Futaba's Palace broke Izuku's heart. He was so, so touched by her decision to let them help her, but… there was the bolder. And now, they were trying to track down a thief that had stolen something of hers. Morgana had mentioned that Futaba didn't seem to have much control over her cognitive world, but what if that wasn't it? What if this thief was how Futaba saw them, as someone to pilfer and plunder her talents without care?

Izuku spied down at the thief who stole from Futaba. "He turned right, then went up one row," he reported into his phone. Their vantage point on a roof let them see the entire town and its maze of alleyways. Despite the awning above their heads, the sun baked the beige stone and Izuku wished he could have joined the front squad.

"Copy that," Nijima said, and the phone went silent.

Izuku sighed as he watched the Morgana bus try to sneak up on the cognition. He was in the back-up group; while Akira, Morgana, Kitagawa, and Nijima tried to ambush the thief, he was up on the rooftop with Sakamoto and Takamaki. They called out where the cognition ran off to and took down any Shadows that popped up.

Fighting Shadows was… an experience. Fighting with his bo-staff and sniper rifle was easy enough—apparently everyone instinctually knew how to use their weapons of choice, which was nice—but his persona… Seigiichi was powerful. Too powerful, like he was trying to fit a long rifle bullet into a hand gun. Only he managed to still fire despite the mismatch of sizes and he felt the shot scrapping down the inside of his bones— The metaphor got away from him. The point was, Izuku couldn't use his persona's abilities more than a few times without running out of energy.

Akira had mentioned it on the drive over to the town. Everyone in the group had an "element" their persona specialized in—except for Akira, who had multiple personas—and Izuku specialized in Almighty, which nothing was weak to, but nothing blocked it either. Almighty attacks took a lot of energy to use though, and Akira was worried that Izuku would get too exhausted too quickly if he was on the front lines too often. Izuku wanted to point out that he was often exhausted in every day life, but he figured it wouldn't gain him many points.

Together, they watched the Morgana bus chase the thief back into a clearing and run the shadow down, causing it to burst into an enemy. "Yeah!" Sakamoto screamed from the rooftop. "Kick its ass, Joker!"

"Joker?"

Takamaki tossed out a quick cheer as well before turning to Izuku. "Yeah, it's Akira's codename. We use them in the Metaverse. It totally makes it feel like we're real phantom thieves."

"Yeah," Sakamoto nodded. "Mine's Skull. Ain't it cool?"

"Yeah. What's everyone else's?"

"Well, I'm Panther. Joker's Joker, Morgana's Mona, Yusuke's Fox, and Makoto's Queen!"

So it was like a hero name… "I won't need one, then. Since this will be my only heist with you all."

"What?" Sakamoto whirled back around to Izuku. "No way, man! Codenames are the best! We'll come up with a cool one for you, don't worry!"

"That's really not necessary…"

"No problem, man, it's fun!" Sakamoto studied him and Izuku squirmed. "With your gun… what about Sniper? That sounds cool."

Izuku made a face. "Pass. It sounds too close to Pro-Hero Snipe's name."

"With the hat, you kinda look like him though… Oh, but what about Hunter!" He nudged Panther. "Doesn't he look like a Hunter?"

"I'm not going to be able to talk you guys out of this, am I?" Izuku asked, resigned.

"Nope! And I can't really see him as a Hunter. But what about Hiro? Since you want to be a pro hero!"

"Yeah, but then he'd get too confused every time someone talked about heroes around him."

"And it sounds too close to an actual name," Izuku agreed. "Plus, everyone else has an English name. It wouldn't match… How did you decide on your names?"

"Mostly by appearance," Skull confessed. "Though Mona's based on his name, and Joker's like our ace."

Izuku looked down at his clothes. The only thing that came to mind was, "Cowboy…" Both phantom thieves grimaced. "Yeah, I thought it was bad the moment it left my mouth."

Panther leaned back on a wooden pole for the awning. "You know, with the gears and the decoration on your hat, you've got kind of a steampunk look. I modeled it once for an alternative magazine and you could pull it off."

Steampunk, huh…? Izuku fiddled with the gears on his lapel. He liked the sound of that. Or at least, he liked, "Punk."

"Huh?"

"My codename." He locked eyes with Skull, then Panther, and smirked. "It's Punk."