Thanks for taking an interest in my fic. I hope you stick around for whatever I come up with.
The school staff had just finished recording their welcome messages for the new first years. The letters should be all sent within the week, hopefully, all on time. Meanwhile, as the teachers sat down in the teacher's lounge, many breathed a sigh of relief as they finally were able to rest.
"I think I might hit up that Coffee shop again," Present Mic said, reclining on a couch and sinking into its cushions. "I think the barista likes me."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Aizawa told him. "She flirts with a lot of guys. I've seen her go out with a few of them, but the next day she's out flirting with another. She doesn't strike me as a whore, far from it, so I'm going to place my bets and say it's more than just bad luck with men."
"C'mon, man. It can't be that bad," Mic said. "She's hot and I am confident she can't be that bad. She was polite, nice, and patient enough to put up with me not knowing what I wanted to order."
"And I still think it would be a bad idea for you to engage with her further," Aizawa insisted.
"What's going on?" asked Midnight, a hero who was scantily dressed up in bright leather and a flogging whip at her side.
"Mic intruded in my quiet space and met the barista there," Aizawa informed her. "She was flirting with him and I see her go out with guys she flirts with and come back empty-handed."
Midnight nodded in agreement. "Yeah, Yamada-san, that sounds like a big red flag."
"Are you both serious?" he whined. "Just when I thought I had a catch."
"Don't worry, Mic, there's someone out there for all of us," Midnight reassured. "Just next time remember not to dive head first into the next girl who hits on you."
"Also keep in mind that you're thirty-one and she's probably ten years younger than you," Aizawa pointed out to him.
Present Mic sighed in frustration. He wasn't actively looking for love, but when he believed it to be pointed at him he wouldn't say no. It annoyed him that even if she was genuinely interested it was probably a bad idea.
Meanwhile, outside of Mic's lamenting, Aizawa began to complain about his class. "I can't believe I'm stuck with All Might's favorite. The kid shouldn't even be here. His quirk is a liability in battle, he'd drag everyone down while they're trying to combat villains while they're also trying to protect him."
"Maybe that is why he's here," said Cementos, just entering the conversation with a coffee cup in hand. "There are many kids who have quirks that are great drawbacks to themselves and don't know how to properly control it. Some of them go to Hero Academies to learn control."
Aizawa huffed, but couldn't necessarily disagree with what Cementos had to say. "Fine, but first chance I get I'm gonna give him the shock of his life."
The smell of blood and gore filled the air around her. She was hungry, so she ate, but it was a risky thing to do at this time of day. Back when it was just the C.C.C., she could exercise more freedom when it came to feeding, given their limited numbers. Now she has to be more careful.
While these Heroes don't carry as much lethality as the Doves did, they do have more individual power and are a much more frequent sight than C.C.G. Agents. She was sure they wouldn't kill her given the high moral standard they have to uphold, a decent few of them would have no problem going only just a little bit under lethal after finding out what she does.
Hearing the sound of distant fighting, Rize licked her lips clean and tore a piece of the man's shirt off the wipe down her face. She then threw the piece of torn cloth on the man's half-eaten face and quickly switched clothes behind a dumpster nearby. Rize exited the alleyway towards the sound of the fighting, carefully pushing her way to the front to at least get an alibi from an anonymous citizen or one of the heroes fighting.
She recognized one of the Heroes as an upstart named Kamui Woods, wearing his debut outfit and branching out his arms to contain a rampaging villain. There were other Heroes there, none of whom she recognized, but also did their best to contribute to the fight.
The Villain they were fighting was rather slender and able to move and morph his body around like a sort of liquid clay. It was something akin to that one hero she heard about from the comics of her world, but she couldn't remember his name. Kamui did his best to contain the Villain, but he was able to turn himself into a semi-liquid state to squeeze out of his cage. He then quickly wrapped around Kamui's arm, crawling up his arms at a speed the Hero couldn't react to, and coiled around his body like a snake. He began to squeeze right, forcing Kamui to retract his wooden appendages and fall to his knees as he was being squished.
"Kamui!" shouted a Heroine in a dark red qipao of traditional design. She was obviously one of the Heroes on the field, but she didn't seem to do much. "Don't worry, we'll get you out of there!"
"Too... tight...!" Kamui tried to yell as his body continued to be squeezed.
"I just wanna get out of here!" shouted the Villain. "Let me leave and I let him go!"
"Not a chance!" the other Hero shouted, wearing wrist bracers painted in a construction motif. In response the Villain tightened his grip on Kamui, getting a more pained squelch from the man.
"You don't comply, I'll keep tightening until he pops!"
It wasn't looking very good for the Heroes at the moment. As they tried to negotiate with the Villain for some reason it was becoming oddly hot. It was mid-August and it was cold enough to be wearing thicker clothing, but for some reason, it felt like it was becoming mid-summer.
"Just let him go!" shouted the man with metal bracers. "You'll be less likely to get a longer sentence when you go back!"
"Not a chance!" yelled the Villain. "You gotta be crazy to think I'll ever go back in that cell!"
So he was an escapee? No wonder he was able to escape with a power like that. The officers protecting the cell had to have known about his power. Maybe he slipped beneath the seem of the door and escaped that way. Or perhaps they didn't know and he simply oozed between the bars. Regardless, they had to have specialized jail and prison cells for specific powers. More durable bars for stronger inmates, colder cells for people with fire-based powers, and things like that. Or perhaps the prisons themselves may be specialized. Rize wondered what cell she would be out in if she got caught.
Still, it kept getting hotter and she didn't know why. The temperatures were rising significantly now, almost as if standing next to a flame that kept growing in size.
Then from the crowd, a man yelled out as he pointed in the distance, "It's Endeavor!"
She recognized that name. It was the No. 2 hero in Japan. He's solved the most crimes across all of Japan compared to the No. 1 Hero, All Might. He was far more effective, yet still ranked below him. In All Might's defense, he was more charismatic than Endeavor and stronger. He did a better job at inspiring people, both children and adults, to look toward a better tomorrow, and struck more fear in the hearts of Villains nationwide. She wasn't concerned, however. All Might was always too busy doing brand deals or making cameos in advertisements and commercials to do hero work effectively. Not to mention, he started his hero-ing nearly thirty years ago. He's far past his prime and will likely retire or burn out in a few years.
She knew very little of the way Heroes were structured and ranked, and frankly didn't care to learn more. How each individual Hero operated was of more concern. Endeavor was more important than All Might to her. Endeavor did very few brand deals or cameos, making him more active than All Might. It reminded her to always finish her meals thoroughly and use every part of it. She may need to fast more often, but there was something satisfying about eating after a long day without a single meal.
Endeavor shot a short blast of low-heat fire at Kamui that scared the Villain enough to make him release the newbie Hero. Endeavor quickly made a rush to the Villain, grabbing his elongated body and summoning fire around his wrists.
"Move, and I melt you," he said to the Villain.
"U-understood," responded the villain.
The Villain reformed himself back into a human-shaped state, Endeavor's hand now wrapped around his arm. At the same time, it also revealed a fully naked man, who had forgotten his clothes do not morph with him. Many of the people in the crowd began to cover their eyes or laugh, some even covering the eyes of children who came to watch as well.
"Now you have an indecent exposure charge added to your rap sheet," Endeavor told him.
"Can someone get him some clothes?!" yelled the Heroine in the qipao, doing her best to avert her eyes.
Rize too stopped looking at the unsightly scene before her. It was definitely something that would be burned into her memory forever, for better or worse. Whether it be for something to laugh at or plague her dreams for weeks to come.
She was hungry again. She could go back into the alley to finish the meal she left behind, but there were too many people around. A few may take the same route she took her prey down and she would need to act as shocked as they were to see a cannibalized body on the ground. She could kill and eat them too, but it would look suspicious if she was the only one seen leaving the path so many others took. It would be best if she left it behind and looked elsewhere. There was always food around somewhere.
Giran walked into the bar alone, his stomach queasy after his informants kept sending him pictures. So many corpses in such brutalized states, and there was no way it was Toga because she was more into draining the blood out of someone than slurping out their organs.
Corpses with bite marks on the bones, muscles, skin, and organs, all in the shape of human teeth or the human mouth. His eyes in the streets would find them in the back streets where no one would typically go through. Some were even found in the outskirts of the city, yet he wasn't sure if at that point they had been picked clean by scavengers or Musutafu's new resident Cannibal.
He knew it wasn't Moonfish because that weirdo was on death row. There weren't many people he knew about that could possibly be the perp either. Whoever it was at least had some sense because they haven't been caught yet. Even though Moonfish was technically caught within more than a couple, he was found out within a week. He merely eluded capture for almost a full year before finally being apprehended by Crust.
This new one has gone unnoticed for a full week as far as he knew. It wasn't enough time to evaluate how good she was at this, so he'd wait a little longer. The school year doesn't start until the first month of spring, so they have time.
"Are you going to continue staring at the ceiling or will you order something?" asked a man made of black mist with a purple hue.
"Something hard and strong," Giran replied. "I have a few things I wanna forget about."
"Such as?" asked the man made of mist.
"You don't wanna know," Giran told him. "Just know that if all goes well, you'll get your crew."
The living mist hummed with satisfaction, polishing a class it somehow managed to hold in its hands. "How is progress going so far?" it asked.
"It's slow," Giran answered. "But we got about five months, so you have time. You just need to wait for an opportunity and you got 'em."
"That too has been slow," answered the mist-man. "We lack the necessary information to know when should be a good time to strike."
Giran, doing his best to shove the morbid images his crew sent him, began to hum in thought. Currently, he was trying to think about anything else. "How's that mole of yours? Is he any good?"
"Before I answer this, am I being charged to speak with you?" the mist-man asked.
"A thousand yen per minute," Giran dryly answered.
"For casual banter?" asked the bartender.
"My time is valuable," Giran answered. He quickly downed the rest and slammed the glass on the table. "Grab me another drink, won't ya?"
The bartender stared at him silently. If the man had a face Giran could more easily recognize the irritation radiating off him. "Then I refuse to answer," he said. "The same as the last drink?"
"Yup," Giran quickly replied.
The misty bartender disappeared from behind the bar as he collapsed in on himself and appeared next to Giran. He poured from the bottle into his glass, waiting until Giran took the first drink to speak. "Do not be so rough with our glasses."
"Alright, then," he said.
Suddenly the door behind the bar swung open and a rough-looking boy walked in. The boy's appearance was rather lanky and frail, and his face was covered by a severed hand. His posture was slouched and improper, something he should probably work on if he wanted to appear more confident and threatening.
"Kurogiri, what's Giran doing here?" asked the boy.
"I believe he mentioned something about having things he wanted to forget about," Kurogiri replied.
"You say that like I care enough to know," he answered.
Suddenly the television started on its own. The screen blurred with static before the image became more clear. Even with the image cleared, Giran couldn't see much aside from a dark figure sitting in a chair. His figure was muscular and masculine, but his entire face was obscured by darkness.
"Tomura, aren't you even slightly curious?" asked the man behind the screen.
"No," Tomura said. "Why would I be?"
"We seek allies, Tomura," said the man behind the screen. "Even if they are binge-eating cannibals."
Giran's skin crawled. He knew that these two had to have someone above them. The boy is too immature and erratic to be a leader, and Kurogiri is more subservient to Tomura than anything else. This guy was the brains behind it all. And he knew that Giran knew about the cannibal.
Giran wasn't an idiot. He knew he was being called out. In his defense, he wasn't lying or omitting details, he just wanted to forget about photos that looked like they came right from LiveLeak. He planned on telling them about her eventually. He just wanted to wait until she was on the run so he could work his magic.
"No doubt you've heard, Giran. It's making rounds among circles of Villains." The man's voice was cocky as he played coy, not even bothering to hide that fact. "You will be paid well if you can retrieve any information about the subject matter."
"Y-you got it," Giran told him, doing his best to keep calm. "You guys'll be the first to know!"
He swears he could see some semblance of a smile from the darkness around his face. It felt as if it was unnatural. Without another second, the television shut off on its own and Kurogiri approached him with a slip of paper.
"The hell is this?" he asked, his heart still pounding in his chest.
"Your tab," he answered.
"My tab? Since when did you start charging me?"
"We always have," said Kurogiri. "You keep leaving before I can give you the bill. So far you owe us more than we owe you."
Giran grit his teeth and stood up from his seat. "Fine," he said, grunting as he walked to the door. "I'll pay it off next time I'm here."
Now in the streets, he could finally find the time to breathe. There was no feasible way it was that big of a subject matter. Only a handful of people knew about the cannibal. His people knew, his informants knew, and only another two info-brokers knew. The police definitely knew, but they've been very hush-hush about it all. If people learned about a murderer-cannibal hiding among them there would be panic, even with All Might around.
That whole interaction told him that he was replaceable. Giran of all people, replaceable? No, he had all the big bits of information people wanted. He had eyes and ears in all the big cities, not just in Japan. He was a commodity. Regardless, he would need to be more careful with what information he kept to himself, or he might wind up pissing off Tomura. The kid had a really nasty Quirk.
Naomasa Tsukauchi's finger hovered over the left button of his computer mouse. The cursor also sat over a send button on his email typed up in English. The most ethical part of him told him that their families needed to know they would likely never see their loved ones again.
He looked over the blind carbon copy of the email. The current ambassadors of the United States and Australia were included in the list. He would need to draft one up for all the others as well.
So far only the body of the Swede has been discovered and it was picked clean by foxes and boars. In only the first week of the expanded search, they've already made some progress. The issue is the others. They found the Australian's camera equipment, but haven't been able to find a body, dead or alive. It was probably the damn animals.
The cameras were so far being scanned through. He took pictures of the Meiji Jingu shrine, of old battle spots from Japan's history such as a few in Tsushima, and even the Kyoto Tower. It was mostly landmarks and environments. There were probably hundreds of them from each camera they had to go through and they couldn't skip a single one. At least three of them had already used all the film, leaving two more being scanned through by their forensics team.
The one thing of note that was mentioned was how damaged one of the cameras was. The film could still be saved, but they still weren't sure if there was anything of note in the film. The people at the front desk said there were more than just the five they picked up, so perhaps there was one that could have caught how they got split up.
After the long delay, Tsukauchi finally pressed the send button and pushed back in his chair. He had five more of these to go through after the first six.
End Note:
Hey guys! Thanks for checking out this fic! I do plan on trying to extend the chapters if I can, but I don't want to just fill them with a bunch of words that don't contribute to anything.
Please leave a review and let me know what you think.
