Shahryar - Give Intelli a chance. Let's just say that she gets character development during the course of the story. And yeah, Rini is crazy.
Old Herobrine - Who knows, who knows.
(***)
The small convoy carrying Mindscape around arrives at the Might Tower three hours later. Thankfully, the whole movement was surprising enough to the NVA and the PLF that neither of those organizations attempted anything funny. Resulting in what would be considered a pleasant trip.
If not for its destination.
And if not for the fact that Mindscape hated leaving her hero agency.
Her car stops in the underground parking lot. Her escorts and sidekicks check the area around it. Then she heads to the elevator, with three sidekicks of hers with quirks that could be helpful in repelling a surprising ambush (for example, after opening the elevator door to see an assault party of the NVA).
Paranoia? Maybe. But that's how they got Coldstar (in her own hero agency, no less) a few weeks ago, and Mindscape refuses to take any chances. Not with Ayako Nakahara being her opponent.
Part of her would have preferred to see Ryukyu, Gang Orca or Crawler. Instead, once the elevator door opens, she finds herself facing Mirio Togata.
"Dropping by unannounced?" He asks, venom dropping off his tongue. "How impeccably… polite of you, Mindscape."
He's wearing his hero uniform. It hasn't changed much since the time when he was a part of the UA's Big Three. He did drop that ridiculous visor, a perfectly logical maneuver seeing as it kept falling off his face each time he used Permeation.
"I was in the area… and in a hurry." Saiko replies. She ignores the moderately hostile stares she gets from his sidekicks present in the room.
She also doesn't say any variation of 'and we both know that if I announced myself, you'd do everything you could including triggering a fire alarm just to not meet me'. They both know it. But at least in public, they keep up the appearances of being in the same team.
Well, she does it. Lemillion is… much more open about his feelings. He was never one to hide things.
"I also require your aid in my current investigation." She adds. "It's a matter of national security."
"You want Sir Nighteye's archive." Lemillion figures it out immediately. He's, unfortunately, smarter than people give him credit for. "Why do you think that I'll let you in there?"
"Because I'm pursuing the man that killed him." She replies. "And I know you well enough to be acutely aware that if your intention for the day was to deny me access to it, you wouldn't have gone out to meet me. You'd do it through one of your sidekicks."
Silence. Lemillion is staring at her, without a single shred of emotions on his face. She meets his stare with one of her own. Eventually, he speaks.
"Follow me." He says. "Just you. Your sidekicks are staying here."
Well, hopefully it's not an assassination attempt. Then again, Lemillion's too skillful to make it that sloppy.
(***)
"That's it?" She asks, her voice betraying her shock. "That's the 'Sir Nighteye's Archives' that I kept hearing conspiracy theories about for years?" Lemillion wasn't hiding the fact that he had it. He occasionally pulled some documents out that helped solve a case or two. But how much was in them, and where the archive was… those were all conspiracy theories.
Lemillion led her to a completely unremarkable room near the upper end of the Might Tower. In a relatively high-security area, but with no additional security of its own. It even looked like someone's office.
Kind of dusty.
"It's Bubble Girl's office." Lemillion replies. "I told her she's off for the day."
Then she realized it.
There were TWO computers in the office. One of them edged in the corner, and looking… remarkably… old. Used, but probably not outdated.
"You're kidding me." She says incredulously. "You just…"
"The original archive was destroyed by Overhaul, probably at Entropy and Revenant's orders, during his raid on our old agency." Lemillion replies. "Before it happened, Juzo had everything photocopied and stored on a singular hard drive that he put in a bank vault under false identity. After Chisaki killed him, I recovered the drive and put it here."
J… right, Centipeder.
"The computer is filled with termite charges." Lemillion continues. "If you attempt to open it to take out the hard drive, it'll be destroyed. The switch to deactivate that is on the inside." Where a few people beside Lemillion can use it, Mindscape realizes. And only he knows where exactly it is. "The computer also isn't connected to the network. Other sidekicks think that it's a Centipeder's old computer, his memento in a way that Bubble Girl is keeping in her office."
Saiko Intelli realizes the true brilliance of it. Every attacker, every hacker, every infiltrator, they'd all look for Sir Nighteye's archive in the vault, in Lemillion's office, in… literally every other place. And they'd expect a lot of documents, not a dusty old computer tucked in the corner of the head sidekick's office.
"That's…" She says, while Lemillion is booting the computer on, entering his credentials and going through security checks that certainly had no place on someone's memento. "... brilliant."
"That's the minimum imaginable security for a computer carrying so many secrets, some of which even the government doesn't know about." He replies, while taking a step back from it. "You have three hours. No copies. The USB ports are all duds, either way, except for those needed to operate the mouse and a keyboard, and…" He sighs. "Trust me, you don't want to put anything else in those."
It'll probably trigger the self-destruction of the archive. There most certainly was a way to copy things, as he proved to have printed versions of at least some documents from it, just… ah.
He had a technopath sidekick in his agency. They kept the computer offline unless needed to be used precisely to avoid other technopaths from managing to copy data without anyone noticing. They'd have to sneak inside and switch the computer on to even try doing that. Smart, Lemillion, smart.
Three hours. She'll make the most out of it. Hopefully they at least indexed the whole thing to make it easier for her.
(***)
"You've got to be fucking kidding me." Saiko Intelli announces three hours later, when Lemillion shows up to kick her out.
It's not a very diplomatic way of putting it. But Mindscape isn't in the mood for being diplomatic. She's in the mood to commit a bloody murder. She just doesn't know whom to kill, but she's rather certain that the Prime Minister is quite high on the list of potential victims.
"Really opens your eyes, doesn't it?" Lemillion says, clearly enjoying the spectacle of her suffering. "And puts things in perspective."
That computer, that small and junk-like computer in the corner of Lemillion's PA office carried the biggest concentration of capital S secrets that she ever saw in her life. She wasn't even sure where to start.
All for One's true quirk being an ability to STEAL AND TRANSFER QUIRKS, the fact (together with him being a demon lord as old as quirks) covered by governmental misinformation to 'avoid panic'.
All Might's quirk being called One for All and being fucking transferable, not to mention being accidentally created by the All for One at the very beginning of the Dawn of Quirks. One and only quirk capable of opposing the demon lord.
Izuku Midoriya being on the short list of potential candidates for being the next Holder of that power before Kamino (together with Mirio Togata). The fact that Sir Nighteye's investigation uncovered the fact that he was the biological son of ALL MIGHT from a short-term relationship in the old past, neither side apparently being aware of it.
And that was just scratching the surface.
Sir Nighteye's Archives included evidence for several major cases of HPSC covering up for crimes perpetrated by heroes that were sufficiently 'friendly' towards its operations. Evidence that would be taken down by courts thanks to the HPSC influence, so…
… on four different occasions, Sir Nighteye leaked the intel about to no one else than the Hero Killer Stain, typically through the first Vigilante Alliance. Before Hosu, so before he started killing his victims instead of just releasing the evidence for their corruption after beating them in an alleyway to promote himself as a supervillain.
And if that wasn't enough, certain parts of the documents concerned his supposed 'informant' within the PLF that Sir Nighteye developed a suspicion of the man being Re-Destro' leaking intel to the heroes in order to compromise All for One's position within the Front's leadership.
Suspicion that he confirmed. It was Re-Destro, Sir Nighteye knew that and Re-Destro knew that he knew about it. The greatest strategist among the pro-heroes had secret contacts with the Grand Commander of the Meta-Liberation Army, both playing against All for One.
If some of his notes on the margins were to be believed, Sir Nighteye suspected that Re-Destro was preparing an inside coup against All for One… and Entropy was a part of it, having grown tired of having to bow to her adoptive father.
And then was the intel concerning 'Revenant', Entropy's mysterious strategist and tactical advisor whose existence Sir Nighteye began to suspect a few months before his assassination.
He didn't manage to gather too much evidence, even the name was based on Dabi's slip of a tongue overheard by a hero he was fighting about 'Revenant putting me here to do all the work'. But there was some groundbreaking information, such as his belief that Revenant originated from the Meta-Liberation Army and might have been a personal student of Re-Destro.
Izuku Midoriya was actually his number one suspect, but he never found any evidence. Besides, it's not like it'd help him a lot, with Midoriya probably hiding together with Entropy and Overhaul they needed not the evidence but his confirmed sightings somewhere to send in heroes to arrest him.
She didn't have a lot of data on Revenant's modus operandi. But she had a lot of it on Re-Destro. This could work.
"Unbelievable." She says, staring at him from her seat by computer. "That's just…"
"I assure you that this computer will be moved elsewhere after you leave." Lemillion cuts in. "Those three hours are all that I was willing to allow you to do. And only because you're pursuing the man that has killed Sir Nighteye… and might have ordered the attack that ended with Centipeder dying and Bubble Girl losing a leg. I expect you to leave the premises of Might Tower as soon as possible."
It might be the shock of the revelations talking, but Intelli ends up talking back to him. In his own hero agency, no less.
She also stands up, because she certainly isn't letting him look down on her anymore.
"Are you seriously going to keep your ridiculous grudge against us, Lemillion? She replies, staring at him angrily. She can feel his smile (oh, so very fake right now) steeling up. "This is the Second Paranormal Liberation War, you can't expect…"
"All Might and Sir Nighteye 'worked' with the HPSC during the First Paranormal Liberation War." Lemillion replies, as venomously as humanly possible. "See where it brought them, Mindscape."
"So you're going to just sit back?" She glares at him. "Sit back and do nothing? Do you think that…"
"No." Lemillion interjects. "I'm going to do my part. I'm a pro-hero. Saving people from the villains is my job and calling. But if you think that I'll forget who created that particular villain… then think again." He leans over her. "Because true heroes do not create villains."
"Don't you think…" She refused to be intimidated. She's an SS-Rank hero like him. And they both know that the only reason why despite his hatred towards the government he is so high in the rankings is because he was the Victorious Hero. The man who killed Entropy during the battle of Haiboro Woods. The man who ended the First Paranormal Liberation War. "... that you sound like someone from the NVA right now?"
"The New Vigilante Alliance talks a lot about All Might being a true ideal of a hero that we should all strive for." Lemillion says slowly. "But then they freely kill those that do not live up to it. We both know that if there is a big historical figure that they're following, it's not All Might. And I refuse to follow the Hero Killer."
He is still looming over her. Right behind her back is a wall. It's… rather cramped. It actually feels rather dangerous, especially with him being this angry. Of course, the situation is not without its own benefits.
"Your surprisingly stiff moral spine is your greatest asset as a pro-hero, Lemillion." She says, their eyes meeting and something akin to a faint smile on her face. "Stick to it, because we need more heroes like you."
Silence, their eyes still locked onto each other. Eventually, he speaks.
"Please, tell me that this isn't what I suspect it is." He says, the anger on his face temporarily dulled by surprise. There is an interesting lack of disgust there, however.
"Who knows." Saiko smiles. She's enjoying it in more ways than one. "Maybe I just like people that are angry at me. Makes them… honest. And much more… lively. You'll have to figure it out for yourself."
Her finger lands on his chest. Well, technically, it's a poke. Not strong enough to push him back, but just enough to send a message.
"But if there is one thing that I actually want to make clear right now… is that I do not enjoy being accused of being responsible for governmental fuck-ups that happened while I was still studying at Seiai. Or before I became an SS-Rank Hero." Saiko announces, her eyes not leaving Lemillion's face for a second. "I assure you that I'm not at all happy with how my own dreams turned out."
"I get the feeling…" Lemillion replies slowly. "That I saw this tactic somewhere. Do you suspect me of being NVA' spy and hope to make me contact my supposed superiors in order to suggest to them that you might be recruitable… just to arrest both the recruiters and me in the aftermath?"
Tall, strong, morally unforgiving… and smart. Not bad, Lemillion. Not bad. Sir Nighteye was a truly extraordinary mentor to have. Such a shame that she never got to meet neither him nor Nedzu.
"No, I don't suspect you of being a traitor." Saiko lies. The chance is small, unless he was playing a 5D chess game making himself intentionally suspicious in order to make everyone think that he was too obvious about it to be a spy. "But I can't say the same about Nejire Hadou." There is a brief flinch on his face. One that someone as attentive to details as she was didn't miss. "The Prime Minister didn't buy her sudden switch from a position similar to yours to being the government's mouthpiece."
"Why am I not surprised…" Lemillion replies coldly. "... that you know what the Prime Minister's doing?"
"It comes with the position of the one and only Class-Five intelligence quirk Holder in government employ." She replies, unfazed by the unspoken accusation. "Violating someone's trust… even if it's an ex-wife after such a messy end of a relationship… isn't something that a pro-hero should do. But, when national safety is at stake… the rules are different. And besides…" She pauses for a moment, her smile growing a tiny bit wider. "... I can be very rewarding."
Silence. The eye contact remains, Lemillion still in a position when pinning her to the wall would take him but a single move. In the end he doesn't do that.
"Just go." He replies, his face unmoving but the earlier hostility having vanished somewhere. "You've got what you wanted. Good luck with your investigation."
Did she? She might have developed an additional interest. Sometimes, well, sometimes Saiko Intelli just enjoyed doing something incredibly illogical and unreasonable.
Was it because of Yaoyorozu? The first true defeat in Intelli's life, one brought by an act that her quirk couldn't predict due to being so… deliciously irrational? Or maybe she's just tired of being the prim and proper perfect Seiai graduate? Or maybe it was always in her?
Who knows.
"... drop by my agency if you want updates on that." She replies. "Don't forget to… wear something comfortable."
And now time to leave before he actually punches her out of the window. She has a lot of plans to make, and a lot of new data to compile.
(***)
Trying to ask local heroes and police about anything was absolutely pointless. Monoma knew that well enough. If there was a cover-up going, they either didn't know shit, they only knew the official story, or they knew the truth but weren't going to spill it. And he has no patience nor time for getting it out of them.
Especially when there was an alternative. Local adults were probably going to be tight-lipped too, but… most people tended to forget that kids had working eyes. And much less mental blocks on talking with people.
So Monoma donned a long coat, and stayed around until he found someone to ask questions about what happened. Someone definitely underaged.
And yes, he was absolutely aware of the fact that this made him sound like a pedophile on the hunt for victims. Oh, the things he was ready to do for Itsuka, ugh. Then again, it works, and it's not illegal, so…
He eventually noticed an appropriate kid. 13-14 years old, that kind of foolhardy look of him, clearly an urchin who spent a lot of time on the streets but wasn't actually abandoned. So he had a family around those parts - and thus, was probably civilized enough to cooperate with a hero - but spent enough time waltzing around on the streets to see and hear things.
Kid spotted. Time for action.
Fuck, this still sounds wrong.
"Hello there, kiddo." Monoma says. The kid almost jumps back in surprise. Yes, Neito can be sneaky when needed. "I have some questions, and I think that you can answer them." The street is mostly empty right now, so there is no one to overhear them.
"W…who are you?!" The kid is still slightly freaked, but there is also something of an accusative glare hidden behind it. Huh, someone's rather spirited.
"A hero." Monoma pulls out a hero license. It's not his hero license, of course. He came disguised. Long coat instead of tuxedo, differently styled and coloured hair, this sort of thing. The license makes him into an A-Rank hero with a fire quirk (he borrowed one to be able to prove it if asked).
His natural quirk isn't very… heroic, at least to many people. And the more heroic you feel, the more people are willing to help you. Stupid times. Stupid people. But hey, it works. That's good enough.
"O…oh!" The kid's eyes suddenly beam at him. "That's so cool!" Oh god, the nostalgia hits Neito like a tonne of bricks. It's like seeing Midoriya spot All Might through the window during their lessons with Nedzu. Absolutely a pain to watch. "How can I help? What are you doing here? Are there any villains around a…"
"Calm your horses, kid." Neito quickly intervenes. If he lets a hero fanboy start for real, he'll just never stop. And he doesn't know how much time he has until PLF's next move, so he prefers to work in a controlled hurry. "You see, I'm investigating the death of a villain that happened around here something like a month ago. A-Rank villain, Crucible. Any way you can help me with that?"
Hero fanboy just asked to help a hero in something. Yeah, that one hit was a critical one. But… Neito realizes immediately that he struck a motherlode. Because the hero fanboy in front of him actually looks conflicted about something.
"You can tell me everything you know, kid." Neito decides to push a bit harder. "There are lives on the line, so I really need your help and I'm ready to do a lot to obtain it. Whatever happened, stays between us. No judgments from me."
The kid finally came to a decision.
"I… I can't believe that he was a villain." He looks ashamed of admitting that, and Neito understands it. "I mean, he was very nice to everyone and…"
Sigh. Fuck the government, seriously. Neito shouldn't be forced to clean up their bullshit in order to get anything done.
"Kid, let me share with you a very important truth." Neito decides to interrupt it. The faster he deals with the root issue here, the faster the kid will spill the beans. "I know how people portrait villains nowadays. Monsters out for the blood of innocents." He actually makes a scary face at that. It's the funny type of scary face. Kid actually ends up chuckling at it. "But it's not exactly true. Yes, some of them are monsters, but some are victims. Of bad decisions, either their own or those of others. There are genuinely good people among them. So you don't have to be ashamed of thinking that he was a nice person. Just…" Let's not ruin the kid's life, alright? "... try not to tell that to people, alright? It's very easy to get singled out as that one guy who defends villains. And people can be brutal about that, got it?"
The kid nods quickly. Yeah, a hero told him that. He naturally trusts it. Ugh. Probably no wonder why so many heroes go bad nowadays. Power corrupts and so on.
"So, back to the subject." Neito says. "What can you tell me about him? What was he doing here, to begin with?"
"Err, I don't exactly know?" The kid feels ashamed of that. "I mean… he was supposedly working somewhere, but never told anyone any details. He lived in one of the houses here, with a lot of kids. I didn't see them after his death and…"
Wait a second.
"Kids?" Neito asks. The kid quickly switches to this subject.
"Uhm, yeah." He scratches his cheek, seeming a bit nervous. And probably sad. "People didn't really know, I think, but there were a lot of kids at his house. They weren't leaving it, errr, I mean one or two did. Mostly the older ones and mostly for stuff like convenience store visits. It was kind of odd, but I talked with one of them and he said that he was taking care of some orphans. Apparently for someone else. It was kind of odd, but… uhm, should I have… mention that to someone?" Now the kid suddenly feels very guilty.
Okay. There were two options here. The first one was that Midoriya Izuku shouldn't be allowed anywhere near kids. Very unlikely, because Neito still remembers him freaking out and blushing to hell and back when Hatsume almost blew up her lab and ended up landing her sizable assets on his face.
He included side-theories, like human trafficking, to this category. Because honestly, Revenant was probably capable of doing that, but things didn't add up. Like the whole 'letting some of the kids make trips to convenience store'. That didn't sound like they were held against their will.
This left only one option. Midoriya Izuku (he still has to find some actual evidence for his involvement though) was hiding kids from the government. With Crucible's help. And since the government was probably responsible for their sudden vanishing (cover-up +Midoriya Izuku going suddenly berserk against said government), they had two, no, three options left.
One: The kids had villainous or even supervillainous parents. Probably dating back to the first Paranormal Liberation Front. Two: They were from the groups that were on the government's (or general population) shit list. So, complex mutants and so on. Three: they had powerful quirks.
Because the whole governmental cover-up and vanishing children sounds like the Paragon Program was involved. Monoma can't exactly do a lot about it, but he does know that it's a thing.
(Kendou doesn't, let's keep the dirt among the dirty people).
What were the chances of Thunderbolt having inside knowledge about the Program? Such as 'where the fuck did they take the kids'? Probably quite high. Midoriya, you sly yet magnificent bastard.
Everyone thinks that you took him so that Quicksilver could kill him slowly. Intelli probably figured out that it was a cover-up and that Midoriya wanted some intel from him, but she doesn't know what he was looking for. And Thunderbolt knew too much to narrow down Midoriya's goal from that alone.
"They probably wouldn't do a thing either, so don't trouble yourself with that." Neito deflects the issue. "Did you see or hear anything more about them? Any visitors they got? Anything weird that happened around the time when Crucible died?"
The kid spends a moment thinking it over.
"Uhm, I think I saw someone enter his house a few weeks ago." The kid eventually finds something interesting in his memory. "I wasn't really paying any attention to it, and I'm not sure if…"
"Anything can help." Monoma interrupts it. "Any details you noticed? Anything at all?" Quirks made many people look quite different. Even a small detail can be actually something as unique as DNA.
"It was a woman." The kid replies, quickly doing his best to recall it. "I didn't see her face, and… errr, I think her hair was like vines? Green vines. I'm not sure if…"
Wait. There is just no way, right? There are many people with vinehair out there in the country, most of them slightly different from each other. But only one of them Neito was certain knew Midoriya, even if briefly and years ago.
"Hold it for a moment." Neito pulls out his phone. He has a lot of pictures of him. Including those of his former classmates and friends from school. Even those that didn't make it. Even those that turned their back on the heroics. He has old pictures of Midoriya and Yaoyorozu somewhere in it.
But in the meantime, he finds Ibara Shiozaki's photo from the time when they graduated UA. Then he shows it to the kid. His face lights up immediately.
"Yes! That's the vines I saw!" No longer guilty, now he pretty much beams at Monoma. He really thinks that he helped a hero a lot in his investigation. He isn't incorrect in that assessment, just… Neito would really prefer to NOT make that discovery.
Ibara, what the fuck? Sure, they were precedents. Kuroiro switched sides to the Paranormal Liberation Front and Neito can't really blame him. But… Ibara? The holier-than-thou girl turned to active villainy?
Oh, right. Kids. If Midoriya was running a kindergarten for kids kept from the HPSC grasp, it probably wasn't all that surprising. She had a soft spot for those.
"Alright, that was extremely helpful." Neito admits and the kid somehow beams at him even more. Ugh. He'd prefer being a full-blown underground hero to that. "Anything else? It doesn't matter how nonsensical it sounds, if it happened around the time when Crucible died. Or before that."
He is faced with A LOT of nonsensical rumors. Like wow, so much bullshit. He steels through, at least until he hears that one of the local kids claims that he saw a 'shadow demon' stalk the rooftops after Crucible died.
Cloud. The Paranormal Liberation Front's warper. The final link he needed to know that Revenant was involved. Gotcha.
(***)
Oh, Intelli. The fact that Neito Monoma is the sanest big brain of your generation (maybe, Ayako Nakahara feels fairly logical) actually tells me a lot about it. That's an extremely crazy idea, but it seems to be the whole point, so... yeah, Big yeah.
What made Nejire Hadou stop being a vocal opponent of the government, I wonder? Well, time will tell. Might even be this arc, except near the end.