Izuku smiled to himself as he walked through the halls of Beacon, a handful of books stacked in his arms as he walked along heading back to his dorm room. The day's classes had been pretty exciting, in his opinion! Port had gone over some of the more interesting facts on the more common Grimm that they all would be encountering, he actually hadn't really been aware of the fact that Nevermore feathers 'actually' stuck around after the Nevermore itself died, he always just figured that 'Nevermore cloaks' were a nickname given to Dust treated cloaks, Doctor Oobleck had gone over some of the more interesting early history about Vale which he hadn't been all too aware of and everyone else had been a bit of a blast to get in with class too! Izuku knew, there were some days where he just had to take a step back and consider his situation; Izuku, a Broken Soul, had somehow gotten lucky enough to come to Beacon, the Greatest Hunter's Academy in the entire world! He smiled as he practically shook again at that thought; it made him want to pinch himself to make sure that, why yes, he still wasn't just dreaming.
Izuku was just so lucky to be here that he couldn't believe it sometimes.
"Oi!" Izuku suddenly froze in place, his body 'immediately' halting mid step as he heard an all too familiar voice call to him in an all too familiar tone. His blood practically froze over as his head slowly swiveled around in place so that he was looking down the hall he heard the voice. Sure enough, a ways down the hall was Bakugo, decked out in his more battle-ready Hunter's attire, his weapons firmly placed on his hands, admittedly mechashifted down into their less inconspicuous 'inactive' state, as he glared right at Izuku, his red eyes boring a hole into his head. "Stay right there Deku!" Immediately upon saying that Bakugo sprinted toward him and Izuku just couldn't help but internally scream.
...Maybe he externally screamed too.
'Okay so maybe I'm not 'always' so lucky!'
'I could probably outrun Kacchan pretty easily with Full Cowl now and, judging by the look on his face, Kacchan is seriously pissed off right now and that 'probably' means I shouldn't be standing here right now. Oh Gods, is he finally going to try to get back at me for that fight way back when!? Oh he's gonna cream me! I got to run or, no wait, he'd just hunt me down and make the beating worse-AAAAHHHH!'
Izuku put his books down while Bakugo approached, intent on at least standing his ground if nothing else. As Bakugo closed the distance Izuku winced as he threw his hand forward and...
... Pointed at Izuku.
"Get your shit Deku, we're going to Vale!"
...
"Huh?" Izuku practically deflated, some of that stress having just immediately left his body as Bakugo spoke, the explosive young Huntsman in front of him gritting his teeth as he looked at Izuku.
"What, you got shit in your ears, Deku?! I said we're going to Vale now get your Goddamn weapon and whatever else and let's get going. We don't have time to waste." Bakugo insisted, causing Izuku to just tilt his head in confusion as he stared after Kacchan.
"... Okay, but, why? I mean, Kacchan, school's out for the day sure but should we really be taking a daytrip to Vale-"
"This isn't just about some shitty daytrip to Vale, Deku!" A sudden explosion of energy went through
Bakugo as he bellowed that out, causing Izuku to scream a bit as Bakugo just grit his teeth. "There's this mute little girl we have to find in Vale and quick!" With that, Bakugo looked down at Izuku's books and grit his teeth, reaching and down and picking up a good number of them as he glared at him. "Get a move on Deku!" With that Bakugo started to quickly move to, going in the direction of where their dorm was generally, as he just blinked in surprise.
"Wait, a mute little girl? Gods Kacchan, is she in trouble or something!?" As Izuku quickly picked up his books, having picked up on Kacchan's intent on getting rid of them quickly before arming up himself, Izuku ran after him.
"YOU BET SHE'S IN FUCKING TROUBLE, BECAUSE I'M GOING TO KICK HER ASS!"
...
"WHAT?!"
xXxXxXxXxXx
"Then that little bitch ran off with Roman fucking Torchwick of all people and that was the last I saw of her. Now, got any more questions or can we actually get on with this?!"
"... No, that... that does sound like a big deal, Kacchan... I mean, not all of it like your belt, but that last part, yeah."
The two had managed to dump their books in Izuku's dorm room, thankfully while the rest of Izuku's team was out and about doing their own things for today, before running off to the rocket lockers to pick up his own gear. The entire way there Bakugo had been giving him the rundown of the situation: about that ice cream eating competition that Bakugo usually took part in during the Hunter's Day Festival, no surprise that he won again this year, to the look and appearance of this 'mute little bitch' as Bakugo referred to her, to the fight that took place in the alley to... well, her somehow actually 'stealing' the belt off around his waist and walking away with 'The' Roman Torchwick of all people.
The guy who in a few years flat had managed to go from some local con regularly on the police's radar to a crime boss of Vale, with his fingers in a lot of the pies of Vale's crime going on these days. His most recent exploits, a series of rash nighttime Dust Robberies, having most recently grabbed everyone's attention as he's hit store after store after store with no one having managed to catch him or most of his goons. What goons they did catch could never give them great information on either Torchwick's plans or his base of operations, having either been hired third party or having been kept low on the totem pole of information. The guy wasn't a joke and, if this girl really was working so close with him to be 'there' in Mountain Glenn 'with him' then that just meant she must've been a big deal in and of herself...
'Gods,' Izuku shivered slightly as he quickly slipped on Emerald Gusts' boots. A guy like Roman Torchwick was in Mountain Glenn while it was celebrating Hunters, including the Greatest Hunter of all time, and he'd gotten in and out without 'anyone' noticing him. That was no mean feat and yet he somehow accomplished it.
"Tch, maybe not, but I'm still getting that fucking belt off that mute little bitch. First things first, we find her, then I beat the ever loving shit out of her smug ass, then we get the belt, then we turn her over. She doesn't look like some small-time toady so she's bound to know something more about that shithead than those grunts that the cops have been pulling in and wasting their Goddamn time with!" A grin formed on Bakugo's face as he thought over the plot, slamming his fist into his open palm as a cloud of black smoke exploded out from the contact thanks to his Semblance. "It'll be a good day all around. I'll get my belt, I'll kick some ass and we'll get some credit and actually make some fucking progress on this. Show these people why Hunters are the top dogs." With that, Bakugo turned to Izuku, his face evening out into just a normal frown as he watched his rival. "Oi, you almost done?"
"Yeah just give me a second, Emerald Gust doesn't really Mechashift into something small so I have to put the whole thing on at once." Izuku slipped on a gauntlet as he spoke, his mind going a mile a minute. "Kacchan, are you sure this is a smart idea? I mean, I get it, you don't want anyone else to know about your participation in the eating contest but... well, I mean, if you're right about how deep in this girl might be with Roman Torchwick, that has to mean she's a pretty dangerous criminal right? Shouldn't we bring some more help to try to make sure this goes alright? I mean, at the very least we should tell the police so they can back us up, maybe use numbers to try and track this girl down!" At that, Bakugo snorted as he looked Izuku's way.
"First off, even if I wasn't about to let anyone else know about that fucking belt, I still wouldn't drag anyone else's ass along with this!" Izuku flinched a bit at that as Bakugo crossed his arms. "We're going to be tracking down someone who along with her fruit of a boss has managed to elude police searches for upwards of three fucking years now, Deku. Think about that; if you want to grant that the police haven't been lazy fucks who've been sitting on their fat asses and not doing their job, that means that Roman and his main group have eluded a search by sheer fucking numbers for all that fuckin' time. If we get the police involved with it, guarantee that those assholes are just gonna stomp around and probably scare that little bitch right fucking off." Bakugo just grinned as he tapped his head. "But she's a cocky mute who can fight half decent, I'll give her that. If it's just a small group and we find and sneak up on her, then we might just get her to stick around because she'll think she can take me on."
...
Okay, that wasn't unfair. Actually, not even talking about it being unfair, that wasn't even technically wrong. The police 'had' been having a lot of trouble finding Roman Torchwick, or any of his actually well connected goons, in all the time he'd been an active threat to the City of Vale and its people. If all it was going to take to find them was sheer numbers, yeah, the police would've done it themselves ages ago. Kacchan was right; smaller numbers that knew what they were looking for probably had a better chance of spotting this girl out in a crowd and following her. Even if you two were spotted, if this girl was of the demeanor Bakugo described, she might not necessarily find two Huntsmen-in-Training to be any kind of a big deal and would probably not run off. It probably was the best chance to find her... still...
"Okay, but... well, why just the two of us? Maybe we should get some of our other friends to come along-"
"NOT A CHANCE IN HELL, DEKU!"
"AAAAAAAH!"
Bakugo heaved an annoyed sigh as he gritted his teeth. "Even if this wasn't partially about that fuckin' belt, who are we honestly going to bring along that'd wouldn't be a big draw on attention to get people to notice our group faster? Your partner or the Ice Queen? Yeah, I'm sure walking around with fuckin' Pyrrha Nikos or the Goddamn Schnee Heiress is going to keep us inconspicuous? Tenya would just rat out the entire situation to the authorities thanks to that fuckin' stick up his ass and the blonde bimbo would probably raise a racket about this shit too..." Bakugo grit his teeth as he put his hands in his pockets. "I'm 'not' letting my team know about this shit either. Icy-Hot has the same problem as the Ice Queen when it comes to his fuckin' name preceding him, Ren'd just be immediately useless actually going into a fight with this bitch and Red? Shit, I group her up with that loudmouth on your team in that regard, Deku."
'... Yeah. Okay, I can see it. Ruby and Nora 'would' go along with this and they'd be totally fine with not telling anyone, feeling like this was a legit Hunter mission they were doing to help the City of Vale. They'd be excited and ready to do whatever they could... but they'd probably be really ready to go off at a moment's notice. Nora would 'really' want to break some legs during their detective investigation, after all. Ruby probably wouldn't be that to the same degree but it wouldn't be hard to notice a girl in a red hood buzzing about the streets.'
"Well what about Blake and Tsuyu? They're both really good at tracking and sneaking around from what I've heard and... well, I'm not sure about Tsuyu, but Blake wouldn't say anything and I'm pretty sure she'd be willing to help." Izuku watched as Bakugo's brow furrowed.
"Deku, the more people I drag along on this little show, the more of a chance that bitch has to catch us out! More than that, the more people we have along, the more she'll probably look at it as a fight not worth fuckin' sticking around for! Now I'm already taking a big enough chance asking you along in that regard, but... fuck, I..." Bakugo seemed to actually be in some small amount of internal pain having to say it, but he forced his way through it. "... I need someone to help look for her..." He 'very' pointedly didn't say he needed Izuku's help, but even still our hero's eyes bugged out a bit. "As much as a small group has a better chance, there's no way one set of fucking eyes has that same chance. I need some numbers... and you're the asshole who actually knows about my belt 'and' might be able to help in this regard. Simple fuckin' fact of reality is four eyes are better, but that's 'it'! No one else is going to risk this and no one else is gonna know about this!'
"Now... that isn't to say I have to bring you along! If you're going to be a pain in the ass about this then I can go by myself and deal with this. I'm just asking you because it'd make it easier. So, are you onboard or not, Deku?!"
...
'Well, I really wouldn't be here right now if I wasn't onboard to some degree or another, right?'
"Alright Kacchan, I'm onboard... I'll help you find this girl." With that, Bakugo's expression evened out slightly as he nodded.
"Good. Now come on, you're geared up, we can get moving." With that, Kacchan immediately turned on his heels, while Izuku just looked down at his pocket which housed his Scroll. It was funny; he hadn't even brought up the idea of bringing on a more experienced Hunter. Probably because he was well aware that any sign of any of the higher tier Hunters he knew would immediately scare this girl off and also because... well, Izuku guessed he was like Ruby and Nora in that regard. As much sense as there was in the idea, there was a part of you that was excited over the prospect of doing something like this, not just as Hunter-in-Training but as an actual Huntsman.
'Still, maybe it might be a good idea to call up some help, I mean, Kacchan seemed to think this girl might be dangerous...but he'd also get really mad, especially if whoever I asked causes the girl to bolt…'
"Oi, Deku!" Izuku snapped from his thoughts as Bakugo called to him, taking one last moment to look down at his pocket before shaking his head.
"Sorry Kacchan, let's go!" Izuku immediately sprinted off after Kacchan, the pair of them making their way to the air docks.
'As much as I might want back up for safety reasons...Kacchan is right. If we want to find this girl, and maybe help take down Roman Torchwick, we can't possible risk alerting her to us. Plus…' he looked over at Bakugo, who was sprinting faster towards the air docks, 'Kacchan is trusting me with something...for the first time in such a long time. I can't just betray that trust, even if I would feel safer with Pyrrha or Yang or Blake to back us up.'
…
'Besides,' Izuku almost felt himself chuckle as he unconsciously began to race with the classmate in front of him, 'this feels like when we were kids, and Kacchan lead me on a half hundred adventures into the unknown.'
'It's honestly kind of nostalgic.'
xXxXxXxXxXx
"Alright, we're here." Bakugo's gruff tone was immediately met by a slight shake of the craft as the airbus came to a halt, the doors quickly sliding open as the pair made their way out of the vehicle. Unlike with getting to the vehicle itself, the exit for the both of them was more even and slow. A silent agreement that rushing out with their weapons and gear on likely would end up drawing attention and so playing it at a slower tilt was worth it if only to not bring attention to the both of them. On the other hand, they both knew there was another good reason for them to play this initial part slow and steady.
"So, what's the plan for actually finding her, Kacchan?" Izuku started off, Bakugo having just frowned a bit as he looked around.
"That's what we're gonna start figuring out. Vale isn't exactly a small bit of turf; lots of places for that little pink and brown midget to be hiding. If we're gonna track her down, we're going to need to think about where she could be..."
Izuku brought a hand to his chin as he took a moment to think of what might help here. Unlike a lot of other situations, he actually knew a few things about his target thanks to Bakugo's run in with her. In a lot of search and arrest cases that Hunters or the police took part in, they'd have to make guesses, build a random profile based upon what type of people were more likely to commit a crime. However, in this case Izuku actually knew a few things about her. Not a lot, certainly not a lot, but things about her that would help in...
"We can try to narrow down where she might be by building a profile on her, like Professor Aizawa talked about. Put together what we know about her and then use that to try to pinpoint where she's most likely to be." Izuku lightly tapped his fist into his open palm as he suggested this, Bakugo just nodding as he looked around at the city's skyline.
"Yeah, that sounds about right. If we don't narrow it down we'll be spending all day with our thumbs up our asses while we try to fuckin' scan through the entire Goddamn city. Pull up a fuckin' map Deku, let's see what we got here." Izuku nodded as he reached into his pocket, digging out his Scroll as he brought it up. Izuku quickly tapped a few buttons and, eventually, he was able to bring up a map of Vale... well, half of one, anyway. He'd need to scroll back and forth on the map in order to see the entire thing as his Scroll didn't quite support the hologram functionality that the more high-end ones did. Just a screen for him to look at.
"Shit, school issue sucks ass..." Bakugo grumbled underneath his breath, annoyed but clearly in the same camp as Izuku was as they both looked down at the map, going back and forth over it as they both tried to take in as many details about it as they could.
"So, how do we start narrowing this down?" Izuku started off, placing his finger against his lips as he lightly tapped against them, Izuku's thoughts whirring as Bakugo looked down at the map along with Izuku.
"Let's start by nixing the Agricultural District altogether. Crimes in that area have been pretty few and far between when compared to the big fuckin' wave that's been crashing against most of Vale, so I doubt they're spending most of their time down there." Izuku nodded; reports of crimes coming out of the agricultural district had been few and far between, mostly there's just been a few vagrants who've been holding up in a few buildings that have been abandoned now that the City of Vale has been looking at expanding the agricultural district outside the walls into more valuable land. Aside from a few pockets here and there, most of the agricultural land inside the walls was pretty poor, if all were being honest, after all.
"Alright, that sounds sensible enough... for that same reason, I think knocking off the Upper Class Residential Area is also a good idea. It's gotten hit once or twice but with a lot of the really good cops in Vale concentrated there after those hits, I doubt anyone connected to Torchwick would want to hang around there." Indeed, while the city had 'districts' specialized in stuff, Residential and Commercial usually mixed. There were apartments in the Commercial District that people lived in and, likewise, there were stores in the Residential Districts. The Dust Stores that had been hit in the upper class area had gotten the attention of the police as they had been the suppliers of some of the more pure, more expensive material, which had drawn a lot of police presence into the area. It'd worked in so far as no more hits occurred there but... well, it limited the police's grasp in other districts.
"So with the fuckin' obvious out of the way, let's try and figure out if we can narrow down the rest..." Bakugo growled a bit as he looked down at the screen while Izuku nodded in agreement.
"Alright well... let's start with something obvious then" Izuku quickly tapped away on his Scroll, bringing up other tabs and pages that related to the Vale Police Department announcements and statistics. "You said she really seemed to enjoy fighting those guys right? Well if she's a criminal then she probably wouldn't have much of a gripe about getting into those kinds of fights whenever she'd want, especially if she's working for Roman Torchwick. Considering that she was able to get into Mountain Glenn in the first place just to take part in an eating competition, I don't think we have to stretch our imagination to believe that she'd be able to sneak around and do this kind of stuff." Kacchan nodded as he rubbed at his chin.
"Makes sense. I'm guessin' you're going to be looking to see what we can pull up off of the VPD's public statements and files, see what kind of conclusion we can add to the map." Izuku nodded his head in affirmation as he and Bakugo quickly scanned over the data, picking out this or that detail and going back to add it to the image of the map he'd downloaded onto his phone.
"Shit, can't really make heads or tails of this without some fuckin' computer up at the school..." Bakugo uttered as he impatiently tapped his fingers against his arms, grinding his teeth together slightly as he looked over all the data before the pair. Izuku did much the same as him... only his eyes were zooming across the screen as he quickly took in information and then recorded it against the map that he had downloaded using a simple painting program on the Scroll. Thanks to his time spent researching and trying to learn as much as he could, being so thorough in his notes and so thorough with whatever information he could gather, Izuku actually found it to be much easier than he might've otherwise expected. So much so that Izuku was quickly opening up entire charts and spreadsheets that the Police Department made available to the public in the past year to get their information. It was a lot, but by putting it all together you eventually...
"Got it." Izuku presented the map to Kacchan again, the explosive Huntsman-in-Training just giving him a quick grunt as they both poured over the map again. "So when I was looking this over I was ordinarily just plopping down a whole bunch of red spots across the map. While the Police Department hasn't officially cordoned off any areas yet, there are locations that they've referred to as... well, trouble spots where it might not be a good idea for people to linger around in just in case. Places where there were a lot of the violent crimes we were talking about in some excess... but I realized that might end up giving us too wide of a berth as it included 'a lot' of the violent crimes and I doubt that this mute girl is involved in any domestic disputes..." Bakugo gave a short laugh as he shook his head.
"Not unless she's the one beating the shit out of some dumb bastard." Izuku nodded his head as he brought up a spreadsheet.
"So I took a look at some more specific records the police have made available for the past year and used that to try and get a better idea of what the actual crimes concerning these areas are. I've even color coded them a bit. Purple are the aforementioned domestics, yellows are usually assault charges that are paired up with drunk and disorderly charges so no surprise they're taking place in areas majorly surrounding bars... and I left the red as charges of assault that take place in and around area where there are high reports of various robberies, although these days that mostly means Dust Store robberies... so no points for guessing what major store, or stores, are in the areas where the red is most apparent." Bakugo quirked his brow a bit, looking over at Izuku with a frown.
"Alright but that's looking like that's all the colors you've used, Deku. Why the fuck not include something specifically for assaults since that's what we're looking for." Bakugo seemed slightly aggravated at that, Izuku just frowned a bit himself as he pointed down at the map.
"I tried but, no surprise, most assault charges in the City of Vale already occur in these areas I've colored. Most other assault charges that take place outside of them are pretty well scattered, kind of like the domestics, so we really can't get much out of them. The only reason I included the domestics specifically is because otherwise this area down here-" Izuku quickly point toward a spot in the residential area where there are large clusters of the purple marks right next to a red blotch, "-would've ended up creating just a big red blotch across the entire area if I just funneled it all into one group, which might've been pretty distracting."
"That's one of those fuckin' slums, isn't it?"
"W-Well the police just refer to it as a poor neighborhood but, yeah, I guess..." Izuku sheepishly scratch at the head before continuing. "Anyway, given that the vast majority of reported assaults are taking place in these areas already, it seemed to fit our bill better. Where better to get your kicks if you want to fight than to do so in an area that the police have already pretty well plastered over with a broad brush and just said to not try and go to, right?"
"Fair enough... alright Deku this does narrow down our places to look..." He didn't follow it up with a good job or a nice work, but Izuku got the feeling that it was somewhere in the intent.
"Alright, next most obvious... ice cream places." Izuku nodded, already tapping away at the Scroll. "That cocky little bitch obviously loves the stuff, so I wouldn't be surprised that we might be able to narrow a few things down just by finding locations where we've got ice cream shops here in the city." Izuku nodded again as he quickly pulled up search after search. Honestly, compared to the last point, this was 'really' easy to research for him; CCT searches on popular spots around Vale for ice cream, or even just 'ice cream shops' brought up dozens upon dozens, if not hundreds, of results across the city, as a very large metropolitan area like Vale would have hundreds of shops in it to help sate whatever the millions of people living in Vale might want. So at first he was a bit overwhelmed but then he quickly did his best to eliminate a few obvious dead ends; ice cream shops that are actually closed down, either due to having been in areas of high crime recently that caused the business to dry up in the area or just because the business itself went bust. Then there was narrowing it down based on 'popular' or particularly good or well reviewed destinations.
By the time he was done he had several spots on the map where there were either large concentrations of smaller ice cream shops competing with each other or particularly large and well of shops that have become popular or 'Best Ice Cream in Vale' click bait searches on the CCT. With them scattered through the map, Izuku was given even more data to work with.
"Alright, we're probably gonna have to decide ourselves which of these areas to favor on our own as... well, we can't exactly dig up much more data on this point than what we've got here on the map. Still, I'd say that this was probably a good idea to help narrow down where we might search. No surprise, there's pretty much no ice cream shops in the Industrial Sector."
"Pssht, yeah. Who the hell gets off work on their 9-5 job working in a fuckin' factory and goes 'you know what's really going to hit the spot, a fuckin' ice cream cone'. Nah, those guys are probably heading for some shitty dive bar or something'." Izuku nodded, as he moved on.
"Even if we didn't already discount the Upper Class District or the Agricultural District, they don't have a lot either. The Agricultural has one right next to most of the dairy farms and the Upper Class ones are real upscale places or are just restaurants known for their fancy deserts." Bakugo nodded as he both poured over the rest of the map.
"So you're saying we're probably looking at the Residential Area or the Commercial District, then?"
"That's what would make sense to me... but we should probably keep our minds open."
"Because we both know how sneaky this girl is. She managed to get into Mountain Glenn without tipping anyone off and part of that might be because not a lot of people know she might be working for Roman Torchwick. You said it yourself, she's a small mute girl who seems pretty unassuming at first glance." Well he didn't phrase it using language that was exactly that kind but for Izuku it was easy enough to translate Bakugo's diatribes at this point. "So we've got to keep in mind that whatever areas we might think of as being off limits for a criminal or where they might not usually tread, it might be open for her."
...
"Alright. Doesn't exactly help us narrow this shit down."
...
"Ah, right, sorry." 'Yeah... actually, thinking about it, that pretty much did the opposite, didn't it?'
Widening their potential area of looking over rather than narrowing it down to specific points. Hopefully he'd find a way to use this idea to help narrow it down once he combined it with the rest of his research, but for now it was kind of dead weight on its own.
"Alright, let's take a look at what we've got Deku." Bakugo grumbled out, clearly agitated by the amount of time it had taken to get all this, but still waiting to see it. Izuku nodded as he closed the rest of the windows and fully opened the map back up again, he and Bakugo looking over it together as they scrolled back and forth across the screen to take the entire thing in.
"Alright, so we've got what we were looking for... now, where do we start looking for this bitch..."
"Alright, I think we should start from the right of the Commercial District and then move west, going from shop to shop and then doing our best to keep an eye out for her as we go. We'll give a low priority to places where there's mostly just drunk and disorder calls and poke our heads around everywhere else. Chances are she's either in or around those places if she's not already doing a job for Torchwick. I think this'll give us the best chance of finding her, given what we know. Otherwise we'd just have to poke our head around every alley and that probably isn't going to work if she's on the move." Bakugo nodded his head at that, a slight smirk on his face as he looked out to Vale proper.
"Well, that sounds like a plan I can fuckin' get behind. Let's get going Deku, I can already feel my belt back around my waist... it's going to be almost as satisfying as putting my boot up her fuckin' ass." Bakugo started to stalk off toward the first location on the map as he just nodded, packing everything up.
"Good idea. I was thinking that while we were doing this we could also use the coupons you got from the contest with her. I mean, after all, those were some pretty good coupons and she'd be able to get a lot of use out of them, so those would be good places to check out."
"Yeah, good point." Bakugo grinned a bit as he brought out the coupons. "Hell, I was actually a little surprised when we got coupons to a place this good. I mean, there's, what, only a few of them in the entire city. Shit's fuckin' ritzy." Izuku nod in agreement; the guy who ran those ice cream shops was a retired Huntsman with some ice-themed Semblance and he put it to use in combination with some ice dust to make some of the best ice cream in the entirety of the city of Vale.
"I know right? I mean, there's so... few of them... throughout the city..."
... Slowly but surely Izuku and Bakugo stopped, the smirk on the latter's face and the smile on the former's dropping as they both take a moment to think over what they'd been saying these past few minutes.
The coupons.
The coupons that they had a copy of and that they knew this girl had.
Of one of the more exclusive ice cream shops in Vale.
"... Deku..."
"A-Already plugging it into the map..." Izuku quietly mumbled as he brought out his Scroll, tapping away at it as he plugged the data about the ice cream shop in question to eliminate the rest of the spots on the map. Slowly but surely Bakugo stomped over to Izuku, both of their eyes settling down on the screen as they watched the device in his hand go to work. After a quick 'ring', the map updated...
There were just several minutes where Izuku and Kacchan just stared at the screen, their eyes glued to it as they both just took it in for a moment. The crowd passed them by, with only a few people stopping to gawk at the two students who have now effectively just frozen in place, a slightly worried expression having graced Izuku's features while Kacchan, brow furrowed and his teeth grinding together, kept staring at the Scroll.
...
"AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHH! WE'RE SO FUCKING STUPID!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, I'M SORRY!"
"COME THE FUCK ON DEKU, WE'VE WASTED ENOUGH TIME AS IT IS!" Immediately Bakugo sprinted off, his anger having fueled his running while Izuku just as quickly took off after him, the two of them making a hasty run for the first destination on the map.
E/N: Cliffhanger! All that build-up and no payoff... I am not a nice person.
-Shovern
Sometimes, the thread would just wander into things that changed the dynamics of a part of the story. This was one where someone just remembered the coupon on a whim, and suggested it, and it was added late. By doing this...well, you'll see.
-Wind-Waker