be jinxed.

Seriously. The actual villain attack was probably the most tame part of the year.

"I wonder how those League of Villain freaks feel about this," he mused. "Assuming they're not behind this."

"Based on the one encounter we had with them, I doubt they are," Aizawa said. "It was pretty clear Shigaraki is the flashy type, given he attacked USJ directly. What's been happening this year is the exact opposite. The culprit, or culprits, have been trying to cover up everything from the start and avoid attention as long as possible."

The response caught Hitoshi by surprise, and he frowned as he mulled it over. "But does that really mean it's not him?" he asked. "It could have been an act to throw us off and distract us from the actual plan. Or someone behind the scenes might have been manipulating him to be all flashy as a decoy for their plan. So isn't it too soon to eliminate them?"

Aizawa's lips quirked into a small smile. "It is," he agreed, and Hitoshi realized he'd been testing him. Of course the teachers would have already considered all that, they'd been investigating literally all of this since the beginning. "We do have reason to believe they're unconnected though. Reasons I can't share, of course."

"Of course," Hitoshi echoed with a nod, and took another sip from his bottle.

"Shinsou? Aizawa-sensei?"

They turned in surprise to find Jirou and Hagakure standing nearby, the purple-haired girl looking curious. "Huh, so it is you," she said.

"Wow, I almost didn't recognize Aizawa-sensei without your scarf!" Hagakure exclaimed. Which, now that she mentioned it, it was weird to see Aizawa without his capture weapon. He didn't even wear his hero costume and wore regular civilian clothes, though Hitoshi had gotten a little used to that after spending the night with him.

Jirou's attention seemed particularly drawn to his pink sweatpants though, which was fair. It was pretty different from his usual all-black costume.

"Jirou, Hagakure," Aizawa greeted with a nod. "I take it you stayed with Jirou last night, then?"

"Yeah, I'm going back with my parents tonight," Hagakure confirmed, probably nodding judging by how the neckline of her shirt bounced. Hard to tell for sure with her head invisible like that. "We just wanted to go out and do something first, you know, take the edge off everything and be a little normal for a change!"

"But what about you two?" Jirou asked. "Didn't expect to see a teacher and student out here."

"My parents are in New Zealand for a wedding and I couldn't stay with Ojiro's family, so I'm staying with Aizawa-sensei until they get back."

The girls nodded at Hitoshi's explanation. "In that case, do you maybe want to hang out with us for a bit?" Jirou offered, scratching her cheek. "We were just going to get some food and then look for stuff to do for a while. Take our minds off everything and all that. And I mean, three is better than two. Probably."

"Yeah!" Hagakure agreed enthusiastically, her bracelets waving around in front of her self as she gave a little bounce. "You should totally come, it would be so much fun! We haven't hung out all that much lately, and never outside of school!"

"Of course, that's if Aizawa-sensei is cool with it," Jirou added nonchalantly. "I don't know if he wants to keep an eye on you or anything."

Hitoshi just stared, surprised by the offer. While he'd spoken to both girls quite a bit compared to some of their other classmates, the invitation was still unexpected. "Uh," he said, glancing at Aizawa.

"It's fine by me," Aizawa said with a nod. "You're a teenager, you should be hanging out with your friends on weekends instead of your teacher. Just send me a message on Curve whenever you're done so I can meet you."

Since he had the approval, Hitoshi nodded as he turned back. "Then sure, I guess. I don't have any other plans."

"Great!" Hagakure cheered, and Hitoshi felt her grab his arm. "Then let's go!" He blinked but let her drag him away, casting one glance back at Aizawa. Aizawa just nodded before turning to walk away, leaving Hitoshi to his classmates' mercies.

That was how he ended up seated outside a café with the two girls, one which mercifully did not require climbing any stairs to reach. He had briefly worried about whether they'd be able to find any topics unrelated to yesterday's events, but his concerns turned out to be unfounded. Hagakure decided to make lunch into a rapid fire interrogation session, quizzing him on all of his interests and hobbies.

"Oh, I like riding bikes too!" she exclaimed. "Especially at my grandparents' house over summer breaks! They live in the country so there's all kinds of places to go riding without having to worry about traffic!"

"Your taste in music could use some work though," Jirou said casually. "I can't believe you've never heard of Deep Dope."

"I'm just not into keeping up with trends," Hitoshi said with a shrug. "I can't name any big singers or bands right now."

"Deep Dope's been around for longer than we've been alive."

"My point still stands."

"Well, we'll just have to teach you then!" Hagakure declared, apparently never one to be discouraged. Hitoshi hummed noncommittally and took another sip of his drink, parched from speaking so much for once.

And then choked when a voice spoke up behind him. "Hey, you're from 1-A, right?"

Hitoshi hacked up water as a head appeared in the corner of his vision, his own head snapping to the side to see a girl with a poofy light brown bob behind him. Her long bangs were brushed to the side just enough to expose a single brown eye with a cross-shaped pupil, her mouth pulled into a wide grin.

Also, she was wearing a super poofy and frilly yellow lolita dress.

For a moment he just stared, taken aback by the newcomer. She just leaned over right in his personal space and smiled at him, waiting for an answer.

"Uh, who are you?" Jirou asked on his behalf, and she straightened and skipped back. The newly added distance let him see that it had a distinct mushroom motif for some reason; even her headband had mushroom shapes cut into it.

"Komori Kinoko, from Class 1-B!" Even as she spoke she did a little pose, doing a sideways "v" sign by her eyes. "And I'm totally right, you guys are from 1-A!"

"...Yeah, we are," Hitoshi confirmed after a beat, belatedly nodding.

"Ooh, your dress is super cute!" Hagakure said, and Komori beamed.

"Thank you so much! I love it too!" She gave a small twirl, the layered skirts swinging wildly with the motion, and then folded her arms behind her back as she leaned forward. "It's such a cool coincidence I ran into you guys! I can't stick around, but I just wanted to say hi!"

"Um, okay?" Hitoshi replied, still a bit taken aback. She giggled and then leaned closer to his head.

"Be careful about building one in block three," she whispered into his ear, and he froze. Before he could fully process that she pulled back with a sunny smile. "Anyways, nice talking to you, gotta run! Bye!"

With that she turned and skipped off, leaving the trio in silence. "Well, that was... interesting?" Hagakure said. "She seemed nice, I think."

Jirou had a different opinion. "Shinsou," she said sharply, eyes boring into him. "What did she whisper at the end? Something about block three?"

"Be careful about building one in block three," he repeated quietly, and the atmosphere quickly chilled.

In Japan, buildings didn't use street names for addresses. Cities were arranged into districts, and then blocks of buildings, with each building labeled with a number starting from the oldest. So instead of "1234 Asakusa Street, Apartment 102," addresses would be written similar to "1-3-1-102 (District Name)."

The exact address didn't matter, so much as that Komori had just referenced a specific building. Hitoshi pulled out his phone to open the map, checking their location. It didn't take long to find block three, the app labeling each block of buildings once he zoomed out a bit.

"Block three is two blocks east and one north," he reported. "Building one is at the far back corner from us. Also, there's no building two or three."

"So probably a bunch of really old buildings if they're missing a couple," Jirou summarized with a nod. "And building one would be the oldest of all."

Hitoshi nodded in agreement. "Why would she warn me about a building?"

"I don't know, but isn't there one way to find out?" Hagakure asked, and the two paused to consider it. Yes, there was one way.

"Well, this isn't suspicious at all," Hitoshi declared, voice dripping with sarcasm. Building one in block three, according to the maps on their phones, was the old apartment building in front of them. Two floors connected by rickety looking stairs, four doors per floor with heavily chipped paint. The building didn't look derelict or seem to be falling apart, but it was still very obviously shabby overall.

It didn't look particularly shady or suspicious, and the area was actually a fairly normal residential part of town, but the building was still pretty rundown. Hitoshi doubted all the apartments would be occupied given the building's clear age. There were likely to be a lot of issues with stuff like heating and old pipes, enough to put most people off moving there.

In any event, this was the place Komori warned them about.

"This might be the dumbest thing we've ever done," Jirou declared flatly. "Going to the building we were told to stay away from. I'm pretty sure that's how people die in horror movies."

"Come on, we're just gonna take a quick peek!" Hagakure said.

"And now we're checking off another death flag from horror movies," Hitoshi commented wryly.

"Okay, fine, maybe we are," Hagakure allowed. "But come on, aren't you guys a little curious and suspicious? Why would she warn Shinsou to not go there without saying why? If there's something up, why not call the police herself?"

The last question was a good one, and the primary one worth considering. "It could be a trap," he said.

"But it's really weird for a trap," Hagakure pointed out. "I mean, we all have our phones. We can just tell someone where we're going and send a location pin, right?"

"Actually, that's a pretty good idea," Jirou said, pulling out her phone. "Let's just message people where we are, just to be safe." Hitoshi's eyebrows rose as she spoke, watching Hagakure pull out her own phone to presumably do the same.

"So does that mean you want to go inside?" he asked. "What happened to this being the start of how horror movie characters die?"

"We won't know what's there if we don't check," Jirou said with a shrug. "If we call the police to report it right now, they might not do anything. Or they might, but it turns out to be nothing, and then we just waste their time. Which, they really don't need right now with everything else."

"Yeah, we can just take a peek before we call them so we can give them more information!" Hagakure said eagerly. "Besides, aren't you curious?"

Hitoshi hated to admit it, but... he was. He knew at this point curiosity was fucking stupid and probably going to end badly, but he was still curious. If it was a trap, Komori had no reason to tell Hitoshi about it when he was in a group of three, and when they could easily contact people about it. As Hagakure said, it was a weird decision. And the building was right there.

To that end, he pulled out his own phone and sent a text to Ojiro. 'Out with Jirou and Hagakure. Komori from 1-B said to stay away from this building. We're gonna check it out real quick and call police depending on what we find. Will message in five minutes if nothing happens.'

He tacked a screenshot of the map along with the location pin and hit send, and then copied and pasted the message to Todoroki, Asui, Monoma and Tokage on Curve. Might as well cover all his contacts, just to be safe. He removed the "five minute" part and instead told them he'd check in with Ojiro soon, because it would be annoying to text updates to so many people.

When he got to Aizawa's contact he paused though, and modified the message a bit before hitting send. "Let's do this," he said, sliding the phone into his pocket, and paused. "Also, uh, how are we doing this?"

"...That's a good question," Jirou muttered, scratching her cheek.

As they pondered this Hagakure confidently strode ahead, apparently having an idea. Hitoshi and Jirou watched curiously as she marched to one of the ground-level doors, and then jolted when she just knocked on it. Almost thirty seconds later it opened to reveal a guy with horns wearing a university sweatshirt, and they spoke for a few seconds before he closed the door.

When she turned around to wave them over Hitoshi and Jirou just stared at her slack-jawed. It took them a moment to recover and dart over to her. They then each grabbed one arm and dragged her a safe distance from the building, much to her surprise. "Huh? What are you guys doing?"

"Are you crazy?" Jirou hissed. "What if some psycho answered the door!?"

"Well, he wasn't a psycho, so it's fine!" Hagakure replied brightly.

"No, it's not fine! Tooru, you're going to get yourself killed if you're not careful!"

"I'm with Jirou on this," Hitoshi said with a nod. "If a villain does answer, you'll be in big trouble."

"It's not like they'd recognize me!" she huffed.

"If they know there's an invisible girl in 1-A, that might not matter," he said dryly, and could see the shoulders of her shirt slump with dismay.

"Oh, right. Guess you got a point." Then she perked up and shrugged, declaring, "All right!"

And then her shirt started to roll up.

Hitoshi yelped and spun around, completely uncaring of the fact she was invisible so he wouldn't see anything. "What are you doing?" he squeaked.

"I'm removing my clothes so they won't know I'm there, duh! You guys can hide, and watch whoever answers the door!"

"...I hate that that actually makes sense," Jirou sighed, and Hitoshi had to agree.

Meanwhile Aizawa sat in his apartment, hunched over his laptop as he ate a bento box from the nearby konbini. With Shinsou safely out with classmates, he'd decided to go back home until the boy messaged him. After all, there was no point wasting time that could be spent investigating the cases.

Truthfully, he wasn't formally assigned to any of the active cases at UA, but he had still been kept fully up to date and shown the case files many times. The only reason he hadn't been given more active roles in the investigations had been due to his injuries from the USJ. But now he'd recovered (for the most part anyway), and he was ready to get to work.

Thankfully Nezu knew him well, and he'd booted up his laptop to find an email waiting with virtual copies of the case files attached. He'd already seen the files on the Bakugou case and the infiltrator before, but it never hurt to review them and see if any new details stood out.

He was halfway through the autopsy on Kuroiro Shihai when his phone rang, and he swiped it from the table with a frown. His frown deepened when he saw it was Nezu calling, quickly swiping to accept it. "Hello?"

"Aizawa," his boss said, skipping over the usual greetings. "Monoma Neito is currently in the hospital in critical condition, and according to Asui Tsuyu the attacker was Bakugou Katsuki."

Aizawa went stock-still at the words, blood now icy. "What did you just say?" he whispered.

"Monoma Neito is in the hospital in critical condition after being attacked by Bakugou Katsuki," Nezu repeated. "Either it was the realBakugou, or the infiltrator discovered Monoma's role and used Bakugou's face as a disguise to attack him. We know that they used Kirishima-kun's Quirk on the day Monoma-kun first discovered them, so either option is possible. Given Monoma was the victim though..."

He didn't need to finish the sentence. "You said Asui was the one to file the report?"

"Yes, she had called Monoma-kun to help her with grocery shopping. The attack occurred while en route to her house. She's currently at the hospital waiting on news. Unfortunately it took some time for the news to reach me, it's already been close to an hour. Police found a discarded uniform a few blocks away, so we can only assume that the culprit is already gone."

Shit. "I'll, I'll go to the hospital as soon as I can," Aizawa said. "She's probably still in shock, right?"

"Yes, but her family is already with her. More importantly, we need to make sure all other students are somewhere safe," Nezu declared briskly. "Monoma-kun and Asui-san got attacked in broad daylight. That means that allstudents are at risk."

Shouta's heart lurched, eyes growing wide with horrified realization. Shinsou. Shinsou, Jirou and Hagakure were all out. "I'll send a message to everyone to inside," he said. "I need to go though, Shinsou is currently out with Jirou and Hagakure."

"Get them, quickly," Nezu ordered, and Aizawa hung up without another word. As he exited the call he noticed an unfamiliar icon in his notification bar though. It took him a second to place the blue icon with the speech bubble: Curve.

He froze, eyes widening as he quickly pressed the volume button to check the current settings. Phone calls had the ringtone set to max volume, but notifications were on silent, not even vibration.

"Shit," he hissed to himself. He had the habit of muting his phone's notifications recently because he simply couldn't respond with both arms in casts. He couldn't participate in any of the group chats his colleagues had insisted on adding him to, so it was better to just save himself the frustration. He'd figured that if something urgent came up on Flex, it would push the notification sound anyway.

It seemed he'd forgotten to change that back last night. He cursed as he quickly brought up the newly installed social media app, finding a single message from an account with Ojiro's picture. Which didn't alarm him too much, until he saw the account name and abruptly remembered Shinsou mentioned he'd used the blond's picture as a decoy.

Please just be a request to pick him up, he thought as he opened it.

'Still with Jirou and Hagakue. Komori from 1-B said to stay away from this building. We're gonna check it out real quick and call police depending on what we find. I told Ojiro I'd text him if nothing happened in five minutes. But you should probably come meet me here, just to be safe.'

For a moment he just stared, and then jumped to his feet with an irritated growl. "Dammit kid!" He grabbed his capture weapon and raced for the door, not willing to spare a moment.

After all, the message had arrived twenty minutes ago.

Teens make the worst decisions sometimes, don't they? c: