Wow look at me being proactive and updating so often. I hope you enjoy this little detective chapter. I thought it would be a fun pace to everything else going on with Leinei and the PLF.
TW: Mentions of suicide

"If you say so, Dynamight."

Only Leinei ever called me that once, one time.

No one knows that's my hero name. I wanted Jeanist to be the first to know.

So how did that vigilante know it?

It's been two weeks since the encounter with the masked vigilante, and it didn't take long for her to strike again. She's taken down at least six more B-rank or higher villains with ease, videoing it each time and within the hour of their arrest, it's broadcasting all over social media. Each time with the same message of the Paranormal Liberation Front, of Destro's manifesto, of how hero society is destroying free will.

"Do you really think people believe this stuff?" Denki asks, laying on the floor with his phone above his face watching the vigilante known as Apathia take down a familiar sludge villain. "I mean she's got the moves, but the speech? The monologues seem hard to believe that a hero could endorse that crap."

"People will believe anything nowadays," Yaoyorozu says from the kitchen where she's finely chopping some celery. Denki lifts his head off the floor, pausing the video before sitting up all the way. Eijirou looks up from the homework he's doing. "We all know that the PLF is harboring fugitives and the League of Villains. With the raid next week, now isn't the time to start second guessing our mentors."

"Yeah, I know, but like…" Denki rubs the back of his head as Katsuki glances over at him. "She…she makes some good points. She brings up the curriculums at the schools, the bullying, she even mentions Leinei's suicide."

"She's twisting a tragedy to fit her narrative," Mina speaks up, a sharp edge to her voice. "Leinei didn't…didn't do that because she couldn't handle the pressure. She…"

"Lei had a lot of issues before she met us," Hanta adds, looking up from his phone as a solemn silence falls over the living room of Alliance Heights. Izuku, Shoto, Iida, and others look up from the other cluster of chairs as Hanta continues, "we can't blame one thing for her decision. A lot of factors went into that choice, and she's not hurting anymore, so that's all we can ask for, y'know?"

"Is being a therapist your fall back job?" Mina asks.

"You try having Kendall as your partner."

"Is he that bad?"

"No, he's really not. His family on the other hand…let's just say he's happy his school is also a boarding school."

"Yeesh."

"Okay, while I love whatever Kendall lore we get from you," Denki says, turning the conversation back. "Kacchan, you fought her. Did you notice anything?"

"..." Katsuki is quiet, back to reading his book, one of the manga that he had gotten for Christmas from "Hawks". He turns a page, before closing it on his finger and laying it in his lap. "Her costume was similar to Leinei's. The way she held herself and…the way she spoke, it was like I was looking at a mirrored version of her."

"Oh my god, do you think they turned her into a Nomu? Or mimicked her somehow like a-a…what's that word, they're in Fullmetal Alchemist," Eijirou taps the table with his finger as he tries to remember. "A homunculin or something."

"Homunculus," Tokoyami calls from his seat next to Sato.

"Thank you, Toko!" Eijirou calls back. "Yeah, a homunculus. It wouldn't be entirely farfetched, y'know? Nomus being what they are, how hard would it be?"

"Are you really getting your ideas from anime right now, Kirishima?" Mina teases.

"Look, Tetsutetsu suggested to me while we were patrolling with Fatgum. Amajiki endorsed it too, so I thought I'd check it out. I can't help it's super manly!" he shoots back, his face turning bright red.

"I mean, they have someone there who can create copies, right?" Denki points out. "Maybe that's what it is, they created a copy of her and since they didn't actually know her, they're just having her do what they want! That has to be it, right?"

"Maybe," Katsuki mumbles, shrugging his shoulders before standing up. "I have some crap I need to work on. Leave me alone."

"Okay. Dinner will be ready in about two hours," Yaoyorozu calls as he leaves the living area to go up to his room. Once there, he dumps the manga on his bed and sits in his desk chair with his head in his hands.

"If you say so, Dynamight," echoes in his head, still bothering him more than anything. He could've brushed the vigilante off as a chance thing, as a ripple effect of the growing influence the PLF has on everyone.

He grips his hair, clenching his eyes shut as he curls onto himself with his head between his knees. He's trying to piece everything together. He's trying to figure out why he has this nagging feeling in his stomach that this isn't what it seems, that there's more to what's going on than there is.

Ashido was right. Those Christmas gifts-they were more personal than I would've thought. Hawks wouldn't have known our song.

And that vigilante-she moved just like Lei. She acted just like her.

Think about it. She left hints, didn't she? She left clues, and I was just too stupid at the time to pick up on them.

"'You'll see me eventually'," he murmurs to himself, repeating the last spoken words he ever heard her say. "'Just family business'." He sits up, as if struck by lightning. He gets up from his chair and heads towards Leinei's dorm.

Since her death, it's been off limits, taped with red duct tape to prevent the class from turning it into a shrine. Thankfully, no one wanted to go through the pain of going in there anyway, so everything was relatively untouched except for the dust and that moment Katsuki spent in the room after hearing her death on the news.

He takes the tape off the door, balling it into his hands before opening the door. The smell of stale air and dust fills his nose as he steps in, closing the door behind him. Her chair was still angled as if she'd just stood up from it, a thin layer of dust covering the cushion and top of her desk. He walks over to her desk and looks at the nearly empty desk, with just her textbooks and a notebook with a few pens and pencils. Each is covered with the same layer of dust, which doesn't surprise him.

He steps over to her bed, seeing the wrinkles in the covers where he laid on the bed the day he heard her death. There was nothing out of the ordinary there, so he got down on his knees and lifted the side of the blanket to peek under the bed. He sees the familiar silver case for their hero costumes, and pulls it out. It's lighter than it should be, which prompts him to flip the clasps on it and open it.

Why is it empty?

His brow furrows as he stares at the indentations made to perfectly fit their costumes and gear. He closes the case, leaving the clasps undone, before getting up. He looks around the room some more, before spying the trash can. He steps over to it and dumps it over, seeing two small pieces of plastic come out. Setting the can down, he kneels down and picks them up, studying them for a minute before realizing they were broken pieces of a sim card.

Why would her sim card be here and not the rest of her phone?

Unless…

He quickly gets up and goes downstairs, carrying the broken sim card in a clenched fist. He ignores Denki and Eijirou calling his name, walking straight up to Shoto. The two toned boy looks up, curious as his friend stands before him.

"Can I help you, Bakugo?"

"How good are you with your fire now?" he forces himself to ask, feeling disgusted with himself as Shoto tilts his head. He can feel everyone else staring at him as if he were insane.

"Depends on the reason."

He groans but holds his hand out, showing the broken sim card. Shoto raises an eyebrow, looking at the piece of plastic before looking up at Katsuki again. He gently takes the plastic, studying the broken edges.

"Did you get angry and snap it in half, Bakugo?" he asks, before seeing where they would fit together. "We could just ask Yaoyorozu to make you a new one, or I could-"

"It's not mine," he hisses, prompting Shoto to look up again. "It was in Leinei's room."

"Why were you in Salinsa's room?" Tokoyami asks, his brow furrowing. "Hawks asked them to tape it off so that he could get her things when he had the space."

"But that doesn't make sense," Katsuki points out as Shoto moves to the floor with the plastic. The ashen blond moves out of the way to let him, watching as he sets the pieces on the table and begins to gently melt them back together. "When Reina died, they couldn't get her place cleaned out fast enough. So why the delay with Lei's?"

"Are you going conspiracy theorist on us, Bakugo?" Asui asks, tilting her head. "Because Sero's three in the morning rants are more than enough."

"It's not a conspiracy if it has the chance to be true," he argues, getting frustrated.

"And that's the only time I get to talk to Kendall," Hanta adds, huffing afterwards. He sees Katsuki staring daggers into him, then gestures for him to carry on.

"As I was trying to say, Deku, remember in Otheon when you had to take your phone battery out when you went on the run with that dumbass?"

"You mean Rody? And yeah. Todoroki told me to do so that they couldn't track me," Izuku replies thoughtfully, tilting his head back. "It would've made more sense to take the sim card out in that case…"

"Knowing you, you would've lost it," Shoto mumbles, finishing soldering the plastic together. It was a little warped in places, but hopefully still usable. "I'm sorry if it's too messed up," he tells Katsuki, holding it up to him.

"Thanks," he mutters, taking it from him. "But do you get what I'm getting at?"

"You think she went on the run from something?" Izuku offers, sitting up when Katsuki nods. "Okay, but why?"

"Her hero costume is missing," he starts, holding up a finger on his free hand. "It wasn't found on her personal effects. Her phone is missing, with her sim card here. That means it was dumped somewhere else." He holds up another finger. "The presents I got for Christmas from Hawks, he never knew what our song was and yet it was circled on the back of the CD I got. Not just that, he wouldn't have known I like romance manga." He holds up a third finger, then a fourth. "And that vigilante called me by my hero name. Only Leinei knew what it was because she helped me come up with it."

Everyone is quiet, contemplating what he said. Tokoyami sighs, raising his hand as Dark Shadow peeks up from over his shoulder.

"Hawks has been acting strange for some time now," he offers to the group. "Just a few weeks ago, when this vigilante appeared, he had to take off in the middle of patrol. It looked like something was really bothering him, which struck me as odd."

"Alright. When is the only time you've seen him be bothered by something?" Katsuki presses.

"When it had to do with Salinsa or her sister." Then it dawned on Tokoyami. "He helped her run away."

"So, hold on, Kacchan, because you lost me at having Todoroki over here fix that sim card," Denki says, waving his hands as both groups of students intermingle. "You think that Leinei didn't commit suicide, but faked her death, and became a vigilante spouting fanatical propaganda. Does that really sound like our Leinei?"

"I overheard Hawks talking to someone on the phone," Dark Shadow offers, now settling atop Tokoyami's head. "Toko didn't pick it up because he was busy filling out paperwork, which is so boring. But he talked to someone named Twice I think." Dark Shadow gets excited when he sees several of the students perk up, knowing he did something good. "Yeah yeah, he said something about another person named Dabi and then something about you know who. That's what he said. Do I get a treat now?"

"When were you going to tell me this?" Tokoyami asks, surprised as he looks up at the manifestation of his quirk.

"It didn't seem important at the time. I tried to mention it when we got home that night but you fell asleep. So I thought it was just work stuff."

"Aren't those the villains that kidnapped you and Leinei back at the summer camp?" Sato asks, seeing several of his friends sit there fuming. "Do you think she-"

"No," Shoto, Katsuki, Eijirou and Mina say at the same time.

"Dabi murdered her sister," Katsuki tells them. "Everyone knows that. There's no way she'd willingly work with them."

"Unless someone was forcing her," Izuku murmurs, looking pointedly at his childhood friend.

"That Dabi bastard had an obsession with her for some reason," he replies, folding his arms across his chest and still holding fast to the sim card. "And with everything else…"

"We don't know what's going on," Ochaco points out, everyone feeling the heaviness that's settled over the class. "We have the raid next week. If she's there, then we'll get our answers on what side she's on. But Bakugo, what if you're wrong?"

Then I have to break my heart all over again.

So please don't let me be wrong.

Later that night, Katsuki tries the sim card in every device he can get his hands on. It was too damaged to do anything with, for which Shoto apologized over and over again.

"I'll just hold onto it," he tells him despite the fact it doesn't work. Just for the hope it brings.

But that begs the question: What exactly does he plan to do if she is alive?

And even worse, what if she's his enemy the next time they face each other?