Chapter 14: Icarus' Rescue
"Alright, with Mrs. Bakugou and the kids' help, we've found that Izuku's home life is similar to what he has endured here at school in his last couple weeks," Nedzu stated. "Therefore, I cannot, under any good conscience, send him back to that house when we get him out later tonight."
"Naomasa is coming back today?" Nemuri asked.
"Indeed," Nedzu nodded. "And just in time as well. We need to make haste in getting Izuku out of the Commission's hands and we need to find the real traitor. Aizawa, do you have the list ready?"
Shouta pulled the list that held only a handful of names from his pocket and handed it to Nedzu. "There's a couple students and a teacher or two."
Nedzu took the list and read over it before folding it and placing it in his pocket. "We won't say any names aloud and this will be the only copy of the names, so we have an agreement?"
The four teachers in the room nodded along.
"What's our next step?" Vlad King asked.
"The next step is retrieving Midoriya and then, due to the nature of his mother's treatment, finding new housing for him. Of course, we can always make him a war-"
"We're taking him," Hizashi cut in.
Shouta couldn't help raising an eyebrow and smirking at Nedzu's questioning look. "If my husband says we're taking the kid in, we're taking the kid in. I already have emergency guardianship over him, so he can come home with us tonight."
"Alright, let's finish the day out and then we'll go meet Tsukauchi at the station tonight so we can bring Midoriya home," Nedzu said, clapping his paws together and dismissing the heroes.
Naomasa sighed as he sat in the back of his taxi. It had taken just over a month to complete the mission that the precinct across the region had demanded his help on. It was ridiculous and mostly a wild goose chase, but they'd caught the villains in the end, so at the very least, he was thankful for that.
He looked out the window to watch the thunderstorm attacking the city. Flying in it had been horrible, but bearable. He was just glad to be back on solid ground and not dealing with any more turbulence.
"About five more minutes, detective," the taxi driver offered as they stopped at a red light.
"Thank you, sir," Naomasa offered, pulling out his phone. "Kami, my emails are an absolute disaster since I took the mission." He scrolled through the long list of unread emails in his inbox, marking the importance of them and deleting any spam that snuck its way in as he was driven the rest of the way to his station.
Unfortunately, he hadn't even gotten halfway through his emails by the time they'd arrived and he reluctantly stepped out into the rain and grabbed his belongings from the back of the taxi.
As he walked back towards his office, the officers and his fellow detectives smiled and waved and offered welcomes. He did his best to keep his tiredness from showing as he smiled and nodded along to their excitement. All he wanted was to sit in his office for the last hour of his work day and then go home and sleep off all of the traveling he'd done.
He opened his office door and stepped inside, closing it behind him, not even looking up until a voice interrupted his blissful daydream.
"Welcome back, Naomasa," Nedzu greeted.
Naomasa's head snapped up and he looked around his office, finding Nedzu, Eraserhead, and Present Mic all present and seated in his guest chairs.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Naomasa asked, completely flabbergasted at their presence.
"I did send you a message," Nedzu said with a tilt to his head.
Naomasa sighed. "I took a flight back, my phone's been off, Nedzu."
"You've been off the flight for over an hour now, Naomasa," Eraserhead countered with a raised eyebrow.
Naomasa pointed at the man, then at the other two intruders. "This. This is exactly why my phone is still off. I have one hour left of the work day and paperwork to catch up on."
"You know how dire our situation is," Nedzu commented peacefully.
"I actually don't, thank you very much," Naomasa countered, sighing as he walked over to his desk and plopped into his chair. "All you ever told me is that one of your students is in trouble and you need my quirk as soon as I get back."
"And now you're back," Eraserhead said. "And we still need your quirk."
"Give me a rundown," Naomasa said, waving his hand lazily.
"The Commission decided to expose the fact that UA has a traitor to the general public. Our students started turning on one another and the staff became distrustful of the students. It somehow got into everyone's head that Midoriya is the traitor and the Commission arrested him. He's been in custody undergoing who knows what type of interrogation tactics for over a month now," Nedzu quickly explained.
"That's a very quick Sparknotes version," Present Mic added helpfully.
Naomasa ran a hand down his face. "Why is it always Midoriya?"
"I would like to know the same thing," Eraserhead agreed with a sigh.
"If we didn't already know all of his quirks, I would assume trouble magnet to be one of them," Present Mic joked.
"Sorry, I'm a little late to this," Naomasa said, staring at Present Mic with wide, confused eyes. "Quirks? As in multiple?"
"Yes," Nedzu agreed, nodding. "One for All has seemed to, hmm, evolve in a sort of way. Midoriya now has access, or rather will eventually have access, to each of the past users' quirks."
Naomasa dropped his head on the table. "This fucking child." He raised his head and looked at the three men in front of him with inquisitive eyes. "And what does Toshinori have to say about all of this?"
"Ah," Nedzu said. "Actually-"
"Yagi was fired," Eraserhead said, quickly cutting to the chase and ignoring Nedzu's half-hearted glare. "He is the one suspected to have turned Midoriya in to the Commission and he also had no brain to listen to the kid, instead just demanding he gets his quirk back. A quirk that he no longer has access to."
"Toshinori doesn't have One for All anymore?" Naomasa asked. The three men immediately turned glares at him and he winced at speaking before thinking over all of the information. "Sorry, I don't mean to imply that that was the most important piece of information shared."
Eraserhead huffed. "Sure."
Naomasa turned a regretful gaze to them. "I only said that as I've only ever known him with the quirk. Did he really demand the quirk back?"
"It would be illogical to lie to you given your quirk, Naomasa," Eraserhead sighed.
Which was true. Everything they had said so far rang true, and Naomasa hated it. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "What do you need me to do?"
"I would like you to reopen and take on the case of the UA traitor," Nedzu stated.
"We have a child to rescue and we need you to do it, first and foremost," Present Mic added. "That little listener has been held wrongfully for too long now."
Nedzu nodded. "And after that, we were thinking of doing a class wide search for the traitor."
"Unfortunately," Eraserhead sighed, "we have narrowed down the list of suspects for the traitor and the only viable options are in the first year class."
"You believe that they came in this year as you've never had these problems before," Naomasa noted.
Nedzu nodded. "Precisely. Not only that, but each of the attacks is centered on the first year classes and some of the information the League attained was only accessible by the first years."
"How so?" Naomasa asked. The statement had rang as true, but he needed, or rather wanted, a better explanation.
"The summer camp," Present Mic explained. "The only people who knew of the location were the three of us, Vlad, and the Wild Wild Pussycats. We're assuming that one of the students had a tracker that informed the League of where we were going."
"What if they hacked into your files?" Naomasa asked.
"Impossible," Nedzu countered. "The only correspondence we had about the changed location of the trip was by mouth. Aizawa drove out to confirm with them himself and we only ever discussed the trip in my office."
"And before you ask," Eraserhead cut in, "his office is searched daily for bugs."
Naomasa nodded. This case was a pain in everyone's ass with how smart the villains had gone about their plans. "How narrowed down is your list?"
"We have about four students up to the bar right now," Present Mic offered. "Though it's really two that we've had close eyes on."
"We already searched everyone's dorms and moved them around which helped us narrow the list, though not really by much in the long run," Eraserhead added.
"Why did you move them?" Naomasa asked, surprised at the information.
"The students were bullying Midoriya and even broke into his dorm," Nedzu stated, anger visible in the twitch of his ears and grip of his paws. "We moved him up to a floor containing only those he trusted in hopes that something like that wouldn't occur again."
"Though moving one student was tricky and we decided to create a new floorplan that moved most of the students around," Eraserhead admitted.
"I see," Naomasa said, opening his computer and looking through the closed case files. "I might have to prove Midoriya innocent before I open his case file, but I will flag it so that it will be easier once that is done."
Nedzu clapped his paws together. "However it works, thank you very much."
Naomasa waved his hand dismissively as he found the case file he was looking for and flagged it as he'd mentioned. "Midoriya has been nothing but a hero. I don't know how Toshinori is being so dense about all of this."
"Ah," Present Mic said hesitantly. Naomasa looked up wearily, knowing the man was about to add another task to the ever growing list. "We actually need Midoriya's mother looked into as well as a custody change."
Naomasa raised an eyebrow at this. "Midoriya Inko? What happened there?"
"Bakugou went to her house to inform her of Midoriya's arrest and we found out some rather unsavory behavior," Nedzu explained.
"Midoriya Inko is a bitch who doesn't deserve to have custody of her son," Eraserhead added. "Present Mic and I would like to adopt him if possible."
"You're already cleared for adoption, so that's not an issue," Naomasa said, creating a list of everything that needed to be done on his computer. "The issue would be whether or not Inko wants to fight for custody."
"I don't believe that that'll be a problem," Present Mic hissed.
"This can't get more complicated, can it," Naomasa said, shaking his head. "I'll go over to the Commission headquarters and we'll get Midoriya cleared before we dive into everything else."
"We'll be coming with," Nedzu stated.
Naomasa nodded. "Didn't expect any less," he said as he closed down his computer and began packing up.
"We're heading out now?" Present Mic asked as the three men also stood.
"Midoriya needs to get out of there. The Commission can be ruthless when it comes to interrogation and I don't believe for one second that they would hold back just because he's a child," Naomasa said grimly. He grabbed his bag and made sure that he had his phone and keys before leading the men out of the office.
"You only have 20 minutes left of your shift," Sansa called out as they passed the officer's desk. "You're really headed out?"
"This shouldn't take too long, don't worry Sansa," Naomasa consoled. "All the heavy lifting will be done tomorrow onward."
"Whatever you say," Sansa laughed before turning to the three following him. "Don't let him work too hard!"
"We simply have a need for his quirk and then he can go home," Nedzu stated, sitting on Eraserhead's shoulder.
None of the officers said anything else to them as they left the station and piled into Present Mic's car that was parked out front. Naomasa was just glad that the blonde was driving rather than Eraserhead as he had been in too many car rides with the man that had almost nearly gotten them in accidents.