Lots of things pissed Mirko off.
Assholes who didn't think women belonged in the Hero business. Tall people speaking down to her. Restaurants without vegetarian options. Cowards. Taxes. Villains. Children. Cars that were too fragile to survive her road rage. Poorly built streets that couldn't survive her rage rage. That one asshole who wouldn't call her back just because she broke his pelvis a little bit once he finally got her going-!
The building stopped shaking as Mirko took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The receptionist that she'd been ignoring also stopped shaking, now that the chance of him becoming a smear on the wall seemed to have been reduced.
It hadn't, but she wasn't going to tell him that. The Hero Public Safety Commission was already steadily climbing her shitlist, the last thing she wanted was a reason for them to call her in more often.
Rumi Usagiyama was a wild animal. She belonged on the street, kicking villain's asses. Bureaucracy and red tape wasn't her scene, and if the invite to this little shindig hadn't been delivered on a pair of top 10-red wings, she would have disregarded it entirely. The last time she'd been convinced to run an errand for the Commission, it had been as punishment for accidentally breaking a street.
And then said errand had ended up in a shallow grave, mulched beyond recognition by an unstoppable tide of concrete. She'd seen the videos, the long shots from the news coverage and the shaky cellphone footage. Neither had been stable enough to get a good look at what had actually happened, but she did know one thing for certain.
It was an execution, suitably brutal for such an unrepentant piece of shit villain, and she wanted to shake the hand of the guy who did it. And then beat the shit out of him for depriving her of the fight that Muscular would have put up.
The week since then had been spent trying to find him, to no avail. Rabbits weren't well-known for their tracking skills, and Mirko wasn't known for her patience. Even that rescue couple was doing better than her, and she was pretty sure they'd spent more time in the ocean than on land.
If this was just going to be another session of weaklings reprimanding her from behind a desk, she was going to kick the building down. There was only one Hero on their payroll that would have any chance of stopping her, and the Commission hadn't been any more successful at getting All Might under their thumb than anybody had ever been since his debut.
If anything, he'd take her side. The workaholic attitude, the physical power, the love of fighting (because who would get that strong if they didn't live for the fight?), the rabbit ears… they were basically the same person!
The foot tapping was beginning to fall back into full swing by the time the door she'd been seated in front of swung open. The man who'd opened it was old, plain, only a bit taller than her, and doing nothing to hide the way his eyes trailed up the thighs that her hero costume left bare to the world.
Gross, but not a reaction she wasn't used to. With a hop that just so happened to make said thighs bulge with veiny muscles, she was on her feet and standing a little too close to the man. The movement seemed to remind him who she was, and he fell into a quick bow, not even looking up when she brushed carelessly past him and into the hallway. He squawked, snapping back upright, but she was already turning the corner before he could even think about escorting her.
Even if she hated the place and the time that would be wasted, she'd been here before. She knew where she was going, and the less she needed to listen to pointless nobodies babble, the better.
Take a right, ignore the morons gaping and the out of shape security trying to tell her to leave. The elevator was awkwardly silent as she rode it up three more floors, and she knew she was getting close once the scent of charcoal reached her nose.
They'd called Endeavour in for this? The annoyance started to bleed away. Shit, if they big guns were here, then this had the chance of actually being fun.
With a grin filled with more teeth than anything else, Mirko slammed the palm of one hand into the room leading to the meeting room, sending it bouncing off the opposite wall. The razor thin hand extending towards her face was caught with a white glove, and the smile spreading across her face grew more genuine as the Number 5 Hero inclined his head in silent greeting and withdrew his arm.
Edgeshot was cool, she liked Edgeshot. The man spoke rarely and always carried with his words a weight that Mirko's motormouth generally didn't, but it was impossible to not respect a man who had literally honed his body into a peerless weapon. The fact that their sparse interaction in the past had always included a great deal of respect on his part, even before she'd started to approach the top ten in the rankings, also spoke volumes.
If he was any lesser, she could have dodged. If she was any lesser, his fingers would be rearranging her brains right now. She could always appreciate a simple test of skill.
The rest of the room, not quite so used to lightning quick movements, took a moment to let the tension bleed from their bodies; the perfect opportunity for Mirko to study them quickly. Endeavour and Best Jeanist hadn't moved, though the Number 4 Hero's cuffs seemed a bit more ruffled than the fashion icon would usually allow. Endeavour, she noted with some amusement, hadn't even seemed to consider her a threat, merely glancing over her with a gimlet eye that held none of the usual lust and some of the usual disdain.
The day would come when he would taste her heel. There would be burns, and singed hair, and probably more than a few broken bones, and it would be glorious.
The only other person that hadn't jumped was Hawks. Carefree as always, he spread his wings slightly, tipping his head slightly to the side. Just as she had her ears and instincts to aid her, he'd probably been able to feel the vibrations of her footsteps through his feathers since she'd entered the building.
The rest of the top ten weren't in attendance, the other places at the conference table either being taken up by lower ranked heroes or people in suits that probably cost more than her weekly stipend. Even though she couldn't put a name to every face, their reactions were much better.
The suits jumped. The heroes reached for support equipment or began to ready their Quirks. Wash, the only other rookie that could match her meteoric rise through the rankings, looked like he'd just shit his drain hose.
"Ahem."
Mirko didn't miss the way the President withdrew her hands from underneath the table and clasped them together before her. She didn't pretend she had either, simply throwing herself into the last free seat and propping her feet up on the table. Most of the men and some of the women in the room tried to hide the fact that they were staring at her legs.
Some, like Wash and Edgeshot, were respectful enough to either turn away or pretend they'd seen nothing. Others, like Hawks, didn't even bother pretending they weren't, confidence or ignorance being used as their shield.
"Now that we're all finally here," Mirko rolled her eyes; as if the crusty bitch didn't tell her cronies to make her wait. If the bitch didn't want people pointing out the truth about her appearance she shouldn't have left the house, "we can start the briefing."
The projector embedded in the ceiling clicked on, painting the picture of a devastated street onto the wall behind the President. It almost looked like the one she'd gone a bit too hard on, though with less houses and more dead bodies lying on it- hold on.
"Eight days ago, at 2PM exactly, Goto Imasuji, better known by his villainous moniker Muscular, began to rampage in the Aomori prefecture." The projector clicked again, an irritating noise from a device that was a few centuries out of date, but that was to be expected of the commission.
Mirko's lip curled as a picture of the asshole she'd been sent north to hunt down was shown, a splash of blood on his cheek and glee in his eyes. He had looked much better in a crater shaped like a huge fist with his admittedly handsome face merged halfway into the remnants of his skull, but she wasn't going to say that. In front of people she somewhat respected at least.
"We don't know his motive or the exact death toll, but it is confirmed that he is directly responsible for at least twenty-three deaths. That number could be as high as eighty." Shaky footage filled the wall, taken at a lower angle than anything the news helicopter would have been able to manage. The quality wasn't amazing, but it was good enough to make out the sharp barking of laughter and the horrific sounds of bones snapping.
"The Rescue Hero duo Water Hose were in the area and arrived first. It was at first believed they were killed on the scene after dealing what at first appeared to be a decisive blow." Water slashed across Muscular's face, taking his eyes right out of his socket, before the female member's head was twisted backwards in a movement so gruesome that Mirko didn't even think anything insulting at the sounds of someone forcing down bile. The man did his best, but against the overwhelming strength of his opponent, it was only a matter of time before the life had been choked out of him while his trachea was crushed.
Nightmarish. But for once in her life, the President of the Hero Commission didn't disappoint Mirko.
The footage fast forwarded a moment, Muscular seeming to do fuck all except shove something into his eye socket and laugh, before it snapped back to normal speed.
The rumble of the engine was something Mirko could feel in her bones. She didn't even like motorbikes, they were too loud and smelly. Every sense she had was offended by the things, but for one of the only teams in the hero industry she didn't consider weaklings, she could let it slide.
The brief fight was as glorious as the other times she had watched it. The purple ropes the new guy was throwing around seemed capable of almost anything, feeling as oddly familiar as they always did to her. Muscular's arm disappeared, Water Hose stitched themselves back together, and then the stone hand.
Endeavour grunted, speaking up for the first time in any of the few meetings Mirko had been called into. "What do we know about this vigilante?"
"Frighteningly little." Came the fast, though honest reply. "He has kept his appearance mostly hidden and seems either aware of surveillance equipment locations, or spends his time away from civilization. The parts of his face we can analyse offer no matches to any database we have access to."
The screen switched again. The picture was of the man, clearly taken from the video and enhanced as much as possible. It was the moment he was kneeling between the downed Water Hose, those purple ropes extending from his head and down to the…
Wait. Were those ropes… or was it hair?
"We do not even know what his Quirk is or what it does. There seems to be some level of matter manipulation, but that would not explain the advanced healing capabilities or physical changes. These ropes may be a physical mutation that his Quirk is channelled through, or it could be another layer of disguise. Perhaps they-
"Hair."
The President scowled at the interruption for half a second, before realising where it had come from. She, along with everyone else in the room, turned to Mirko in surprise. She barely noticed, staring into the covered eyes of the vigilante as the dots finally connected in her mind.
The long, purple hair should have been immediately recognisable. The sunglasses and mask did a lot to hide his face, but Mirko could see it clear as day in her mind's eye, a stupid smirk on his lips and one eyebrow raised while she showcased her utter incapability of multiplication.
If only they hadn't been on a train, or people wouldn't have gossiped if she dragged him off into the tiny bathroom they always had on those things. Then she would have shown him just how good she could be at multiplying. Knocked that smug attitude right out of him and into her, maybe twice or even three times if she was lucky…
The brow shape was the same. The hair was the same. Crap, all those people who said she was stupid might have been right. How had she managed to miss the hair, out of everything!?
"It's hair." There was no uncertainty in her voice, even as some of the suits scoffed at her words. Others chose to scrutinise the picture closer, eyes narrowed while they leaned forth in their seats.
A rustle of fabric reached Mirko's sensitive ears, almost silent even to her prey instincts. It wasn't until Best Jeanist had reached the wall behind the President that Mirko noticed he'd moved from his seat.
After a moment, he nodded to himself, turning back to the room as a whole and pulling a comb from his pocket. With a flourish, he'd dragged it across his bangs, coiffing it off to the side in exactly the same way it had been before, but also somehow falling into a far more orderly pattern.
Shit made no sense and neither did he, in Mirko's humble opinion.
"Mirko is correct." The comb spun through his fingers and then back into his pocket. The ridiculous denim suit of his probably couldn't crease, but he ran his hands down the front of it anyway, sweeping his eyes across the room and only stopping on hers' for a brief moment. "It is indeed hair."
"Purple hair will hopefully narrow the search down significantly." Some of the people wearing suits were already hurrying out of the room before Edgeshot had stopped talking. No doubt off to convey this new information. "I will inform those in my employ and peerage of this update. What are this man's crimes?"
Apparently, that was something the President had been expecting. With a flourish not unlike Best Jeanist not moments ago, a manilla folder was on the table before her, flicked open with the professional finesse of a person who sat around doing fuck all every day.
Naturally, Mirko was always going to be faster.
"Tax evasion ain't in there, right?"
That got her a few strange looks, raised eyebrows from some of the heroes, rolled eyes from the scrubs, and stray giggles. Probably coming from Hawks and Wash, contributing in the only way they knew how.
"...No." Credit where it's due, the President only took a second to realise that Mirko wasn't kidding. If only she could have figured out that she also hadn't been kidding about firing her stylist, maybe they wouldn't have to hate each other today.
"All we have confirmed is five counts of first-degree murder."
"Oh thank god." Mirko deflated in her seat. Counted her blessings. Thought about what she'd heard for a moment.
And then her head shot back up, eyes wide.
"FIVE!?"
It was going to be a long meeting.
