"If you think this is the Afterlife, it is not," said a man's voice, causing Sunny Flare to spin around and see a jackal man wearing modern gangster clothes as they appeared in Section 8. "And yes, it is ridiculous to hear. But you should know one thing and one thing only, it's that the universe is much, much larger than you think it is."

"Which part?" Sunny Flare asked as she idly poked at the buttons on her left electronic arm bracer. "The fact that I've been kidnapped somewhere with the Egyptian god of death talking to me, which has me seriously reconsidering my personal beliefs on religion, that there's some sort of horse portal a boy with crow wings is covering up with a fancy drape that he's figuring out what color to embroider, or the fact that a water dragon created and printed up 'Have you seen me?' fliers for some shark doll and has begun posting them?! Also, who are you, why am I here and did I die?"

"When your world was about to die after you saved that girl, I pulled you across time and space," said Anubis, "I managed to send you here so we could talk. As for the last one, you'd think the X-Squad would find Sushi-san by now."

"Right," Sunny Flare replied as she switched to looking at her left bracer and pressing buttons on it. "You still haven't answered my questions."

"I suppose not," chuckled Anubis, "well then, as for why you're here, I brought you here because there is a great danger about to occur, a terror that's destroying countless worlds as we speak Also, if you expected then to be responsible and reasonable, you've come to the wrong place."

"What does all this have to do with me specifically?" asked Sunny Flare.

"A normal person would not leap to save another despite the cost to life," said Anubis, "you did, and were pulled here to be the hero that will save the omniverse from a dangerous threat. Fair warning, the X-Squad aren't known to be herded and you might be bad at it."

Sunny Flare sneered at the unwanted and unsolicited opinion. "How about you try herding a bunch of lunatics and sarcastic assholes?"

"Oh, a new girl!" Voidlon said, teleporting over to Sunny. "Welcome to hell, you stick-up your ass reprobate! Leave your luck, will to live, wallet and self-preservation instincts at the door!" he added gleefully.

"Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about," griped Sunny Flare. "I've got some crow guy milling around doing a one-man version of the bit with the two old Muppets in the balcony."

A manhole cover was suddenly moved from below and clearly terribly confused Mystle emerged from the dark and dank hole. "Yeesh, the sewers are still filthy! I think we have a cassowary problem." she griped, as she got back to her feet and brushed muck and grime from her body.

"And that! One of you doing stuff like that!" Sunny Flare said. "And for all we know, some are too busy in la-la land listening to like… I don't know… Misfits or the Dead Kennedys or something?!"

"Your references are pretty dated," Lune pointed out to Sunny Flare. "You should try watching some shows and listening to some bands that came out in the last couple decades."

Before Sunny Flare's words could catch up with her glare, Voidlon gasped and got a wonderfully awful idea. "Good idea, Lune! Maybe we can all get together and binge some movies, shows, and listen to some albums!"

"Hear and see you!" Sunny Flare called out. "The whole situation just seems like such a metaphor for my life that I figured I'd experience what it's like to be surrounded by assholes and dealing with the stuff they produce all the time!"

"Plus, we might or might not be considered war criminals with a lot of weapons that shouldn't even be used in conventional warfare, or even unconventional warfare!" Ridley added. "We also basically run a fashion line, if you ask, Voidlon forced us to, as well as a extinct wildlife sanctuary."

"Going to just ignore that last one, but seriously. These...things... that might destroy all existence? You want me, an at least normal student, to work with these freaks, some that literally are monsters mad with power, because they need some sane people?" Sunny Flair asked.

"Yes." Anubis said, with the biggest shit-eating grin he can muster.

"Just checking," Sunny said dryly, then she looked around. "Well, the pretty hot Dullahan chick's trying to hit the possible grandkid of Satan with a toy scythe, the ice cream haired one is chowing down on mint chocolate chip, the very same possible grandkid of Satan is figuring out what trim best matches a tear in the fabric in reality."

"I'm thinking of a light turquoise, while Snatcher's suggesting a deep maroon!"

Just then, they got sucked through a portal, again.

The only thing Dabi remembered when he woke up in some back alley dumpster, head spinning and skin half melted off his body, was a handful of names and a few brief flashes of fire.

Not that any of those memories were helpful—he quickly (and painfully) discovered the blue flames that were his quirk, flickering over his hand for no more than a few moments before what little of his skin that was unmarred began to turn an angry red.

So not only did he have a flame quirk that burned him because his body ran too cold, but it also rendered the memories of flames useless in figuring out who he was. Fantastic.

The names? Shou, Yumi and Nat weren't much to work with.

As soon as he'd checked himself out of the underground clinic that'd helped him staple his face on (and while Dabi might not remember shit, he knew that was super weird), he began trying to figure out who he was, amnesia be damned.

He kept a list of what he knew about himself in his pocket.

Admittedly, most of what he had beyond basic descriptors was speculation, but it was something.

With no legal documentation to his still unknown name, Dabi didn't have many avenues in life to go. So for the next six or seven years, his main source of income was nothing but petty crime and odd jobs around his neighborhood for the employers who didn't care about the random teen-twenty-something-year-old not having any form of ID.

His main (only) hobby and pastime was fondly referred to as a simple thing...It was called The Ongoing Investigation Into Who The Fuck Am I And Why These X-Squad Weirdos Wanna Help?

He was almost on a given name basis with the librarians at the public library a half-hour walk from his dingy apartment. It was nice of them to clarify to the rare hero that bothered to patrol the area that no, despite his appearance (and didn't that sting?), he was not a villain. He often went over to research new leads or reference a psychology book to figure out whether one of his weird, unexplained habits could mean something.

The way of looking at his white hair in the mirror made him tense to the point where he just dyed it red, only to feel on the verge of tears when he looked at it, and then dyed it black? Had people with red or white hair hurt him before? He had no reason he could remember to hate the colors, so he wrote it down.

The way he flinched and hunched in on himself whenever someone raised their voice unexpectedly? Concerning. He wrote it down.

The time he realized that he couldn't remember anything more than a few months ago that clearly? Brain damage, most likely.

So not only did Dabi have severe amnesia, he also had some sort of problem with his long term memory that he couldn't figure out the cause of. Did the issue stem from physical or psychological trauma? How did he get covered in severe burns on over half his body, despite the fact that he had to have known how much it hurt his body? (Was the amnesia caused by an incident that gave him a force activated quirk? It would certainly explain a lot)

It'd be nice to not be a walking poster boy for health issues, both physical and mental, but Dabi did his best.

After realizing the growing extent of his memory issues, Dabi switched from just keeping a list of general notes in his pocket to some of those fancy 3-inch binders full of notes, leads, and theories that he had to lug around in a bulky messenger bag.

He was rather proud of himself for keeping the table of contents and index so well organized.

"Hey, you," Shigaraki interrupted. "You can't even do what that crazy high school girl was able to do."

God, Sunny Flare thought, I'd hope not. Dabi's got enough mental issues already, We don't need him to have whatever's going on with her.

"Give your name first," the handy-man continued (he literally had a severed hand as some sort of face mask what the fuck he thought that news report was exaggerated). "You're an adult, right?"

"I currently go by Dabi," he answered, smoothly stepping around the question of his age after years of experience because fuck he probably was? He looked like an adult, but it's not like he had facial hair or anything to judge off of because he wasn't growing any of that any time soon, what if he had just been a really tall ten-year-old? He could barely remember what he was doing in February, but he was pretty sure he was at the end of puberty when he washed up on the streets but he might be remembering wrong oh fuck-

"That's not what I want to know," Shigaraki snapped, uncaring and unaware of Dabi's panicking internal monologue. It was times like that that he was glad his face was fucked up—it was easy to school your expression when it hurt to change, to begin with. "What's your real name?"

And isn't that the million dollar question?

"I'll tell you when it's time," Dabi said instead. "Anyway," he continued, ready to move on from the question, "I will carry out the Hero Killer's will."

That changed the topic of conversation pretty effectively. And Mystle called some Anubis guy to tell him that he has new recruits.

Apparently, becoming one of Japan's most wanted villains and having Anubis as your manager was an excellent way to get the entire internet in theorizing your real identity as well, Dabi was thrilled to discover. He couldn't figure out why he hadn't thought of it sooner.

Seven years of chasing leads and hacking databases to no avail, and he'd absolutely run out of ideas. The internet, on the other hand, was an endless pool of new theories.

Ever since joining the League of Villains, Dabi has been enjoying something of a lifestyle boost. Now, it wasn't all comfort, but say what you would about All for One getting captured, the man had left a lot of dough behind.

Dabi now had a laptop of his own to do his research on, which was mostly a relief due to the fact that he kept popping staples in his wrist when he took notes by hand. Most of his days were spent in the corner of their hideout, dutifully ignoring whatever antics the rest of the League managed to get themselves into each day.

His heart went out for Kurogiri each time he saw the man glance considerably towards the hard alcohol.

"... The government has been known to cover up unethical experiments in the past, especially ones including children—since the first appearance of quirks, secret government training, and experimental facilities have existed to test the limits of powerful quirks. Dabi has been seen to wield powerful blue flames, easily pulling off feats of both quirk and physical prowess that should be considered impossible to pull off if he had begun a sort of training regime at a normal age—let's say around twelve."

Dabi's lips quirked as he listened to the theory video, hands briefly pausing their constant typing as the voice in his ear kept talking. He turned up the volume of his headphones, clicking over to the tab to check the sources in the video description.

"Going by what normal physical features we can make out on the few close up photos and videos we have of Dabi, I would say that it's unlikely that he's older than his late twenties, yet his movements and instincts and quirk abilities speak of experience of almost that many years, supporting the possibility that Dabi could be from one of these experiment or training facilities."

Dabi and Sunny Flare paused as the information registered.

Government experiment?

His first instinct was to brush off the notion as ridiculous, but his second train of thought was what if?

Dabi had no clue what the fuck was up with himself, he couldn't brush off anything.

It was true that he did have an odd sort of muscle memory for how to use his quirk offensively and how to fight, on an almost instinctual level—years of government training?—and that he had an unnatural pain tolerance—experiments without anesthesia?—and that he couldn't remember shit—memory quirk from a shady government official trying to keep information from leaking?—and he woke up in a back alley—getting rid of the physical evidence by posing it as murder?—and fuck was he a government experiment?

Dabi held his head in his hands while the voice droned on in his ear as the information registered. Was he a government guinea pig? A lab rat? Did he even have parents? Oh god, what if he didn't even have a name, what if he was just listed in a folder somewhere as nothing more than a number, fuck-

Dabi, Sunny Flare and Ridley spent the next three days trying to figure out whether he should just find a way to call the government and ask, before realizing that if he was an escaped government experiment or something then they wouldn't just tell that to some random stranger on the phone, but he still kind of wanted to try.

Sunny Flare put down "escaped government experiment???" on the list of Potential identities/reasons why Dabi's like this.

Dabi knew the X-Squad weren't actually villains. It was pretty goddamn obvious, they aren't subtle.

For one, the blonde girl asked too many probing questions about the rest of the league members and seemed a little too willing to do whatever Dabi asked, some were a little too casual and friendly. Dabi couldn't explain why the squad acted like they're causing chaos even when not on the job, but it seemed weird, and he couldn't figure out why.

But, Dabi reasoned, they're moles that he could use.

See, the reason Dabi continued to encourage the squad's probing behavior (mostly because they shanked Hawks, the actual mole, because Voidlon thought the bird had no type of fade) was because from what he read, the X-Squad was, despite how they act, very smart, and had the resources to conduct an investigation into who Dabi could be that the fire user himself could only dream of.

You didn't get to be an omniversal covert ops group just by running around and stopping crime, no, they're well known for unconventional investigative skills, and that was precisely what Dabi was betting on.

He let the squad crash with the League, hoping the extended exposure would help figure out who he was because goddamnit, he's desperate.

It didn't take long at all for conversations about Dabi specifically to come up in their meetings.

"You ever seen those conspiracy theory videos about you?" Mera asked casually one evening.

Dabi gave an amused huff. "Practically all I watch, not gonna lie. I like them."

"Any of them right?"

Dabi smirked and shrugged, and Voidlon gave a good-natured chuckle in response, not realizing that Dabi was quite literal in the implied meaning of I have no fucking idea.

"You seen the one some kids made about you?"

"What?" Dabi asked, glancing at him. Roman looked over and gave him an amused grin.

"I'm pretty sure you're aware of some 1-A class people,?"

"Don't lump me in Handy's obsessions."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever helps you sleep at night." Dabi flicked a small burst of flame at the hero in retaliation, who simply smirked and ducked out of the way as he continued talking. "Some kids named Todoroki Shouto and Kaminari Denki started a conspiracy theory channel together, and they made a video about you being something called the Zodiac Killer."

Dabi had to stop and think about it for a second. "Isn't the Zodiac Killer some American serial killer from like—the pre-quirk era?"

"Dude had to have died centuries ago unless he had some sort of longevity Semblance from before the first one, and your semblance, sorry, quirk, is blue flames, I'm pretty sure."

"That aside, they think I'm the Zodiac Killer?"

"Yes."

Dabi paused, staring at the squad through narrowed eyes.

"...Show me."

Neo beamed and whipped out her phone, taking no more than a few moments to pull up the video and hold it between the squad and Dabi, who leaned over to watch the screen.

There was something about the Todoroki kid that just tugged at something in the back of his head, but he brushed it off easy enough. Probably the hair, he remembered the notes he had on the shit reactions he'd had to his own when it was those colors.

The tug in his mind was quickly forgotten when Todoroki and Kaminari started putting up all their evidence on a corkboard, using honest to god red yarn to connect all their points together and-

Holy shit. They had a point. Fuck.

"...It's well known that Dabi's quirk is powerful blue flames, yet it is also known that he joined the League of Villains, who were previously sponsored by the supervillain known as All for One before his capture during the Kamino Ward Incident several months ago. Connecting all the ties that link Dabi to the Zodiac Killer, as well as the behavioral ticks that could also link them, it would not be far-fetched to assume that Dabi might have some sort of longevity quirk."

Dabi was reeling as Kaminari picked up where Todoroki left off.

"He has some hella nasty scars, ones that after asking Recovery Girl, shouldn't have been survivable assuming they were all received at the same time-"

"-which it is relevant to presume since all seem to be of the same severity, in the same state of healing-"

"-if you can call it that, have you seen the man?"

"-and their relatively uniform manner."

"Yeah, he had to have gotten fucked up like that all at once right? Can you imagine surviving something like that? It's clear he didn't go to a hospital, since one of them probably would have reported getting a patient with that distinct a physical trait by now to help in the police investigation, so clearly, either Dabi has some sorta fucked up turtle quirk that gives him his weird-ass skin and longevity-"

"-or his original quirk was purely a longevity or immortality quirk, allowing him to survive his severe injuries long enough to join with the League of Villains, and potentially receive his famous blue flame quirk from All for One himself."

Fuck, Dabi thought. Do I have a longevity quirk? I'm pretty sure I've had blue flames since long before I joined the League, but I can't remember shit.

It took him a few moments to notice the video had ended, and that the squad was staring at him expectantly.

"So?" Sunny Flare said.

"Fuck, maybe I am the Zodiac Killer."

He really hoped this squad was as clever as he thought because he was so good at keeping his identity a secret that even he didn't know who the fuck he was.

Dabi was at the end of his fucking rope.

He'd hoped that after almost half a year of being a high profile villain, someone would have figured it out, and don't get him wrong, a few of them had some pretty convincing evidence (maybe he was an Canadian convict who'd escaped 60 years ago, he didn't fucking know), but of none of them felt quite right.

He was steadily approaching his third night of no sleep, surviving on nothing but desperation and monster energy drinks as he stared blankly at his lists of theories that he hadn't ruled out.

-government experiment?

-nomu?

-zodiac killer?

-demon summoned from hell?

-Canadian convict?

-living mass of flame?

Fuck, he needed another energy drink. Or caffeine pills. 5-hour energy.

He stumbled into the main room of the base, barely managing to catch himself on the edge of a table when he tripped over his own feet and fucking ow, he was gonna have to redo that staple in the morning.

Dabi looked up and made eye contact with Shigaraki, who had likely looked over at the sudden noise.

They stared at each other, and it took almost a full ten seconds for Dabi's sluggish mind to realize that he was the one who usually looked away first, and he was about to when a thought lodged in his mind.

Shigaraki would probably be able to confirm or deny the nomu theory, at the very least.

Dabi was pretty sure someone would have mentioned it if he was a nomu, and he's pretty sure that he joined the League at some point, but maybe he just imagined that? Could he ask Toga instead? Dabi thought she might've been there so maybe he could ask her?

But Shigaraki was right there, and Dabi was running out of patience for his almost decade-long investigation.

He also simultaneously realized that he and Shigaraki had been staring at each other for almost a minute, and he reminded himself to blink.

Fuck it.

"Okay, just to be sure, I'm not a nomu, right?"

Tomura sometimes wondered what he was willing to put up with, and he was fairly sure it wasn't fucking this.

Dabi had stumbled into the main room, and Tomura had looked over, fully ready to mock the asshole of a Frankenstein's monster. And then he thought to himself, Dabi looks like shit.

That's not to say Dabi didn't always look like shit, but he usually looked more aesthetically like shit, if that were a thing. His casual grace was also gone, and Tomura wanted to bark a laugh as he watched Dabi trip over his own feet.

Then they caught each other's gazes, and Dabi just stared.

Tomura didn't exactly look away either, but it became clear after a few seconds that Dabi wasn't going to look away and Tomura refused to look away first.

Their staring contest carried on for almost a minute, and he could feel his eyes watering painfully from being held open for too long, when Dabi blinked lethargically, almost like a cat. Tomura was glad to give his own eyes relief, and was about to ask what the fuck was wrong with Dabi when the burnt Sasuke started talking.

And Tomura could never stress it enough, nothing could have ever prepared him for the conversation he was about to get into.

"Okay, just to be sure, I'm not a nomu, right?"

Tomura stopped, stared, processed the question, and felt his brain glitch like a fucking Bethesda game.

"I-" he cut himself off, trying to figure out if Dabi was fucking with him or not, and looking at the man, Tomura felt frustration when he couldn't tell. "What the fuck—no? I'm pretty sure you're not? Why the fuck are you asking me?"

[fuck, crusty boy knows]

[we are dead!]

And at that question, Dabi lets out an exhausted sigh as he begins to cross the room, and it was probably the most expressive sound Tomura had ever heard from him. Throwing himself down on the other side of the coffee table, picking a sluggishly bleeding staple from his ankle as he sat down, and looked at Tomura tiredly.

"I've tried figuring this out on my own but I fucking give up," he grumbled before continuing. "Alright, all cards on the table here," Voidlon says, holding his hands up in a show of peace as Tomura raises an irritated eyebrow, "Dabi's memory is pretty fucked up." And in hindsight, not leaving when Dabi said that was probably when Tomura passed the point of no return. "Probably has something to do with all the burns. Plus the heat stroke, which I assume must've happened at some point. Plus, we're from different parts of the omniverse and are fighting some people known as Deadlight that are planning something with all reality that involves mass destruction."

Yeah, that adds up, Tomura thought, glancing at the bloody staple Dabi was fiddling with. Not for the first time, Tomura idly wondered how the fuck Dabi was still alive as Sunny Flare explained.

"Anyways, basically, Dabi has no idea who he was or what he was doing any more than eight years ago, and like, honestly even a few months back is stretching it. He can remember things starting from eight years ago, albeit super unreliably, but anything further than eight years ago? Boom, a fucking blank, plus, some freaks known as Deadlight are planning mass chaos across reality, with no clue what the end goal is. Said he's been trying to figure this shit out for years, kept an eye on stuff online to see if anyone else figured it out, and there was a really convincing video about Dabi being a nomu. It didn't sound right, but we wanted to check. You're sure it's wrong though, right?"

And Tomura has to take a minute to process that confession. He'd always just thought Dabi was trying to be edgy and mysterious, but he actually had no idea who the fuck he was, and as Tomura looked back on all his past interactions with Dabi, the concluding thought came to him unbidden, yeah, that checks out.

Tomura briefly entertained the idea of telling Dabi to fuck off and figure it out on his own time.

But on the other hand, the entire situation sounded like a shitshow waiting to happen, and if there was anything Tomura enjoyed doing outside of playing video games, it was laughing at the suffering of other people. Bonus points if that person would finally be Dabi.

Fuck it, Tomura didn't have any plans for his evening anyway.

"...Show me the video."

Dabi runs to fetch his computer, and Tomura finds himself vaguely disturbed by the fact that he seems almost eager to show the video to him, like some sort of patchwork puppy.

But then whatever conspiracy theory Dabi had found himself enamored with started playing and-

Fuck.

That made far too much sense.

Tomura was fairly sure that Sensei would have told him if Dabi was a noumu, but he was right, it was convincing.

As the video ended, sources flashing across the screen, Tomura turned in his seat to stare at Dabi, who stared right back at him. After a moment, Tomura broke the silence.

"Are you a nomu?" he asked, a bewildered note to his voice, because he'd thought Dabi was on drugs or something before, but now as he looked at him, he couldn't stop the pervasive thought of noumu rocketing around his head.

"I don't fucking know," Dabi whispered in the most defeated tone Tomura had ever heard.

"Give me a second," Tomura muttered, fishing his phone out of his pocket and pulling up his contacts list. "I can figure this out." Quickly scrolling through the relatively short list, he clicked on that one, succinctly titled Dr. Ujiko, and held his phone up to his ear, pinky curled into his palm as he listened to his phone ring.

"Ah, hel-"

"Is Dabi a nomu?" Tomura interrupted the greeting, deciding to get straight to the point.

"I-" The doctor cut himself off with a confused tone, and as much as Tomura had never liked the man, he could understand the confusion. However, he had less patience than Dabi (he'd been trying to figure this shit out for almost a decade and he hadn't lost his shit yet how the fuck-).

"Is Dabi a nomu, yes or no?"

"...No, Dabi is not a nomu. Why would you think he's-"

Beep.

"Alright," Tomura said blandly, shoving his phone back into his pocket. "The good news is you're not a nomu. The bad news is we still have no idea who or what the fuck you are."

"Well, I can cross the noumu theory off my list at least." Dabi sighed tiredly.

"You have a list?" Tomura asked incredulously. Dabi gave him a blank, unamused look.

"I've been trying to figure out who I am for almost seven years, of course I have a fucking list."

But Tomura was invested at this point, and just pointed at Dabi commandingly. "Go get them. in the name of whatever god is watching us, we're leveling up our investigation skills and unlocking your backstory, and start a new side quest: figure out what these Deadlight people's main goal is."

Tomura wasn't sure whether or not he should be surprised by the piles of thick binders Dabi and Sora brought back and dropped on the coffee table, which groaned worryingly under the sudden weight (and patchwork was a twig, he had no idea how he'd carried them without snapping like a glow stick).

"Is this… all of it?" he asked slowly, flipping open the binder closest to him and blinking at the tiny font of a fucking table of contents.

"Pretty much, yeah," Voidlon said, organized the binders into different groups before pointing at them one by one. "The upper row is for Dabi's identity, the bottom is for Deadlight's main goal. These two are just some general information we've been able to figure out about Dabi and Deadlight. These four are theories and leads that I've followed up on and we're able to confidently rule out. The next four are ones that I'm currently looking into. These six have lists of ideas that I need to start looking into, and there's a shit ton of them. And finally, these twelve," he said pointing to the largest pile of binders, "are leads that we haven't been able to follow up on fully, either because of a lack of resources or just hitting a dead end."

Tomura simply stared, only able to comprehend the amount of information piled in front of him simply by thinking I thought Dabi killed a fuck ton of trees at that summer camp, but apparently this is somehow where he's more effective at tearing down forests.

Tomura took a deep breath and exhaled.

Standing up from the ratty couch without a word, he took a few steps up to the large wall on the far side of the bar and brushed his fingers along the surface. He walked from end to end until all the yellowed and torn old posters that used to decorate the surface laid in piles of dust around his feet, leaving the plain wooden wall in his wake.

Turning around and padding past the squad's confused stare and over to the bar, he leaned over the counter and grabbed a knife and marker. Carefully balancing the blade and marker in one hand with decaying them, tore another poster down from another wall in the bar and turned it to the blank side on the coffee table.

Holding the knife in one hand and pressing down the poster with his wrist, he took the cap off the marker with his teeth and wrote down in large, bold kanji, WHO THE FUCK IS DABI AND WHAT THE HELL IS DEADLIGHT PLANNING?

Then he held the poster up to the center of the recently cleared wall, and stabbed it with the knife, pinning it effectively in place.

He turned to the squad, who were starting to gain some level of comprehension in their eyes at what Tomura was trying to accomplish.

"Start pulling out the most likely theories," he said. "We're figuring this shit out."

Spinner really had no idea what he was looking at.

All he'd wanted to do was go into the kitchen and grab a snack to eat before turning in for the night, and instead, he walked in on Shigaraki, those X-Squad weirdos, and Dabi having what appeared to be a civil debate about whether or not Dabi's burn scars were from time traveling and Deadlight's goal being to destroy all reality?

Maybe he'd already gone to bed and what he was seeing was just a really weird dream or something.

He must've made a noise or something because Shigaraki and Dabi snapped their heads around to look at him simultaneously.

He gulped nervously under their combined stares.

"Spinner," Shigaraki said sharply, and he snapped to attention at his name. "Settle something for us. On a scale of one to ten, how likely is it that Dabi's some sort of time traveler and if Deadlight's trying to delete reality?"

"I, uh," Spinner stuttered. "Um, four on both of those?"

Shigaraki cursed softly under his breath.

"Fucking told you," Evelyn said, picking a mug of tea from the coffee table and sipped at it. Shigaraki kicked her shin.

Shigaraki returned his attention to Spinner, who wasn't exactly eager to be getting glared at by their decay-happy leader again. "Spinner, go fetch the rest of the League. There's been a change of plans."

It was a day off.

Now, Maya said that it was her day off, but it really only meant that Prehistoric Park let them have an off day, and would probably end up letting the squad letting her and Mackenzie spend the whole day with them at the League of Villains hideout.

Technically work, he said, but at least it had become enjoyable work.

Now, whatever Maya and Mackenzie had been expecting when they walked into the League hideout at 9 AM, it certainly wasn't Shigaraki slamming his hands down on the table and yelling a question at Dabi, the rest of the league and the X-Squad spread across the couches and chairs, watching intently. A wall that they swore was decorated with posters of trashy old bands the last time they been there was instead covered with papers, either hung up with push pins or knives, some connected by red yarn.

"Give us something to fucking work with here, Dabi! Hobbies, interests, skills, anything you can't explain away!"

"Fuck if I know!" Dabi snapped back, sounding every bit as exasperated and defeated as Shigaraki did annoyed. "I'm pretty sure I was a person before all this shit, but I don't remember a goddamn thing about it."

The League seemed to let out a simultaneous groan at the answer.

"Don't worry, Dabi! Recovering from any sort of brain trauma is a long journey, so take your time!" Twice chirped. "Maybe if we whack you in the head with a metal bat, all the memories will come back!"

"Wait-" Dabi said suddenly, holding up a hand, appearing to be in deep thought. Noise in the room quieted, and Mackenzie had a sinking feeling she knew exactly what was going on as she spied the WHO THE FUCK IS DABI AND WHAT THE HELL IS DEADLIGHT PLANNING sign in the center of the wall. Dabi held a hand to his chin, brows furrowing as he thought. "Actually I think I used to like soba. Maybe. I also might have never eaten soba before. Honestly fifty-fifty chance," he said with false cheeriness, giving the group a thumbs up.

"What the heck," Maya said softly.

The League quieted all at once and turned to look at the two. Several seconds of silence passed before Shigaraki broke the quiet.

"Listen, either sit your ass down and help or get the fuck out. We're not doing anything else until we figure this shit out."

Mackenzie felt the sigh she gave out in response somewhere deep in his soul, shutting the door behind her and dragging Maya over to an empty chair, grumbling under her breath.

"Well, this explains why I couldn't call Voidlon either."

Sometimes, Shouta wondered if it was really worth ever getting out of bed in the morning. Maybe he should've never crawled out of his sleeping bag, just laid there and let the ratty thing become his coffin.

Instances in which he wondered such a thing tended to happen whenever he had to deal with the League of Villains. Again.

Shigaraki was a manchild who was more difficult to reason with than almost all of his students, Toga was some sort of psychopath, Twice desperately needed a psychotherapist, Compress and Kurogiri were polite but frustrating to deal with and thus Shouta hated them by default, Dabi was a powerful and smug asshole, and Spinner was a cosplayer taking method acting too far, the rest were psychos.

So Shouta wasn't exactly thrilled that he got into a confrontation with Shigaraki on the weekend when all he had been trying to accomplish was picking up more eye drops.

The underground hero in him was steadily becoming more frustrated as the year progressed at the sheer amount of confrontations he was getting forced into in broad daylight, in front of the news cameras. He might as well become a spotlight hero, at that rate.

Now, the cause of his headache during this particular confrontation, for once, didn't come from Midoriya's suicidal self-sacrificing tendencies. No, the problem child was back at the dorms, not getting pulled into yet another major villain fight.

It instead came from the fact that Shigaraki kept leaning in and asking about missing person cases he had worked on in the past—the majority were ones he and the police had never been able to solve.

"What about Okamoto Shinju? Ever found him?" Shigaraki hissed into his ear as he shot past, barely avoiding the man's outstretched fingers. "Noguchi Kichirou? Yamauchi Misaki? Inoue Riko?"

Shouta growled lowly under his breath, whipping around and focusing his gaze on Shigaraki, thankful that it was only the one League member he had to deal with (though none of them would have been ideal).

"Why are you so interested in cold missing person cases?"

"Ah," Shigaraki intoned, giving a bright smile that looked demented on his face. "So they're still cold, hm? That's very useful information."

Shouta startled at the statement, not having expected the reaction. Why did Shigaraki suddenly care about decade-old missing person cases?

Shigaraki suddenly shot away from him, and at the top of his lungs screeched, "IT'S A LEAD!"

Before Shouta could even process what on earth that statement could possibly mean, a blast of blue flames poured down on Shigaraki, causing the leader to—melt, not burn. Shouta hissed as he jumped away from the flames, turning his glare to where Dabi was leaning over a nearby rooftop, furious at having been played in such a way.

Of course it was one of Twice's doubles. Shigaraki, even childish as he was, usually had a better plan than just running up to him on the sidewalk.

"Thanks, Eraserhead!" Dabi called over the roof, before quickly retreating back and out of Shouta's line of sight. "You've been a huge help!"

Shouta shot out his capture weapon, quickly grappling to the top of the building he had just spotted Dabi upon, determined to catch him before-

A few wisps of purple mist floated away in the wind.

Shouta tightened his hands into fists, growling a low "Dammit," under his breath.

He was too late.

"Cold cases are cold for a reason, you know," Zenigata said dryly as Lupin dragged him, along with the gang, Rko, Lupin's daughter no less, and her girlfriend, Caren Kotomine, dumping a box of files on the table with a grunt. It'd been a bitch to get his hands on the printed copies of the various cases, but the fact that they were considered cold was useful, in that they had a little less attention paid to them. One quick trip to the photocopier and back and Zenigata had officially committed his first crime.

He was vaguely worried about how nonchalant he was becoming about following the law, regardless of the wide parameters he was given on his mission. That was a problem for future him, however.

"They're cold for the police," Shigaraki said distractedly, already shuffling through the files. Zenigata was relieved that he'd taken to taping two of his fingers on each hand unless he was leaving the bar, having accidentally disintegrated more than a few flash drives of potentially useful information. "Unlike them, we don't have to deal with any red tape or listen to any higher-ups."

"So you're becoming back alley detectives? Like some sort of discount Sherlock Holmes roleplayers?"

"We're not fucking LARPers. This is a serious investigation."

"Alright, alright," Maya said, holding her hands up placatingly.

"You know," Spinner commented contemplatively from off the side after a few moments of silence, "now that you've pointed it out I don't think I'll ever be able to unsee it."

"Detective Maya Sue, at your service," Maya chirped, saluting sarcastically with a ditzy smile on her face.

"I fucking hate it here," Dabi said.

Yuuta didn't really know how long he'd been stuck in that damp basement.

He had a general idea, of course; other prisoners were occasionally tossed into the room with him, and they would tell him what date they estimated it was.

At the very least, he'd been there for over eight years.

It made sense, of course, that the Yakuza cell he'd been sold to would do well to keep their source of limitless energy from being discovered, but well—it still hurt when he realized, around his fourth year, that it was unlikely that anyone would ever come for him. Picked right off the streets in front of Ketsubutsu, and no one could track him down. He finally had his provisional license, and he'd been picked up, just like that.

He picked absentmindedly at the brace around his leg that chained him to the wall, a device that endlessly siphoned off the energy that used to crackle off his skin in abundance.

He startled at sudden sounds of fighting, muffled through layers of concrete. His hand slipped and his nail caught in a seam of the brace, pulling at an awkward angle that left a dull throb in his fingertip. He straightened up, a traitorous part of his mind flaring up in hope before he crushed it back down.

Yuuta knew that if they hadn't found him by now, his case was more than likely cold and shelved. They wouldn't expend more resources on him when there were warmer trails to follow.

It was significantly more likely that some rival Yakuza family was starting something.

Or at least, that's what Yuuta thought until the sounds of fighting began to grow closer. He shifted on his ratty cot nervously—the screams outside his room made the fight sound very one-sided, and in the intruders' favor. That small flare of hope kept nudging at the back of his mind.

When the sounds of fighting faded, Yuuta sat tensely, picking at the frayed edges of his thin blanket, mind racing as he tried to figure out what might happen next.

When the wall of his room crumbled into dust before his very eyes, Yuuta only blinked, confused at what he saw.

The group before him certainly had… a unique sense of style, not that Yuuta and his too-big-for-his-emaciated-body clothes were ones to talk.

But the one standing at the front of the group with his hand outstretched looked like he had a whole hand kink thing going on, another looked like a discount Frankenstein's monster, and the last was wearing nothing more than a slightly too big school uniform.

Yuuta wasn't sure what had changed since he had been kidnapped, but he was fairly sure that interns were meant to be given their real costumes before being taken on fieldwork.

"'Hello," the guy that looked a lot like a dragon said casually, stepping forward as he pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. "You don't happen to be," he squinted at the paper (Yuuta was struck by the horrific realization that the scars weren't an aesthetic thing, but were very real as he spied the inside of the guy's mouth through the gap between the first and second staple on either side of his mouth as he spoke, and oh god Yuuta felt sick), "Serizawa Yuuta, do you?"

"Uh, y-" Yuuta coughed harshly into his elbow, grimacing at the rough scratch of his throat. "Yes, that's me."

"Awww, what a letdown," the school girl whined, waving her arms around angrily, and Yuuta felt the feeling of being sick coming up again as he saw the very much blood-covered knife in her hand. How much more brutal had heroics gotten in eight years? "He's not even that cute—he's so skinny! There's no blood on his bones!"

Yuuta was fairly sure that the saying was "meat," but he didn't get a chance to ask about the strange turn of phrase before the guy covered in hands groaned loudly and childishly. "This is a waste of time, I'm gonna call Kurogiri for a pick-up."

The other two intoned a disappointed "Yeah," as they followed him when he stalked away and out of sight, presumably fishing his phone from his pocket.

"Wait!" Yuuta managed to call out, his throat itching at the effort. The group paused briefly and glanced back at him, looking impatient. "I—are you three heroes? You don't look like part of the Miyashita family…"

The guy covered in scars barked out a harsh laugh, waving blandly over his shoulder as the group continued walking away. "Don't worry about it," he said in an amused tone before they all disappeared from sight. After a few moments, Yuuta couldn't hear their footsteps any longer.

No more than a few minutes passed before police and heroes flooded the room, and Yuuta allowed his confusion to be washed away by crushing relief as tears pricked at his eyes.

"Right. Yes, we're at the location. I'll text you the coordinates. Alright, thank you," Atsuhiro said, before pulling his phone away from his face and hanging up. He turned to face Spinner and Twice, who had sat on the grass and started a game of chopsticks in the time it had taken him to call Kurogiri. Allowing himself a smile at this scene, he quickly shot off a text with their coordinates to the bartender before catching his comrades' attention.

"Shigaraki, Dabi, and Toga have finished up their objective. We'll be joining them back at the base shortly," he informed them, both looking up at him. "The police will be here soon, so get ready to move. Kurogiri will be sending a portal momentarily."

"Alright," Spinner said easily, standing up in tandem with Twice. "So, uh, they're taking care of…" he gestured weakly at the pit next to them, a stale, vaguely nauseating scent rising from its depths.

"They'll be taking care of the body, yes," Atsuhiro confirmed, glancing at the skeleton still slightly buried at the bottom of the hole. "We'll allow the police to run DNA analysis on whether or not this is Itou Ryouta. Hawks will be able to tell us the results before it's even on the news."

"Right…"

"Relax!" Twice chirped, patting Spinner on the back. "Either we still have a lead on who Dabi is or we've helped a family find closure! Either way, there's a silver lining to this! This entire situation is a fucking waste of time!"

"I still think Toga would have been a better choice for this kind of thing," Spinner muttered.

"Perhaps," Atsuhiro said noncommittally, "but she was getting stabby, so we decided to handle that efficiently while we could."

"I guess."

Atsuhiro was pleased to see the familiar purple mist of Kurogiri's portal appear just a few meters away as police sirens screeched into the park. The police officers who exited the car froze upon spotting the three members of the League, but Atsuhiro did no more than tip his hat and stroll briskly into the portal, Spinner and Twice behind him.

"Bye-bye!" Twice called, and Atsuhiro could almost hear the cheery wave he was giving the officers in his voice. "See you never, fuckers!"

"Alright, so," Shigaraki announced, pacing back and forth to the League, sprawled across the couched of the bar, "while we're waiting for the police to calm the fuck down, and let us get some more of those cases, we're going to focus on some of the alternative theories and ruling those out." Shigaraki threw himself into a chair, looking around at them. "We'll be splitting up into groups. Toga, Spinner, you're working with some of the more 'villainous' members of the X-Squad on the Zodiac Killer. Compress and Twice, time travel with the sci-fi members."

"We've been over this," Dabi groaned, letting his head fall back into the couch cushions in exasperation. "We ruled that one out."

"No, you ruled it out. I'm still skeptical."

"Oh my fucking god."

"Dabi, you and the more morally good members are working on the demon from hell theory. Me, Maya and Kurogiri will be making a few house calls to the Yakuza."

"Okay, wait," Sunny Flare said, as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, but there is no possible way that Dabi is a demon from hell, which, for the record, doesn't even exist!"

"Prove it," Shigaraki responded blankly.

"I- what?"

"Prove it," Shigaraki repeated, crossing his arms. "While some quirks can have scientific explanations, some don't. How am I, scientifically, able to decay things with a single touch? How the fuck do Compress and Twice make Conservation of Matter their bitch? How do you control reality? For that matter, how does any form of telekinesis work?"

"I, uh," Sunny Flare stuttered, mind screeching to a halt. "Hah?"

"Exactly. Quirks are some wack-ass shit, so there's nothing to say hell can't exist, and that Dabi isn't a demon." Shigaraki pulled a Bible from out of nowhere and tossed it on the table. "Get to work."

"I—but-" Hawks blinked and stared down at his hands like he was having an existential crisis, which, Dabi supposed, was fair enough.

Despite that, Dabi couldn't keep himself from cackling when Shigaraki huffed angrily, picking the book back up and nailing Sunny in the face with it, growling, "Read the fucking Bible."

Some research later...

"Holy shit," was all Dabi managed to say once they got all the information laid out in front of them. Shigaraki simply made an odd noise of affirmation, and Zenigata and Sunny Flare only nodded dumbly. "I knew heroes were fucking corrupt but this…"

"Yeah," Sunny agreed softly, looking vaguely sick.

"Okay, so Shinoda Kei is definitely dead," Shigaraki said. "Our next question is what the fuck are we supposed to do about heroes taking on black market hits?"

"I dunno, expose them?" Dabi suggested, shrugging. "Tie into that whole 'fuck heroes' thing we're doing."

It was quite obvious that none of them had slept in the past two days when Zenigata simply squinted at him for a few moments before understanding dawned across his face. "Right, yeah, that. Tomura, get Toga to drop off the files to the local newspaper in the morning."

"Now then," a strict voice suddenly interrupted. The three of them tensed, before slowly turning around to see Kurogiri standing behind them, arms crossed. He didn't have a face, but Dabi could feel the disappointed stare. "When's the last time you slept?"

"Uh…" Voidlon started, facing scrunching up in concentration as he started to count on his fingers, talons glinting slightly in the soft light of the bar (Toga had been thrilled when they discovered that Voidlon had additional avian features, and Dabi would reluctantly admit to being worried for his continued health with Toga's excitement).

"It's been like… forty hours?" Mera shrugged.

"It's been fifty-three, actually," Kurogiri informed them shortly. "You all are going to bed, now."

All of them groaned in unison, but with a pointed look from the team mom bartender, Shigaraki and Dabi began shuffling towards their rooms.

"Will you be able to make it back to your apartment safely?" Unlikely, considering that Fukuoka was an hour flight at the very least from Musutafu.

"Um," Zenigata hummed, thinking as he swayed on his feet. "Probably not."

Kurogiri sighed. "Do you know the precise coordinates of your apartment, so I can drop you off?"

"Fuckin' bird brains can't even string a sentence together right now," Dabi muttered, having stopped his mindless shuffle to watch the exchange. Backtracking easily, he grabbed the collar of Zenigata's coat and began dragging him along. "Y'can stay with me tonight." Hawks squealed in surprise and barely managed to snatch his flight jack off the couch as they went past. "Get Toga to go drop those files at a newspaper or something when she gets up," he said to Kurogiri as he and Zenigata left.

"Be nice, Dabi," the bartender called to him as they left the main room.

"Dunno what you're talkin' about," he responded. "'M a fucking saint."

Dabi elected to ignore the amused huff he could just barely hear from the man.

Sometimes Shouta wondered if being a teacher was worth it. A majority of the time, his answer would be a resounding no. The day that Feedback was revealed to have taken an assassination contract as some sort of sick side business was one of the days that really caused him to wonder if it was worth it.

"Today," he started, staring out at the faces of his homeroom class, "we'll still be talking about Hero Ethics, however, due to current events-" most of the class cringed at his words, so it was nice to know that he could still count on Midoriya to keep the class up to date on major events so he didn't have to, "-I'll be going over basic things a hero should not do, even if it seems painfully obvious."

The class was silent, all of them paying attention.

"Number one," Shouta said, turning around to write on the board. "Don't take assassination contracts."

"Pops, where the fuck have you been?" Shigaraki snarled in question as Zenigata stumbled into the hideout.

"What the fuck were you doing?" Dabi added on in wonder.

"Dealing with the fallout of the X-Squad's shenanigans," Zenigata said. "And the pros can't wear their official hero costumes around off-duty any more thanks to the whole body camera thing, so Miruko had to drag Keigo out and buy a whole wardrobe since he's never really worn anything else and overall it's been a really productive week for Interpol, so thanks for that."

"Body camera thing?" Dabi asked, confused as to what precisely Zenigata was talking about, but was drowned out by Toga and Twice.

"Don't worry, I'm sure he looks great!" Twice chirped. "He's gonna look like shit!"

"Didn't you wear anything cute as a teenager?" Toga asked. "You always look so nice with your red suits during your interviews! They remind me of blood!"

"Okay," Zenigata said in a tone that clearly displayed his displeasure with the topic, "we're here to discuss Dabi's tragic backstory, not mine."

Kurogiri glanced up at the commotion, took one look at what Zenigata was wearing, and sighed long-sufferingly. "Give me your coat."

Zenigata groaned, tossing his coat aside, placing it in Kurogiri's expectant hand.

"Fuck off," he growled, stalking over to the couch. "Shove over, Spinner, I'm freezing."

Zenigata and Spinner had converted one of the couches into a pile of heating pads and electric blankets fairly early into winter, and it wasn't uncommon to walk into the main room and find the two of them swaddled in blankets, complaining in unison about how they weren't made for the cold.

In direct contrast to the two ice cubes across from him, Dabi reveled in the cold. His body was every bit made for the winter as it wasn't for his quirk, and it showed as he kicked his bare feet up onto the coffee table.

"You seriously think Interpol aren't going to yell at me endlessly for skipping work if I take off like that?"

"You better not," Shigaraki snapped at him as he walked past, taking his place in front of the WHO THE FUCK IS DABI AND WHAT THE HELL IS DEADLIGHT PLANNING? wall. "I'll dust you no matter where you are if you don't carry your weight around here."

"See? Just like that."

"Alright, here's the summary of our search for Dabi's identity as it currently stands," Shigaraki announced, ignoring Zenigata's comment as he finally started the meeting. "We've managed to handle most of the possible leads dealing with the yakuza and the quirk trafficking rings, and thanks to Toga's work in infiltrating various police stations, we've managed to confidently rule out Dabi being some sort of new pro who went missing and was covered up. Our current route of investigation is into mysterious disappearances surrounding heroes since that's apparently more of a thing than we thought it was. We also want to start working on miscellaneous disappearances that have no apparent cause."

"I finished looking into all the disappearances in Fukuoka, and Hawks' agency has moved on to combing the wider Kyushu region," Zenigata offered, voice sounding muffled through the blankets now wrapped firmly around his body. "Miruko's started investigating Hiroshima and the other prefectures in Chugoku. She's independent, so she should be able to move pretty fast."

"Miruko?" Dabi asked, looking over at Zenigata in surprise. "How'd you get her in on this?" Without coming off as hella suspicious went unsaid.

The blanket burrito shifted slightly, and Dabi assumed that the movement translated to a shrug, somehow. "She's competitive. I mentioned how the League's closed more cases in the past few months than almost any agency or hero has in the past year, and she took it as a challenge."

"Ooh, ooh!" Toga squealed, waving her arms around excitedly. "Does this mean we might run into Miruko on the job? She's so pretty! Her outfit's white, I bet it shows blood super well!"

"Maybe," Shigaraki said dismissively, his face clearly showing that he did not care. "Since Zenigata and his fancy agency and hero friends are taking care of Kyushu and Chugoku, that just leaves Hokkaido, Shikoku, and the rest of Honshu."

"That's like… seventy-five percent of Japan," Spinner said.

"With a diligent work ethic, I'm sure we'll get through it in no time!" Twice cheered, ever the optimist. "It's gonna take forever, but what else is there to do!"

"This is certainly quite an undertaking, Tomura," Kurogiri commented neutrally from the bar.

"My life is a nightmare," Dabi muttered blankly.

"No, this is hilarious," Goemon said, and while he wasn't explicitly laughing, Dabi knew that the grin he had was aimed at him. "Imagine if we go through all this effort and you don't even have some sort of dramatic background or tragic backstory to justify you being this emo, you're just a moody child with an ego."

"That's fucking worse."

"Goemon," Compress suddenly interrupted. Dabi and the squad broke off from their back and forth to look at the magician, who had a contemplative look upon his face. "You said you were able to coerce Miruko's help in this investigation, yes?"

"I don't like the way you phrased that, but yes."

"Would it be at all possible for you to ask other heroes to work on these cases? The more of these that are solved, the less work there will be for us to do."

"We… guess?" Fujiko agreed hesitantly, the bundle of blankets wiggling around until her hand emerged from the pile holding her phone up in front of her eyes. "Jeanist is usually pretty happy to help out, so is Edgeshot… I talk to Uwabami at photo shoots occasionally, she might be willing to listen…" Zenigata muttered, scanning through his contacts for a few moments before his arm disappeared back into the blanket and he began speaking. "I can think of some folks who might help out, but I know literally nobody from Tohoku or Hokkaido, much less anyone on speaking or asking for favors terms with, so you guys are gonna be pretty on your own there."

"Right," Shigaraki started, redirecting attention to himself, "so while Zenigata is busy being the kiss ass that he is, we'll focus ourselves on Hokkaido, Tohoku, and Tokyo. We'll split into three teams. Dabi and Compress will lead one sect to take Tohoku since you're the only ones who'll be able to take the cold there and not bitch at me about it every five seconds."

"Isn't Hokkaido further north, though?" Spinner asked.

"Hokkaido at least has hot springs," Shigaraki said. "Toga, Twice, that's where you two will take one third of the team to, though expect that you might be pulled occasionally if there's a need for reconnaissance or backup from another team."

"Spa day!" Toga cheered, high-fiving Twice.

"That leaves… you, me, and Kurogiri to work here then, right?" Spinner said.

"Astute deduction," Shigaraki remarked dryly.

"Why do you wanna work with me?"

"I don't." Dabi almost winced for Spinner, because Shigaraki pulled no punches on how much he despised all of them. "You're just here to crawl through the sewers so I don't have to."

"God fucking dammit," Spinner muttered into his blanket.

Dabi wrinkled his nose at the cold pressure against his scars, Toga and Voidlon both sticking their tongues out as they attempted to pat enough foundation onto his face to cover up the wrinkled purple skin.

"We done yet?" he asked as she pulled away, tilting her head as the two inspected their work. "Pretty sure you've dumped half that bottle on my face by now."

"It's really hard to cover up purple, Dabi," Toga whined, patting the sponge under his eyes a few more times. "It'll be really obvious if I miss a spot or if it wears off, so it's better to just smother you."

"Smothering doesn't really seem your style," he said offhandedly, closing his eyes obligingly as the sponge pressed against his lower eyelids. Toga giggled in response.

"Bleeding out is much prettier, don't you think?"

"Certainly leaves more of an impact," he said neutrally. He sneezed as something was sprayed on his face, and was coughing by the time Voidlon let up on whatever he was spritzing on him. "Give me some warning next time, suffocation isn't my thing."

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all. He was pulling away and looking over him as he opened his eyes again. "Alright, that should be enough. The foundation says that it's waterproof, but I don't take any chances."

"Thanks," he responded gruffly, rolling up the collar of the turtleneck he'd been stuffed into to hide the parts of his neck that hadn't been covered up. Toga squinted at him as he completed the action. "What?"

"You look funny."

Dabi raised an eyebrow at the response. "I usually look like a rotting eggplant, and me not looking like that is funny?"

"No, it's just-" Toga waved her hands uselessly, mouth twisting as she searched for what she was trying to say. "You don't look like Dabi," she finally came up with after a few moments.

"That's kind of the point."

"No, I mean you look like someone else. I know what people look like, and your entire facial structure looks different. You don't look like you."

Dabi blinked slowly at her. "I'm not sure I'm following."

Toga huffed, before taking out her phone and quickly taking a picture of his face, before handing it to him. Dabi took the phone and simply stared. Toga, as a certified shapeshifter, had always been particularly sensitive to people's appearances being out of place, and he'd assumed that she was just overreacting, but actually seeing what she was talking about… yeah, Dabi could see her point.

His face was a lot softer, more round and less sharp, with his staples and scars covered. His face held a sort of youthful energy it didn't have before, with his eternal eyebags weighing down his eyes. He looked like someone completely different.

"See?" Toga asked probingly. "You don't look like Dabi, you look—like—like not-Dabi!"

"Yeah, I can definitely see what you were talking about now," Dabi agreed distractedly, still staring at his face.

"I don't like it," she muttered, across her arms.

Dabi sighed, racking his brain to figure out how to deal with the situation he was presented with. There were main problems to deal with. The first was that Toga could likely smell him as Dabi, but couldn't see him as Dabi, which understandably upset and confused her slightly. The second being that Toga was exceptionally fond of his scars and staples, and not being able to see them was probably half the problem.

"I know you don't," Dabi said slowly, picking his words carefully as Toga and Voidlon looked up at him. "But me and Compress don't know the back alleys of Tohoku as well as we do here, so it's best that we don't look like ourselves so that we can travel freely. So how about this: if I pull a staple or start bleeding anywhere, I'll send you pictures, and each night, when I take the makeup off, I'll send you a picture so you know I'm still me. Sound like a deal?"

Toga sniffed, and after a moment, nodded her head. Dabi gave her a smile and ruffled her hair as he stood up from her bed.

"Make sure you've got everything packed. You can call Kurogiri if you need anything, but it's probably best to not bother him excessively," he said, strolling out of her room as she chirped an affirmative.

Strolling into the main room, he announced, "Guess who's got a new look, fuckers."

Compress, Kurogiri, Spinner, and Zenigata, who he didn't even realize would be there, looked over at him simultaneously. Most of them simply blinked and squinted at him, while Zenigata made a strangled sound and inhaled the mouthful of water he'd been trying to drink.

While Spinner thumped Zenigata back as the inspector tried to cough up his lungs, Kurogiri and Compress simply looked him over in awe.

"You certainly look… different," Compress said after a moment. Dabi rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, that's what Toga said. Anything else?"

Compress hummed for a second before shrugging his shoulders. "You look good, Dabi."

"Thanks," Dabi said, tilting his head slightly at the response. Zenigata had finally finished hacking up his diaphragm and was looking at him like he'd seen a ghost or something, causing Dabi to raise an eyebrow judgmentally in his direction. "Too sexy for you?"

"Um, that's not it," he said, shaking his head, and Dabi allowed his eyes to follow them for a moment before looking back at Zenigata's face as he got his words in order. "Not that you don't look great, hot stuff, you just remind me of someone and I really wasn't expecting it."

Dabi felt something tug in the back of his mind, like something wasn't quite right, but, unable to figure out what the problem was, simply narrowed his eyes at the inspector before shrugging. "Alright. What're you doing here, then?"

Zenigata shrugged. "We're all gonna be pretty busy for the next month or two, thought I'd see you guys off since heading up to Tohaku or Hokkaido in the middle of winter isn't my idea of a good time."

"That's fair."

"Dabi, you've finished packing?" Kurogiri asked, interrupting the conversation.

"Yeah. It's mostly just a bunch of turtlenecks and, like, fifty bottles of concealer and foundation. Not much to remember."

"You're sure you don't need a coat?"

"I thrive in the cold. If anybody asks, I'll just say my quirk's cold resistance or something. Not too far off the mark."

"Please bring one with you just in case," Kurogiri said, turning away to head back into the kitchen. "Cold resistance does not equal cold-proof."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll toss one in," Dabi responded, waving him off.

"Oh my god, he sounds just like Tsunagu," Zenigata whispered under his breath after a few moments. At the inquiring looks of both Dabi and Spinner, he clarified. "Best Jeanist. Kurogiri sounds exactly like Best Jeanist, guys," he said, looking as if he'd just had a revelation.

Dabi felt a mocking smile across his face as he realized the implications. "Are you saying that Best Jeanist parents you?" Zenigata blinked at him.

"Is that what it is?" His face scrunched up as he thought. "I suppose that explains why Miruko kept asking me why I didn't buy him a Best Dad mug for his birthday this year. I was wondering about that."

"Oh my fucking god."

Dabi wasn't really prepared for the astronomically strange feeling of walking into a coffee shop and having absolutely nobody look at him twice, either because of his scars or his criminal status. Compress and the rest had gone off to raid a small gang a few blocks over and had sent Dabi off to get coffee in the meanwhile, as his quirk was incredibly distinctive, and they didn't want alarms about League presence in Sendai being raised quite yet.

Was this what not looking like a discount Frankenstein's monster felt like? Novel.

It was probably his tense nerves from being so openly out in public that caused him to almost snap his self-restraint and cremate the person who slammed their hands on his table when he finally sat down with drinks.

"Hey, can we ask you a question for a survey we're doing?" He looked up to see the eager face of some guy with green hair and red eyes, flanked on each side by a woman with blue hair and green eyes and a guy with white hair and blue eyes, who was giving him an odd look.

Staring at them for a moment, he shrugged. He didn't really have anything better to do. "Sure."

"Great!" the guy chirped. "I'm Matsumoto Ryouichi, this is Takahashi Sho, and the polar bear is Todoroki Natsuo." Dabi felt himself twitching at the name, trying to place it. Maybe he'd met the guy a few years ago and he just couldn't remember him? That happened a lot, so it was certainly possible.

"Hashimoto Touwa," he said in response, the fake name rolling off his tongue oddly. The guy with white hair, Todoroki—ah, like Todoroki Shouto from 1-A, that must be why he looked familiar—choked slightly at his words.

"Sorry, what did you say your given name was?" he asked stiltedly. Dabi raised an eyebrow at the response.

"Touwa. You know, kanji for lamp and wing?"

"Ah, right sorry," Todoroki said, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, as if his face hadn't gone dangerously pale. "I thought you said something else."

Dabi hummed skeptically, but let the matter go. The guy looked a little sick, and he really didn't feel like getting puked on. He lived with enough infection risks as it was.

"We're students from the Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University," Matsumoto said, skillfully brushing right along. "Our question is pretty simple: do you think doctors should be friendly and personal, or distant and professional?"

"I mean, a friendly presence is nice, I suppose," Dabi started after thinking for a moment of what the best way to answer the question when the only experience with doctors he could remember was sketchy underground ones who helped him staple his body together. "But I don't really like getting casually friendly with people I don't know that well, so keeping the talk strictly professional would be ideal."

"So, a friendly demeanor but no questions outside of what's needed?" the med student clarified. "Cool, thanks for your time!" Dabi inclined his head in response as the bubbly man herded his friends away.

What an odd interaction. It was weird, talking to people in the medical industry about something other than how the fuck he was still alive.

After a moment, he shrugged to himself, deciding that it must just be how people without debilitating trauma or mental issues must interact. Finally taking a sip of his coffee, he pulled out his phone to kill time while he waited for Compress to get back.

Zenigata tried to repress a sigh as he checked the text from the Commission, steering his car as he changed direction. He was already on a tight schedule, so of course they wanted to meet right now.

It was a short detour to the HPSC building, landing on the balcony outside the president's office and knocking. The door was quickly slid open by the president herself, who gave him a distinctly unimpressed look at his method of entry.

"You wanted to see me?" he asked, careful to keep a relaxed look on his face as he strolled into the office. He tapped his fingers along the can of coffee he held, taking a sip as the president took her seat.

"Yes," she started. "Would you tell me why the League has been so erratic lately? You haven't been turning in your reports."

Shit. Zenigata knew he'd been forgetting to do something. He should probably cut down on his visits to the League a little, the hour drive time to and from cut into his already tenuous sleep schedule.

"Zenigata," the president said, voice colder, snapping him out of his head. "Please explain the League's current motivations."

Zenigata paused, running over the words in his mind.

The League's current motivations.

Zenigata wondered how he could best explain that the reason Dabi had burned down that church was to test the demon theory, or how Toga was only dropping all those exposés at the media because the files were taking up too much space at the bar, or Shigaraki being spotted helping out pros at several quirk trafficking ring busts was half to investigate, half something Hawks didn't want to touch with a twenty-foot pole.

After sitting in silence for almost a minute, mulling his thoughts over, Zenigata decided to make a, in his opinion, rather smart and stupid decision.

He stood up, looked the president dead in the eye, said, "If you pay me enough to explain that fucking rabbit hole, I'll explain everything, but fair warning, the shit you'll learn is very much chaos." He then walked out the door, and leapt off the balcony.

As he somehow survived the fall and landed in his car, he took another sip of his coffee as he fished out his phone, tapping out a text as he sped off towards U.A. saying that Lupin's a bad influence on him.

Hitoshi didn't think that anything could have ever really prepared him for his transfer into the hero course. Sure, Aizawa had made sure that he was caught up on all the heroics-specific coursework, and he was actually ahead of his new class in their other classes, thanks to gen ed having more rigorous academics. But he supposed he wasn't prepared for the atmosphere or the socialization.

The first thing he'd said when he'd been introduced as their new classmate was his name and that he wasn't here to make friends.

When he finally took his seat in the heroics course, the first thing any of his new classmates said to him was from Todoroki, who sat behind him to his right. The recommendation student had tapped him on the shoulder, and when he'd turned around to meet Todoroki's blank look with one of his own, he was simply told, "Friendship isn't an option here."

Hitoshi had stared at him for a few moments, trying to parse out the possible meaning of the statement. Todoroki didn't strike him as a social butterfly, and his statement sounded less like an invitation to socialize than a warning. "What?"

"Midoriya doesn't give you much of a choice. He has a tendency to beat your face in with kindness." With that, he settled back into his own chair and continued going through his notes before class, unconcerned with Hitoshi's alarmed look.

Hitoshi had turned back around after a moment to stare at the green-haired cinnamon roll that sat in front of him. That was ominous as fuck.

And it was true.

Todoroki had told him that Monday. Wednesday, Hitoshi and Midoriya had gotten into an argument while sparring during heroics, and Midoriya had shouted some profound stuff at him as he beat Hitoshi's face in the ground, and on Thursday he was being dragged over to Midoriya's table for lunch.

Hitoshi really understood the whole 'beat your face in with kindness' thing after that.

So yes, heroics was intense in a way he didn't really expect or had prepared for.

So when an Interpol inspector burst into homeroom chugging canned coffee and looking vaguely like he regretted life, Hitoshi spared a thought as to why he was surprised by anything anymore.

"What's up?" Zenigata chirped as he strolled into the room. Aizawa's frustrated sigh was mirrored by Tokoyami dropping his head onto his desk with a thud. Hitoshi wondered for a moment why Tokoyami would have such a strong reaction to his mentor's appearance, before comparing Zenigata's bright smile to 'revelry in the dark' and answered the question for himself.

"Koichi," Aizawa greeted in a less than pleased tone. "I hope you have a reason to be here."

"Yeah, yeah, don't worry," Zenigata said, tossing the empty coffee can over his shoulder and landing it perfectly in the trash can (Hitoshi felt slightly tempted to clap at the trickshot) as he reached into his jacket and took out a file, handing it over. "Release forms. I'm here to pick up some first-year interns and escort them over where we're having the meeting. Jeanist and Edgeshot are picking up the second and third years."

Hitoshi had no idea what 'the meeting' was, but Aizawa nodded knowingly as he flipped through the file Zenigata handed him, eyes critically scanning over each page. "Everything seems in order," he grunted after a few moments, turning his attention back to the students. "Jirou, Shoji, Sero, Iida, Tokoyami, Kirishima, Uraraka, Asui, Bakugou, and Yaoyorozu, pack your bags and collect your cases," he called, each named student straightening up as pulled out the remote and released the cases containing their hero costumes from the wall. "Your work studies are beginning early today. You will not be headed to your mentor's agency as you usually are, so Zenigata will be escorting you all to location."

"I know you still have a class to teach, so do you want me to send you the sparknotes of the meeting afterward?" Zenigata asked their teacher as all the named students stood up from their desks.

Aizawa grunted, tilting his head ever so slightly in thought before he spoke. "Shinsou," he called, and Hitoshi shot up straight in his seat as Aizawa looked at him. Aizawa made a quick beckoning gesture and he quickly made his way up to the front. "This is Shinsou Hitoshi, my intern," Aizawa introduced bluntly. "I'll send him in as my proxy." Glancing at Hitoshi, he said, "Shinsou, this is Hawks. Consider him your mentor for the day."

"Well, this isn't sudden at all," Hitoshi muttered under his breath. Going by the way Aizawa rolled his eyes and Hawks gave a small chuckle, he wasn't quiet enough.

"Go get your stuff, kid," Zenigata said, smiling. "You can hang with me and Tsukuyomi for the day." At Aizawa's pointed look, he added, "I'll make sure he doesn't get hurt, don't worry about it."

"Hearing that statement from you of all people only makes me worry more," he heard the tired man grumble in response as he retrieved his case.

Hitoshi found himself sticking close to Hawks and Tokoyami as the hero packed up some kids from 1-B and herded the students out of the school and onto a bus that was to take them all to location. Sure, he sat with Asui ("call me Tsu-chan,") and Uraraka at lunch, but he didn't really know how to talk to them. Hawks, he supposed, was his mentor for the day and he knew Tokoyami could also appreciate silence and was unlikely to bother him with small talk.

"So, you're the kid with the brainwashing quirk, right?"

However, that did not prevent Zenigata from being a small talker himself.

"Yeah, what of it?" he said sullenly in response, his body already tensing defensively.

To his surprise, however, Zenigata smiled at the revelation. "You did well. I was disappointed you weren't in the hero course, I had so many people I wanted to pester into taking you as an intern."

"You didn't want to take me as an intern yourself?" Hitoshi asked, raising an eyebrow as he tried to suppress the pleased flush that threatened to rise to his face.

"Oh, I absolutely would have," Zenigata said. "I'm just not sure I'd have much to teach you. Your quirk is voice-based, right?" Hitoshi nodded. "While Keigo's primarily a spotlight hero, if you're interning with Eraserhead, I'm assuming you intend to go underground. I can give a few tips for that, and maybe teach you a few bird noises, how to deal with heights - maybe complex multitasking if you're able to control more than one person at a time, though that would've been a gamble, but beyond that, I probably wouldn't have had much to teach you for the week."

"I have several questions about that statement," Hitoshi said, and when Zenigata nodded obligingly, he continued. "My first question is bird noises?"

Zenigata smirked at him and let out an owl hoot. Hitoshi blinked.

"You want some bread crumbs with that?" he asked, and wow he should really learn how to keep his mouth shut. Luckily, Zenigata was a detective with a sense of humor and laughed at his comment.

"You're not the first to basically call me a pigeon, don't worry about it."

"Okay," Hitoshi said, a bit off-kilter, before continuing with his second question. "You said you could give me a few tips for underground work? But you're not an underground hero. You're literally the opposite of that."

Zenigata shrugged. "I took a lot of night patrols when I first started out, and I still take about two a week. Hero rankings are heavily based on popularity and crime and case solving rates of the season, but it also incorporates overall crime and case rates from the course of your career." He shrugged. "Working double or triple shifts every day is how I was able to reach the top ten so fast—because I had to compensate for not having that kind of history with underground work. So I'm pretty familiar with the operations of underground heroes since I work with them often enough. I've also done a bit of undercover work, which you have the potential to be pretty good at."

"Undercover work?" Hitoshi asked, giving Hawks' bright red wings a pointed look over.

Hawks laughed. "Yep! As long as you keep an open mind to those around you, you already have most of the tools you'll need to be good at it, and with some refining, you'll be great!"

"Really?" Hitoshi asked, beginning to get drawn in by the prospect. Aizawa had mentioned undercover work in passing to him but had recommended that he go to another underground hero for advice on the subject, not having done much of it himself. Zenigata nodded.

"You're pretty charismatic, which makes sense with your quirk, and if you're underground, you'll be an unknown, so there's a relatively small chance of them identifying you. And if the way you got tensed up when I mentioned your quirk before is any indication, you have your tragic backstory and villainy reasons already laid out for you."

"I'm not a villain," Hitoshi snapped, almost on instinct. Zenigata held up his hands placatingly.

"I'm not saying you are," he said. "I'm just saying that we're you to go undercover, sticking as close to your personal history as possible is ideal, since you're less likely to forget anything. Just tweak some stuff, say you never made it into the hero course and became bitter or something, and bam!" Zenigata clapped his hands. "Tragic backstory and villain origins. And since it's personal, your body language will be more natural as well." He shrugged. "Take all your trauma growing up and there you have your cover. It's what I do."

"You have trauma?" Hitoshi asked, mouth moving faster than his brain was able to say 'that's a bit of a dick question.'

Luckily, Zenigata was probably one of the most chill heroes he'd ever met, and didn't seem to take it personally and simply shrugged it off. "I literally fist fought a jackal man and a falcon man when they tried to escape custody. Let's just say, my work doesn't come with a clean psyche, kid."

Hitoshi shifted uncomfortably in his seat, not quite sure what to say in response to such a nonchalant admission. Zenigata was right, in a sense, about him being charismatic, but he was only charismatic in getting people to talk back to him. He wasn't, however, skilled in talking to people who were way too casual about their trauma. Talking to Zenigata was reminiscent of talking to Todoroki, and that was something he never thought he'd say.

Luckily, Bakugou was there to save the day, which was a day of firsts because that was another thing that Hitoshi never thought he'd say.

"Hey, knockoff Sherlock," Bakugou called over the noise of the bus. Zenigata looked away from Hitoshi, identifying Bakugou's scowling face with a smile.

"What's up, angry Pomeranian?"

Hitoshi choked. He couldn't believe Zenigata went there, and going by the sweet scent of burning caramel that suddenly began drifting through the bus, neither could the angry Pomeranian.

After a few moments, wherein Hitoshi was pretty confident he could hear Bakugou grinding his teeth into dust, he spoke. "Where the hell are you taking us?"

"Oh, right," Zenigata said, perking up as he clapped his hands together. "Listen up!" he called over the noise of the bus, quickly gaining all their attention. "I know that work studies only started back up again last week, so you've probably been pretty busy, and that for some of you, you're either at a new agency or this is your first work-study, and as a result, your mentors probably haven't had a chance to explain what's going on."

"So you're going to tell us why we're here?" Uraraka asked, raising her hand.

Hawks nodded. "Yep! So, assuming you're all keeping up with the news, you've all heard of that super team-up thing Jeanist, Edgeshot, Miruko and Hawks have organized?" There was a wave of affirmative nods and murmurs before Hawks continued. "Congratulations! All of the agencies you're at for work studies are part of this, and your mentors decided to have all of you attend the first meeting so that you get some big team-up experience, and are aware of the details of what you're likely going to be working on for the rest of your work studies."

"So we're going to be working missing person cases, right? Because of the League of Villains?"

Zenigata hummed his agreement. "You should all be aware that the League of Villains has taken a peculiar interest in missing person cases. We're not exactly sure why this sudden interest has appeared," Hitoshi watched Zenigata's face twitch as he spoke—he supposed it must have been irritating to see villains rescuing people without understanding their motivations, "but it's been having a pretty negative impact on hero society—take the assassination of Shinoda Kei." Everybody on the bus winced or cringed in some manner at the reminder of the incident. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that it came to light and measures have been taken to prevent stuff like that from happening again, it's just that we can all agree that the 'how' it came to light wasn't exactly ideal."

"So we're doing this to show that heroes are still reliable as an institution?" Iida asked.

"Officially, yes," Zenigata said. "Have you guys had a class on hero politics or publicity yet? I'm not sure when you're supposed to get in-depth on that."

"It's a second-year class, kero," Asui offered up from the back of the bus.

Zenigata nodded, leaning back in his seat slightly to tilt his head to stare at the roof of the bus. "Okay, well you'll understand this a bit better next year then, but what's happening is something of a publicity stunt to save face, but we've also got an unofficial mission statement behind this as well. Unofficially, this is also being done in an attempt to intercept the League of Villains. We've noticed a trend with the cases they're going after, so we'll be focusing on many of the same. The fewer of those cases there are open, the higher of a chance we'll have of encountering them while investigating." He shrugged. "Close in the walls, see if we can get them. Like that one trash chute scene from Star Wars or something."

Another hand was raised hesitantly, and Hitoshi was able to spot it belonging to Kirishima before Hawks inclined his head at him to speak. "This team-up is super big, we're not going to be doing anything like the Shie Hassaikai raid, will we?"

Hitoshi watched the way Uraraka and Asui's faces twitched at the mention of the raid - he wasn't even there and he could feel his stomach churn a little. Just reading the news about the incident had felt brutal, actually being there must've been horrible.

Zenigata was quick to reassure them amongst the quickly deteriorating mood. "No, no. The Hassai Incident was an unusually large group; it's one of the biggest yakuza or organized crime cells we've had to take down in decades, and Overhaul's quirk was… exceptionally well suited for causing maximum casualties. The Shie Hassaikai raid had oversights and gaps where there shouldn't have been any, and new protocols have been put in place to try and prevent it from happening again." Zenigata placed his elbow on his knee and propped his cheek in his palm as he continued to talk. "Since you'll primarily be investigating cold missing person cases, it's more likely that you'll be tracking down graves than yakuza. Your mentors will make sure you don't see anything disturbing in those instances. But if you do end up going after someone who is hopefully still alive, it's important that you understand that this team-up is primarily organized as a way to share information and call for backup. There are going to be many more sub-teams or groups within this little organization we've created that will carry out raids on smaller and less equipped cells. Nothing like the Shie Hassaikai raid. We're actually expecting the amount of combative and medical personnel that we're going to require at each raid to be overkill, considering that we're going into this expecting to confront the League of Villains."

Hitoshi and other students on the bus relaxed slightly at the hero's words, but there was still an underlying current of tension at the possibility of encountering the League for a third (or in Hitoshi's case, first) time. Zenigata seemed to pick up on the slight uneasiness and gave them all a closed-eyed, easy, friendly smile.

"I highly doubt any of you will run into them," he said. "So don't worry about them too much, okay?" Zenigata opened his eyes again, gazing across them all. Hitoshi felt something incredibly sharp and dangerous about the look. "I'll make sure you're all safe."

Hitoshi wasn't sure whether the confident statement was comforting or worrying. Hawks' smile wasn't one of surety in his strength, it was confidence in his knowledge. Logically, Hitoshi understood that there would obviously be information that they wouldn't tell student interns—levels of confidentiality and all that—but at the inspector's brazen statement, Hitoshi couldn't keep himself from wondering what Zenigata knew that they didn't.

"Did you really kidnap a UA student?" Dabi asked, looking up from his phone to where Magne was reclining on the other bed of their abandoned-cabin-turned-base, reading a book. "That sounds like something I should remember." The transvestite looked up at him with an eyebrow raised in exasperation and amusement.

"You can't even remember the time Toga stabbed your hand to a table a few months ago. But yes, you did. Just this summer, actually. It was quite an event."

"Hm," Dabi intoned neutrally, returning his gaze to Shigaraki's pissed tirade in the League group chat, feeling a frown tug at his staples.

"This better be a good idea," Ridley muttered for the hundredth time, watching Shigaraki dig through files. Spinner was all for helping Dabi out, but he felt like he really should have drawn the line at Shigaraki deciding to break into the Hero Public Safety Commission to search through their old case files. Sure, they were the League of Villains and had Kurogiri ready to warp them out at any moment, but it didn't make him feel better about being deep in what was essentially the heart of hero society.

"Stop being a little bitch," Shigaraki snapped at him, "Check those shelves over there." He waved a hand at the opposite end of the room, before pulling out another box of files and skimming through them quickly.

"What are we even looking for?" Spinner asked, pulling a dusty box off the highest shelf and nearly dropped it on his own head. "You were kinda sparse on the details."

"Files of missing or deceased people that look sketchy." Shigaraki picked out two files from the box he'd been looking through and tossed them into the box they'd set up in the middle of the file room. "The HPSC has a lot of unreleased and classified information, so if we need information or new leads, this is the place we're most likely to look for it."

Spinner hummed his acknowledgment, and they worked in silence, for the most part, making their way through the shelves of the HPSC's classified file room.

Now, Spinner was a follower of Stain and his words of false heroes, but as he looked through the classified files of hero society's governing body, he suddenly felt a lot more understanding for late-night rants back at the bar about the inherent corruption of heroes.

The HPSC had a hit squad for people with information they wanted to be kept silent—that entire box had been shoved next to the one slowly filling with independent files in the middle of the room.

Quirk experimentation, blackmailing of heroes, missions that were assigned despite the minuscule chance of survival. Every dirty secret that was too classified to risk being stored on a digital, hackable server. Unfortunate that they hadn't accounted for a warp quirk.

The box labeled Legacy Program was filled with nothing but files on people; it was heavily redacted as well, and skimming over the birth years of some of the children (Spinner was tempted to read further into the files to figure out what on earth the HPSC wanted with kids, but a feeling deep in his gut told him he didn't want to know) placed a lot of them around Dabi's estimated age, so he just shoved that whole box to join the growing pile in the center.

Another box filled with files of cases that the Commission had ordered law enforcement to stop investigations into, a few files from the box of people who'd quit unusually early and knew far too much, an amalgamation of files on people the HPSC didn't want anyone asking questions about.

"The guard shift will change soon," Shigaraki grunted once they'd met in the middle, a sizable mountain of boxes and files piled up in the center of the room. His phone was already in his hand, pinging Kurogiri for pickup.

Helping Shigaraki push the boxes of files through Kurogiri's porta, Spinner and Ridley tried to ignore the growing pit in his stomach about what going through the information would reveal.

"Excuse me!" Kichirou called, jogging as fast she could in her heels to catch up to the band of misfits she spotted. "Wait up, please!" She almost cried in relief as the group stopped in unison, turning to look at her; one with slightly flushed cheeks, a peppy smile, and space buns, one being a kid with crow wings, one being a water dragon, one with a parasol, one dressed like he's high class, the last one covered in spandex and jittering in place. She stumbled to a stop as she caught up with them, hunching over for a few moments to catch her breath.

"Are you okay lady?" the spandex-covered one—Twice, she remembered—asked her, concern lacing his voice. "Fuck off and die!"

Kirichou blinked, caught slightly off guard by the sudden switch, but recovered quickly enough. She'd heard about his split personality she just... hadn't really been expecting to run into the League of Villains in Hokkaido, of all places. Last she checked, they operated mainly in Tokyo. But, she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"I'm fine," she reassured, an easy smile on her face before she turned to the girl next to him. "You're Toga Himiko, correct?"

Toga's smile brightened as she nodded eagerly, fists tightening near to her jaw in excitement, and oh, that was a knife.

Kirichou decided to pretend the red staining the edges of the knife was rust, for her own peace of mind.

Pushing the thought out of her mind, she bowed to the teen, who blinked at the action, her smile briefly replaced by a look of shock. "My name is Maeda Kirichou - Serizawa Yuuta is my cousin. Thank you for saving him."

Straightening up, she saw the grin on the teen's face suddenly come back with almost overwhelming joy. "Oh, I remember him! He smelled like a power plant!"

Kirichou laughed, almost able to completely ignore the fact that she was talking to a villain, with the child-like joy Toga gave off, and the man next to her joined her excited bounces, the two seemingly feeding off of each other. "Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?"

"Why?" Roman asked. "You're not gonna sic the cops on us, are you?"

"No, no, not at all," she was quick to reassure them. "I'm not the biggest fan of the police, after how they mishandled Yuuta's case. I'm a journalist, I just wanted to ask a few questions about you, maybe your opinions on a few things… an interview?" she suggested meekly.

The word 'interview' seemed to be the jackpot, as Twice and Toga brightened up, and began bouncing on their feet again in unison.

"An interview? Like the ones famous people give?" Toga asked excitedly.

"You are sort of a famous person, yourself," Kirichou said. Toga squealed, glomping Twice.

"We're gonna give an interview and get famous!" she cheered. She gasped suddenly, smile getting even brighter and the flush of her cheeks darkening. "Ooh, what if Izuku-kun or Ochako-chan see it and fall madly in love with me?"

"It's gonna be great, Toga-chan!" Twice joined in on her celebrations, somehow managing to keep his excited hop going, even with the extra weight. "This is a fucking farce!"

"Hey, Todoroki-kun!" Izuku called as he jogged into the common room, catching the attention of the stoic teen from where he sat at the kitchen counter. "Did you want to come and see a movie with us this Saturday?"

Todoroki blinked at the question, his eyes flicking over to the calendar hung on the wall. Izuku followed his glaze; most of the days were filled in with who was supposed to be cooking, due dates on various assignments, but the box labeled January 18 was relatively blank. "I'm busy," he said bluntly. Izuku blinked at the response, and Todoroki stared at him for a moment longer, before continuing in a slightly softer tone. "I'm going out with my siblings that day. Maybe I can join you for something on Sunday, or another weekend, Midoriya."

Izuku beamed at the response. Todoroki had certainly opened up more throughout the year. "Yeah! I'd love that, Todoroki-kun."

"FUCKING RUN FASTER!" Dabi screeched at Compress, ducking around a corner to dodge a blast of electricity.

"I'M TRYING!" Compress yelled back. Usually, Dabi probably would've found it hilarious that the showman had finally lost his composure, but that was when they didn't have an angry supervillain on their tails, actively trying to kill them.

Two years ago, Dabi was fairly sure that he thought he would die of an infection, and he still held it as a likely probability. However, 'death by electrocution' was moving up his list of the most likely ways i'm going out faster than he would have liked. As a person who had 39 metal piercings (did staples count as piercings? Probably.) on his head alone, he was surprised he hadn't come across this situation sooner.

Well, he thought bleakly to himself as he felt a staple in his leg tear while sharply turning around another corner, at least they had managed to cross Morimoto Shou off the list of potential identities for himself. The problem was it turned out he'd been a supervillain with an unknown identity. Considering what he could remember of his life so far, that tracked.

"Call for help, CALL FOR HELP!" Dabi screamed at Compress.

"From who, the police!?" Compress growled back, running alongside Dabi.

"Not the police! You wanna get arrested? Call Kurogiri, dipshit!"

"I left my phone in the cabin, you idiot! You call Kurogiri!"

Dabi liked the League of Villains. No matter how frustrated he got with them, he liked them. He barely suppressed a growl as he dug through his pockets, grimacing at the warm, wet feeling of blood staining his pants. Burns scars and staples weren't an ideal combination for cross-country.

Pulling out his phone and wiping the smear of blood off on his shirt, he quickly pulled up his contacts and dialed Kurogiri. The bartender was responsible, a fact that Dabi was exceptionally thankful for in that specific moment, and picked up on the first ring.

"Dabi? Is something wrong?"

"Yeah, you could say that," he responded breathlessly.

"What he means is we're about to die!" Compress yelled. "An escape portal would be highly appreciated right now!"

Dabi really related to the deep, bone-tired sigh Kurogiri let out.

"How on Earth did you two manage to be chased halfway across Hirosaki when all you were supposed to do was investigate?" Kurogiri asked them once they fell through the portal.

"Mr. Dabi doesn't seem to understand the concept of 'not everyone thinks you're funny,'" Snatcher muttered, dusting himself off with a huff as he stood up.

"Fuck off, I'm hilarious."

"No, you're rude, there's a difference."

Dabi groaned into the hardwood floor of the bar, before turning his face to the side to look up at Kurogiri. "Do we have a stapler behind the bar or anything?"

Kurogiri tilted his head at the odd question but nodded. Dabi grunted and peeled himself off the floor, steadfastly ignoring the red stains where his legs had been. In Kurogiri and Compress's shocked silence, he slid behind the bar and grabbed the stapler—an office one, but it would do—and a bottle of whiskey, before slinking towards the bathroom.

"Dabi," Kurogiri suddenly cut in, concern lacing his voice, "if you're injured, it would be best to go find a doctor. That's not even a medical stapler you're planning to use."

"Well, unfortunately," Dabi bit back, turning to glare over his shoulder, "I don't think I'm built to do cross-country, even if my health wasn't weaker than a wet tissue. You can find a doctor to take me to, I'm not gonna complain about that, but in the meantime, I wanna drink the pain away and refrain from finding out if my skin can slide down my legs like shitty thigh highs. We good?"

Silence.

"Great. Call when you find someone willing to treat me, I'm gonna get wasted in the bathroom."

"Exactly how much information did you steal?" Zenigata asked, flicking through a box of files on the floor with a disbelieving look on his face.

"Eh…" Kermit started, tilting his hand. "We combed the entire classified archive and took what looked interesting. So, all of it."

"Great," Sunny Flare muttered, running a hand down her face.

Dabi snorted. "So how are we splitting this up?" he asked, crouching next to Ridley and looking over the sea of information. "We just take a box each and look for plausible leads?"

"Sounds good enough," the space pirate shrugged.

They each reached for the box closest to them, settling into a companionable silence, broken only by the rustling of papers and files. Dabi flicked through the files quickly, separating them into piles for 'possible' and 'bullshit'.

Suddenly, a choked sound cut through the room, and Dabi glanced over to where Zenigata sat next to him, looking sick. He raised a brow at him. "If you're going to throw up, please make sure it's not in my general direction."

Zenigata blinked and glanced back at him, awareness flooding his glazed eyes, though they still looked a little… absent. He opened and closed his mouth for a moment before muttering, "Yeah, sorry about that."

"I have a stupid idea." Voidlon said. "Some movies taught me something about being able to get over amnesia if you're reminded enough of what you forgot."

"I don't think movies are the pinnacle of psychological or medical knowledge," Dabi commented dryly.

"Well, it's worth a shot, isn't it?" Toga asked, waving her arms in frustration, cheeks puffing up in a pout. Dabi sighed and rolled his eyes, but waved his hand in a 'go ahead' gesture nonetheless. He heard Compress chuckle, and he shot a glare at the man, who held his hands up innocently.

Toga beamed.

"It turns out there's a bunch of recent articles about someone named Todoroki Touya, and all of them think he's dead, but apparently a body was never found, so there's a chance!" she said cheerily, shoving her phone in his face. "Here, read and see if you remember anything!"

Dabi rolled his eyes again, but took Toga's phone obligingly, and began scanning the article.

Dabi froze as he reached the picture, three bright, smiling children, and a wide-eyed infant, snow-white hair with splashes of red across the board.

He stared at it.

Something was tugging in the back of his mind.

His thoughts raced.

Shou, Yumi, Nat-

Touya remembered.

Touya and Yumi hid underneath a table, their mother's feet walking right past as she called out in wonder. "I wonder where Touya and Fuyumi could be," she said slowly, a smile in her voice. Touya shared a glance with his sister, the two of them starting to giggle. Their mom crouched down, her smiling face appearing as she looked under the table. "There's my two little trouble makers. Come on, hide-and-seek's over, time for lunch," she said, scooping the two of them up to hold one on each hip, strong arms carrying them with ease. Touya laughed as her short white hair tickled his nose.

It all came flooding back.

"There's a baby in mommy?" Nat asked in wonder, chubby little hands coming to rest on their mother's stomach with as much care as a four-year-old's motor skills could provide.

Touya nodded, smiling as their mother looked down at the two boys fondly. "Mm-hm! You were in mom once too, Na-chan."

Nat looked up at him with big, round eyes, filled with all the wonder and innocence of the world. "Really?"

"Uh-huh! And now we're gonna have a little brother!"

Nat beamed up at him, before returning his awed gaze to her swollen stomach.

How could he forget-

"Careful," his mother's exhausted voice warned him as she gently laid the baby in his arms. "Move your elbow a little, support his neck—yes, just like that."

Touya stared down as the tiny person now cradled in his arms, soft tufts of white and red hair sticking up from the top of his head. Blue and grey eyes blinked back up at him. He looked at his mother. "His eyes are funny."

She laughed—a soft, tinkling noise. "It's called heterochromia, sweetie. It means his eyes are two different colors."

"Ohhh." Touya looked down at the baby again. "He's my little brother?"

"Yes. This is your new little brother, Shouto."

"Shouto," Touya repeated slowly, staring at the baby. After a few moments, he beamed. "Hey, Shouto. I'm your big brother Touya. I'm gonna protect you since that's what big brothers do!" he said, finishing with a note of pride. His mother chuckled.

"Yes, they certainly do," she said, ruffling his hair.

Shouto stuck his hand in his mouth.

"I think he might be stupid."

His mother laughed.

-everything-

"Hi!" his roommate chirped, bouncing up to him as he entered the room. "I'm Hawks! I'm thirteen, what's your name?"

Touya stared at the other boy with an unimpressed look on his face. "Todoroki Touya. Fourteen. Do you have a real name or am I supposed to believe that your parents actually named you Hawks?"

The boy with the bird mutation blinked and reared back slightly, allowing Touya to step around him and set his bag on the extra bed in the room.

"I, uh," the boy started hesitantly, and Touya looked back over his shoulder to him tapping his talons—he had talons? That was actually pretty sick—together nervously. "I'm not supposed to go by my legal name."

"I'm not gonna tell on you if you tell me," Touya said, raising an amused brow as red feathers puffed up in embarrassment, the younger's face flushing. "I'm not a snitch."

Clawed fingers twisted together for a moment, before freezing and clenching around each other. The other boy's flush deepened. "...promise?"

"Yeah. I promise. Dorm secrets, or whatever. What happens in the dorm stays in the dorm."

Feather boy stared at him for a few moments longer, before his hands clenched slightly again and he slowly untangled them, shakily holding one out for Touya.

"Takami, uh—Keigo. Takami Keigo. I prefer Keigo. Nice to meet you."

Touya grinned and shook the boy—Keigo's—hand. "Todoroki Touya."

Keigo beamed. Touya already knew the other was going to be the death of him.

His head pounded.

He was burning, Touya was burning, he couldn't fucking stop it-

"-i!..."

Blue flames surrounded him as he screamed-

"-bi!..."

He could feel his skin burning, and he could feel himself crying, but only blood made tacky by the heat was running down his face-

"-abi!..."

Touya screamed again as the fire kept licking at his body, and he could feel himself getting lightheaded, he was hyperventilating and he didn't want to die-

"DABI!"

Dabi's head snapped up, meeting Toga's concerned gaze only a few inches from his face. In his peripheral vision, he could see the rest of the League (except Shigaraki, who was still freaking out somewhere) staring at him with worry.

"What the fuck?" he asked in a monotone after a few moments of silence.

Toga sniffled, and oh God, Dabi was not prepared to deal with a crying person right at that moment. "You were just staring at the screen for a really long time, and then when Jin tried to get your attention, you weren't responding and-"

"What she means," Compress interrupted gently, putting a hand on her shoulder, "is that you worried us for a moment there."

"Oh," Dabi said. Not the smartest response he'd ever had. To be fair, he was processing a shit ton of information. "Hold this," he said, shoving Toga's phone back at her as he roughly stood up.

The bar was silent as he took several quick strides over to the window, yanking the curtains aside and sliding the window open, sticking his head out into the alley between their building and the next.

Taking a deep breath-

"MOTHERFUCKER!"

He listened to it echo slightly in the alley before ducking his head back inside, shutting the window and closing the curtain as a black and silver gear spat out his chest. He turned back to the occupants of the bar, who were all staring at him in shocked silence. "Sorry about that, I just remembered my entire fucking life."

Spinner made an odd, aborted choking noise as the X-Squad dragged them into a portal.

Since the first arrivals the breeding programme at Prehistoric Park has been labouring to breed extinct animals and today it has been successful with the two T-Rex: Moses and Lumi.

The two giant dinosaurs stood protectively over a conical mound of ferns and other assorted vegetation. Like a vigilant bird, Moses waved his massive head in big swings to survey the area for his larger mate. Despite her size, Lumi was very delicate with the three conical eggs in the vegetation. She nudged them softly with her snout if she thought them to be exposed, or scattered dust over them with her mighty foot if she felt them too cold. It had been expected for a while; only the night before did the female Yutyrannus lay her eggs.

"This is gonna be good," Voidlon said to Maya and Mackenzie. "Two dinosaurs laid eggs now."

Bob came up to them and waved unaware about the new arrivals in the Tyrannosaur paddock. His relatively loud entrance disturbed the two Tyrannosaurs who started to roar with an almighty noise that caused the trees to shake and native birds to fly from nearby canopies. The four quickly left them to go to Brandon's treetop office to continue the conversation. A microraptor stood on his desk eating peanuts out of a bowel by files of multiple animals. When he saw them coming he jumped onto a perch overlooking the desk and let Maya stroke his head.

"Hammond's given me another mission," Brandon said. "To rescue a few recently extinct animals so I've sent you the files. I was sure that you would like them."

"Yes finally manageable animals: Dodos, Moa and some tigers. I've finished the aviary for that eagle and those aquatic tanks. Although didn't you say that you'll wait a bit for the sea creatures?"

"Yeah. I'm going to use this mission as a sort of practice for a future one. Didn't you have another thing to ask me?"

"Yeah. The twins were wondering if they could do a bit of work experience. They want to follow me in my footsteps."

"Of course. They haven't seen the park yet so it'll be good. Maya and I will go rescue the Dodo first though so get them ready."

The Dodo was a species of flightless pigeon to live on the island of Mauritius until they were hunted to extinction in 1662. They vanished before scientists could study them so what we know about them could be inaccurate.

Like modern day Mauritius, the island was a tropical paradise. They emerged from the time portal on a sandy beach with the sea gently lapping the smooth sand. The sun beat down with gentleness and by the side of them a green forest represented an unknown force that explorers were eager to trek through. On the sea a great wooden brig flying the Dutch flag was making its way to the island.

"Looks like the first explorers will be arriving soon," Maya said.

The squad went into the dark forest but the weird new sounds attracted some of the naïve residents. They were taller and thinner than contemporary images. The males were pink and the females were traditional grey but both had massive beaks. It turned out that the males used the beaks to attract females; the bigger the beak the more attractive the male. Strangely they also made a pigeon cooing sound similar to the sound 'dodo'.

"That sound must be why they were called dodos," Maya explained. "They were recorded to like berries so look what I've brought."

He pulled out of his pocket quite a few berries and scattered them around him. The curious birds were not afraid to peck around for the berries near the explorers, so Indus could simply open the portal. Sixty dodos hopped through the portal, although one decided to show Roman another use for their beaks. A male pecked his knee with some ferocity; evidently they used the beaks to fight with.

For once, one of the rescued animals was easy for Bob to move to their exhibit and they became the first animal for the twins to try their work experience on.

The Dodos were very happy with their new home, especially as now they may not be food for hungry sailors. It turns out that Bob's son and daughter, (Abi and Bradley), quite liked the curious flightless pigeons. Although it might be down to the birds being their first extinct animal and such a famous one at that.

"I've sorted these out so one of you can go with me and the other can go with Mackenzie," Bob said.

"I'll go with you dad," Abi said. Although, both of them were disappointed to find out that they weren't to go anywhere near the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

"She said nothing however about the Yutyrannus, Deinosuchus, Allosaurus or Dromeosaurus," Bob laughed "Just don't tell her that I've let you anywhere near big carnivores. It took me a while just to convince her to let you near the cave bear. Now Nigel what are you after next?"

"The Caspian Tiger."

The Caspian Tiger once lived from the Caspian Sea to northern Iran, until their fur and claws became a wanted commodity. Despite attempts to protect them by the Russian Tsars, and even the tyrannical communist dictator Joseph Stalin, the last Caspian tiger was shot in 1970.

Nigel and Chiyo travelled back to Georgia in 1915. Here the Russian army were on strict orders to shoot any tiger they saw to stop the regal animals from killing livestock, which the army needed for food when fighting the Ottoman Empire. The Caucasus forests were still intact from the war effort and in the distance a single deer could be seen grazing. The ungulate held up its head and ran off when it saw them. Maya knelt down and ushered Nigel over.

"Looks like two sets of tiger print," she said. "Quite fresh."

"Wait, look," Brandon replied. Human footsteps were just a bit in front of the prints. A big drag mark as if a large cage had been dragged by a party were next to the footprints. The order to kill tigers was sometimes not always followed; tiger pelt was a luxury commodity that could make someone very wealthy.

The sun had set beyond the horizon by the time they had tracked the marks. Three beautiful tigers were in separate cages. One was a young mother with her cub while in another cage was an elderly male with his face crisscrossed with scars. By the side of them a group of soldiers sat by a roaring fire roasting their rations over the flames. They were all listening intently at a middle aged moustached civilian who was talking rapidly. Instantly they knew they had to save the tigers. But how?

Back at the park, Mackenzie is showing Bob's son Bradley how to look after some feline residents.

Bradley had brown hair like his mother but had dyed blond stripes through it, as well as having his father's hazel eyes. In these eyes were reflected the amber eyes of the alpha-female of the smilodon pack. Her two sisters and mate were pacing behind the fence with protection for the pregnant female.

"Her breathing's fine," Bradley said.

"Good," Mackenzie replied. She eased the sedative and let the female back into her enclosure. Lazily the sabre toothed cat jumped onto her climbing frame and fell asleep.

"She should be ready to give birth in about a month," Suzanne explained.

"Dad said she was in a bad way when she arrived."

"She was. There was little prey and she almost starved to death before she was rescued. Now how about I take you to see the Parasaurolophus."

At the opposite side of the park, Bob is showing his daughter Abi one of the park's most temperamental residents.

The crocodile hissed which sent a shiver down their collective spines. Like her brother Abi had brown hair with blond streaks but it was tied into a bun. After one of the Stegosaurs tried to eat her bracelet she had to put it into her pocket. She helped her father load a device made by John Arnold to feed Gustav the Deinosuchus. It was like a crane which dipped over the lake to stimulate a dinosaur drinking. The male burst from the water and dragged the meat under with the female give up hissing at the two annoying mammals for a more bloody meal.

"I would hate to see one of them out," Abi laughed.

"Same here. Now let's check on the…Oh not again."

Ori, one of the young Diplodocus smelt around the reeds that poked out from the Deinosuchus Lake. After a few weeks of being well fed, its size had ballooned to the size of a bus. With sauropods not being the smartest dinosaurs, Bob hadn't placed special security measures on the exhibit entrance like he did with the Dromeosaurs, but one of them had learnt to open the gate with its snout. As it passed through the gate the motion capture recorded it as the truck so closed as he finished ambling out.

"Come on Ori," Abi said holding out her hand. The great dinosaur placed its head into her palm to be stroked. It seemed that being good with dinosaurs was inherited to her.

Back in wartime Georgia, the crew have formulated a plan to rescue the tigers.

They were worried after seeing the female with an injured paw so they had to act fast. Brandon had packed Russian army attire beforehand if he encountered soldiers, so he could easily sneak up to Russian soldier camps, which he did. The tigers snarled as he approached the cages but they didn't attract the attention of the soldiers. All Brandon had to do was put the portal by the bars and the tigers were sent to the future however he couldn't help but use his recorder to record the Russians conversation, Ark knew Russian so could translate.

"Comrades," he translated. "The Bolsheviks will liberate us, end this war and tyranny. Stop the bourgeois Tsar who oppress the people. I have been one of them for years and their leader returns soon. What is your name? Joseph, Joseph Stalin."

They promptly returned to find that Mackenzie had quickly tended to the female's wounded paw. Looking down from the walkway they saw the male snarl angrily at them. Abi and Bradley were given the honor of naming them: Alexandria for the female, Saddamn for the male and Don for the cub. As the tigers were placed into an exhibit, Brandon went to the next mission to New Zealand.

The X-Squad is going back 40,000 years to New Zealand to rescue the giant moa and the eagle that hunted it: Haast's eagle.

Like the dodo they quickly found the moa but it was different than expected. They did not have an upright neck like an ostrich but rather a horizontal neck similar to an emu; they even made a low pitched squawk like the emu. Not seeing humans, before made them curious of the squad.

"Dinornis novaezealandiae," Brandon laughed stroking one of the two moa. "Named the moa by the native Maori. They were hunted to extinction by 1500 but the Maori tried to protect them by setting up reserves."

They opened the portal and the mating pair through the portal. Brandon then revealed his plan to catch the animal that hunted them. He had a plane with the portal attached to it which they used to fly over the forest. Quickly they found a male and female brown bird of prey with a wingspan of three metres.

"Haast's eagle. The world's largest bird of prey."

He flew in front of the birds and activated the portal which sent the birds to Prehistoric Park. Arnold had rigged the portal so that they would automatically be sent to their aviary. In an hour the eagles were sitting upon a giant tree branch observing their land with beady eyes while their prey were safely pecking at the ground in their exhibit. A group of dodos were squawking at each other over mates while the tigers were lounging in peace in separated exhibits. For once one of the missions has been a success.

Five days later...

Although it has been only a few days since the last mission, the X-Squad is going on another one, but only after Bob has to deal with the animals he brought back in his secret mission at the dead of night.

Bob was happy with the animal species Brandon secretly brought back, which was a change to the secret mission the night before where he brought back five more Dryosaurs because the other two were 'lonely'. One was from the Galapagos Islands while another was from mainland Costa Rica. One species consisted of four members and were the giant Pinta Island Galapagos Tortoise, the last one, Lonesome George, only going extinct in 2011, only for Anubis to ferry his soul to Prehistoric Park to respawn, while the other consisted of 20 golden palm sized toads, the Golden Toad who were wiped out through a deadly fungus. It was time though to meet the X-Squad at the coast where they had built two tanks that went into the sea itself while a third was built in one of the rivers, all three tanks having small holes in it to allow water to continue flowing. Chiyo and Nigel were standing at the newly built dock where a grand yacht with the logo of a skeletal T-Rex proudly labelled on the side of the sail.

"What are you going to rescue this time?" Bob asked, looking fondly at the yacht.

"Well we plan to put a Steller's sea cow in the tank with a cooler in it," Brandon explained. "A Caribbean monk seal in the other sea tank, and a river dolphin called a Baiji which we are going to rescue now."

A portal emerged at the head of the dock and the yacht sailed through the portal on its way to rescue the extinct dolphin.

The Baji lived in the Yangtze river and, at its most abundance in 1950, there were 6,000. However when dams were built during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, their habitat was diminished, and despite conservation efforts the dolphin was declared extinct in 2007.

The yacht sailed quietly on the river. They had to be quiet. They had arrived in China in 1949 where Mao's rebels were on the verge of seizing Beijing so they didn't want to be found by the guerrilla forces.

"Being caught in fishing nets and the building of the Three Gorges dam largely wiped them out," Brandon explained.

Ridley had worked with cetaceans before, so he knew how to attract some. With how recent the dolphin's disappearance was, they had recorded its clicks that comprised the echolocation. Chiyo dropped a microphone that emitted the communication into the murky river ready to attract the rare dolphin.

All cetaceans are sociable, so the Baiji will be attracted by the clicks of their own kind.

The plan succeeded and they saw a tail fluke splash the surface further down the river. A male and two females started nuzzling the hull of the yacht with their snouts. They were two metres long and, like other river dolphins, were a pale grey colour. As they bobbed their heads out of the river the crew observed that the Baiji's eyes were two black orbs.

"They're shyer than their saltwater cousins," Maya explained. "That's why there's little knowledge about them."

"We can guess that they are similar to the Amazon river dolphin," Brandon replied. "I've got an idea."

He pulled out a bucket full of loach and threw them into the river where the dolphins quickly dived after. With their intelligence, they learnt quickly that they could rest their heads on the surface and the fish could be thrown down their long snouts. Brandon lured them to the back of the yacht where the portal was attached to. Immediately the dolphins went through the opened portal and the yacht was teleported to Prehistoric Park. Suzanne, Bob and the twins were watching as the yacht emerged from the portal. Abi laughed as she saw one of the dolphins jump out of the water.

"I've named the male ChiQi and the females Zhen and Su," Brandon yelled at the group on the river bank who were throwing fish into the water which was now bubbling. "We're going now to get a Steller's sea cow."

The X-Squad is now going back to the seas of the north Pacific to the Commander Islands off modern Russia. They were the larger cousins of the manatee and dugong, so they were hunted to extinction within 20 years of their discovery.

All the non-Neanderthal crew members were wearing coats as the yacht bobbed up and down on the north Pacific waters. Below them was a massive kelp bed where they could see two distorted murky shapes down in the undersea field.

"The Steller's sea cow was the largest of the sirenians which consisted of manatees and dugongs," Brandon explained. "They were discovered in 1741 and, with their slow speed and thick blubber, they were hunted to extinction. I think I can see two now."

"How are we going to rescue them?" Maya asked.

"Just wait." Evolt said, grinning maniacally.

As Maya reluctantly hears the plan, Bob and Muldoon take the twins to look after the most recent additions.

The great mesh of the Haast's eagle aviary could be seen for a wide area on Isla Nublar, despite the fact that it was dwarfed by the empty one built on the coast. They entered a small section in the aviary that separated the entrance from the eagle's flying space. A carcass of an animal was to be placed on a pole to be put into the ground of the aviary. It would represent the prey that the raptors were used to hunting. They worked quickly and managed to put the pole firmly in the ground.

Bob and Muldoon however haven't realised that if the eagle eats moa, it would also eat humans.

There was a blur and Bradley fell onto his back. One of the eagles had swooped down and now was flying back up to the roof of the aviary to take another swoop. The second took another swoop but this time at Abi who ducked last minute, the talons just caught her bun making it unravel. As the first started to take another swoop they managed to escape out of the eagle's reach.

"You two aren't going near any carnivores now!" Bob said panting.

"Oh come on dad!" Bradley moaned.

"It was just a one time thing," Abi complained.

"I have to agree with your father," Muldoon replied "Anyway the herbivores are just as exciting for you, even the sloths here are a handful. You can still look at the carnivores but not before seeing one last animal."

"The Rex?" Bradley asked hopefully.

"No way," Bob interjected "A herbivore that we haven't told you about yet. I've talked to your mother and she said you can look at the Tyrannosaurs as long as you go nowhere near them."

Back in the 18th century North Pacific, Evolt is ready to rescue sea cows from imminent extinction.

Evolt and Maya dived into the bitter sea with special heated wetsuits to keep them warm. They each held a yellow cube which Brandon wanted to test for a future mission. They descended down into the kelp forest and saw two nine metre long sea cows who had a fluke similar to the dugong. Both were grazing at the base of the kelp until they saw the two divers and swam curiously towards them.

"Seems we know why they went extinct," Eholt said through the communicator in his mask. "It made them easy prey for sailors."

They got so close that Evolt and Maya could stroke the rough hide of the sea cows. After swimming with the peaceful animals they pressed a button on the side of the cubes which activated the portal sending the benevolent animals to Prehistoric Park.

"Come on, I'm freezing now," Maya laughed.

The group sat on a small boat in the sea cow tank as the long grey mammals sometimes surfaced for air. Where they had built the tank was where the mountains channelled air to keep the water cool to simulate the North Pacific waters. Bob had cleverly planted a kelp bed for the sea cows to feel at home with a few animals that they would have seen at the time; including a male and female sea otter who was swimming on their backs cracking sea urchins on their stomachs.

"I heard you had a nasty run in with the Haast's eagle," Maya laughed.

"Yeah," Bradley replied. "Nearly took Abi's head off."

"What's the last animal," Bob asked.

"Caribbean monk seal," Maya replied. "We need to be going now to rescue some."

The Caribbean monk seals used to live from Belize to St Kitts, but their docile nature and blubber made them quickly hunted as well as overfishing depleted their food source. By 1952, they had all vanished.

With how recent the seals extinction was, the crew had no need to hide the yacht, only replace the sail so no one in the early fifties knew about Prehistoric Park.

"We need to be careful about opening the portal," Brandon said. "Everybody's panicking at this time so the flash of the portal may be interpreted as an atomic blast. According to Hammond's paradox we might cause World War Three because we didn't come back to cause it in the first place. We can't have President Truman thinking that the Soviets have dropped the bomb."

With the rareness of the seals, it took a very long time to find them. They had found a pod of fourteen very malnourished seals bobbing along the surface. Despite the ferocious hunting that was depleting their numbers, they were still friendly to the crew. Brandon had a plan. He dropped the back of the yacht, so it touched the water, and scattered fish guts across the deck. Instantly the hungry seals flopped onto the deck, adding to the smell of fish. One giant male yawned, revealing rows of sharp teeth for his fish diet.

"We have a population of Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals at the park, we can put these with them, they won't interbreed, so no issues will rise up."

In an hour, the extinct monk seals were fed up and swimming happily with their critically extinct relatives, but the day was not properly finished yet.

Abi and Bradley were blindfolded as they were led to a fence. As they placed their hands on the railing, the blindfolds were taken off. Abi gasped as she saw the lone male Ceolodonta rubbed his horn on the grass, he had been doing this regularly to remove the remains of a winter coat on his face.

"Wow! A real-life woolly rhino!" they both said.

"That's not the best part," Brandon said. There were calls in the Neanderthal language as something was brought forward. Now both of them gasped. Martha and Ellie, the two mammoths were being led up to them by Suzanne.

"Meet Syra and Lucille," Nigel said "If Syra likes you for the rest of your work experience, you can work with them as amends to not being able to work with the carnivores. We would let you go near the male, Titan, but he doesn't like company."

Syra, however, did seem to like the human company, and extended her trunk for the two to stroke. Lucille then walked up to them and did the same. What could be a better work experience than one which involves stroking mammoths?

"In a bit, do you want to see the juvenile Rex called Tempus?" Bob asked "He's the one that almost ate me and Voidlon."

An hour later, they were sitting in the Pinta Island Galapagos Tortoise exhibit for a briefing.

Nigel gave a slice of lettuce to a male tortoise as another snapped at another slice next to him. They had put a pond in for the Golden Toads so they both lived in the same exhibit. Abi was now holding an olive coloured female in her hand and the toad was croaking. Roman had rescued them at breeding time, so the males were croaking to each other.

"The reason that I specifically chose to save the eagles and aquatic animals was to test two devices for Hammond's specific mission to four time periods. The first is to England in the Late Jurassic to rescue a giant marine reptile…"