Alright. Maybe he'd been wrong. That happened, from time to time. He'd just be certain as shit that Momo had been trying to signal she'd left something in the folder for him.
He'd gone through the folder more times than he was about to admit — and would've done it with a fine toothed comb if he was allowed one. As it was, he'd checked every margin. Read every line, in case she'd somehow snuck something into the text. He'd checked the back of every paper, double and triple checked if any pages were deliberately stuck together so she might have hidden something between the sheets. He looked for paper clips, pen springs, a file, anything, and fucking nothing. Even now he sat with the folder open on his cot, back against the cell wall, flipping through them again and getting more annoyed with every passing second. What if she'd done something supremely concealed? If she'd laid an anagram or something deeply cloaked? How the fuck was he going to find it then? Aizawa knew in this, Momo was far more intelligent than he.
The warden broke his attention, rapping a baton against the bars. Aizawa exhaled a slow, slow breath at the jarring ringing before raising his eyes.
"Shit hasn't changed in the last week, you might as well get it done," he said, tucking the baton away. "Just going to piss off the judge and prosecution if you wait until day twenty-nine to hand it back."
"Thanks," Aizawa drawled.
"You got two days left before your transfer, and it's just going to piss off your new babysitters, too, if I have to give them that unfinished with the rest of your shit."
"I can't imagine how annoying that would be." The warden's nostrils flared, and his hand went back to the baton. "They pay you extra to breathe down my neck about shit?"
"You talk a lot of shit for somebody's who's looking at the long drop. You make me keep track of those papers much longer, I'll make sure I get a seat to watch you swing."
Aizawa's muscles tensed and damn, he felt it. Wanted to grab the warden through the bars and make sure his nose was out of alignment if he had the balls to show up to the execution. It wasn't worth the solitary confinement. But he tempered it. He dumped sand on it to put it out. The warden was stalking away, and Aizawa exhaled through his nose. Not worth solitary.
He ignored the folder for a few more hours, until his patience had made a comeback and he was ready to try to look for Momo's clue again — but he conceded to knock out the first couple pages, to get the warden off his fucking back for a day. He twirled the pen in his fingers as he reviewed the information listed on the first page; name, date of birth. They wanted him to sign off on the bottom it was accurate and true. Whatever. Aizawa bit the cap of the pen between his teeth to yank it off, and began to scribble his signature.
The paper began melting in the pen's trail, smoking and spreading outward. Aizawa stood up fast, dropping the pen and paperwork spilling across the cell floor. He spit out the pen cap, gaping. Then he heard the warden's baton clicking across the bars as he headed back this way, and Aizawa knelt to begin picking up the papers. He didn't look up when he heard the warden's steps pause, and after a moment of inspection the man kept on his way.
His heart was hitting at a mile a minute as he got the papers back in order; a hole went clean through the entire first half of the stack, before he must've dropped it. Aizawa found the pen rolled under his bed and picked it up with two fingers, watching it with narrow eyes and it might as well have been a fucking viper. He sat down on his cot, and bent at the waist to press the felt tip to the floor. The cement dissolved under the contact, the acid eating away until it was the width of a straw and he couldn't even tell how deep. Now Aizawa found the cap and replaced it on the pen.
He shuffled the papers out of order, staggering them so the burnt-through papers weren't so fucking noticeable, and laid them in their folder under his cot. The pen stayed clipped to the collar of his prison jumpsuit, and the papers remained under the cot until his transfer came down.
Aizawa had the folder in hand as the officers walked him out past the rows of cells, and when they unlatched the gate the clock started ticking. He felt it counting down. The transport van was idling in the dirt behind the facility fence, a single police car sitting in front waiting to escort him — and was pleased. They were changing facilities because of his charges, not his quirk. They didn't think he was that cunning, that capable, that dangerous. He'd prove them wrong.