"If you're actually right about this, that will mean the Yaoyorozu family will just so happen to be attacked while we are visiting. Doesn't that seem rather suspicious to you?"

"Yes, it does… which is why we're going to be suspicious."

"Excuse me?"

"You said it yourself, they're going to be suspicious if we just so happen to be there when shit goes down. But who's to say that us being suspicious should reflect negatively?"

"...I have no fucking idea what you're getting at here."

"Matsumoto! Language!"


"I refuse to believe you!"

"Father…"

"I have known Rikiya for decades. He is Momo's godfather! To think that he would have something to do with this is ridiculous!"

Sometimes, it was easy for Momo to forget how big her father was.

For all that Mother was taller than average and Momo herself towered over her by half a head, Father dwarfed her by a fair amount. The heroic lifestyle that he'd never let leave him even after her birth gave him a wide frame, which combined well with his comparatively giant stature to cut an imposing figure.

Despite being on the business end of a glare that had made hardened executives quiver, Michael didn't so much as bat an eye as Father's hand swiped out, gesturing towards the room at large. Richard's toy soldiers had been hard at work as Mother described the situation to the other men, dumping every intruder into a nice straight line along the further wall from the entrance. In less than a minute, carpet and stone were interlaced across all their bodies, holding them immobile.

In all, there were thirteen assailants. Two were still unconscious. She was trying not to think about the rubber chicken-shaped welts that decorated their bodies.

"You're right. Compared to you, I don't know anything about Rikiya Yotsubashi." If she hadn't seen his matter manipulation in use multiple times, Momo would have assumed Michael's Quirk was the ability to piss people off effortlessly. His tone, in stark contrast with anything approaching placating, was disinterested. His fingers continued to dance across the laptop's keyboard, occupying much more of his attention than the irate man bearing down on him. "That doesn't change the fact that one of his subsidiaries just tried to kidnap your daughter."

Father stepped forward. Momo, surprising herself more than anyone else present, matched the movement, laying a hand on the arm that he was beginning to draw back. Father glanced down at her in shock, but before either of them could say anything, Michael drew himself up from the laptop, his face twisted in bewilderment.

"The hell?" He murmured, tapping a few more keys. The large television mounted on the wall, which Momo couldn't recall having ever been used, flickered on with a brief burst of static. Any question of how he even managed to gain access to it died a second later, as the picture stabilised into a simple document.

Future Recruitments, the top read, the words much larger than anything else on the screen. Electric Charge, Chameleon, Water Control, Curse, Muscle Augmentation. All the words were in a simple font, red letters contrasting with the pure white background. Creation followed them, this time written in green. Hellflame came next, with blue letters, and the quick scrolling Michael did confirmed that everything else written matched the shade, up until the last line.

Kill Order - Matter Manipulation - priority one. The rich purple shade of the font did little to settle the hot iron curling in Momo's gut, nor did Michael's carefully blank stare as he scrolled back to the top.

Mother walked towards the television slowly, her head tilted slightly in what Momo knew was deep thought. Richard followed after her closely, having already been the closest to the television in the first place. The reason became clear as soon as one of the incapacitated freedom fighters tried to move into a position that would allow him to fire off his Quirk into Mother's unsuspecting side.

It was inspirational, how casual he could make a kick to the face look. She would have to work hard to match that level of control. Mother didn't even seem to notice, but the way Father's arm lost some of its tension made it obvious that he had.

It was nice that they'd found a friend out of this awful day, at the very least.

"Are these Quirks?" Richard fished his phone out of his pocket, snapping a quick picture of the screen. He was nowhere near as quick at typing as his son, but his fingers still danced along the virtual keyboard at a respectable speed for whatever he was doing.

"Most of these in blue seem to belong to heroes. Others I've never heard of." At Matsumoto's prompting, Michael highlighted all of the text, tapping the same key until the entire list had been compressed enough to fit on the screen. "Blade-Tooth is a villain's Quirk. I'm not familiar with Gas or Transformation."

The sirens that had been howling in the distance had finally caught up to the house. Nobody in the room paid much attention to the sight of multiple police cars screaming up the lawn, all of them following behind a small brown blur. Somewhat confident now that fists weren't about to start flying, Momo released her father's arm, stepping around him to take a place beside Michael. His eyebrows were furrowed slightly, his mouth set in a grim line that felt unnatural after their first meeting.

There were many things about Michael Wise that she did not know. He likely wouldn't have answered her if she asked. But Momo had always been a smart girl, and she had never been afraid of using that intelligence.

"You know something." It wasn't a question, and he wasn't the only one that seemed surprised that she'd figured that out. Two pairs of dark eyes locked, and for a moment Momo wondered if he would deny the ghosts she'd seen swimming through his mind. It was easy to forget their parents standing around them, the intruders that Richard had methodically knocked out lying around the room. The rapidly closing in law enforcement responding to the alarms that had been set off.

With a sigh, he enlarged the text once more, increasing the spaces between the red words until they took up the entire screen.

"The Five Villain Purge."

He didn't say more, and he didn't need when the events had been infamous enough to feature in multiple different languages. The public never had gotten a name for the vigilante with purple hair. No arrests, even with no shortage of sightings. No motive had been figured out.

The only thing connecting all the victims was their hefty body count.

Muscle Augmentation, the man with that Quirk had been first, and it had been brutal to witness. The news coverage had been censored after the live broadcasting, as was often the case with the gorier heroic battles that made it onto the air, but it was never difficult to find the original footage. Debate still raged even months later if it had been justified; she'd even taken part in a few.

And then, a week later, the second murder had taken place. Curse had been crushed to death outside of a college campus that had experienced several disappearances over the previous months. The only footage of that was shaky, shot with a phone being held in quivering hands, but that long purple hair was unmistakable.

Chameleon, an unnamed man but suspected cannibal. His body had been found in a fountain, his head having been held underneath the water with a single strand of unidentifiable hair. Electric Charge, villain name Tesla, besmirching the legacy of a brilliant scientist for his careless burglaries that usually ended with at least one bystander in cardiac arrest. His inglorious end had been captured on a small store's security camera, though it was no less gruesome for it.

The vigilante had gone silent soon after, emerging only once later that week to stop the Water Controlled rampage of Hanzo Suiden. That had been the only one with no tangible evidence, though many were willing to take the word of Water Hose for that. Along with the many shark corpses that ruined the beach for the rest of the weekend.

The Five Villain Purge. Depending on who was asked, either the necessary actions of someone unwilling to let evil lord over them, or the crazed riot of a man preying on those no better than himself. The only thing that either side could agree on was the fact that the only person who had dropped violent crime rates more in such a short amount of time was All Might.

And, incidentally, it was possibly the reason that she was being targeted by a group of revolutionary terrorists.

Some awaited his reemergence with anticipation. Others dreaded who his next victim might be.

Momo could have done without the whole thing, personally.

The wall beside the door crumbled as the cars outside finally slid to a halt, ruining all the effort the gardening staff had put into perfectly maintaining the lawn. In a flash, the television has turned off, the laptop disappearing back into Michael's jacket and the wall having been smoothed over in a heartbeat. As one, they both turned towards the destruction, the tautness leaving Momo's body and seeming to enter Michael's, if the way his spine went rigid was any indication.

Though really, perhaps that was the smart reaction to have when seeing the fierce scowl that was dipping low on Mirko's face.

"Where's the fight at!?" In a stunning display of disrespect not seen since Michael five minutes ago, Mirko hopped down from the pile of rubble she'd created, kicking part of what had once been a wall off to the side. From beside Momo, something creaked ominously, and she turned around just in time to watch as Father's hands curled into fists tight enough to pop his knuckles.

His eyes, the left one twitching furiously, shifted rapidly between the new hole in the wall, and the perfectly intact and unopened door. A fact that she wasn't the only one to notice, if the slowly spreading grin on Mirko's face was anything to go off. It was a testament to the shit that Momo had put up with throughout the day that her opinion of one of the top female heroes in the country didn't drop all that much, even after watching her miss the door by a good few feet.

"Yo, old timer! Fight m-!"

Father couldn't have been the one that made her choke and her nose crinkle; even if she'd never won a match against him, she wasn't one to back down. No matter how quickly she was climbing the ranks, Father had retired from the life of heroics on his own terms, and that wasn't to be taken lightly.

No, Father wasn't maintaining her attention anymore. Mirko darted right past him without so much as a backwards glance, rounding on Momo's position in a few hops that came close to breaking the sound barrier.

Only, Momo wasn't the one that was being inspected.

The look that Michael shot her as Mirko descended on him was one of pure panic. It was hilariously out of place on the face of a man who could face down a loaded gun with an insult and a workable plan. The rabbit heroine trailed her face along his torso, shamelessly taking advantage of the fact that everybody else was far too confused to stop her, taking in his scent with enough urgency that Momo could see the fabric of his suit lifting slightly along with her breaths.

For reasons completely unrelated, her hands twitched towards the taser she'd left strapped to her thigh.

"Do I know you?"

The gravel that usually took up the pro's tone had deepened even further, her voice coming out in an outright rasp that had Momo's eyebrows rising beyond what she thought was their natural limit. Michael let out a rattling breath of his own, every visible muscle in his neck tensing as the rabbit heroine gave up on her own sense of balance, planting her chin onto his chest and relaxing the rest of her body to meld along the planes of his.

She then fell forward with an exaggerated "Oomph" as Momo reached out and yanked Michael to her side, wrapping both of her arms around his elbow and offering Mirko a smile that was faker than some recently-resigned employees had claimed her mother's breasts to be.

"You must be mistaken, it's his first time in Japan."

It probably wasn't. She was almost certain Richard had mentioned something about previous trips before things had gone to Hell. Lying wasn't very heroic, but as the other woman picked herself up off the ground and shot her a glare, she decided that she could allow herself a pass, just this once.

Mirko brushed off her costume, causing certain parts that were underneath it to shift around. Michael didn't seem to take any notice, given that he was trying to somehow compress his own bulk enough to be able to hide behind Momo's back. The rabbit's heroine's mouth opened, eyebrows set in a thin line, but whatever she had been about to say was interrupted by someone clearing their throat.

Oh, it was Father. He was still in the room. Along with Mother. And Richard. And all the people they'd knocked out.

And Matsumoto too.

Bother.

"Shouldn't you be clearing the officers outside to get our statements?" Oh. That was his 'I am not amused by this, young lady, there will be a discussion in the near future' voice. The last time Momo had heard that, it had been right after he'd sworn vengeance on the None-ya Business for corrupting his precious little angel.

Thankfully, the voice seemed universal for all young women. Almost as though she'd forgotten all about the other people in the room, Mirko's mouth clicked shut, and she offered nothing but a quick nod and a rapidly reddening face as she darted back through the hole she'd kicked in the wall.

The grip that Momo had on Michael's arm ended up being the only thing that kept her on her feet after the heroine passed just close enough to her for the wind to buffer her. He didn't seem to notice, finally heaving a breath and allowing the muscles that had been bunching across his entire body to loosen.

Leporiphobia, perhaps? An interesting development, but not one that she had time to ask about, as another arm slung itself over Michael's opposite shoulder. Richard's face leaned down enough to catch his eye, the smile on his face as large and ever so slightly unhinged as ever.

"Well that was certainly something, huh?"

Michael endured his father's laughter with the long suffering patience of someone who knew there was nothing that could save them. A hand on Momo's shoulder distracted her enough to let go of Michael's arm, and as she was spun around to take in the enormous grin that was beginning to spread across her mother's face, she found she could commiserate with him entirely.

"I want to go home." Michael said from behind her, sparking up another round of barking laughter from his father.

At that moment, Momo found that she, too, wanted to go home.

And she lived here.

Bother.