Quirks not Required

XI: Around the Bonsai Shrub

The meeting had been extremely productive. It had just been between Nighteye and Kato; it took place in a cafe that Nighteye knew. There was no mediator thankfully and Kato; well sang like a canary.

Nighteye merely nodded and thanked the paralysed doctor before heading back to his agency. Kato smirked, he'd done the right thing; he'd put the remaining Yakuza on Nighteye's shitlist; cleared his name and was now sequestered safely in UA's infirmary.

It'd been a quiet day; he'd kept a young hero student by the name Emily, Yanagi Reiko, company as she'd suffered an accident within the conflagration zone. "Change them once more after you've showered and keep it dry for a week. You got lucky."

"As opposed to Midoriya and his class." Kato at times, couldn't believe the lack of utter stupidity of Tomura Shigaraki.

The man had called on a family who owed AFO a few favours. As a result a potential point of leverage had been lessened. If the boy had not been so impulsive, Kato could have attained the schedule for the semester; plausible excuses all around. "Why don't you turn yourself in; for as techno-progressive Tomura is, he's certainly stupid. He'd not realise you'd done him in until the police were kicking his door down."

Kato knew how he was going to play this. With the maximum of plausible deniability; his hard paper free notepad, more confession pad; was now on its 5th pad. To make things harder he was writing it in a mixture of languages and shorthand computer programming. The easier it was to translate the lesser the crime, the harder the crime the harder the encryption; all of the answers written in previous entries.

He had a sinking suspicion that Nezu was in on it. The marsupial was one of the few people that scared him. It was now an open secret that Midnight was pregnant; Kato wasn't going to confirm or deny anything. However the door opened and Toshinori Yagi slipped into the room.

"Daiten"

"All Might…what can I do for you?" This was a dangerous situation; everyone looked up to him, even Kato.

"I trust this can remain confidential."

"Unless a warrant is issued or I believe a person is either in genuine, or a genuine danger. I save lives, All Might. Now what is it?"

"The Headmaster has informed me that you can be trusted, despite your evident displeasure towards heroes."

"I expect certain things from people; I greatly disprove of certain policies that heroes pursue in the pursuit of justice." Such as Nighteye, went unspoken.

Yagi nodded "The school knows about my injury."

Kato nodded, fought to keep his face straight. "In great detail, but not from who you'd expect." "Is there a point pertaining to this pontification."

"I need help training a hero…"

"Training HEROES, Yagi. Not one, but classes; you seem to be forgetting that bit of information. How the principle allowed you to teach one class instead of all four… that is a height of irrationality." Kato snapped, yes he hung out with Aizawa too damn much.

Yagi shied away "Are all medics this terrifying; if it's not Recovery Girl it's Daiten telling me to remember my limits."

"Yes, a medic team or ward are the most important, yet unsung, heroes of the heroic industry. Support Gear, Quirk Enhancements don't work on thin air, we're required to put broken heroes together. Yet heroes are on seven figures a year; not including franchise offerings and yet Medical Staff are on way less. So, yes we're scary because we need to be."

Yagi nodded "The principle knows that I've got a successor…"

Kato nodded "You want me to assist you or assist him in ensuring his powers don't destroy him...Speaking of were you not meant to be teaching at the USJ today?"

Yagi nodded "I was...but I ran out of time on my commute."

Kato sighed "You're meant to be taking it easy, conserving your strength. Yes, I'll help your successor."

It was then Ectoplasm, whose classroom was near the infirmary, rushed by "All Might, we're needed, to the USJ. Villain attack."

All Might nodded before departing the room. As he left, Kato smirked "All Might, be careful. As much as my errant man-child of a boss wants you dead; I don't. Damn it...Why does having to be the villain have to come down to these choices; stop your thinking about this...Remember your end goals, none of this...none of this is personal; purely business."

His phone rang it was an unknown number
"Sensei?"
"It's me. Kurogiri."
"What's going on? We're retreating from the USJ, one of the students escaped."
Kato paused "Staff have left; you've got ten to fifteen...more like three to get your boss to get everyone out."

"Master Shigaraki is absolutely fuming at you; says you're the one who made All Might unable to make it."

"Tell the man-child, he shouldn't waste leverage."

With that he hung up. His phone went again and it was Yaoyorozu.

"Sir."
"Yaoyorozu-san! It's been a while; my apologies I've been delegating to you for too long."

"It's not a problem; I trust your new position is treating you well?"

"Do miss working full time with you guys. What can I do for you?"

"My daughter's phone's off-line, do you know where she is? I wanted to let her know that Hiashi and I were not going to be home when she arrived home; we are at a business event."

Kato grunted "I'll keep you abreast with the project. I'll let you know if anything drastically changes."

Kato grinned, yes he was a villain, but it was beautiful when aptly given advice was completely disregarded. "What goes around, comes around."

(Police Station)

Tsukauchi sighed, he really wanted to slam his head against a desk. Four mass homicides, four mass homicides taking place at the exact same time on the exact same day; coupled with the multitude of villains on All Might's direct commute to work.

Tsukauchi was no-one's fool. There was something at work here, but he couldn't see what it was "Tsukauchi."

It was Tsuragamae Kenji, Tsukauchi's boss, "At ease, detective. Woof! I'm here to hopefully shed some light."

"Chief, that'd be brilliant. Because the recent cases I've been on, I'm finding repeating patterns of inconsistencies. The four homicides were on families of four people who disappeared."

"Where you and a few pro heroes confronted Daiten Kato…"

Kenji sighed "Naomasa, you're going to need some exceptional evidence to persuade me to do anything further to that young man. I know he's lost the use of legs and that's no excuse; what IS inexcusable is the fact he's quirkless and the amount of times quirked members of the police and heroes that interfere with him; it's setting an unwarranted precedent. The rest of the quirkless are watching this."

Naomasa slumped even further "He's a factor in all of my investigations either by design or coincidence. Furthermore, I've just been on the phone with Nighteye, the Yakuza approached him."

Kenji let out a rumble "Find what you can on Daiten Kato's involvement with the Yakuza and ONLY the Yakuza. I share your feeling Tsukauchi; otherwise I wouldn't be setting you up as my non-confirmed successor once I'm done."

Tsukauchi nodded "I can do that."

As this conversation was being had, three coppers had set about their tasks. 95% of the time they were being good at their job, but unfortunately they needed to do some odd jobs from time to time and this was one such occasion; they needed to keep Daiten off police radar and that is what they were going to do.

(League of Villains Hideout)

Kato appeared out of Kurogiri's mist, lying on the sofa and whimpering in pain was Tomura Shigaraki. "For the Leader of the League of Villains; you're certainly whimpering like a little pig."

"You, traitor. You told me he was weak! But he's stronger than ever."

"I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. If you had waited, like I had suggested, then it might have been much more successful. However, no, you lost a little bit of leverage, hired a bunch of yen-thugs and got theirs and yours collective asses handed to you by a bunch of brats."

"You weren't answering your phone!"

"I have fifteen other ways for you to contact me! I don't use phones for our jobs, you petulant brat because a phone will get tapped."

"Kato, I've utilised some cops on my payroll to delay your alignments." Rasped AFO.

"My thanks and your welcome. Now, Shigaraki mk. II, brace yourself as this is going to be fun for me; not so much for you." With that he began to pull the various fragments of bullets out of the blue-haired man-child.

"Now, be grateful Snipe wasn't aiming to kill. Speaking of Nomu; where is it?"

"All Might destroyed it. Overcame the Shock Absorption."

Kato sighed "You got gleeful, full on the high of the thought of killing a few hero hopefuls you told them everything about the Nomu...Shigaraki, you utter moron."

"Like you're…"

"Shigaraki, Daiten-san is on your side, you need to understand not everyone thinks in the same patterns as you do. His role is quite precarious." AFO explained patiently.

"Kato, we've assimilated the quirk particles into our collection."

"Good, good...feel free to unleash Nomu if you want to…I have an experiment to conduct."

(Hospital)

Kato was poring over the data that'd been assembled. His jaw dropped; they'd done it! They'd actually fucking done it! They had a serum that could theoretically repair the spinal column and the nerves in a human being.

Garaki stuck his head in "Kato-kun, you're looking positively ecstatic, care to share?"

"Garaki-senpai, I, We, My Team and I, it's fucking done! We've fucking did it! Now all we need to do is run the trials and then it can be patented...patented it anyway, own the domain the whole shebang as people say these days."

Garaki smiled genuinely, the project was actually ready to be used. He meant, the corpses he used to make Nomu did need to be experimented on. Thankfully, his protégé had a plethora of experiments all in the name of his research that could be used.

Kato didn't need to know about those. But the theoretical project of 'Ascension' a grandiose name for a project for a truly grandiose project. Along with 'Patches'. "Kato-kun, permission to start a trial run on your 'patches' project."

"Done. Keep the patches clean, I want to see if there are any useful recessive quirks that might come to the fore upon contact with them…I am interested in seeing if they work in specific locations or if they'll influence the body in from one place."

Ujiko nodded "You realise we're going to need to go public with this?"

Kato nodded "I'm going to get my lawyers set to…bankruptcy. I want to see the Hero population sweat and nearly bankrupt themselves to get this operation or reserve it if they need it. Then if mysteriously…"

"Several monsters paralyse some heroes and we repair them…"

Ujiko's eyes narrowed "Kato-kun, for a moment I thought you'd have sold us out. But my fears are misplaced. Come, come...I want to talk to you about 'Project Anti-Ten.'

Kato wheeled himself around his desk and followed behind "This...this should be fun. I've had a thought; what if we gave people...actual people, similar quirks?"

Ujiko looked at his apprentice "Explain."

"Take Endeavour, his quirk Hellflame, pretty potent fire quirk. Then you've got someone with say...firebreath; theoretically you could graft Hellflame or Firebreath to one another…as deviances between individual qns's aren't that developed or sensitive; the only problem is the potential incompatible DNA and mRNA amongst other bits and pieces."

"That's highly dangerous, theoretical at worst and hypothetical, to the point where people drink that discussion...but, you've managed to repair the spine! I like it."

"I know you're using my discarded research for our...other jobs and clients. Just...record the results and keep names clear. It's easier to dodge questionings on self-induced research than research with big names."