Aizawa was immediately rushed off to a nearby hospital where he had to wait until morning to meet Recovery Girl. There were perks of her also being the school nurse, as her quirk was strong enough to heal near-fatal injuries quickly, though at a cost to the recipient's stamina. A useful quirk for the school to have, given how often their students are bound to injure themselves.
Still, even after the visit from the school's nurse, he was hospital-bound for a week before he was discharged. His ribs and back still hurt, as Recovery Girl purposely healed him a little over halfway. According to the old crone, with the amount of stamina left in his body after his encounter with the villain, the stamina her quirk would force his body to use would kill him if she healed him fully. He was thankful for her assistance regardless, especially now that he could teach his students with only some pain.
As a result of her quirk, Aizawa had been in a state of lethargy for the past week. He was too tired to feel safe to drive to work, spending most of his time eating and sleeping to recover energy. Most of the time he was taking phone calls between Nezu and Sekijiro, planning up lessons for the first trimester.
Outside of his school duties, he was still waiting for more information about what happened last night. There was a concerning amount of blood, and he hoped that whatever Villain was responsible was caught. He knew that someone had to have died, but he wished that casualties were kept at a minimum. Until he fully woke up he would struggle to think too hard on it.
Today he checked his emails again. As a case he was the first to arrive on he was still informed about its updates, even though he still wasn't fully cleared for duty yet. He didn't expect to even be able to participate in the investigation either, given how school is so close to starting. Aizawa thought it was pointless to let him weigh in with his duties as a teacher taking up most of his life at the moment, but he appreciated the gesture regardless.
There were at least a handful of new emails from the police department. Each of them was sent within only a few hours of each other. He opened the first email he saw and was greeted by a small update email from the department.
" 23/13/2xx1. From: Musutafu Police Dept.
Eraser Head, we have found the last body in the security room after receiving a headcount from the manager about who was on that night. There are a total of six dead, all of their bodies were mutilated beyond recognition. All except for the one in the security room who appeared to have his head popped off his body.
Due to the states of their bodies and forensic testing, we can assume that they were cannibalized before death-"
Aizawa paused between reading. Before death. Those poor men must have suffered immense pain and been helpless to do anything about it. Previous emails mentioned dented bullets around the ground where bare footprints could be detected. Not only were they made to suffer, but they were also likely scared to the core.
Those tendrils must have been bulletproof, or perhaps the Villain was in conjunction with the tendrils. Or were there multiple? The report says the camera room for the fifteenth through twenty-fifth floors was smashed. It was unlikely there were multiple. The most likely scenario to Aizawa was that this cannibal was still at large and unknown. What's worse is that he almost died to him... or her, or... it didn't matter.
Aizawa continued to read. "-which makes this case all the more disturbing. If this is the same cannibal from before, we can assume that the target has become bolder and is no longer luring people into remote places. It is also possible that this is a one-time occurrence.
Thanks to your leads on the quirk type and quirk description, we finally have something to work with. Although we are going through every individual in Japan's registry that has a mutant quirk matching the description, we are struggling to find results. We will continue to update you. In the following emails we have sent you images of the crime scene should you want to view it. If by analyzing the scene you have any assumptions or theories, let us know."
He clicked out of the email and saw the other two emails. One said "Scenes 1-4" and the other said "Scenes 5-7". The mouse icon hovered above the image, ready to click but Shota was unsure if he wished to see the images or not. He eventually clicked, opening up the first 4 images on his computer.
Nothing too gruesome. Mostly blood and broken glass. There were pieces of corpses, but not the full body, only ripped-off legs still completely intact. Brutal for sure and definitely disturbing, but he's seen people lose limbs in battle before. It's still something he would never wish to see again.
The next set of pictures was truly a series that he'd never wish to see again. Even more so than the severed limbs. Several bodies were mutilated and torn open or apart. Their skin was torn open to reveal the muscle underneath, and then the muscle to reveal the organs. Some still had their faces attached, or at least partly attached, but it was something he would never wish to see again.
Not even Moonfish was capable of this type of depravity. He was a cannibal, yes, but he did so because he was a psychologically unstable individual. Whoever this was was either doing it for the sole purpose of being a sadistic piece of shit or they actually enjoyed the taste of a human being.
It was sickening. He had no idea how many of these men died before they were turned into a snack, and how many of them lived to be ripped open. Not to mention there was an odd frequency to these as well. Almost as if they were dealing with some binge eater who couldn't control their hunger.
He immediately closed out of the email and went to leave his apartment. Aizawa decided a walk should clear his mind. He prayed to whatever divine entity may exist out there that none of his future students would ever have to receive the email he did. He hoped they wouldn't. Not even All Might's chosen favorite. Especially that boy. He doesn't look like he could handle it.
Noamasa sat in a meeting room with several of his peers. Various colleagues and superiors, even the Wild Wild Pussycats who spearheaded the search. Some Heroes remained, but others went home.
The search still continued, but they chose to review the film on Jacob Taylor's cameras. Most were pictures of animals and some even of the tour group, as well as pictures of himself. They even found one of him and the tour guide posing for a selfie. But that wasn't what they were interested in.
They kept scrolling and scrolling, coming across nothing but images of human feet, covered in blood but showing no wounds and still very clearly attached to the heel and leg. They didn't think it was some kind of weird fetish he had that they could make jokes about, but that is likely what the present group would have preferred. Up until a few frames, the most they received were just the knees down. Eventually, they reached the thighs, but that was where the last image was.
The photographed body was covered in blood, and a severed arm hung at the perpetrator's side. The legs looked effeminate in their musculature and shaved appearance. As well as the way they appeared to move between frames as she walked.
There was one important one they came across, but it looked like the edge of something round and blood-red in color. The image was just barely out of the frame, and couldn't be entirely seen. None of them were even sure of what they were looking at, only being able to see its color was as red as the blood on her body. There was some discoloration and splotches on the item, indicating it wasn't blood covering the camera lens.
"How are the rest of the pictures coming along?" asked Mandalay.
"There are no more pictures," answered one of the police sergeants. "This is it. That was the last picture."
"Oh..." Mandalay sounded dismayed at the lack of any more information. "At least we know it's a woman."
"But that's it. That's all we know. There is nothing else to go off of," another officer complained. "The final meeting before international authorities get involved is happening today. We at least need to find this woman so we can extend our grace period."
"Isn't this enough?" asked another. "We found the bodies of one of the Americans, the French, and the Swede. It's proof we're making progress."
"I suppose so," Noamasa barely agreed. "I can send an email when the meeting is over, but something tells me it won't be enough."
Pixie-Bob groaned in frustration. "This can't be it! There has to be something else!" she shouted, her voice echoing in the small room and bouncing off the walls. "We have made almost no progress in finding the others, aside from that Italian girl's severed foot." She finished, shuddering at the memory of the sight she was forced to see that day. The only reason they knew whose foot it was came as a result of DNA testing matching with the blood it.
"I don't think we'll ever find the rest of them," suggested one of the other Heroes. "I think we should call it a loss."
Noamasa loudly cleared his throat to gather attention on him. "In other news, there is high evidence that they were murdered and then eaten by this mystery woman. Have any of you all caught wind of the corpses showing up around Musutafu and the surrounding areas?"
The Wild Wild Pussycats shook their heads, while one of the Heroes from Nagasaki raised his hand to answer. "I've heard things about it, but not a whole lot. Something about the bodies being brutalized before and-or after death?"
"Not brutalized, but eaten," Naomasa corrected.
"You think these might be connected?" asked Mandalay.
"Yes," answered the officer. "They've been popping up around the city rapidly, with only a small two-week gap between the Fuji murders and the first detected corpses."
"Oh wait, last week didn't someone attack a tech building at night?" asked another Hero.
"Yes. In the attack, there were multiple security guards found dead and eaten," he answered. "Eraser Head was the first on the scene and engaged with the Villain. He was injured and escorted off the scene. Others went into the building to find the Villain had escaped."
"So what happened from his perspective?" asked another one of the Heroes.
Naomasa cleared his throat before he began. He pulled out the report from that night by Eraser Head, as he had kept them with him should he find it important to bring them up. "He was doing his nightly patrols and decided to make a detour to check out a broken window. He arrived on the scene to find copious amounts of blood on the floor around him. He was then immediately attacked by the villain who used two blood-red tendrils to put him on defense, before he was grabbed by them, slammed into a wall, and then thrown out of the window, creating a new hole. He was not able to tell any physical details about the Villain because they were hiding in the dark. Sex, age range, height, hair color, hair length, and skin tone are unknown. He was then later found by the Fighting Hero: Dropkick, hanging from a building by his scarf."
"And what about Dropkick?" asked the same hero from before. "He called in support and went in to find the Villain, only to see that she escaped."
"She?" parroted one of the officers. "Are we assuming that this attack was performed by the same person as the Fuji murders?"
"Yeah, isn't it a bit early to be assuming things?" agreed another hero.
"And if you're referring to that splotch in the corner of the photo matching the description of the color of the tendrils Eraser Head gave, I don't think that's enough to go off of," interjected another. "For all we know it could just be darker blood or something wrong with the film. The only evidence we can go on is the cannibalism, but how do we know this is the same person and not some newfound cult?
Naomasa bowed his head, agreeing with all the statements put forth. "I know that this is quite a shot in the dark, but we need to do all we can to find the one responsible. If you can't do so for the safety of others, then please try for the reputation of Japan. I'm asking for a lot of faith in this bold assumption, an assumption I have little evidence for. Please, give me a chance."
The Heroes shared a worried look. They could only see how much of a leap of faith they would be taking with this, and how little evidence there was to back up the claim.
"You're asking for quite a bit of faith, Tsukauchi-san," said another Hero in the room. "I can give it to you, despite this having very little chance of success."
Other Heroes began to place their faith in the detective, despite how much they thought the claim to be absurd. The rest shook their heads, respectfully declining Naomasa and quitting while they were ahead. It was split down the middle, with the search force effectively being halved. It took more resolve to stay in the investigation at half-capacity than it did to help Naomasa prove his claim.
Soon they were all dismissed and left to go back to their agencies. One, however, took a back path into an Alleyway where his doppelgänger lay bloody and broken, yet still barely alive. The main hero leaned down and pulled out a half dozen syringes to giddily draw blood from the hero.
The form of the unscathed hero began to melt into a sludge and came back down on the form of a naked teenage girl, only covered by the after-effects of her quirk. Her smile revealed her sharp fangs and made her red eyes glow even more than they did. She finished stealing the Hero's blood, placing the vials in a frozen punch to keep them cool, and finished the Hero off with a combat knife on her hip.
Just as she pulled the knife from his skull, her phone began to ring. "Hello!" she answered, still reveling in the dark deeds she committed.
"Hey, Toga!" answered the familiar voice of Giran. "How did the meeting go?"
"Boring..." she answered, her mood slightly soured by the reminders of paperwork. It was a skill she was forced to get good at, her hatred for it doubling by her hatred of writing. "They're getting close by the way. To that girl you wanted
"How close?" Giran asked.
"I dunno," Toga answered. "They know she's in Musutafu. Something about a tech building."
"The recent one with Eraser Head? They said someone broke in and stole a bunch of stuff-"
"Nothing was stolen," Toga told Giran, alerting him of the truth. "Are we done?" she asked, becoming annoyed and impatient.
"Fine, we're done. Just remember who I am, so you watch that to-" Toga hung up the phone, cutting Giran off before he could continue scolding her.
She looked down at her prey. He was easy to take down with such a useless quirk. It made her laugh at how someone with such an excellent tracking quirk couldn't sense an ambush from so far away.
Toga smiled, pushing Giran aside and looking at the blood pool beneath his head. His blood tasted so sweet, which to Toga meant they had become closer. However, she had to move on, but that did not mean she would forget him, only that new people were out there to form a connection with.
Giran scoffed as he was hung up on. He would show her who's boss, but that would mean he would need to touch her head. Not to say it would be a hard task, but with someone as erratic and insane as Toga it would definitely be an issue. Dabi was the only one who could get away with talking to Giran like that because there was nothing he could actually do about the pyromaniac.
It especially infuriated him that Toga had no new information aside from the tech building. It was relatively close to a few places, only within a five-mile distance from U.A., a six-mile distance from Tatooin Station, and just a few blocks away from a cinema. It helped narrow a bunch of places down, also coinciding with a bunch of other places where the victims were.
Regardless of the new information, he still had business to attend to. What Toga told him would be documented at a later time, or at least vaguely remembered.
He stood in a dark room with some random guy tied up in a chair. Unlike Toga, progress was going slow on his end. Between recruiting more idiots to chase after Shigaraki's dream and other things he was hired to do, the Maneater usually took a backseat. This was one of those few occasions where the cannibal took up his time.
The man had just been unloaded in Giran's warehouse and two of his men immediately left, leaving the two alone. He pocketed his phone and pulled off the sack on the man's head.
"Shit, you really fought, didn't ya?" Giran laughed, looking at the man's bruised face. "Or they're just really rough."
Giran took out the cloth from the man's mouth to allow him to finally speak. "Who the hell are you people?! W-what do you want with me?!"
"I'm lookin' for someone," Giran said. "Someone with a particular interest in the human body, or at least how it tastes."
"I don't know what you're talking about! Please, just let me leave!" the man begged.
"You haven't seen anyone?" Giran asked. "Because stolen security camera footage shows you running away from someone trying to chase you down. Why were you running?"
"I don't know what you're going on about. Please, let me go! I don't know anything!" He began to cry as a pathetic look took over his face.
Giran sighed. "What reason do you have to lie to me?" he asked. "She can't get you here, she probably doesn't even know who you are. And those two idiots who roughed you up, don't worry about them. It wasn't personal." Giran leaned in close to the man, standing over him with a tired and curious look in his eyes. "So spit it out."
"O-okay," the man finally caved, still shivering in the chair he was pulled out of the van in. "I-it was some woman. S-she was kinda short compared to the guy she was hanging onto and had long hair. I couldn't get a good look at her. Th-then they turned into an alleyway and I heard screaming."
"What were you doin' around the place?" Giran asked.
"I'm homeless," he answered. "I was just sitting around with my stuff."
"You took a look?" Giran asked.
The homeless man nodded his head. "I-it was fucking awful. Her clothes and face and hair were covered in blood and the guy was just screaming. He wouldn't stop screaming. I th-think he bled out, because he stopped screaming by the time I made halfway down the block."
"And you didn't grab the cops?" Giran further questioned, raising a brow.
"There's a reason I'm homeless," he said. "I have so many warrants if I show up I won't even get the chance to speak. I'll just get tased and hauled off to jail."
Giran clicked his tongue in annoyance. "You were awfully talkative after being given the chance," he said. "I even bought some new shit I wanted to test out. Not to call myself a sadist, I don't get no pleasure out of your pain, I just wanted to know this stuff works." Giran walked over to a table and pulled off a cloth, revealing half a dozen devices designed to make a man scream. "Consider yourself lucky I didn't get to use these," he said, picking up one of the instruments to inspect it and placing it back down. "You said you didn't get a good look at her?"
"N-no," said the man. "I'd say somewhere around 152 centimeters and long hair. I think it was purple hair or something."
"It ain't a whole lot, but it's something I can work with." Giran approached the man and then asked him a single question. "How much time would you say has passed?"
"W-what?"
"Time? How long has it been since you got here? Since we started talking?" Giran asked, annoyed.
"I-I don't know, maybe about six minutes?" the man guessed.
Giran pulled back his sleeve and looked at his hand. It was supposed to be the last five minutes, but it could have some margin of error, either in increased or decreased time. He did round the time to be somewhere in the ballpark of five minutes, but it could be a bit longer.
He stuck his hand out towards the homeless man, grabbed ahold of his face, and activated his Quirk. When Giran pulled his hand back he saw the man's eyes become blank.
Giran smiled and called his people back into the warehouse. "Drop this guy off somewhere far away. You got five minutes. You can do less than that, but no more." He still wasn't sure if his quirk was exact, which was why he was hesitant to experiment with him earlier, despite already having done so. "And don't kill him, just dump him somewhere."
The two men came back into the room, grabbed the man, and threw him in the back of their van. The back doors slammed shut, and only a matter of seconds passed until he heard the van drive off.
Surprisingly the man gave Giran decent enough information. It definitely narrowed down the search, much more than what Toga gave him, but he should still meet up with her to get all the information he knows she didn't give him. She was still a kid and could be a brat, but most of the time she was happy to do what she was told as long as she got some blood out of it. Perhaps it was that time of month?
Giran pulled out and lit a cigarette, taking a puff before dealing with Shigaraki and Kurogiri right after Toga. The longer he spent time chasing after this one person, the more he felt he was wasting his time. Even the freak on the other side of the screen should know that this was too much energy on one person. Was it the police notoriety that made her so desirable? Was it the ability to so easily blend in with society for several months without the police getting close that he admired?
Giran threw his cigarette to the ground and stomped it out. This was all such a mess. He did admit that he was a bit interested in seeing how this all pans out for her, but there wasn't any conceivable reason in his mind that would find her this interesting. She was just another Villain who hides in plain sight. A wolf in sheep's clothing.
He sighed and shook his head. He then soon left, closing and locking the doors behind him as he left to go meet up with Toga. He was also quite tired, despite not doing much of anything. Maybe something with caffeine could wake him up, like an energy drink or soda or coffee.
([no notes for today. Let me know what you think! Thanks for stopping by!] I lied, this is being updated as I have just released the chapter and noticed a screw up in previously stated logic. It has been fixed.)
