The morning greeted Izuku and Hitoshi with a meeting with Sir Nighteye and Lemillion first thing. The two of them got dressed into their hero costumes and met the pros in Nighteye's office as soon as they could, bickering with each other about what the meeting could possibly be for on the way. Hitoshi thought they must have done something that Nighteye wanted to insult them for, but it was clear that it was mostly a joke to poke fun at their actual screw up with the warehouse. Izuku appreciated that Hitoshi had gotten back to his usual self after the chance of them getting expelled from UA had put him into a deep depression for the few weeks after the warehouse explosion. It looked like Hitoshi more or less accepted that whatever was going to happen would happen regarding UA, and that if he could clean up his mess working with Nighteye before that point then he was happy. Izuku accepted no such thing. They were going to fix their mistakes, and they were going to be going back to UA. He refused to think otherwise. He was the hopeful hero, after all. If he allowed even the possibility of a negative outcome for them to enter his mind, then he wouldn't be living up to his own ideals. When they entered Nighteye's office, though, he immediately began explaining that they had a new mission.
"My own research gave me more information than the DNA analysis machine that Bubble Girl utilises. Unfortunately, as I explained last night, that device only seeks out the closest matches, and throws everything else away. I broadened my scope, and looked for near-matches. Thus, we have one result," Sir Nighteye said.
"That's great!" Lemillion said, seemingly incapable of losing that chipper attitude of his no matter how early in the morning it was.
"Indeed. You, Lemillion, will take our interns here and investigate this lead. The near-match is a woman named Hidari Ushiro, a thirty-eight year old athlete who lives in the city. I've sent her address to your phone, Lemillion, along with a photograph of the woman so that you may identify her on sight. You know the basic procedure for questioning persons of interest. Good luck," Nighteye said.
"Thank you, Sir. We'll do our best!" Lemillion said with a grin.
"Yeah," Izuku and Hitoshi said at the same time, though their tones were wildly different.
Suddenly, Lemillion sank through the floor and disappeared. His cape fluttering behind him was the last Izuku saw of him before he was simply gone. He looked over at Hitoshi, who shrugged, until Sir Nighteye smiled at the floor and looked back up at them with a more neutral expression on his face.
"Lemillion has the highest conflict de-escalation rate at my agency. He is the fastest hero I've ever had the pleasure of working with, outside of All Might himself. You better catch up quickly or you'll lose him," Nighteye said. He had the most amused expression Izuku had ever seen in his life on his face, which he ignored in favour of taking stock of his surroundings.
"Do these windows open?" Izuku asked, power-walking toward the row of transparent panes of glass acting as both wall and window overlooking the city. Judging by the sound of footsteps behind him, Hitoshi was following closely.
"Yes," Sir said.
"Great," Hitoshi grumbled.
Izuku found the latch and flung it open. He stepped aside when he heard the speed and heft of the footsteps behind him increase, guessing what Hitoshi was going to do without even looking. A second later, Hitoshi sprinted past him with a wordless shout and dove out the window, flinging his binding cloth out and getting it caught on a street light. He swung a mere metre or so off the ground, and at the apex of his swing brought his binding cloth back in to throw it back out onto the next highest perch, the corner of a building that he climbed up in a matter of seconds. Izuku smiled at how far Hitoshi had come with the binding cloth in just a year, and powered up One For All to twenty-four percent. It was time to show Sir Nighteye what he could really do. Sir's office overlooked an intersection, so there was a long stretch of road ahead. He thought he might've seen Lemillion rise up out of the road and propel himself further down the street a few hundred metres ahead. Green electrical discharge crackled around Izuku as he powered up, and he crouched down in preparation to leap. He pushed off the floor as hard as he could and allowed Float to embrace him like the comforting warmth of a mother's hug. He shot down the street like a blur of flashing green lightning, immediately overtaking Hitoshi, as he relied on a blend of parkour and swinging with the binding cloth to travel. In a few moments, Izuku had caught up to Lemillion, who soared up into the air beside him from under the ground with wide eyes and a dropped jaw.
"Where was that yesterday?" Lemillion asked, before falling back through the road only to pop back up into the air again. Izuku was dying to know how that worked, but he could only smile at getting to really prove himself.
"It takes me a second to get to full power," Izuku said, pausing when Lemillion fell and was launched back up again. "I'm working on it, though!"
"I guess I should know better than to underestimate students," Lemillion said. When he popped back up again, he continued. "Since nobody expected me to achieve any sort of success as a kid."
Izuku brought himself back down to about fifteen percent. There was no need to go all out and legitimately outpace Lemillion and Hitoshi, who managed to catch up over a few minutes after they'd both slowed down. That display at the beginning was just for Nighteye, which sounded pretty selfish when he thought of it like that, but Izuku thought that Sir might understand what he was capable of now that he'd been given a demonstration. Plus, it was good practice for adjusting power levels, since what he'd said to Lemillion was true; he was going to get better at mixing up what percentage he was using on the fly. A repeat of the incident from the day before was not going to occur in his presence. Izuku didn't want to disrupt the people going about their lives on the street below, so he decided against the use of Air Force to propel him across the city, instead opting to use Blackwhip to swing around much like Hitoshi. People pointed up at them from the street as they passed and occasionally asked each other if the two of them were a new hero duo or just an unknown pair. Izuku and Hitoshi shared a grin every time that happened. That idea, him and Hitoshi forming a duo once they went pro, didn't sound too bad.
By the time the three of them reached the address that Lemillion led them to, Izuku and Hitoshi had gotten over the early morning drowsiness and were wide awake, ready for whatever the day could bring. Lemillion met them on the roof after phasing up through the middle of what looked like an apartment building. Izuku dialled One For All back up to twenty percent for his final leap, finding that he didn't even need Float's help to extend his air time, and landed in a crouch beside Lemillion on the rooftop. It took a few more moments for Hitoshi to make his way up, during which time Izuku allowed the crackling green aura of power around him to dissipate with a few final pops of electrical discharge. Once Hitoshi landed on the rooftop with a roll and popped back up to his feet using his remaining momentum, Lemillion smiled.
"You two have got all sorts of stuff hidden up your sleeves, huh?" he said.
"No hero's a one trick pony," Hitoshi said, likely not catching that he'd repeated a saying that Aizawa used a lot.
"Right you are!" Lemillion said, giving Hitoshi a thumbs up. "Now, let's see about this person of interest that Sir told us about."
Lemillion led the way as they entered the apartment building through the rooftop exit. Hitoshi ended up taking up the middle position in their marching order, with Izuku taking up the rear position. Lemillion urged them to be careful and to not let their guards down, since this Hidari Ushiro woman could be a member of the Shie Hassaikai, and thus a villain. While they walked down to her door, Izuku made sure to keep One For All steady within him at one percent, enough so that he could dial it up to a significant percentage without having to first draw it out, but not so much that he was showered with the telltale green sparks that came up whenever he used Full Cowling with five percent or more. They didn't tiptoe down the hall as they approached the dwelling of Hidari Ushiro, but the three heroes were cautious as they stopped in front of the door that stood between them and their only real lead. Hitoshi had his hand on his tool belt, gripped around the stun baton at his waist, while Lemillion knocked, the booming sound increasing Izuku's nerves even higher than they would have been simply due to his realisation that he was once again doing real hero work. He was not going to mess it up again.
After a moment of silence, the door opened with a groan from the hinges. A tall, solidly built woman with greyish hair and blue eyes opened the door. She seemed taken by surprise that three young men in hero costumes were standing before her, each with serious expressions on their faces. She stammered for a moment before asking, "How can I help you?"
"Good morning, ma'am," Lemillion said, his cheer dampened somewhat by the importance of the mission. "We're heroes with Sir Nighteye's agency. Do you mind if we ask you some questions about a case we're investigating at the moment?"
"Um, not at all," the woman, presumably Hidari Ushiro herself given Lemillion's reaction, said. She stepped aside and opened the door wider. "Come in."
Ushiro welcomed the heroes into her neat, tidy apartment easily. Izuku, Hitoshi and Lemillion sat down around a round table and politely declined Ushiro's offer of tea, before she sat down and nervously asked the heroes what they wanted to know. During this time, Izuku kept maintaining that one percent of One For All across his whole body, which might as well have been no power at all, which was why it was actually kind of difficult to keep that up. He was used to containing a lot of power and then turning it down to zero, so keeping it at one was a new experience for him. Under the table, Izuku could see that Hitoshi had kept his hand at his belt so that he could grab a weapon in case something happened suddenly. Lemillion's smile was different ever since stepping inside the apartment, like it was no longer genuine. All three of them were prepared for things to go wrong.
"Well, has anyone you know gone missing in the last couple of years, Miss Ushiro?" Lemillion asked. "Family, specifically?"
Ushiro's entire face changed in an instant. She looked at Lemillion intently and nodded. "Yes. My brother and his entire family just up and disappeared one day. Him, his wife and their young daughter. It's like they never even existed."
"What do you mean by that?" Lemillion asked, his shock breaking through the chipper mask that he'd put up.
"One day all three of them just vanished," Ushiro said, her voice thickening with emotion. "I tried to go to the police, but they wouldn't help me. I figured it was Hana's doing."
"Hana?" Lemillion echoed.
"My brother's wife — Hana Chisaki," Ushiro said. Lemillion's hand curled into a fist under the table where she couldn't see, but Izuku could. "I always thought that she was into shady stuff, and their whole family unit vanishing off the face of the earth like they were never even here confirmed it. But the police wouldn't listen. They just waved me off. Maybe they were in on it, too."
"So they're just gone? They didn't leave a note or anything?" Hitoshi asked, before realising that he'd spoken over Lemillion and silencing himself by frowning into his binding cloth — a gesture that would've looked hilariously childish from Hitoshi at any other time.
Lemillion nodded to Hitoshi, though, and turned back to Ushiro. "Was there any sign that they were going to go away?"
"Well," Ushiro said, her face scrunching up in concentration. "Hana called me the day before I went over and realised what had happened. She told me something pretty weird. Don't take the child. That thing is a curse. It killed him. Goodbye. I can still remember the sound of her voice as she said it. So much hatred. So much fear. I babysat their little girl sometimes, she was so sweet. I can't imagine little Eri being the things Hana said she was. She was only four years old. She'd be … seven now. Oh, god." Ushiro began to tremble, and her voice broke. "Please tell me you found her. Please."
Izuku and Hitoshi didn't speak. They gave each other a look that they'd become able to easily translate to, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into? It was a look they'd been sharing a lot lately. Lemillion was silent for a moment, before smiling sadly. "We don't know," he said. "We don't have a lot of information to go off of. If you could tell us about your brother and his wife's Quirks, and maybe Eri's, that'd be a massive help."
"Their Quirks?" Ushiro asked. She seemed puzzled for a moment, but nodded her head. "Okay. My brother and I have the same Quirk, we're twins. It's called Karma. It basically stores power every time we get into an unlucky situation. Tripping over your own shoelaces, knocking a mug onto the floor, stumbling over your words in front of a crowd, that kind of stuff. If we let it build long enough and then used our Quirk, some real miracles could happen. My brother won a couple of million yen once. I got a sports scholarship to the school of my dreams. It turned negative experiences into bursts of good luck. I didn't know a lot about the specifics of Hana's Quirk, but it let her know the exact weight of anything she held. People, cars, she even went down to the basement of their house once and put her hands to the ceiling — next thing we knew, she was rattling off the exact number, decimal point included. Is that enough?"
Izuku's mind latched onto the information so quickly that he accidentally released One For All. Before he could start theorising, Lemilion said, "That's a big help, thank you. Do you happen to know what their daughter's Quirk was?"
"No," Ushiro said, sighing. "She hadn't gotten hers yet. Mako was telling me a few weeks before they disappeared that he could've sworn that little Eri had some sort of growth sticking out of her forehead, though."
"Like a horn?" Izuku asked, maybe too enthusiastically considering that it was the first time he'd spoken up.
"Yeah, maybe like a horn," Ushiro said haltingly. "Does that mean something?"
"It could mean something big. It could mean …" Izuku paused, uncertain that he wanted to get this woman's hopes up. He shot a look at Lemillion, who nodded, smiling with a knowing look in his eye. Izuku put a smile on his face, too, and turned back to Ushiro. "It could mean that we're close to finding Eri."
"Thank you!" Ushiro said, shedding a few tears. "Thank you so much."
"It's our pleasure," Lemillion said.
"Is that it?" she asked through tears. "Do you need anything more? I'd be happy to help with anything you need to find my family."
"I think that should be all for today," Lemillion said, shooting a questioning glance at Izuku. When he realised that Lemillion was wordlessly asking him the same question, Izuku had to fix his expression to hide his shock, then he shrugged. "Can I get your phone number, in case we do need to ask you any more questions at a later time?"
Ushiro easily gave them her contact information, and then they were on their way. As soon as the three young heroes were up on the roof, all three of them sat down on the ledge and gave themselves time to think about what they'd heard in there. It was a surprise to Izuku that Hidari Ushiro hadn't been the potential Shie Hassaikai member, but her sister-in-law instead. The details of all the Ushiro family's Quirks fascinated him, and he took the time to write down Ushiro's descriptions of their Quirks word for word for later reference. He pulled his cowl off his face and sighed as the spring wind hit his face. He, naturally, had sat between Lemillion and Hitoshi. He showed them both the written descriptions of the Quirks to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything and then slipped his notebook back into the pouch on his belt. Karma was a Quirk that took time to gather enough power to affect things around the user and change things to their benefit, with the effect's strength depending on how much time they'd spent charging up, essentially. Hana Chisaki's Quirk granted her precise knowledge about a physical aspect of whatever she touched. Were those Quirks in line with this mystery Quirk within the bullets? Maybe. He couldn't tell without a second opinion, and the only person who was interested in giving him one was Bubble Girl, or maybe Sir Nighteye, so he'd have to wait and find out. There was something more pressing, though, but Hitoshi spoke first.
"On second thought, I don't think Tsu would be able to handle this," Hitoshi said. His face was paler than normal, and he stared out at the city with heavy eyes. Izuku understood what he was talking about. Tsu loved their younger siblings more than anything. If Izuku's hunch was right, and he had a feeling that Hitoshi and Lemillion agreed with him at the very least, then this Eri girl might have been the source of the bullets. He didn't know how Tsu would react to children being in danger, but Izuku was willing to bet that the reaction would not be pleasant.
"Yeah," Izuku said. He turned to Lemillion. "Does the name Hana Chisaki mean something?"
"It does," Lemillion said, staring out at the city around them as he spoke. "The leader of the Shie Hassaikai is a man named Kai Chisaki, but he goes by the name of his Quirk, Overhaul." It was the first time that he'd sounded angry since Izuku had met him, and that had him wondering just how bad this Kai Chisaki fellow was.
"Wait, so this little girl might be the source of the bullets and the Hassaikai leader's granddaughter or something?" Hitoshi said, his disbelief clear in his tone.
"No, Kai Chisaki is a younger guy. Maybe this Hana person is his sister? I'm not entirely sure. We'll have to ask Sir about it," Lemillion said.
"I agree," Izuku said, standing up and judging how far down the street he thought he could get with one leap.
Lemillion stood as well and took a moment to observe Izuku and Hitoshi preparing to set off again. "Thank you guys. I think it's cool that you're not afraid to get involved. When I was a first year at UA, none of my classmates were as proactive as you."
"Oh, there's no need to thank us. We just want to make sure that we save everyone we can," Izuku said.
"We're gonna see it through, so getting involved in the process is a must, right?" Hitoshi asked as he leaned over the edge of the building, as if he was judging the distance to the nearest thing he could swing off. "Do you mind giving me a boost?" he asked, turning to Izuku.
"Not at all," Izuku said, crouching down and bringing One For All to twenty-four percent.
Izuku leapt off the building and twisted around in the air to face Hitoshi, who sent two strands of his binding cloth after Izuku, who reached out with Blackwhip and entangled the two capture tools together. He then spun around using Air Force with his free hand and flung Hitoshi back the way they'd come toward the Nighteye Agency, managing to give him the speed he wouldn't have if he were to have used parkour to begin his swing. The momentum generated by the spin forced Izuku back down onto the rooftop with Lemillion, though, and he slid to a stop.
"You two are a riot!" Lemillion laughed, before he fell through the solid matter beneath them and shot out the side of the building after Hitoshi.
Izuku grinned and took a running jump after the others, soaring through the sky using One For All, Blackwhip, and Float. They were dealing with some grim ideas, gearing up for a hard battle, but in that moment, it felt good to be doing real hero work, helping real people. They were going to save everyone they could. They were going to see it through. Izuku made that promise to himself, and to Ushiro. He wouldn't fail again.
The next day, they had Ushiro come down to the agency and give a blood sample. Izuku met her out front and escorted her to Bubble Girl's work space — which she refused to call a laboratory — and got started on the process of taking some blood. As it turned out, Ushiro was afraid of needles, which was not very conducive to analysing her blood and her Quirk Factor to find similarities with the mystery Quirk. To distract her while Bubble Girl got the blood sample, Izuku asked her to describe Eri so that he could draw her and hopefully get an idea of what Eri looked like. He knew it wouldn't be accurate anymore, since it had been three years since Ushiro had last seen the girl and she would've grown since then, but Izuku didn't expect it to be an exact portrait. He just needed a way to distract Ushiro from the needle, and that was the best thing he could think of. It also put his minor talent of sketching realistic depictions of people based on limited exposure to use. In the end, he'd drawn what Ushiro had described.
Apparently, Eri had always been a small kid, and that must not have improved in the years that she may have been in the custody of the Hassaikai, though Izuku did not tell Ushiro that part. She described Eri as having whitish hair and red eyes, and that struck Izuku for some reason. After a moment, he realised that it was because Tenko Shimura shared those exact same traits. From what the authorities had been able to find after Kamino, Tenko Shimura's Quirk was nothing like the powers found in his family tree, a complete mutation that manifested a variant Quirk in him. Could there be a link there? Did Eri also go through the same thing, manifesting a Quirk that was entirely unrelated to the powers of her parents? If so, that meant that collecting that information had been a waste of time, but Izuku didn't let himself think that anything they were doing was worthless. Any information was useful information. Izuku got Ushiro to describe the little growth that Eri had apparently had on her forehead just before the entire family unit had vanished, and finished up the drawing just as the analysis of the blood was completed. He showed the drawing to Ushiro, and she began to cry on the spot. He had apparently captured Eri's likeness well, and Ushiro asked if she could have the sketch. While Bubble Girl got Ushiro to have a full body scan done, just in case, Izuku made a copy of the sketch and gave that one to Ushiro when she left, keeping the original safe in his notebook.
It was after that that Izuku and Bubble Girl got to work. They examined Ushiro's blood samples and x-ray so that they could read her Quirk Factor and determine if her Plus Alpha elements bore any resemblance to the mystery Quirk. As it turned out, Ushiro's Karma Quirk both did and did not resemble the mystery Quirk. There was definitely some connection, since the general structure of the Quirk Factors and even some of the Plus Alpha elements were similar. Ushiro's Quirk Factor was found in the genes that oversaw the function of the brain, specifically the limbic system, which some reading in a biology textbook told Izuku was the part of the brain that regulated emotion. Izuku guessed that her Quirk didn't really store power during negative experiences, but it derived a little bit of charge from the release of stress chemicals in the brain when she experienced periods of heightened anxiety, sadness, or fear, which most often happened during Ushiro's 'unlucky accidents'. Then, the Quirk released that charge and did something that appeared as a burst of good luck. Taking a look at Ushiro's Quirk Factor and the Plus Alpha elements, and referring back to the book Quirk Theory, it looked like some of the more overt mutations in Ushiro's DNA occurred in the structure of the brain. It wasn't physically similar, but the general structure of the Quirk was the same as the mysterious bullet power. They both built up a charge of some kind of energy, and then released it. That meant one of two things — either the person whose Quirk was used for the bullets was Mako Ushiro, Hidari's brother, or it was Eri.
Unfortunately, Izuku's hunch was that it was far more likely to be Eri, since she'd been developing a hard growth on her forehead the last time Ushiro had heard about her, and their efforts to analyse the mystery Quirk did produce evidence of a heteromorph feature being present within the Quirk Factor. Izuku did not feel good bringing that up later that afternoon during the team meeting.
"Excellent work, you two," Sir Nighteye said, unable to stop himself from giving Izuku a slightly less appreciative look than the one he gave Bubble Girl. "I believe I know where we must go from here. We know who made this weapon, we know how it was made, but we do not know why. What does it do? We must learn this if we hope to have all the facts."
"How about we use it?" Hitoshi asked. When everyone looked at him, he frowned, like he hadn't meant to interrupt but was forced to continue now that he had the spotlight. "If we test it in a safe environment, shouldn't it be fine?"
"Theoretically, yes, but we have no idea what the Quirk does aside from it maybe being able to affect things for the benefit of the user somehow, though that's as vague as it is useful since most Quirks match that description," Nighteye said. "It could kill whomever we use as a test dummy. Besides, who would we test it on in the first place? Are you volunteering, since it was your idea?"
Hitoshi didn't respond. Izuku didn't blame him.
"Sir, I seem to recall an amendment being made to the Bethesda Accords a few years ago, regarding this sort of dilemma," Centipeder said.
"Yes, I know the one you mean," Sir Nighteye said with a grim look on his face. "The HPSC technically does allow us to test substances like these on a certain kind of person."
"What?" Lemillion asked. "What kind of person would the Commission allow heroes to test unknown weapons on? That's not very heroic!"
"Easy, Mirio," Sir said. "The inhabitants of Tartarus are able to be used as test subjects for new technologies if the Commission approves. I have a very good track record with the organisation, so they will."
"That's …" Izuku stuttered. All For One and Tenko Shimura were both imprisoned in Tartarus, on the deepest and second deepest levels respectively. Izuku met Nighteye's gaze, and he knew immediately what the older man was thinking. "Do the prisoners have to agree to that?"
"Tartarus is the hole where they throw near-uncontainable villains to rot. No, they do not necessarily need to give permission for this to take place," Nighteye said, before sighing deeply. He had to have known it would be a tough sell.
"That's a violation of their human rights," Lemillion said as he stood up.
"It's the least of what some of the filth in there deserves," Sir said, making a point of not rising to his feet in return. "Mirio, that place is for people like the Scourge of Kamino and Tomura Shigaraki, the men who ended All Might. I do not particularly care if they give their bodies to our cause."
"Are we actually considering this?" Hitoshi asked with a casual tone, but his eyes were wide and he was trying to get anyone to meet his eyes, seemingly in an effort to validate his own shock.
Izuku had to hold his tongue and not correct Sir Nighteye's use of the name Tomura Shigaraki. "Who do you have in mind?"
"I doubt that I would be able to get access to the mighty All For One no matter how good a reputation I had with the Commission. I suppose I must settle for the next best thing," Nighteye said. He stood up, which silenced the brief cross-talk that had broken out from his employees. Sir looked out over his team, and scowled. He met Izuku's eyes once again, and once again, Izuku did not need the words to be said to know what he was thinking.
Sir Nighteye said the thing that Izuku had been silently dreading since the name had first come up in the conversation. "I will use the bullet on Tomura Shigaraki."