How do you decide your targets? I thought it was human trafficking at first, and then sexual abuse, but then there was Tamaki-kun, and he didn't fit either of those. With that, I almost thought you were slipping, just murdering whoever, he was just a kid being pushed to inherit the family business, his parents weren't hurting him - the details of what, exactly, that business entailed were pretty quickly hushed up, getting my hands on a report was surprisingly hard.
Corruption, huh?
But you didn't follow up on that, didn't hunt down the corrupt government officials, so what is it? Was it just a kid being forced into a role he didn't want, and the crimes were just your justification to keep a vigilante label instead of a Villain's?
If a Hero pushed a child to follow in their footsteps, would you kill him too?
I'd really like an answer to that one, some of my students are children of heroes and they're worried.
Also, what are you doing to the cats? It's going to get reported soon, I can't keep giving Amiya-san platitudes like this, she's getting concerned.
And you'd better be eating well, you're feeding all these cats, so if you're not feeding yourself I'm going to tie you to a chair and force-feed you.
-Aizawa
Only a couple of students in Aizawa's class are children of heroes. Sasuke almost doesn't look into it - they're heroes after all, and for the most part they seem to be actually good people.
But something about the mention of government corruption in Aizawa's newest letter, about how they almost managed to cover up all that evidence Sasuke had spent literal days hunting down and collecting into a report-
He looks into the man's students.
Just in case.
He starts with Todoroki Shouto, because he figures Endeavor will be the easiest to research, being so popular-
And then the man isn't.
There are no public records of his family, which could be understandable, maybe, if you held him to All Might and the fact that that man's true name wasn't even known until he retired, except that there are no public records at all.
Which means that until UA, Todoroki Shouto never went to school.
Homeschooling isn't a crime, Sasuke knows that, but something about it feels wrong.
He asks a cat to check it out for him.
She comes back with singed fur later that night, hissing and furious. Another cat, he's been calling him Chikkun, bops his head into Na-chan's. That one already had a name, one of Amiya-san's favorites.
She stops hissing, and stalks off with wounded dignity to try and clean her fur. Sasuke's going to have to see if he can get into Aizawa's apartment again, borrow a grooming kit, because he's not sure how much of that she'll be able to fix by herself.
He'd better let her try first though, or he'll have claw-marks as decoration for the next week at least.
Sasuke stands, trying to plot the best way to sneak into the Todoroki mansion himself without getting caught, because anyone willing to light a cat on fire honestly deserves to die for that alone but now Sasuke knows there's more to find, when Chikkun puts a paw on his foot.
He glances down, and the cat meows once, before stalking off.
Sasuke's not an idiot.
He follows.
Chikkun leads him all the way across the city, to what he's fairly sure is a student dorm.
It's nearly dawn. Cats are small creatures, though the ones he's been hanging out with are getting the hang of chakra enhancement - he's not quite sure how, but then this entire world is a little off from what he's used to, so maybe they're just like that here. He's been trying to teach them how to talk, but hasn't had much luck yet, though they've gotten really good at using body language and gestures so he knows they're smart enough for it.
Either way, it's taken hours to get here because he's not about to pick Chikkun up and deal with the consequences, the cats really learned how to use chakra to reinforce their claws and Sasuke is not getting on the other side of that, so once he confirms that it's the dorms Chikkun wants him to investigate, he turns away, heads a few streets back to that market he saw, and buys some fish.
If he picked the money of a rich-looking guy browsing a figurine stand, well, that's not his problem.
Chikkun accepts the fish with a dignity that makes Sasuke think of all those… internet… posts about cats ruling the world, and then stalks off with a contemptuous flick of his tail.
The internet's still… really weird to Sasuke.
Just-
The entire world, sharing information freely with each other, openly communicating? To a shinobi who's lived his entire life breathing secrets, it's still so mind-boggling.
Not that Sasuke doesn't take full advantage of it, of course.
It's amazing what he can find. He verifies as much of it as he can personally, because the sheer breadth of knowledge means that at least some of it has to be incorrect, but still.
If he maybe stole a phone that maybe has a bunch of cat videos on it now, no one can say anything about it because he's alone and even if they did he's got a chidori with their name on it. No dog videos though.
Not that there's anything wrong with dogs, really, they just remind him of home, Sensei, my team- aren't as cute.
And they lick.
If Sasuke never feels another slimy tongue on his face again-
He breathes deeply, lets lightning spark at his fingertips for just a second, the only outlet he can have right now, and then he settles himself.
He's got a mission, and the cats haven't lead him astray yet.
He slips into the dorms, and finds the front office easily enough. Getting the occupants list isn't much harder from there, one Todoroki Natsuo standing out in stark relief.
There's no digital records of him, just paper.
It could be a pro Hero trying to give his family the privacy they deserve, keeping such knowledge safe from any hackers or Villains with tech quirks, but Endeavor burned a cat.
So Sasuke apologizes mentally for what he's about to do, and then heads up to Natsuo's dorm.
Two hours and one genjutsu later, Sasuke's back on the streets.
He knows where to go for more information, now.
Two doctors, one Psych ward, one cosmetic specialist, and a nerve-wracking break-in of Endeavor's own agency later, Sasuke has everything he needs to compile his report.
He tries not to think too hard, about a brother who tried to measure up to a prodigy child so much it killed him, with his father never once caring-
W̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶t̶o̶u̶-̶s̶a̶n̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶I̶t̶a̶c̶h̶i̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶n̶'̶t̶-̶
Sasuke has a report on his knees, now, two pictures staring up at him in stark relief - one of Shouto, taken from a recording of the Sports Festival, focused on the scarred eye. The cosmetic quirk user did a great job, Sasuke can give her that - even knowing it's a scar, Sasuke can't see anything that sets it apart from any other birthmark.
The other picture, the only one he could find of Todoroki Touya.
It was provided to go along with Touya's obituary, a poor-quality photo meant to be easily forgotten.
Sasuke has carefully traced over it with a marker, clearly marking out the marks just barely visible to anyone who thinks to look for them.
Perhaps it was a bad-quality photo for more than one reason. It was clearly cropped from a larger photo, perhaps a family shot, and some of those marks look suspiciously like burns.
Sasuke doesn't look for the original.
He's got more than enough to go off of, and a pretty good idea of which student asked Aizawa in the first place. He'll check on the others later, just to be sure, but he doesn't think he'll find anything else.
So he makes copies of the reports, echoes of corruption lingering in his mind, bribes some cats with plenty of fish and a nice long grooming session for Na-chan, and asks them to deliver the copies to a few police stations first thing tomorrow morning.
And then he prepares.
Two copies, sealed and carefully stored away, one for Aizawa and one to be left with Endeavor, though he's pretty sure that one will have an 'accident' if anything the teacher said is true, and every weapon he can get his hands on.
It's a lot harder to get ahold of good quality kunai and shuriken in this world, but Sasuke's found a couple criminal dealers who don't ask questions as long as he has money, and if the quality isn't quite what he had before, well…
Sasuke's dealt with worse.
He swings by Natsuo's apartment again, and doesn't feel guilty this time, when he uses a genjutsu to make the kid call out his sister for a sleepover.
Sasuke's not about to have collateral here.
Then all there is is waiting.
Wait for Endeavor to get back to the house, wait for him to sleep, wait a bit longer to, if he times it right, interrupt the deepest part of his sleep cycle.
Sasuke's not against just killing the man in his bed after all, and that's exactly what he goes for.
He's not sure what goes wrong. Maybe he mis-judged Endeavor's sleep pattern (Kakashi-sensei would scold him so much for rushing into an assassination, he should watch for days, learn all his target's patterns but patience was never really Sasuke's best skill…) or maybe the man is just that light a sleeper, but he surges up with a flaming fist Sasuke just barely dodges, a thin line of red on Endeavor's neck the only mark of Sasuke's attempted stab.
Sloppy.
Sasuke doesn't listen to the man's yelling, just flips the kunai around while tossing a brace of shuriken with his left hand. None of them hit, but he can see how badly they surprise the hero, being attacked by completely normal metal weapons, with no tricks or traps.
He takes advantage, launching a fireball of his own at the man's face, then ducking low as he darts forward, kunai slicing the hero's knee and sending him crashing down.
Sasuke flips the blade again, moves to stab him in the neck, when Endeavor twists with a roar and throws fire at point-blank range.
Sasuke gets his arms up, leaps backwards, but doesn't quite escape the burns.
Endeavor doesn't have any burns from Sasuke's fire, and he might be a little annoyed.
The sort of elemental resistance quirks come with tends to be something only the most powerful kekkei genkai give their users back home, and Sasuke can't help but grimace at the memory of that electric-quirked bastard that nearly turned his own chidori against him.
Sasuke hasn't made the mistake of underestimating quirks since, but it's still annoying to fight them, especially in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing.
No handsigns means no ability to predict what's about to happen, and he knows just from the few fight recordings he's seen that Endeavor can shoot fire from pretty much everywhere.
If he goes in close for a killing shot, they'll both go down.
The room's got too much furniture for him to grab his sword though, and Sasuke might not have a choice.
When Endeavor spits that backup's on the way though, Sasuke knows he's out of time.
The man could be bluffing, Sasuke didn't see him send an alert, and Endeavor's got enough secrets to hide that he knows there's no way the fire alarms would ever call law enforcement, but-
Just because Sasuke didn't see anything, doesn't mean he's going to count on it.
Endeavor's a pro with decades of experience, and Sasuke's learned his lesson about underestimating people from this world just because they're softer.
His eyes burn as he uses them as a focus, pouring a genjutsu that's not quite a Tsukiyomi (he'll figure that technique out, eventually), but it's enough to get the man to freeze, just long enough.
Sasuke builds up the chidori, feels Endeavor snap out of his genjutsu with a scream of rage, and then his hand sinks into the man's flesh with a disgusting splurt.
He misses the heart, Endeavor's too tall and Sasuke is not annoyed by that, at all, but his arm's burning, and he feels what he's pretty sure is a spine beneath his fingers.
A hand strikes his shoulder, fiery and painful. Then it tries to grab him by the throat, so Sasuke curls his fingers around that mass of bone, and pours the rest of his gathered lightning into it.
Lightning directly to the spine is, by the sound of Endeavor's shrieking, a very painful way to go.
But go he does, sliding off Sasuke's arm and onto the ground.
Fire blazes around them, and Sasuke sways in the heat.
He doesn't have the time to put out the blaze, so he drags Endeavor to an unburnt section of the house, and drops one of the reports in front of him.
Then he takes a minute to clean off the blood, because blood drips and he can't afford to leave a trail.
There's a lot of burns.
His arm's the worst, because apparently Endeavor's overheating was not an excuse or anything, but a very real thing that happened and Sasuke stuck his arm straight into a man who's blood was near boiling how does that even work?!-
He can worry about the injuries later.
He needs to get the last report to Aizawa, to make sure it doesn't disappear.
He can worry about everything else later, too.
He doesn't really remember much of the journey back. A lot of running and hiding and running, and then he's staring at the door of a man he still doesn't understand.
A hero who thinks what he's doing is wrong, but hasn't tried to stop him.
Sasuke's pretty sure he miscalculated.
There's no way he'll be able to get out of here fast enough. He needs to hand the papers directly to Aizawa, or at least make sure no one else destroys them, but he doesn't have the energy for a shunshin, barely has the strength to un-seal the last report.
There's no way he'll be able to run in time, so… he's going to have to hope Aizawa doesn't turn him in.
It's a gamble Sasuke's not sure he wants to make, but he's dizzy and out of options.
And then he doesn't have to, because the door's jerked open, and Aizawa stops just a step shy of crashing into him.
Sasuke glimpses a TV in the background, and wonders if Aizawa meant to look for him.
Then his knees buckle, report slipping out of his arms, and everything hurts as he crashes into the hero.
He hopes he won't wake up in a cell.
Of course, what he does wake up to ends up being even worse.
"When was the last time you went to school?"
It rings like a death knell in Sasuke's mind, and he thinks he'd rather have that cell right about now.
Aizawa's sadistic smirk could give Kakashi-sensei's trolling eye-smiles a run for their money.
Sasuke does not gulp.
He doesn't.
This was a mistake...