Tokage beckoned us both over to the edge of the wall. I had created a set of maximum power noise detection gear pieces - based off of Jirou's Earphone Jack quirk - for us to eavesdrop. It had been quite the creation; I had asked Jirou a few months earlier to let me study her quirk in order to learn how to make something of the sort.
"I hate to think my quirk can be replaced with tech," she'd told me, looking nervous.
"No one could ever replace you," I told her. "This is just so I can keep you - your quirk - in my pocket, whenever we can't fight together!"
I flushed up a little, embarrassed; she looked embarrassed too, but she smiled and said, "You wanna fight together - maybe, like, after UA?"
"That sounds like a wonderful idea!"
In any case, I had created the device, and now we were using it to eavesdrop on these dastardly villains.
Slowly over the intercom came a set of three voices, all of them female.
The first voice was a bit muffled and coming through what sounded like a synthesizer - a disguise, so there was no way to identify it.
"Perfect, Doctor. That should tie up our latest loose end quite nicely."
"It was idiotic to leave things to a bunch of amateurs like those," said the second voice - high, cold and piercing. "You should have let me put them under my control."
"Police have started noticing your quirk, Kokoro. The effects are too specific. In any case, there are fine skills involved in this sort of task for which drones are simply not adequate."
"Fine, just don't turn to me when they fail next time."
"There is no need to get snippy, dear. We left a few loose ends, but all that's left now are afew dead bodies. And what are a few more dead bodies nowadays?"
I felt a chill coming through me. They were speaking of murder, so casually.
"What've you come up with today?"
"An excellent new creation, one that should, with time, be able to terrorize from underground with ease. I'd imagine the League of Villains might start becoming a more profitable client now, what with their new windfall."
Windfall? The League of Villains? Oh no...That can't mean anything good.
My mind flashed back to the last direct encounter I had had with that group. It had been some time ago, but they still stood out to me. I wasn't likely to forget them any time soon.
The five of us back in Kamino, hiding behind that tiny wall, as Bakugou and All Might fought hopelessly against them - the towering, all-powerful All-for-One, the magician known as Mr. Compress who had snatched Bakugou away from us, the duplicating strange being known as Twice, the gecko-quirk user Spinner, blood-drinking schoolgirl Himiko Toga, and their sinister leader Tomura Shigaraki, who could decay anything to nothing with a touch. Even with their leader in prison, they were still something terrible.
I hadn't fought any of the main members, such as they were; I had been wounded by one of their genetically engineered monsters - the creatures known as Noomu. Monstrosities created through experimentation.
Experimentation - could this Doctor have something to do with the creation of those monstrosities?
"Wind...falll..." groaned the third voice, a whisp of a tone that sounded scratchy, like it was coming from a throat not quite fully formed.
"Hm, it's awake," said Dr. Soken. She then resumed, "If I agree to assist with their genetic modifications - provide blueprints, as it were - they might be willing to throw some real funding my way. Much preferable to hiring thugs to hold up snooty banks. Regular customers with no objections to our experimentation; it could be the perfect arrangement."
"Weren't they just a bunch of bums a few months ago?" asked the other woman, who the doctor had addressed as Kokoro. "Living in shacks, with nothing but their name? How'd they level up so fast?"
"Who knows? Profitable investors, probably. Plenty are willing to invest in a new world these days, my dear Kokoro. The old regime - the way of heroes, of villains living in fear, playing by some foolish rules? That's dying now. Endeavor is hardly a replacement for All Might."
"Speaking of Flame quirks - you think that Fire User's gonna be any real use to us? I mean, sure, he looks weird, but a lot of villains like to look weird."
"He's more than strange, Kokoro. My investigations tell me he ishardly even human."
The flame user? I glanced at the others, who nodded at me. Of course, Dabi.Hardly even human?
"Perhaps he was, once. But it would perhaps be more accurate to describe him as a walking corpse. He is the closest thing to a fully articulate human zombie - or vampire - that I have ever seen. I'm not sure how All-for-One did it, but he must have had something to do with reanimating that body and allowing it to use its quirk again, to think and function. It was likely immolated originally, which is why it is so badly burned. But whatever the cause, if it turns itself over to us for study we will be able to replicate it. Won't that be exciting, dear Kokoro? The power to re-animate the dead, to raise perhaps an army at our command? Along with ourlittle experiment here -"She paused, perhaps looking at whatever the third womanwas -"Only think of it!"
"Aren't you worried the League of Villains will stop investing if we pull something like that? Give them real competition?"
"Why would we be competing with them? I have no interest in ruling the underworld, or whatever petty havoc Shigaraki and his merry band of misfits want to wreck. I'm interested, my dear, in the thrill only of the experiment - in the joy of creation, of invention! Of seeing just what science can do!"
I felt a little sick to my stomach. I tried not to feel too faint at the ideas of what this villain was doing - what kinds of experiments could be creating beings like the Nomu?
Concentrate - we have new intel. The League of Villains has money now. Money they'll use to - stop, focus. The Flame-user - that's why no one has identified him, because whoever he was is legally dead. Maybe search through burn victims? If they don't experiment him to death first...An image of the fire-user strapped to a chair with his body cut open flashed through my mind - images of what this thingthey were talking to could be - of this army of monsters the Doctor wanted to raise...
Concentrate, Momo. Concentrate. We've got some intel now. And -
I looked at Majestic, Officer Mifune, and Tokage, and recalled the sidekicks spread out around the compound. We were going to get these villains. We had come on purpose to defeat them, and capture them. Right.
"Let's go," said Majestic into the comm. He turned to look at us.
"Let's be careful with this apprehension. We've heard their plans, but know nothing of their quirks. We have the advantage of stealth, so the capture needs to be quick. Lizardy, break apart and enter the compound. Once we arrive, use your split off parts to disorient them. Creaty, we'll need something to disable them quickly. A knockout gun of some kind. Officer, bring your men in for the arrest once we send the signal they've been disabled."
He said all this very quietly; I could still hear them talking inside, which meant we hadn't been detected. Tokage had split herself up on his signal and was bouncing her various parts towards the entryways.
"How are we entering?" I asked him as we headed around the corner.
"Through the doors."
He threw several of his defensive disks through the front doors, which split open. No alarm sounded, which I found more sinister than if one had.
"We need to move quickly."
I ran after him as he and the sidekicks ran through the opened doors at top speed, floating on his various disks through the halls, following a piece of herself Tokage had left behind to direct us. I couldn't quite tell which component it was, and I decided not to guess.
We zig-zagged downward, and downward, through increasingly dark and slimy tunnels, dimly lit and with no end in sight. I had to create a small lantern to keep us from losing sight of Tokage.
But at last - we broke forward into a large room -
It was a laboratory, cavernous in size, with tanks and gears hanging from walls and ceilings, things in jars, tables covered in stethoscopes and various equipment...
Dr. Soken wore a long lab coat and gloves; her face was covered in bandages and huge goggles covered her eyes; black hair streaked with white was tied in a large tail, two tails hanging before her face. No way to tell anything else about her physically. Kokoro wore a face mask, but it exposed her eyes, large and green; she had long brown hair and wore a red bodysuit.
Across from them, tied by tubes to the wall, was a young, slender woman with pale skin, short blue-gray hair, naked and dripping in test tube juice. She couldn't have been older than me.
Tokage's parts had risenand were surroudning the two, in a dizzying display. Majestic's rings were headed in to trap them. I readied my knockout gun.
"Dr. Soken!" announced Majestic. "Kokoro! We are here to arrest you-"
"Chi-no-magari," said Dr. Soken.
The girl on the wall raised her hands and opened her eyes.
I froze. I couldn't - physically - move a muscle.
And neither could anyone else.
