Not for the first time — but definitely for the final time — Aizawa Shouta lamented that out of the three girls, it was Yaoyorozu Momo who discovered his double life.
If it had been Uraraka or Ashido, it would've been easy to get rid of them. They were normal girls in normal homes. It would've been easy to slip in and kill either of them. Instead, it had to be Yaoyorozu fucking Momo, the only child of Yaoyorozu Asao — with a fence, open yard, security lighting, and guards around the perimeter.
He didn't have much time left to execute this either. Shortly after he'd chased Momo out of the nightclub, her tail between her legs, his phone had begun to go off with emergency news alerts about the attack in Hosu.
Nomus. Motherfucking Nomus. He had a brief moment of PTSD, remembering the Nomu at USJ slamming his face into the ground. Feeling the fractures as they happened, one by one and two by two. Dizziness. Nausea. Cold. But his locked jaw and cold, empty stare had not been seen by his men for what it was, and when he came back it was with orders on the tip of his tongue.
"Coordinate with Kenichi Minato," he said. "Find out what he's sending and fill in any gaps. Arrange transportation for both of our supplies and men."
He thought that'd be the end of that, until the calls started coming in from Yamaguchi-gum and Sumiyoshi-kai as well. He'd had to leave the nightclub and head to his syndicate's den, working from his personal HQ to see what they had available in resources and manpower to spare. It had become a hands on exercise in patience as he was forced to finish his work before he could attend to assassinating Yaoyorozu Momo.
It has stolen hours from him.
He didn't even have the free time to really decide how he would kill her before he was forced to get in his car and drive in the direction of the Yaoyorozu estate — he pressed some pills, grabbed a coil of rope, and hoped for the best.
Sprinting across twenty meters of open grass, unsure where the nearest guard was located, was not the fucking best.
If he was found here, this would be it for him. He would be behind bars until he was old enough to need a nurse to wipe his ass. A male teacher caught breaking into a female student's home with rope and boot dagger, carrying a baggie of amphetamines cut with a toxic dose of Fentanyl? He would have no defense to stand on in court. Aizawa didn't understand his good fortune that he even got across the yard, but decided not to test it by trying to locate Yaoyorozu's room over again — he went in the first window he reached.
The mansion was not dark and inactive, the way he'd hoped it would be. He shouldn't have been surprised — Asao was in the Hero business, and of course he would be on the line for what happened in Hosu City. Aizawa quickly realized he would not be able to stealth through the mansion to reach his target — of course everything about this shit would have to be difficult. But he was lean and nimble, and pulled himself up into an air duct to find his way and figure out what to fucking do.
And then he learned something new about Yaoyorozu Asao: he had not fully pulled his Yakuza roots from the dirt.
Slithering through the ventilation system as smoothly and quietly as he could, Aizawa caught bits and pieces of the chaos that was keeping the mansion so alive this late in the evening. Yaoyorozu Asao ordered his private helicopter to Hosu City to assist with evacuations, and was sending down his collection of cars with supplies — on behalf of none other than Kenichi Minato. It was just one surprise after another tonight.
He eventually — after wasting far more time than he'd been willing to — reached a vent over the empty servant stairs, and dropped down so he could slip to the second floor. The servant quarters, unlike the downstairs, were quiet — because everyone was downstairs making themselves available to assist. He kept his boot dagger in his hand, ready to use it if he had to, but relieved no one crossed his path. The only person he wanted to kill tonight was Momo.
He disliked how many doors he had to crack open and peek in looking for her room. Every step of this had him lamenting that it was Yaoyorozu fucking Momo he had to kill. He wished now, looking back, that he had gone for it in the nightclub. He could've pinned her against the wall, cornered her with his body and blocked her from view while he clamped his palm over her nose and mouth. Kept her quiet while she bled out. Or that, at the very least, he'd done what he did the night the girls were kidnapped — stayed on the goddamn roof and navigated his way to her room from there. He was going to know the entire layout of the mansion before he found her. And then he'd need to find his way back out.
But he did eventually find her room.
He recognized her room from his first foray into her home, and saw immediately her shape in her bed. She did not stir as he stood with the door cracked an inch, and he let himself inside. He didn't like this. Didn't like being in her room, inside her home, to kill her.
He'd had a few ideas of what to do — murdering her in cold blood was a last resort. He'd brought rope, he could make it look like a suicide. That wouldn't be too far beyond reason; student with high grades, the constant stress to perform, combined with PTSD from her multiple villain encounters? Passable. He could lament to the police about her increasing distance in class — could even cite how Todoroki had waited for her one day after the bell, because he'd had to talk to her about her lack of attention. But he'd have to either kill her before hanging her, or wrestle her into position for execution.
Less ideal, he'd brought pills. The amphetamines laced with that fatal ratio of Fentanyl. It would be harder to execute — less sure fire, for certain. But he saw the silhouette of a bottle of water on her nightstand. He could drop the tablets in that to dissolve. She might drink the water at some point during the night, and go back to sleep — then never wake up. But it was a big might, and he couldn't stay all night to make sure that's how it happened. Yaoyorozu might be his biggest fucking problem, but she was far from his only one.
He'd kill her with his knife though if he had to, but he didn't want that. Really did not want that. There would be an investigation, and her family likely kept security camera footage on their database for more than 24 hours. If he was anywhere on a single one of their cameras, it would be done.
Aizawa crept around the perimeter of her room, evaluating his surroundings and thinking hard on his next move. He didn't want an investigation. If he gave her the pills, that might trigger one anyway, but he didn't think there would be enough to lead to him.
He should hang her.
Should he kill her first, quickly while she was asleep in bed? Or drag her over? She couldn't have any defensive injuries on her, or signs of a scuffle. His mind was ticking toward pinning her under the blanket and using her pillow to suffocate her, when she hiccuped.
Aizawa immediately dropped to the floor, catching himself without a sound, and he pressed himself into the dark corner as her hiccups became frantic and Momo's silhouette sat straight up in bed — and she flew across her room toward a door. The light slapped on, and for a moment he was fully illuminated and exposed under its brilliant glow, but the bathroom door slammed shut behind her. A moment later he heard her retch into the toilet.
Shit. Fuck. Fucking A.
He moved for the third door in the room, assuming it was a closet — and he was right, but another door on the far side adjoined it to the bathroom. It was better than sitting in the open of her room though. Aizawa ducked in, shutting the door behind him, and he used his arm to slide aside a rack of long dresses before stepping in and pulling them back in place. In the background, he heard the wet sounds of his student vomiting. She gagged for a moment then, coughed, and the sound of bile splashing into the toilet bowl followed.
Maybe he should go for the pills. If she was vomiting, she would brush her teeth and then want something to drink to wash away the mouthfeel of bile. He could probably get out there and drop the pills in her water then get back in here before she was ready to return to her room.
Then…he heard her crying.
It was such a muted, gentle sound, and at first he didn't hear it at all against the backdrop of her sickness. Then he heard her soft keen.
Only then did he wonder if she was sick because of him. Almost immediately he realized…she probably was. Was she so disgusted by him that she had gotten sick? That idea was short-lived; she had been trailing him. She'd known what he was about — he'd known that she had known it with certainty on one level or another. No, this wasn't disgust. So was it fear? Guilt? Had he pushed her conscience this far that she'd gotten ill?
"I can't do it." He blinked, surprised to hear her voice. It echoed so clear from the bathroom though, and he knew he had not misheard as she lamented to no one, except perhaps a god he didn't fully believe in, "I-I can't do it. I can't turn him in."
Aizawa didn't know what to do. There was a long moment where all he could do was listen, unable to even think, as she flushed the toilet before murmuring rationalizations to herself.
"He—He's not all bad. He got us out of there. He didn't hurt us. He—"
Aizawa's dark eyes lowered.
Wasn't this what he'd wanted? To intimidate her into silence? He'd wanted he'd go keep her mouth shut — did he trust that she would? Could?
She'd held onto it for this long, he reflected, listening to the distant sound of her sniffles. She could've gone to Majestic's agency or the police at any point and told them her suspicions. They would've been cautious, but they would have investigated. She could've told her father, and he could have sent some of his connections on either side of the fence to check up on him. But no, this fifteen-year-old girl had kept it tight to her chest. Had accepted the mission and kept the undertaking to herself rather than bringing outsiders in. She'd kept her mouth shut. She'd held it in like it was her dying breath.
Would she change her mind? He might have only accomplished his initial goal: to keep her quiet long enough to kill her. Yaoyorozu Momo was a smart fucking girl, she might realize at some point that she could blackmail him. Having a student know was reckless. Dangerous.
Perhaps, just maybe, she was aware of what her father did in his free time. Maybe she knew her father's past. Whether she wanted to be a Hero or not, she was a daughter of Yakuza — everything she had in her life was because of what her father had done for a syndicate. Would she go to her father first before trying to hand him over to police? Her father wouldn't allow such recklessness. She would be turning her back on her own kind.
She came from better stock than that.
Aizawa listened to the girl weeping on the other side of the door, and at last his grip on his dagger slacked as he tilted his head back toward the ceiling. Inhaled. Exhaled. Silently cursed what he'd gone through to get inside this house — only to retreat back to her room and unlock the balcony door. Only to decide to give her the chance to show him what she was made of.