03/06/2023

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The Emperor's Dragon
Emergence 75 - Active Infestation

"That was interesting. That was so boring!" Twice whispered as soon as Himiko had disappeared with their probable boss in search of Kurogiri. In the silence of the warehouse, it was loud enough for them all to hear.

The kid had checked to see what they were doing but he'd obviously decided that they could listen in if they wanted. He couldn't possibly have thought he'd spoken quiet enough not to be heard.

"He's just a fucking kid!" Butterfly complained, flapping her wings in agitation.

Atsuhiro watched the display without comment. The kid, as she put it, had never made any issue of his age. They'd never asked his exact age but it wasn't hard to work out given his enrolment in UA and the uniform he wore. He was first year, so was 16. Was she really that surprised?

He'd been more impressed that the kid was taking the time to truly think about how to utilise their skills. During their question sessions, Atsuhiro had noted how the kid had phrased his questions about their quirks. He knew what they did and he had some idea of how to utilise them. At least theoretically. It remained to be seen how practical his plans would be. He'd actually told them why he was hesitating with the mission they'd agreed to. The first reason was sensible. The heroes were still desperately looking for them. The second was a bit more esoteric. He wanted to think of something that was one off so that if they did decide to leave, then his plans weren't thrown out by needing to learn about a new group. Atsuhiro knew that even if they left, the kid had the resources to get more villains in.

What he had to decide was if he wanted to help the kid…. If what the kid stood for was enough like what he wanted.

"He is," Dabi agreed with the woman. "But he has resources," the fire-quirk user pointed out.

That was true.

"But he's a kid!" Butterfly growled again. She shook her head. "He hasn't done anything. You heard him!"

They had and as Atsuhiro looked around, he realised they had all taken different things from the conversation the kid had with Himiko. The obvious thing was that Izuku hadn't meant to kill Shigaraki. He'd admitted that himself. But at the same time he wasn't whining about it. The kid accepted the fact that he had done it, and that he'd probably screwed up some plans. Atsuhiro approved of that. There was no point in crying about what couldn't be changed. And…

Atsuhiro nodded to himself. "We heard him," he confirmed for Butterfly.

"He's just gonna use us!" She complained.

That wasn't what Atsuhiro had heard. The kid had probably been distressed that he'd killed but he hadn't let that stop him. Himiko had somehow seen that he was unhappy but she had known him when he was younger. He'd accepted her offer to teach him. That told Atsuhiro that the boy knew his shortcomings, or at least, some of them and was prepared to work at fixing them. As Butterfly indicated he might use them but if he was learning to do what they already could, and if he was willing to lead, then it would only be for a short time.

"We are getting paid," Dabi pointed out.

That was the other thing. They hadn't been paid for the job Tomura had them do yet. They'd been interrupted by the Heroes before he could pay them. The kid, Izuku, had agreed to pay them but had requested that they wait until the heat died down. He'd even offered compensation for those days. Not a lot but enough that it wasn't a huge burden to stay here. Atsuhiro knew his own place would have been compromised. He looked around at the others.

He was pretty sure Dabi had some other reason to stay. The other villain had spoken to Izuku privately and had probably worked out an agreement. Except Dabi had never announced that he was staying with the kid so… Atsuhiro mentally shrugged. It could be a lot of things.

Twice… well, he would probably go with the majority of them. Butterfly was proving to be against the kid, or maybe it was she didn't want to work with someone so young? Whisper was quiet but Atsuhiro thought she was leaning towards staying. Her quirk wasn't that powerful but the kid had been impressed by it. Power wasn't always flashy.

And he… What did he want?

He took a breath to steady himself. He wanted to be known. He wanted recognition and he wanted… He had no particular animosity towards a specific hero but Atsuhiro knew he didn't like the system. He wanted that to change. His goals were allied with the kids. And… There were two ways the kid would go. He'd either go far. With the quirk he had and the resources he had, he could go very far. Of anyone that Atsuhiro knew in the underworld, Izuku was the best placed to actually make a change. That was a powerful pull towards him. But it wasn't a guarantee that Izuku would be able to pull off any plan. That was the other option for him. He failed. He'd be captured by the Heroes and incarcerated… Or worse.

Atsuhiro was aware that there were worse fates than simply being sent to Tartarus. Izuku, if caught- it was very easy to see him suffering that fate.

Which meant nothing to him. What did he care for the fate of one, young, just starting out villain? Nothing.

What he did care for was the fact that… The kid was probably the best chance of making changes. That's what he cared about.

Atsuhiro sighed to himself. That fact pretty much tied his hands. Especially if the kid was working on becoming better.

"He's just another arrogant little twat with some cash! As soon as it's safe I'm out," Butterfly announced.

Dabi just shrugged, which screamed to them all that he'd already made up his mind to say. "Up to you," he murmured.

"You still in for that mission?" Atsuhiro was surprised when Whisper spoke up to ask Butterfly.

"God no! The sooner I can get out, the better," the woman replied.

Whisper nodded, which still gave no hint of her decision.

"We all have to decide what is best for us," Atsuhiro spoke to the room.

"And getting out is the best," Butterfly announced.

"Only time will tell," he replied. It was the truth. It might be that the kid, for all that he was willing to learn with Himiko, would not be able to do it. That happened sometimes. Some people just could not kill. It might be that he liked it too much and that was just as dangerous! While he was inclined to stay, there were still reasons to leave.

He'd just have to see what happened. But then, he'd done that all his life, so in that, nothing had changed.

-ted-

Bokusen Shoko, not his real name, had read enough. He followed a number of forums but wasn't active on them. They were there to provide him with information. He knew when they blew up about one particular issue that it had to be important, and right at the moment, they were all harping on about a particular villain and one of his supposed, non-villain friends. He'd got the gist of the situations from the forums but he wasn't stupid. There were times when those forums blew up about the most trivial matter or when they just got it wrong. So Bokusen also made sure he followed several official news outlets and the official HPSC information release streams. Then he could correlate what the forums were yapping about, with what the officials were doing and either ignore the issue, because it was already being dealt with, or take the appropriate action.

Bokusen Shoko, not his real name, was one of Stain's followers. Stain had never heard about him, and had probably never even thought about what he was doing but if Stain ever learned of it, Bokusen was sure the great man would approve. Stain preached that the only true hero was All Might, and that was true. Bokusen was sure that there were others who were trying to be good heroes out there, but they were too constrained by rules to be able to show it. One thing Bokusen had noticed was that Stain never went after Rescue Heroes or Medical Heroes (the few that existed). They were true heroes but in an understated way. Bokusen was sure that of the patrol heroes, there were some who could be true heroes, if they could properly show it.

Most would then say that they couldn't show it because of the HPSC rules. That was the naive view. He'd thought that for a while. He'd even posted some fliers and material against the HPSC before he'd realised that it wasn't their fault. Not completely anyway. The HPSC existed to make sure that heroes weren't hurting the public. They provided appropriate licensing and defined what made a villain. The problem was that they didn't go far enough.

They defined villains and they left it at that. When you looked at the world, you realised that there was more than just heroes, villains and civilians. The hero industry actually served as a template there. Heroes had support in the form of their agency, support specialists, medics, sidekicks and all that. Villains had the same. Minions, equipment, gangs and sympathisers. The HPSC recognised those support structures, but they failed to classify and condemn them. They should. In classifying just villains, they were leaving the support structures in place. Heroes took out villains but without removing the support structures, more villains could simply take their place.

So that's what he did. He took out their support structures. Some people would call him a vigilante. He called himself a supporter of Stain. He wanted heroes to be true heroes, and so by removing the support structure of villains, he was removing the ability to create more villains, thus allowing heroes to focus on removing villains, and hopefully showing them that they could be true heroes.

His quirk allowed him to take people out, so long as he was quick. It was named Blow Dart because he could shoot a toxic dart at a target. The problem was the toxin. It was highly effective but wore off equally quickly. And so he couldn't just paralyse an entire room, or more than three to four people at the same time. By the time he got to the firth, the first ones were almost recovered. But it just meant he had to be creative. He did have a name in the industry. There were those who called him Edge Dart but… he didn't think of himself as that much.

The fact that he took action, also made him superior to the plebs and dweebs who infested the forums. So many of them were complaining about this villain lover but not one of them had the guts to do anything about them. They were all just… chafe that got in the way.

Still some of them were slightly useful. There was a poster on one of the forums who was in a group Bokusen thought of as useful. This particular poster gave the impression that they attended UA, except Bokusen knew that wasn't the case, not when they'd been posting like that for at least five years. Overlooking that, if the poster did go to UA, then they wouldn't be there for long. UA was work, and they wouldn't have time to post and if they did, then they'd be failing.

Bokusen didn't care about that. As far as he could tell the poster never said they went to UA, just let people believe that and they were useful. The information posted about UA was accurate, and that's what he cared about. This particular poster was also one of the first to mention the villain lover and the first couple of replies actually gave the name.

Ochaco Uraraka.

He'd looked her up. She was a former Hero Student, expelled from UA for… well the paperwork hadn't been publicly posted but it was said that she was expelled because she'd given information to villains. That made her an informant, but for the wrong side. If she knew villains, she should have given the information to the HPSC. Sometimes, you couldn't help that you knew a villain but once you knew they were a villain, it was then your fault if you didn't do something about that.

She knew this villain, who had gone to UA as Mitei Chui but was also known as Izuku Midoriya. Bokusen was willing to accept that while they were going to school and while Izuku was going to school with her, he wasn't doing anything villainous, or at least nothing she could tell was villainous, but the instant he took those quirks… which was after she was expelled, she should have gone to the nearest hero to tell them absolutely every little detail she knew of Izuku. The smallest thing might help the heroes catch him. She hadn't though. He'd checked. She'd just continued going about her life, without a care for the fact that her villain friend had stolen quirks.

That was… He had never heard of a villain so vile.

That was the entire reason Bokusen was going to do something about it. They simply could not let a villain with a quirk that dangerous go lose. He recognised his limits though. He could not find that villain, and even if he did, how did he fight them? That was for the HPSC and frankly he hoped once they found that villain, they didn't bother to fight. There were a few times when execution was the best option. This villain was one of them. No questions need be asked.

Instead he was going to help by making sure that the villain had no support. There'd be other villains who would flock to Izuku's banner and Bokusen was sure that the heroes would be taking them out. But the villain still had friends, he still had sympathisers. Those had to be removed. If they weren't against Izuku, they were with him. On this, there was no middle ground. And Ochaco Uraraka was with him.

Society could not afford that and if no one else would step up, if no one else would do what is necessary, Bokusen would. But first, he had to find her. Having a name was a great start. As was her general location. She had been a student of UA, which meant she would be lodging within a reasonable distance of the esteemed high school.

The easiest way to find this villain lover would be to get her address from her school records. Given they were in UA, that was also the easiest way to get his ass handed to him. So he was probably going to have to go to a broker. But before then, he could run a few searches. Some people were stupid and he might get lucky. That would help.

Once he found her address then… Though… Bokusen wondered if this was one of those cases where people would do something.

They were scared. Daiki Yaoyorozu's press conference had made them scared. The thought that there was a villain who could take their quirk was scary. Bokusen would admit that. It scared him. He wasn't foolish enough to try to delude himself on that. With the public, it was a question of if they were scared enough to take matters into their own hands.

The HPSC and the government didn't want to admit that it happened but it did. They called it the breakdown of public order but if they were not meeting public needs, then the public tended to make sure those needs were met, one way or another.

They might be prepared to act, Bokusen thought as he weighed the situation. If they were, that would be best for him. Not everyone would be prepared to physically do something. That's why people like Stain and himself existed. But someone who was not prepared to act physically, might be prepared to give up some information. That had possibilities.

Bokusen didn't post much online. The online world was for those who were too weak to act, too weak to actually do things and he was one of the doers of the world but he did have accounts, usually with the name of BS_Hater. He'd used them back before he realised that the online world was a series of echo chambers. People agreed with you online but they didn't agree with you to your face. There was no point preaching online to those who agreed. You actually had to do things in the real world. Still, the accounts were useful. He went to one of the original threads he'd seen on the Villain lover and clicked reply.

'So who is willing to do something about the villain lover?'

He posted the question. That should be enough for him to judge if he could glean some information about Ochaco Uraraka from them soon. In the meantime, he went back to his search.

She had to be somewhere.

-ted-

And here is the idiot who will act on Nishita's words... I figure in a super powered society, you can have people act as vigilantes but you will also have those who aren't up to fighting toe to toe but want to so they try to 'help' in other ways.

The League also has something to think of as they watch their boss learn about villainy.

My discord is on this code: TcBnRN7aDn FFN will remove links but you should be able to figure that out. There's a heap of other authors there, so come along and chat to us all!

-ted-

Loved it? Hated it? Found a spelling mistake? Let me know please!