Some possibly upsetting imagery in this. Enjoy~
The school was standing in the assembly form outside while the principal explained that the first years would be doing hero work studies since villains were on the rise and it was best for them to learn early, and they could also be useful help to the hero society in general. He would be working at Hawks' agency, and knew the unofficial number two hero would be fine with that, and looked forward to it.
He had said he was interested in one of his classmates, but kept it a secret of who he'd be inviting. It irritated Luffy, but Hawks refused to tell him so he finally gave up.
When he and his classmates were talking about the hero work studies, most weren't able to use the same person they had the first time around. Gunhead wasn't available, neither were the ones who Tsu used, or Kirishima's. Well, most would need to go someplace that had experience with work study kids. That was the only thing that allowed them all to take part, knowing they had responsible work studies heroes.
"Are you going to go back to Endeavor?" Uraraka asked Luffy. He shook his head and said he was going to work under Hawks. And then he mentioned that he was looking at someone in the class but wouldn't tell him. This may have been wrong to say as everyone was now hoping they were the one chosen.
Oops.
After the break, three upperclassmen entered, and Aizawa introduced them as the Big Three, the strongest students in UA at the moment. One of them looked like a friendly guy. The one with black hair, Amajiki, was very shy it seemed, and couldn't handle speaking to the class, so the girl Hado, took over. But she wasn't very good at explaining either, so Mirio was the one to finish up, starting out with something that was supposed to be a joke but just didn't go well.
Instead of explaining in depth, he challenged the class to a fight. All of them against him. So, they got their gym outfits on and went into one of the gyms, where Mirio told them to attack him however they wanted. Luffy chose to stay back a bit, and it didn't help that everyone else was bragging about fighting villains before.
Luffy hadn't. He felt like an outcast, and balled his fists, looking at the ground. He was distracted by his sorrow at being an outsider in this conversation, and only was able to get out of the way of Mirio when he saw him start to come out of the floor beneath him. He jumped back, now on guard. Everyone else was punched in the gut immediately, bending over or on the ground. Luffy was the only one still up, from an accident.
Then Mirio was in the ground, and he hadn't been paying attention to the conversation or fight at all. Damn it. He looked on the ground, but then the upperclassman came up from behind and punched him in the gut, making Luffy bend over for a second before the feeling went away and he zoomed after the third year, aiming a kick that went through his body.
When he punched, Mirio grabbed his arm and flipped him over, hitting him hard on the stomach, knocking the air out of him. Luffy kicked again, but his leg went through his legs and then Mirio was back in the ground, coming up right under him with an uppercut, knocking Luffy backwards, holding his jaw in momentary pain.
"You're pretty tough thanks to your regenerative power," Mirio said, not out of breath at all and looking like he was having fun. Luffy put his hands up.
"This will take forever if we keep going and I'll never win if I can't land a solid hit," he said honestly.
"What good sportsmanship!" Then he attacked the others, all of them out. At least he had pants on now. So, once everyone was bent over in pain from a very hard punch. Mirio explained his power of permeation, where he can turn his body intangible and could pass through objects, even if it was a difficult process and hard to handle without a lot of practice and experience.
His work studies gave him experience that he then turned into power. So, hero work studies would help by giving real experience, whether it was scary or not. That was his way of explaining and encouraging them to do their best in their work studies.
After that, everyone was looking over a list Aizawa got for them from agencies offering the work studies. Surprisingly, four of the students were taken in by the Big Three to join their work studies. Uraraka and Tsu joined Hado with Ryukyu, Amajiki took Kirishima for Fat Gum, and Mirio took Midoriya for Sir Nighteye.
"Luffy, who is it? Do you know yet?" Kaminari asked the next day, the other four missing. They were on work studies and would be missing a lot of school, which Luffy would be doing, too. Finally going on real patrol, and probably on his own, making reports himself, like a real hero and not tagging along with Hawks and helping if he needed it.
"Yeah. Tokoyami, it's you. He asked for me to bring you to the agency today," Luffy said, surprising the bird man. He asked why him. "He saw you at the sports festival and thought you were strong."
Bakugo scoffed. After all, he got first place yet had nowhere to get work studies yet. "Do you accept?"
"I would be honored." Aizawa walked in, already knowing Tokoyami was chosen by Hawks. The agency was far from U.A., so he would either take the train today or let Luffy fly him there. He got his backpack and his briefcase with his costume and equipment. The rest of the class was moping, wishing it had been them.
Luffy made sure Tokoyami had his contract with him. "What kind of man is he?" Tokoyami asked while they walked through the school. Luffy thought for a moment, wondering how to explain it without sounding biased.
"He is laid back, likes not having too much work, even if he's diligent with his job. His wish is to live in a world where heroes have free time on their hands," Luffy explained. Tokoyami seemed surprised by this. "Do you want to take the train or let me fly you?" The bird man hesitated before he sighed, and said "why not?" about flying. "I won't go too fast." He nodded, but looked worried.
Luffy grabbed his under arms and flew up, staying lower as he crushed easily to the other city and lightly landed in front of the agency. "You live here, right?"
"The top floor. C'mon, let's go meet him and then get changed," Luffy said. He saw Tokoyami get tense. "Don't worry, he's not intimidating." He nodded and they entered the building, finding Hawks working with one of the sidekicks, going over a report. Luffy and his classmate waited patiently, behind. "Why don't we change while he's talking?"
"Sure." They went to the training room and put their backpacks in lockers, even if Luffy could just take his upstairs. They changed and Luffy closed his eyes when he switched to his hero face shield that had the headphones with a built in speaker that connected to Hawks' headphones. It was usually turned off, though.
Once they were both changed, they waited again until Hawks noticed them. "Ah, Luffy, Tsukuyomi! Just in time. Luffy, I want you to go on your first solo patrol." Luffy grinned. "Make sure to keep the speaker on and call if anything happens."
"I will," Luffy said. Hawks raised his eyebrows. "What, I'm working. I have to be professional."
"You've been here long enough to know I don't work with people with sticks up their ass."
"Fine, fine," Luffy said and pat Tokoyami on the back, who was shocked and a little confused. Luffy left the agency and flew around slowly, looking down and opening his senses to any suspicious noises. He immediately heard sobbing and dropped down to see a little boy crying. "Hey, what's wrong?" he asked, crouching and trying to look non threatening.
"I lost mommy!" he cried loudly. Luffy said that he'd help him find her. He asked what she looked like. "Mommy is pretty!" he cried. Luffy asked what was pretty about her. "She ha-has long brown hair and is tall!"
Luffy picked him up, and said, "Why don't we go look for her together?" He sniffled and nodded before touching his feathers. Luffy plucked one off painlessly and gave it to the boy to hold. "Soft, huh?" he nodded, still sniffling. "What's your name?"
"Misaka," he said.
"Well, Misaka, let's go mommy searching." He listened for any sound of shouting, any frantic woman's voice. Surely she was freaking about losing her kid, too. He walked around for a bit before he heard a woman's voice calling for help. He quickened his pace and turned the corner, and asked Misaka if that pretty lady was his mommy.
"Mommy!" He put him down and let him run to his mother, hugging her around the legs. He smiled from a bit down the sidewalk, and Misaka thanked him. He grinned and gave him a thumbs up before flying away. His senses were still open, and he was over a less dense part of the city around the edge before coming across a disgusting smell.
He followed it and landed in an alleyway, expecting to find a dead dog or something rancid in the trash. He closed that sense, and walked deeper into the alleyway before turning the corner and finding the scent was under a heap of trash bags.
When he moved them, he found what was reeking. It wasn't a dead dog or rotten food. It was the grey corpse of a child. If he hadn't seen dead bodies before when he was a kid, he probably would have thrown up. She didn't look old, but was almost a chalky gray. He saw she had a ripped up shirt that had some sort of puncture wound that had black cracks around it.
He pressed the button on his headphones. "Hawks. I found a dead child's body," he said in a flat voice.
"Seriously?" Hawks asked in disbelief. After all, this was his first actual patrol and he found this. How unlucky. "Where are you?" Luffy gave the address and said he'd stand on the roof of the building so he could see him. "I'll be right over."
Luffy flew up and stood on the building, keeping watch for any movement in the area. He doubted the murderer was near anymore. He or she was probably long gone. He saw Hawks flying over with a grim look on his face.
Luffy dropped into the alleyway, and Hawks landed next to him. They stood in front of the body, and Hawks crouched down, looking closer at the puncture wound. He didn't touch her and sighed. "It looks like the work of a quirk. Bodies don't decay this way." He moved a button on his headphones and alerted the police of the incident and address. "How did you find her?"
"I followed the smell." He sighed. "What a terrible patrol."
"I'm sorry you had to see this." Luffy sadly reminded Hawks he'd seen bodies before, just not in a long time.
It didn't take long for the police to arrive, an ambulance as well. Hawks signaled them over and the police inspected briefly before calling to have forensics and the right people for this. They were both asked what happened. Luffy said he was flying on patrol and found her in the alleyway under a pile of trash bags. "Did you see any suspicious activity."
Luffy shook his head. "There was nobody in the vicinity. It was pretty much deserted, and these buildings are mostly warehouses, so there wouldn't be anybody passing by. It was a good area to leave her," he said with a sigh.
Hawks asked for them to let him know the details of what they found on her. Namely if anything was strange regarding her death and the cracks in her chest. They really looked like they were done by some sick and twisted quirk. "Will do."
"C'mon, time for your first report," Hawks said, and both of them flew back to the agency, Luffy knowing where to go and walking to the logs. They were separated from incidents. There were the green logs, which were incidents resolved quickly and easily, a yellow one that had to do with drugs or weapons, the orange which were incidents where there was some difficulty but ultimately solved, and then there was the red that included murders and deadly assaults.
He started in the green book, logging the lost child that was returned to his mother, and then sitting at an empty desk and filling out the details of what he'd come across, describing in morbid detail how she looked and smelled.
After that, he returned the logs to the right places and headed to the database computer, where you could search anything about the city and its citizens, reading through the known quirks that were dangerous. He did that for about two hours and found only a handful that were dangerous enough to be on an alert and perhaps worried, as some of those recorded were not in jail.
He looked up any crimes in the area, even back months before now. A lot of drug deals, but no assaults or murders recorded. The drugs were mostly drugs that weren't overly concerning but were caught being sold in large quantities.
Only a handful of people got caught, while many others were still dealing, but seeming in more secluded places. Weed was the main drug being exchanged. But he couldn't see how that was related to the murder of the little girl. She had to be under seven or eight at most. He clenched his gloved hands and then took a deep breath.
He exited the computer and then went to get a drink of water and came back to find Hawks talking into the recorder on his headset. Tokoyami was sitting at a desk, looking determined but a bit nervous.
Luffy walked over and asked how he was doing so far. "Everything is very organized, so this is easy." He asked what he thought of Hawks. "He seems like a nice man, and is also not what I was expecting. I am not disappointed, just surprised." Luffy nodded, saying that seemed to be a recurring thing he saw with new workers when he saw them.
"Want a muffin?" Luffy asked, pointing behind him at the basket of them. "I made them, so you know they're safe." He nodded and stood up to go get one. Hawks was off the speaker by then. So Luffy walked over.
"I looked at any criminal activity in the area but it's only drug deals, mostly marijuana. And I didn't see any quirks registered that could kill in that way, or at least make the body decay like that.
"The forensics team is working on it. I've asked them to keep me updated on it." He sighed and leaned against the wall. "There hasn't been a murder in this city for awhile. Mostly vandalism, break-ins or assaults. I don't think anyone would have found her for a while without your nose. She was in a secluded area where dump trucks don't exactly pick up trash. Should get that part of town fixed up and regulated."
Luffy commented that there wasn't much to regulate at the moment. "Nobody is going to move there for awhile. It's mostly warehouses in the first place. It's not like where I lived, with street rats everywhere and villains running rampant," Luffy commented. Then he looked down. "Has there been any missing person cases lately?"
"Not for children."
"She was wearing a ripped up dress, looked dirty and old. Maybe she was gone for a long time, but not from here if there were no reports recently. Or maybe she was a street rat, just one nobody ever noticed. If that's the case then it's very sad."
Hawks sighed and looked at his watch. Luffy asked what he was having Tokoyami do.
"Research mostly. On this agency so he gets a better feel for it. He needs to relax a bit before he can work on big things." Luffy said he was always serious, so to not be disappointed if he treated this like a job, which it was. "This is my way of doing things. I'm not Endeavor."
"Thank god for that," Luffy replied.
When it was 4:30, Hawks told Tokoyami that he was free to go for his first day. "I won't have you come in every day. How many days do you think you can work with?" he asked while Luffy was eating one of his muffins. They were mini and plentiful so they lasted most of the day. Tokoyami asked for three days to start off. "That's fine. Good work," he said. The intern seemed uncomfortable but returned the high five.
Luffy asked if he had a ride home while they were both changing. "Yes, I am getting picked up. Is everything okay? You looked stressed and upset. Luffy said he'd found a dead body. Tokoyami's eyes widened. "I'm sorry."
Luffy pursed his lips and nodded. "It was a little girl. We're gonna investigate it." He looked even more horrified. Luffy changed the subject and asked what he thought of flying. He blunty said it was terrifying and he'd rather take the train. Luffy chuckled and nodded. "I'll see you tomorrow. Don't tell anyone else about this, okay?"
"I understand. See you tomorrow, Luffy," he said.
"Bye."
He went outside and flew up to the window, scaring Merry under the couch like usual. He put his things away and then went to the kitchen and just stared at the sink. He didn't feel like cooking tonight and they had no left overs. They'd probably order pizza since Luffy didn't want to go pick anything up.
He flopped onto the couch and stared at the ceiling. What a shitty first day of hero work studies. He was so happy about helping the lost boy, but then he found a dead child. Merry jumped onto his chest, wanting to play. He didn't refuse and played with her on the couch.
When the front door opened, Hawks asked, "Why don't we order pizza?" Luffy nodded, saying he didn't want to cook. He walked to the couch and put his hand on Luffy's head. "I'm sorry that you had to see that."
Luffy said he was glad he did, or she would have been just thrown away with nobody knowing she'd died. "I didn't want to see it, but it would have been cruel to just leave her there. The scent was terrible, but I knew deep inside that it was a dead body. I just didn't want to expect it to be a child," he explained.
"I understand that," Hawks said, sitting on the recliner. "Poor Tsukuyomi." Luffy said he told him, and asked if that was a mistake. "No, I don't think he'd blab based on what I've seen of him." He pulled out his phone and called their favorite pizza place. Luffy turned on the TV, going to the show that distracted him the most just because of how terrible it was. It was some reality TV show that was obviously fake but just so stupid it was ridiculous.
Hawks watched it, Merry curled up on the back of the recliner. "I'm not looking forward to making up classes, even if I do all the homework ahead of time. Shit, I haven't done any," Luffy grumbled, and walked into his room to get his backpack and to his desk by the window. He breezed right through it, finishing by the time the pizza arrived.
He went to bed sad, but fell asleep after Hawks suggested he take some of his sleep pills. He was clearly worried about him, but Luffy made sure he knew that he wasn't broken inside or anything. He was prepared for messiness, just not so soon.
-x-
When he went to school the next day, he saw Midoriya looking upset. "You have a bad first day in work studies, too?" He nodded. "Me, too. I can't talk about it, though."
"Same with me," Midoriya said when they walked into the classroom. Both of them were clearly distracted, but Luffy wanted school to be over so he could go look for any information. He was prepared to find more dead children. He had a feeling it wasn't just one case. He kept up in class, but he was mostly on autopilot.
He flew home quickly, and did homework immediately, cheating and using Nezu's smarts. He wanted to get it done quickly. After finishing, he went down after changing and got to work, finding Hawks and saying he wanted to go on patrol again. "Are you sure?" Luffy nodded. "Okay. Don't go sniffing for dead bodies, alright?"
It sounded disgusting but fit the description perfectly. "Okay, I won't." He left and flew above, getting waves from those who'd seen him on patrol lately. He landed next to one and struck up a conversation, asking her if she'd seen anything odd lately.
"Oh, is something going on?"
"Not much. Just started my internship and looking for anything interesting to investigate," he said with a smile, making himself look a little embarrassed. She thought for a moment.
"Well, a woman in my book club said that her daughter sighted a monster in Kasuga. She said it had an odd appearance." Luffy was surprised, but kept his face mildly interested. Luffy asked if she had a description. "She's only six, but she described it as having an opened skull. We think she was making it up. Nothing can live with an exposed brain." Luffy swallowed.
"Thank you, I'll see if anything comes of it. Have a nice day," Luffy said with a smile. This city didn't have much crime near the Hawks agency, for obvious reasons. It wasn't what he'd been fishing for, but was concerning nonetheless. A nomu had been spotted? But the heroes said all of them had been collected or killed during the Kamino incident.
But an exposed brain was too descriptive just to be a passing monster. But he did wonder if the woman had never seen the footage of the mess in Hosu last month. Maybe the little girl had seen it and recreated the image in her imagination? That didn't really sound plausible. Another thing to worry about.
He went to an alleyway and opened up the communication with Hawks. "Is everything okay?" he asked immediately.
"It's fine right now. A woman told me her friend's daughter saw a monster with an exposed brain in Kasuga."
"Seriously? A nomu, right? That describes the ones that you fought with Endeavor." Luffy agreed with that. He asked what they should do. "We should find more sightings, see if anything comes of it. Just continue the patrol and then come back at 4:15."
"Okay," Luffy said, looking at his watch. He had another half hour, and he spent the rest of it doing normal patrol, helping people out with little things. He managed to catch a dog that had run off from its owner on a leash, and brought it back to her.
"Thank you," she said, an elderly woman who couldn't run after the dog. Luffy said she was welcome with a smile. He walked and didn't fly, interacting with passerbys. Many did recognize him from being with Hawks often, since he wasn't exactly a forgettable sight, was he?
He was glad it was a Friday and he could spend time searching the internet for two cases. The dead child and the nomu sighting. If there were nomus around, and they hadn't attacked, it was concerning. Why would a nomu do anything but attack humans? They were mindless, weren't they? All of them so far had attacked any human in the vicinity. Though they did seem to follow orders by the League of Villains. But since the Kamino incident, they were AWOL and nobody knew where they were hiding.
They would conserve the nomus if they had any left, they wouldn't let them wander around, right? He could be wrong. He could be. When it was 4:15, he went back home. "Write a log about the nomu sighting," Hawks said distractedly. Luffy nodded and logged it, though there wasn't anything to go on. He didn't know the name of the woman whose daughter said she sighted the nomu.
After that, he changed and then went upstairs on his computer and looked up book clubs in Fukuoka and Kasuga. Mostly ones with women. He found many, and found the names of the leaders. Then he went to each of their Facebook pages and looked at the women that were most active on the page, and looked them up, seeing if they had young daughters.
Of course there were many, and he wrote down their names and the location of where the book club was. He jotted down their numbers as well. By the time he'd thoroughly searched all of them, he had 26 women from book clubs in Kasuga that had young daughters. Then he searched the internet with all of their names, looking for any blogs of any kind.
Not cooking blogs or anything like that, but personal ones. He also kept age in mind, since the woman he asked looked to be in her thirties. He spent three hours searching, only taking a break to cook lemon chicken, eat it and go back to his room.
Hawks knocked on his door, which was slightly open. "Don't overwork, Luffy. You'll burn yourself out doing that." Luffy stopped typing and laid down on his bed on his back.
"I want to do something productive. I could help that girl, I want to do something," he sighed.
"Do not blame yourself for something like that," Hawks said, surprisingly stern. "Blame clouds your thinking. You did not find her moments after she died. According to the police, she had been dead for at least six hours. You were at school, there's no way you could have helped her."
Luffy knew he was right. He nodded, understanding even if he didn't like it. "Still don't like it," he said simply. Hawks replied that he didn't like it either. "I'm worried about a nomu being around, though. I don't understand why it hasn't rampaged, since they just attack anybody they see."
Hawks leaned against the wall and said he hadn't heard much about the nomu since the Kamino ward incident. "I know that they said that they hadn't let any slip past that they found. But that's the short and sweet explanation. Since I wasn't part of the League of Villains incident, I wasn't told. I didn't want to be part of that, but still."
"Kamino is really far away, it's not surprising they didn't call you. I bet if I'd been affected by the League, you would have involved yourself." Hawks said that was true. That it would have been personal. "I feel like an outsider sometimes. Like when we had the group fight against Miriro, the guy I told you about, and they were all saying they had fought villains and I just stood there, the only one to not go through what they had."
"Do you wish you had?"
Luffy looked at the ceiling. "I still don't know. At first, when I heard about the USJ attack, I thought 'it's a good thing I got out when I did'. But once I was back, and I missed helping out at the summer camp, I felt like I should have been there, to help," he said honestly. "They all told me they didn't blame me, and that I had a bad head injury, I might have not been able to fight back. Even though my injury was gone by then."
Hawks sighed and then said, "There's no use with what-ifs. You helped a lot, tipping about the location of Bakugo and their base. They just don't know you played a pivotal role." Luffy said he knew that. And that it was best for him to do it anonymously. But still, he wished they knew.
"I won't tell anyone about it, though. Even if I want to," Luffy said. He sat up and turned off his computer. "I think I'll just watch a movie and hope I fall to sleep." Hawks nodded, and told him to not think too much.
"It'll take awhile to get the true hero mind set for anyone. And that isn't just to want to help people and work hard. You also need to know how to manage your own mental health since being a hero can be really stressful. I'll help you with that. No hero is as laid back as I am," he said, seeming to be bragging. Luffy smiled and thanked him before the door shut.
He was really lucky that Hawks took him in.
-x-
"Luffy, I got information back about the girl. We can't know her identity, sadly, as her finger tips have been burned and her teeth knocked out so nobody can find out who she was. She was extremely anemic even without any big wounds. And she had no signs of having her blood drawn. Somehow she lost a lot of her blood. That's why she was gray, but it was also an unnatural color.
"The police are sure it was a quirk that did this, but there are no known quirks that are described in a way that would relate to her death," Hawks said in the morning.
Luffy pointed out that it was easy to lie to the government about quirks. Plus, there were undocumented people with quirks. Me. Hawks understood this, as Luffy had easily lied to the government about the extent of his quirk, but that was for safety's sake. The only place that knew of Luffy's actual quirk was the privately owned quirk hospital that had no obligation to share their patients' information.
Luffy looked at the photos of her. They were gruesome, but necessary to see. He was an intern and he was in on this, but he was also involved a lot with the agency for years, even if it wasn't in any professional way.
"Did they say why her eyes are gray like that?" Hawks said that she seemed to have been blind. Luffy frowned. He had no hunch or idea what on earth could have caused this.
"I'm getting other heroes involved in this, but many are busy with another case going around with the professional hero world. A big case, bigger than this one is so far. Not sure what it is, though. But I've made contact with Endeavor, Best Jeaniest, and Edgeshot so far. Best Jeanist agreed to help and Endeavor hasn't replied. Edgeshot hasn't replied yet either, but I know he's on another case right now. Honestly, those are the heroes I know well enough to actually have them listen to me. Even if Endeavor thinks I'm annoying."
"Biggest fan," Luffy whispered. Hawks shook his head at him.
Luffy looked back at the photos, and saw something on the eye. "What is that?" he asked, pointing to a red spot on her left eye, right in the middle. "It looks like a burn."
"Yeah, she has small, superficial burns on her face and neck."
"Like something hot was there? Hot and bright, maybe she was blinded by some flash of light. And clearly whatever it was was close if she had burns on her face. Maybe the quirk involved some flash of light," Luffy hypothesized.
Hawks started jotting things down on a notepad. "It's possible, but there's no real way to know."
"I have an idea. We can search places for burns on the walls or floor. Was there any burns in the immediate area, around where she was found? I didn't see any," Luffy said. Hawks pointed out that they had no idea where to look for that. It could be anywhere. "Still… she was dead for six hours. That means whoever killed her had been six hours away. Six hours by travel is a wide radius, but it could make a boundary line. Someone came from somewhere under six hours away to dump her there."
"That's true. But it depends on how fast and how they were traveling. Six hours can turn into four if you're speeding. That's assuming they used a car," Hawks pointed out.
Luffy said, "Whatever quirk this was, it possibly blinded her, killed and took her blood out. Did she die of blood loss?" Hawks shook his head.
"She died of a heart attack, which is extremely odd for a child of her age. Extremely odd. I think we're all positive by now it was a quirk, and an extremely dangerous one." Luffy asked if there were no cameras in the area at all.
"What about CCTV in the area? A six hour timespan yesterday."
Hawks shook his head, saying there were no cameras in that area at all. "Plus, there are multiple ways to get out of there without any camera picking you up. If he parked behind the old pharmaceutical warehouse, it's surrounded by tall walls that branch off in six routes. Two of those lead far from the scene without any cameras being able to capture them. We have a lot of hypotheses, but nothing concrete."
Luffy frowned deeply. "Can I go investigate?" Hawks looked hesitant, and said they would go together, he didn't want Luffy going to look for this guy alone. He was fine with that, and Hawks put the notes in the log book for now.
They left and went to the crime scene. It had been picked apart already, but Luffy wanted to see if he could smell anything. When they got there, Luffy started digging through the trash, he opened the bags that were on top of her, and smelled them. They reeked of trash, but some other scent.
He dumped the contents out on the ground and sifted through it while Hawks looked at the ground and under the dumpster for any marks. Burn marks, scorched areas. Luffy recognized the scent, finally, on the outside of the bag, which was easier to recognize when the rest of the trash was out of it.
"Smells like weed," Luffy said.
"There are drug deals here all the time. And we don't know how long all of this trash was here. Could have been weeks." Luffy searched the garbage some more, and found a banana that wasn't completely rotted.
"But this banana isn't rotted enough to have been here too long. I had gotten one in the slums, I remember. It took under a day for it to turn this spotted after I ate it. I kept the peel with me, desperate to save it for later. After a day, it was completely inedible. This has been more than a day, but it couldn't be by much." He sifted through the pile of trash some more. "Plus, there is not enough mold here to have been long."
"We don't know how long it had been somewhere else before being dumped here. I doubt that the murderer took her here and brought his own trash bags."
"Then why are these bags scented? Scented bags are usually used for bathroom trash. At least ones of this size. He might have put all sorts of smelly food in bags that already smelled. It could have been used to throw off the scent of her body." He paused. "And isn't it strange that she smelled rotten to me but had only been dead a few hours? Do bodies usually start to smell that soon?"
"I wouldn't think so. But there was nothing in the report of rotting flesh that would produce a strong scent."
Luffy was even more confused now that he recognized that fact. But the smell of weed was what was putting him off. Why would you throw weed away? It had an extremely potent smell and surely a dog could track the smell of weed on anybody.
He said, "I still think the smell of weed is out of place. Why would they deliberately put weed on the bag when it's so easy to smell from a long distance?" Hawks pointed out again that a lot of drug deals take place here. "Yeah, but I doubt someone would throw the bag away seeing there was a dead child here. A real criminal, well, wouldn't they not want to have any trace of themselves at a scene like this? Afraid of leaving fingerprints on the trash bags if they weren't responsible for this?"
Hawks thought for a moment. It was true that a thug would stay far from a murder scene. They wouldn't want to leave anything that could be related to them and be mistakenly found and convicted of a crime much worse than drug dealing.
Luffy looked around, and saw nothing else. No other clues. "There is no way the murderer would dump another body in the same place. At least, not right here. Unless they were stupid. But it would make sense to get rid of them in an area like this, abandoned and private."
"So he might leave other victims in other secluded and unregulated areas. In a six hour radius." Luffy nodded. "Lets go search, then." Luffy nodded and made a mental note about the smells of weed, and the banana's decomposition time. They flew off, Hawks looking at his smartwatch's GPS. They flew about ten minutes, quickly, and landed in another sketchy area.
Luffy smelled deeply, trying to find the scent of trash in general. He found a dumpster and dug through it, pulling out trash, smelling a faint trace of weed, before he turned away and vomited. "Whoa, what's wrong?" Luffy scrunched his eyes closed and Hawks looked inside the dumpster and his face crumpled.
"D-Do you smell weed?"
Luffy couldn't look. He couldn't look at the baby. A child was bad enough. Not a toddler. "I can't look at it. But we have to stop whoever is doing this. Soon." He took a deep breath, and Hawks took his jacket off and took the corpse out of the dumpster and wrapped it in the jacket, face sad. He didn't deal with dead babies usually. Would anyone want to be a hero if they had to deal with that often?
Luffy smelled the area, smelling the scent of weed again. Hawks was calling the police. They needed to know clues about the baby's death. From the small glance Luffy had gotten, it had a black spot over it's chest like the last victim. Hawks put his hand on his back. "You've done enough, Luffy. For today, we're stopping. We'll wait for information about the b- it." Luffy nodded, unable to do anything more. He wanted to burn the image out of his mind.
They waited for the police to come, the same as the last time. He was waiting far from the scene while Hawks explained what they found to prepare them. A body bag that was much too small for Luffy's liking was brought. He covered his eyes, taking deep breaths. He never expected to see something like this, especially when he was still in high school. His first year of highschool.
But… Luffy's thinking had gotten this poor baby found. Not left to be forgotten by the world. And with a second victim with the same mark, it was clear that whoever did this, it wasn't a one time thing.
Hawks put his hand on Luffy's back and said they were going home. Luffy nodded and both of them flew off. They were silent for a bit before Luffy said, "Don't kick me off this case."
"I won't. You've provided more valuable information than I have. You're smart, Luffy. You'll make a great sidekick." Luffy gave a small smile. Hawks asked if he could be alone once they were home after both of them took showers and Luffy put his smelly costume in the washing machine, Hawks changed into his old costume, which was pretty much the same but the jacket was a little frayed.
"I'll be fine, don't worry. Tell me… tell me when any news comes of the-."
"I will," Hawks said, saving Luffy from having to say the baby's name. Hawks left with a worried look on, and Luffy went to his room and sat down, shoulders slumped. A dead baby. He discovered a dead baby. This was a sick world, where someone could kill a baby and dump her in the trash like that. Both victims were girls…
Stop. Stop thinking about it today.
Luffy sighed and opened up his computer and went on his second project. He wished he had homework, but he didn't. He needed to pick up another hobby. But for now, he wanted to focus on anything else. Anything else.
He spent hours looking for anything on the women he'd listen to the day before, but found nothing helpful. So he looked anywhere else. He looked through a thousand of the 8,000 google pages when he typed in "nomu". Most were conspiracy sites, not news outlets. At least, passed the first 10 pages, then there were the conspiracy pages.
And it turned out those were the most helpful. Any sightings, and there were a lot of people who said they had, even though he absolutely didn't believe all of these people had made sightings. There was one photo that circulated most through these many conspiracy sites. It was of a huge, muscular and pitch black creature with three arms on one side.
But since it was blurry with rain, nobody could be sure what it was. It could be a muscular human with a mutant form who was wearing a black outfit. Since he couldn't see the exposed brain, it was impossible to tell.
He needed to fly. He messaged Hawks that he was going on a flight. And that he wasn't going to do any hero activities. Okay. Be careful.
I will.
He couldn't tell anyone about the case. Even Ace, who he would really like to talk to about this. But he couldn't. And he wouldn't. He took off, flying to the lake that made him feel better, it took awhile to get there at a normal pace and not fast. He wanted to enjoy flying, so he went slowly, leisurely, cruising on the breeze until he got to the park and flew up the river to the lake, flying over it and looking down at his reflection.
He saw the fish swimming below, and decided he wanted to swim. He hadn't swam in a long time, but he wanted to. He wasn't stupid, though, and stayed in the shallow water, sitting down so his wings were fully submerged, but he could still get out if his wings got soggy. The water was nice. He took off his shoes and shirt, but left his shorts on.
Fish swam around him, and he was truly relaxed. Maybe swimming here would become a stress reliever. His wings did get soggy, but it was fine. He wasn't going to drown or something stupid like that, all alone. He dipped the back of his head into the cool water. He never took baths, there just wasn't enough room in his tub, or even Hawks' master bathroom tub. His wings were too big as well.
Luffy never remembered taking baths, so there wasn't much to miss. But this… was nice. The water lapped against his ears. His glasses and phone were on the shore. Luffy breathed deeply, enjoying the feeling. Before he knew it, it was evening.
His phone rang, and he pulled himself out of the water to answer. It was Hawks. "Hey. I'll come back now."
"Where are you?"
"The lake. I was in the water. Don't worry, I didn't go deep. But it was really relaxing. I feel much better than I did before. I'll come home now."
"Okay, be careful." He said he would and flapped his wing rapidly to dry them before putting his glasses back on and flew home. Feeling the water slide off of him and drying his clothes was also a nice feeling. He felt a thousand times better now than he did that morning. The rest of the night, he hung onto that feeling, and refused to think about the disturbing case or the nomu "sightings".
He cooked dinner while Hawks napped on the couch. "Yo, food is ready," he called. Hawks woke up and moved Merry off of his lap and walked to get the food. "How was work after I left?"
"Normal. Normal incidents, normal crimes, normal everything. Like this morning just never happened. How are you feeling? It was hard for me, too, but I had work to distract me. I didn't sign up for that, y'know?" Luffy nodded, understanding. He said he was feeling fine, and that soaking had made his mood improve drastically. "It's good that's what you turned to."
"What do you mean?"
"Many budding heroes see things they never wanted to, and many turn to alcohol or drugs to drown out what they saw." Luffy assured him he still wanted to be a hero, and wouldn't ruin his future. He'd never do anything to put his future in jeopardy. "Good. It was hard for me, too, but I won't be ruining my future or present either."
They watched a movie, and Hawks said that he would be working tomorrow, despite it being his day off. Luffy didn't remember the last time Hawks didn't take his Sunday off. But, this case was involving the deaths of children. You can't take a break from that without being heartless. Luffy said he'd help, too. There was no way he could do nothing.
"What if we see something else?"
Luffy laughed brokenly. "What's worse than what we saw today?" Hawks didn't reply, just sagged into the couch.