MHA

Chapter – 8

"Well, this is a problem." Nezu said towards the screen in front of me which was filled with videos of all the people who had taken part in a raid.

It was a labour of more than 6 months, where we assiduously dismantled All for One's empire. All of us were actively taking part in the fight and raids while Nezu, me and the detectives took on the investigations portion of the operations.

Nobody replied to Nezu to stating the obvious, just looking at each other.

Yamato spoke up, "We have no way forward at all. All for One has totally gone underground. He has deactivated his own empire and even Sleeper tracking down the financials is unable to help us find him now."

I piped up at that point, "That's just because the money is not being funnelled into any shady places anymore. The companies which he was manipulating have gone totally legit, though we still need to do something about them. After all, they can be very easily used for funding."

"I will handle that." Nezu said from the side and that was that, the genius rodent would handle it.

"So, what can we do? There must be some plan of action, certainly." Gang Orca said from the side.

All he got in response was silence, the only reason this meeting was happening was that we truly didn't have any ideas or leads to follow up.

All Might looked miserable as he said, "Young Orca, our enemy is more cunning than we ever thought. We were wrong in our assessment, we thought All for One would never surrender or give up without a fight."

I laughed at that mocking myself who thought I had everything figured out and could easily predict All for One.

Gang Orca just looked like he wanted to kill someone, his quirk really does make him look dangerous.

Best Jeanist spoke next, "So what? We just give up after everything we did. If we leave him alone, then he can just continue his experiments, maybe on a much smaller scale but they will continue. "

Gran Torino moved to answer, "No, we will not give up. You are right, he must be stopped. This is just a lull in our war on each other. Patience, young man, I have been fighting All for One for decades now. We will put an end to him eventually."

That didn't seem to have improved anyone's mood at all, I just scratched my head and spoke up,

"Yamato, if you remember I was investigating an organisation before I gave up due to lack of leads."

He furrowed his brows trying to remember but Naomasa spoke up, "You were talking about some place called Villain Factory."

I smiled, "Yes, the goal of the organisation can be seen in the name. They are a factory of villains; now tell me doesn't it sound awfully familiar to someone else's goals."

Everybody smiled at that, with Nezu saying, "That's extremely useful. Why didn't you mention this before?"

I smiled deprecatingly, "It's been more than a year since I started this investigation and I haven't seen much success. This is a long shot, let me lay out my theory with All for One shutting down most of his own experiments there has to be other ways to push forward his research. Such as contacting other groups which are doing similar work. Maybe, I can the tail of the serpent when they receive the funding and become more active."

Everybody's expression dimmed, with Nighteye speaking up, "That's too optimistic of you."

I chuckled, "I know but I don't see any other leads. If you have a way forward, please share with the rest of us."

That shut him up and nobody spoke again, Nezu spoke up, "Waiting any longer is a waste of time. Let's put an end to this meeting. Sleeper, you can continue your investigations and see if you can learn something. As for the rest of us, we all have our duties and responsibilities to look after. All for One is not the only person who damages the law and order of our society."

They were a few nods, grunts and grumbles with everybody disconnecting the call as I stretched myself to work out the kinks in my body. I turned back and walked towards my study with all the files on my previous cases.

I pulled out the box with information about the Villain Factory and started refreshing my memory of the case.

There is no rest for the wicked after all.

It's been a year since the previous meeting to discuss All for One and as expected, there was nothing. All for One might as well have been dead with how there was no news of him.

I guess, being an ageless villain would certainly help increase his patience. Even, the Villain Factory was a bust all I got in return for my investigations was endless frustration and resentment. If I ever get my hands on those bastards, I will immediately put a bullet in their brain for stress relief.

Kaina was becoming a super popular hero these days with her good looks, cool quirk and villain capture rate. She had already reached 14 in the Hero Rankings, a very high number for someone so young. I had told the HPSC multiple times that she is ready to go her own way alone, but surprisingly my reports were always rejected for some reason citing things like the involved people didn't agree with my judgement. What involved people, the only ones involved were me, Kaina and our handler who was a bureaucrat with no knowledge of anything related to practical skills.

So, we were still working together. I had already killed and interrogated multiple villains and corrupt heroes who were involved in things like human trafficking with her. Honestly, I could say my initial judgement was correct, she is very talented at it but she didn't have the mentality for it. The differences in demeanour when she worked with me and without me on normal pro hero missions were easy for anyone to see.

I grimaced reading the new mission, we were just given the assassination of a hero again. But this time the hero involved wasn't particularly corrupt, he just was open about his views on quirk policies and hero regulations. The only problem was his views were similar to Destro, not as extreme like forming an army to effect change but even moderate views similar to Destro were flagged as dangerous by the HPSC.

After all, you can't have heroes touting supposedly villainous ideals. To be honest, when I read Destro's book for the first time even I was agreeing with his views, after rereading it, I noticed several issues which had to be corrected and changed in my opinion. Especially, his idea of raising a revolution of quirk users and the wording came off as a little discriminatory to the quirkless.

But that doesn't mean he didn't make sense; quirks regulations were too strict and many people chafed under them. A complete removal of quirk use restrictions would be bad for everybody because of the crazy abilities of quirks but some less strict regulations and a case-by-case basis for other quirk uses for some dangerous quirks would be the best.

I even knew, it would work because many countries had such rules including America, Japan's closest ally in the current world. But the government was not willing to back down an inch on this issue and so the HPSC had decided to silence this Hero.

The hero had recently put out a message to call quirks, meta-abilities instead which was something I agreed with, quirks were terribly named. Quirk literally means an idiosyncrasy or an accident, a vagary while it wasn't really a bad name, meta-ability was just better in my opinion.

After all, people call others quirky when they want to politely call others crazy or stupid too. But this was one step too far for the HPSC and thus, I had been assigned to clean up along with Kaina.

I was debating the brains of the HPSC, I had repeatedly told them not to give Kaina targets which were not villainous in the more literal sense. Killing people for political views which were somewhat controversial, killing villains who were just desperate to feed themselves and their families and killing people with so-called dangerous, villainous quirks were not something she could handle, the fools didn't listen to me though.

So, I decided to ignore their nonsense and decided how to introduce to a dirtier aspect of our work without actually taking her along for the mission.

I contemplated for a few minutes before just deciding to go ahead and complete the mission. Kaina would figure it out with the obvious clues, I will give her anyway.

(Tsutsumi Kaina)

I was sitting in a café in the city of Osaka waiting for Yasu-senpai. He had told me, he wanted to talk about a mission and I had immediately dropped all other work.

I looked at myself in the reflection of the glass and carefully judged my attire.

'Perfect' with this he will surely pay attention to me. I had worked with senpai for more than a year now and he was the most impenetrable wall, I had ever faced.

My various seductive attacks were rebuffed so easily, that it was starting to frustrate me even more. I spoke to some of my friends about it and one mentioned that maybe he was holding back because I was underage or else there is no man who could resist a Pro Hero throwing themselves at them.

I wanted to rebut that and say Yasu-senpai wasn't like other men but then I thought, she might be right. He was a very weird character for sure, he religiously followed some rules which others had no compunctions in breaking even for something like jaywalking on a completely empty street. But he was willing to break every law possible if he wanted to complete any mission, I don't know how he decided what law to follow and when to break every law possible.

So, maybe he was hesitating because of his arbitrary judgement which was stupid in my opinion because we were only 4 years apart.

I resolved myself to break down Yasu-senpai's defences. When I first met him, I just thought of him like my previous instructors, someone who was doing the job because they were paid for it but after meeting him, everything was different.

He was a breath of fresh air; I didn't even know I needed. The training with the HPSC had been having an effect on me and after meeting Yasu-senpai, my grandparents even told me that they were happy, I was back to my previous self and could deal with the stress of my job. I even decided to connect with my friends again, which I had not done ever since starting training to become a Hero.

He was very friendly always making quips and making stupid jokes. His sense of humour needed work, his jokes were always completely inappropriate and morbid. He took his job of teaching me very seriously, constantly showing me how to do things or giving me advice.

He gently corrected any mistakes and only berated me when something had gone terribly wrong. He was very considerate as well, ever since I was staying longer and longer in his house. He had placed a small bed in his study for me, the bath was stocked with more feminine products, he bought and cooked things which were to my taste often and even made coffee just like I preferred.

He didn't even mention any of those things and laughed it off when I asked him about them, saying that it was obvious to make my stay comfortable when I spent so much time in his house and that they were only very minor things in the first place.

He was right, they were minor but how many people would actually do it for a junior from your workplace. When I mentioned it to my friends, they were certain he was trying to get into my pants.

I too thought of that at first, but nothing happened while I was psyching myself up for rejecting him. He continued working for months and made no moves and then I realised, what he said was just the truth. He really didn't have any other motives than making me comfortable.

One more weird thing about him, he was completely open and honest almost all the time, speaking his mind about all sorts of things, though I knew he was a good liar as well. I had seen him do it multiple times, no one ever noticed when he lied. My eyesight which was enhanced with my quirk was the only reason, I even noticed anything and I still missed it many times.

When he didn't want to tell me something, he was always blunt about it. Telling me, he won't say anything and no matter how I tried, he would keep his mouth shut and deflect to other topics. It was very irritating, because he would sometimes get a far away look in his eyes as though he was seeing a different world from me.

To be honest, I never even realised when I was actually developing a crush. I thought, he was even scary sometimes, when he was killing someone or doing an interrogation, it was like his personality slipped, his demeanour became sharp and cruel with his eyes becoming almost emotionless.

But I know he is still the same senpai as before. I remember how he comforted me after our first mission together and was worried about me when we tortured that man. So, I figured it out, the senpai on missions was a result of his days in the slums. Where he did whatever, he could to survive and saw absolutely terrible things happening, he was always brutally honest about what his life was in the slums as though it was nothing worth mentioning.

But, senpai didn't realise that his view of the world was a little twisted, not that there was anything wrong with that. He was still kind and considerate but he just had an edge which many others lacked. Others who spoke to him, knew about that edge but senpai seemed to think nothing of it, if he even noticed his strange behaviour at those times.

Senpai was a good person and a great hero, hearing about HPSC suppressing his rank to ensure he could operate without causing much ruckus was a bitter pill to swallow. Everybody in today's society though the same way, heroes would save people and defeat people, in return they would receive fame and fortune even though that shouldn't have been the goal of their actions.

I too wanted a little bit of that when I started my training, I wanted to help people but getting a little money and fans wasn't that bad right? Yasu-senpai completely destroyed my views on that, he didn't care about fame at all and he was perfectly satisfied with the money given to him by the HPSC. In fact, I am sure I earned at least 4 times more than him from advertising, modelling, selling merchandise and other things. The salary given by the HPSC was just a nice supplement by now.

He was like one of those heroes from the Age of Chaos, when society was on the brink of collapse and the government was frantically putting out fires. A hero who couldn't watch the world around them burn and decided to fight just because it was the right thing to do. They didn't receive any money or influence for their actions, just fighting for the good of the people.

Yasu senpai was just like that, I could feel my opinion about heroes change a little. Everybody was doing good and it was not wrong to reap the rewards of their actions but people like Yasu-senpai and Detective Yamato who worked in the dark without asking for any recognition were the true heroes in my eyes.

I saw Yasu-senpai coming towards me holding a long case which he used to carry his rifle. I was puzzled by that, he only used it sparingly when my quirk was just better at the job.

He looked as cool as usual, with his smart suit, a trench coat all coordinated with a neatly tied tie and a hat on his head. His shoes which looked like normal leather shoes were actually a support item which was actually comfortable to run, walk and jump in and allowed to put on a burst of speed when required.

He removed his hat and slicked his white hair back with two bangs framing either side of his face. I saw his sharp eyes scan the café when he looked at me his eyes softened and a smile broke out on his face changing his entire demeanour in an instant. His blue eye crinkling because of his smile, looked like shining sapphires, his face even with the small scars and nicks he had got because of his missions or his childhood struggles just improved his looks turning a somewhat handsome face into a much more handsome one when taken all together.

I saw, the waitress and other girls in the café along with one guy appraising him from the corner of their eyes, after all he looked amazingly dapper. I couldn't help but feel a little bit hot with an annoying twinge of jealousy sprouting seeing those looks.

Senpai as usual ignored all those looks and walked towards me with small steps, he smiled and sat down before gesturing to the waiter to take his order.

I saw the waiter being pushed back and a waitress take his place instead, senpai just smiled seeing that and looked to me,

"Kaina, great to see you. I wanted to talk about today's mission but why don't we grab something to eat before getting into work."

Kaina and I placed our orders from a waitress who was stealing glances at me. I felt satisfied that my training was paying off, fashion sense, haircuts, clothing and overall body language along with a body trained for hero work worked extremely well at making me a desirable person and certainly helped me when I needed to seduce people. Though, I might have been a little stupid to train this skill so seriously because I had only actually seduced a target 2 times and one time was just a test given to me by my instructor.

Well, better to have the skill than not. The food was eaten while we were making small talk and I felt a little better as I had been feeling a bit peckish. There was one more reason, as it was a sensitive topic better to have full bellies and a good mood before ruining the day with talking about the mission.

I assessed Kaina, she must have been paying attention to my casual advice about how to distract targets using her feminine wiles. As a beautiful woman, she already had a huge advantage compared to me who had to work hard to look good. She seemed in a pleasant mood and was even humming a soft tune while eating the dessert. Good, dessert always puts people in a good mood.

I waited for her to finish politely and when she was done and the waitress cleared the table while bending a little too much with a very unprofessional way of wearing the uniform. I ignored her, while looking to Kaina and speaking, "Well, I am sure you are puzzled about my case. Since, I hardly ever use it."

She seemed pleased about something as she smirked at the waitress, but nodded at me agreeing with me.

"The mission is already complete. The target is terminated and everything is dealt with."

That put a look shock on her face as she had her mouth open, "Why did you complete it already, senpai? I thought we could work together after some time."

I smiled at her complaint, "Couldn't be that I just wanted to talk to my co-worker and wanted to spend some time together.

Her smile became even wider while blushing, I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed this was such an obvious weakness some man could totally use against her, if some light flirting caused her to become like this. I wonder what would happen, if it was someone more aggressive and smoother than me.

"Anyway," I said as I pulled out a paper from my suit and pushed it towards her, "This was the target."

She became serious instantly and grabbed the paper, "Black Chess, Pro Hero rank 76." She raised her eyebrows, "What did he do then?"

I looked at her seriously, "He was making political statements with views similar to Destro. Moderate views but they were too similar to Destro's manifesto."

She looked at me and then at the paper, reading through it and then she put it down and looked me in the eye with a serious look, "What aren't you telling me? What did he do rape, kidnapping, drug dealing?"

I sighed expecting this reaction and firmly said, "That's all he did."

I saw her puzzling through my words before slapping the table with so much force, "What how can that be possible?" Her volume was quite high and others were looking at us.

She noticed and removed her hands off the table and spoke softly, "Senpai, how can he even be considered a target? The HPSC doesn't care about heroes making political statements."

I wryly smiled at her naivety, she had seen the dark side of the world but she hadn't seen the true depths of the abyss, "The HPSC doesn't care only if the political statements don't cause any damage to the perception of the current Heroic society," I tapped the paper, "Black Chess was espousing the political ideals of a villain."

In the background, I could hear the volume of the TV pick up and the chatter of the café fall down,

Kaina looked at me with a complicated face, so I continued, "Kaina, I have told you the HPSC is the crutch to the current way of life. They will do whatever it takes to ensure the society continues as normal. This mission is part of that objective, Black Chess was a good hero and a good hero. I have investigated him carefully; he was a truly model hero and citizen. If he had been a little less smart and little less willing to speak his mind, he would have been the poster child of the HPSC just like other heroes."

The news was reporting about the death of Black Chess in the background, I could hear the shocks and exclamations of the crowd, their outrage palatable. Black Chess was beloved by the people of Osaka and many looked up to him, listened to him and praised him, that just made his death come faster.

I leaned back in my chair, "That's why I didn't take you on this mission. You are not ready for it. The HPSC will eventually give you similar missions, I hope my training and methods will help you in coping with it. As such, I have submitted my report to the superiors asking for you to go solo. Lady Nagant is not a sidekick of some bottom tier Hero anymore but a Pro Hero who can take on anything and everything. I have faith, you will do well."

I smiled and patted her shoulder, "Don't worry, if you want advice or some help. I am just a phone call away."

Kaina was stock-still, I could hear her breathing becoming shallow and fast, this is bad I didn't my asking her to go solo would cause such a reaction. Or maybe it was Black Chess.

I should submit a supplementary report noting this down, she can't seem to do these kinds of missions maybe they should lean her into it instead.

I nodded and decided to do that after all, I looked after her for so long, what's wrong with helping her out.

I patted her shoulder, "Kaina, it seems like you need some time to process this. So, I will head home. Like I said, if you need any help, let me know."

I stood up putting on my trench coat and hat moving out of the café after placing the money on the table. I could her the mutterings as the news continued showing interviews of Black Chess' parents, classmates, colleagues, neighbours and friends. Some were crying, others looked angry and some looked like they couldn't believe what was happening, I just looked at it and turned around and walked away. The final thought I had was that this was just one more body sacrificed on the altar of this dysfunctional society, Black Chess would have had a brighter, happier and much longer life if he lived in the society whose ideals he was espousing.

As I continued walking, I threw that thought away and mused about what to buy for dinner today.

Kaina watched the back of Yasu walk away from her, as she looked at his back.

A memory came to the forefront of her mind,

Yasu looked at her and smiled deprecatingly,

"I am a good hero, Kaina but that doesn't mean I am a good person."