"Remember- we're not here to cause conflict. We're here to familiarize ourselves with the layout, and to give me the opportunity to touch someone working for the Nue. So long as I can lay a hand on one of their recruits, we'll learn where their central base is… or at the very least, where they tend to go after hours."
Bubble Girl nodded along to Sir Nighteye's instructions as she followed the professional hero across the street. Both of the heroes were in civilian clothing, though for Sir Nighteye, that still meant a sharp suit and tie combination. Bubble Girl had instead gone for something far more casual, wearing a pair of skinny jeans and a crop top that showed off her pale blue midriff.
"Won't they suspect something, though?" Bubble Girl asked with a frown. "Everyone knows about your Quirk- you touch someone, and you can see their future for the next 24 hours. If you lay hands on a member of the Yakuza, they will know that you're trying to track them…"
"Which is why I need you to be a distraction," Sir Nighteye explained as the pair made their way up to an absolutely massive building on the far side of the street. "All I need is to tap one of them on the shoulder to get them to turn around. The difficult part will be figuring out who here is an innocent worker, and who is a member of the Nue. We have substantial proof that this place is owned by their clan, but whether everyone involved is a member of the Yakuza or not is up in the air."
"And how are we supposed to figure that out?" Bubble Girl asked.
"Carefully. Possibly through repeated visits. Look for tattoos, listen for coded language. You know how to investigate. I have faith in you."
Bubble girl smiled slightly as she looked up at the building and took in its features. Two long flights of stone steps led upward toward a grand entrance surrounded by red-painted columns. High above the entrance doors was an archway painted in red and green with a long, prominent banner reading SHIBUYA CENTRAL MUSEUM: HERO STATUE EXHIBIT THROUGH THE END OF THE YEAR! reaching from one side to the other. An immaculately carved marble visage of All Might was smiling down at her from its place next to the words, while a stony Endeavor glared from the other side.
"Thank you, Sir," Bubble Girl replied as she began to climb the steps alongside her mentor. "I won't let you down. There's still one thing I don't understand, though. This is somehow connected to the attack at the mall, and that… message? The one about somebody's brother? How does that link to this?"
Sir Nighteye kept his eyes forward as he continued to ascend toward the entrance of the museum. The man's jaw was rigid as he answered, his tone telling Bubble Girl that no further questions would be permitted.
"I'm not at liberty to say. Once we're inside, we'll split up. Reconvene at the statue exhibit when you receive a text message from me, and we'll make our next move from there."
"Understood," Bubble Girl answered in a disappointed tone. "Have you ever been here before?"
"Once or twice," Sir Nighteye replied as they made their way into the lobby. "I'm not particularly interested in displays about the past."
Bubble Girl snorted in amusement as the pair walked up to the reception desk. She watched Sir Nighteye pay for a day pass before the man accepted the small card given to him and turned to walk into the museum proper. The moment he turned away, the receptionist gave him a cold glare from behind, and Bubble Girl froze. As the receptionist turned to her, the older woman's facial expression changed into one of welcoming immediately.
"Hello! Welcome to Shibuya Central!"
"…hi," Bubble Girl said hesitantly as she presented her I.D. and produced enough money to cover the entrance fee.
"Is this your first time at the museum?" the woman asked, all smiles as she took out a stamp and applied an inked seal to a small card.
"It is," Bubble Girl replied. She knew that the receptionist didn't recognize her from the immediate personality shift, but no notion of how to capitalize upon the fact came to her. "Anything in particular I should look out for?"
The receptionist shrugged, popping her gum and looking disinterested.
"Make sure to check out the statue exhibit before it leaves. Other than that, the food 's good, and anything else is personal taste."
Sudden inspiration struck Bubble Girl as she took her stamped card and placed it into her wallet. If anyone within the ranks of the Nue was going to let something slip, it would be during their off hours, and likely over food. With a nod and smile, the hero intern gave the museum worker a quick two-fingered salute.
"Thanks! See ya!"
By the time Bubble Girl had turned to head into the museum, Sir Nighteye was long gone. Several people were milling about in the entrance hallway, occupying the large circular space and talking excitedly about various exhibits. Bubble Girl made her way through the sparse crowd and up to a free-standing directory to begin looking over her options, keeping an ear out for anything suspicious all the while. Despite actively trying to listen for anything of interest, the sound of a scratchy, unfamiliar voice addressing her from behind caused her to jump all the same.
"…excuse me? Are you Bubble Girl…?"
The hero intern turned and arched a brow in confusion. She had never been recognized and called out in public before, nor did she recognize the man standing behind her. Something about his shaggy, ghost-white hair, the scratched skin on his neck, and the scar rising from the side of his upper lip unnerved her, but she couldn't bring herself to be rude to a potential fan.
"Um… yes, actually!" Bubble Girl admitted with a fair amount of embarrassment as she scratched at the back of her head. "I'm surprised you recognized me…"
Bubble Girl gave the man another once-over, trying to figure out if she knew him from somewhere. His eyes were a deep, piercing crimson, and he looked every bit the anarchist in his black leather trench coat. Everything about him set off warning signs in the woman's head, and yet, she had never seen his face on a wanted poster or heard him described by any heroes in the pro circuit.
"What's not to recognize?" the man asked with a lopsided smile. "You're an apprentice of Sir Nighteye. I'm a big fan of his agency. Tomura Shigaraki."
"Oh! Kaoruko Awata, but Bubble Girl is fine!" the hero insisted as she offered a hand.
Tomura simply stared at the offered hand before raising his eyes to meet with Bubble Girl's. His gaze was cold and calculating in stark contrast to his friendly tone.
"…not yet. Maybe we can shake hands… later. Is Sir Nighteye here…?"
"I…" Bubble Girl began as she pulled her hand back, feeling rather self-conscious. "Yes, he is. We're taking a day off, actually…"
She regretted the words the moment they left her mouth, and Tomura's widening smile only made the sickening feeling in her stomach intensify with each passing second.
"Good to know… I do hope I run into him," Tomura said gleefully. "Hey, could I get your autograph? I'll get out of your hair afterward. Promise."
"Really?" Bubble Girl asked, taken aback as she watched Tomura pull out a small notepad and begin flipping the pages. "But… I'm just an intern, not a household name. You really want my autograph?"
Bubble Girl watched as the pages riffled by, each one featuring the signature of a pro hero. She recognized Endeavor's choppy, angular signature immediately, and she thought she saw Ingenium's as well.
"I do," Tomura insisted as he offered the woman a clear page and a pen. "I believe you'll go down in history sooner than you might think."
"That's a lot of praise for an intern, but…I hope so!" Bubble Girl said nervously as she accepted the book and fumbled with the pen.
She realized then that she had never practiced a 'hero signature,' and began to feel incredibly stupid. With an uncertain flourish, she added an oblong bubble around her name and drew a small little square in the upper right corner in an attempt to make the shape look 'shiny.'
"Um… I hope this is okay? I haven't really thought about what my autograph should look like…"
"It looks fine to me," Tomura said with a smirk before flipping the book closed and stuffing it into the pocket of his long leather coat. "Something to remember you by."
Bubble Girl gave the man an apologetic smile as he walked around her and into the crowd. Tomura disappeared before she could say anything else, leaving her with nothing but a bitter chill in her spine.
Bubble Girl let out a sigh of disappointment as she sat alone at a balcony table in the museum's café, sipping at a soda while scrolling on her phone. She had gone through almost every exhibit throughout the building, paying far more attention to the conversations around her than to the models of dinosaurs, larger-than-life hearts, and antique locomotives. Despite her efforts, she had come up with nothing suspicious at all, and the crowds were beginning to thin out as the museum neared its closing hours.
She also hadn't seen any sign of Tomura anywhere in the building, though she couldn't get the man's creepy smile out of her mind.
"Yeah, it's almost time," a tall man with his black hair tied back into a tight bun said loudly from one of the tables below. "We should be able to move the shipment as soon as the doors close. The buyer came through."
"Would you shut up?" his partner, a smaller man with russet hair and a distinctive scar upon his chin hissed. "Save it for after hours!"
Bubble Girl scooted her seat closer to the railing as she tried to pick up on the rest of the conversation, but both men had descended into conspiratorial whispers. She squinted as she took in the details of the man's scar and noticed that he had a heteromorphic Quirk- each of his hands had three extra fingers. Within seconds, her own were flying across the screen of her phone as she fired off a text.
Got a lead. Man with a chin scar and extra fingers. Meet at the statue exhibit?
The reply came immediately, just as she expected. Bubble Girl was already out of her seat and making her way to the trash can to throw away her soda and the wrapper of her burger as her phone lit up.
I'll be there.
With one last look over at the two men hunched over their shared table, Bubble Girl made her way to the nearest directory. The path to the statue exhibit was easy enough to locate, and after double checking her orientation, she set off at a light jog. As she made her way up to the second floor, her pocket began to vibrate again, and she fished her phone out to find another message.
Hurry. The display closes soon.
Bubble Girl hesitated as she read the message once again- none of the signs indicated that the exhibit was timed, and the museum was still open for another hour. A quick glance around her revealed that no one else was in the hallway leading to the show floor, and the museum had grown eerily quiet. She took a quick breath to steel herself and proceeded forward, unsure what to think. One final turn brought her to a large wall emblazoned with the same image on the banner outside of All Might and Endeavor's faces with a door embedded between them. Bubble Girl's heart skipped a beat as she noticed that the singular guard posted in front of the display had a scar on his chin and his hands in his pockets.
"…excuse me…" the woman began as she clenched her fists and squared her shoulders to try to make herself look bigger. "Am I too late for the exhibit?"
The man beside the door withdrew a hand from his pocket, showing off his extra digits as he checked his watch.
"No, you're just in time. This is the last call, though. Not many people inside, so you'll be mostly alone."
"That's fine," Bubble Girl reassured with a disarming smile. "I'm looking for my friend, though… Sir Nighteye? Did he go inside recently?"
"He did," the man acknowledged as he stepped aside and offered a welcoming hand toward the door. "Just follow the arrows on the floor, and I'm sure you'll find him."
"Thank you," Bubble Girl offered as she stepped inside of the exhibit with a sigh.
The overhead lights were off inside of the entrance room. A few small lights embedded in the floor and shining upward at an angle giving the monolithic statue of All Might upon a pedestal before her an otherworldly quality, to the point that it seemed intentional. She took a moment to admire the stone replica of the number one hero in Japan, walking slowly around it.
There was a sudden heavy click as the door back to the main part of the museum locked behind her.
"…hello?" Bubble Girl called out as her heart began to race. "Hey, I'm still in here!"
No response came, even as she walked up to the closed portal and pounded on the surface.
"Hey!"
The sound of movement up ahead caught Bubble Girl's attention, and she slowly turned to face the hallway behind All Might's statue. Everything was so dark that she couldn't tell if it was a straight corridor, a wall, or another chamber at the other end, nor could she see anything upon the floor. With a shaking hand, she pulled out her phone and engaged the flashlight, revealing thick red arrows below her trailing into the darkness.
"H-hello…?" Bubble Girl called again as she began to follow the guiding arrows. "Sir Nighteye…?"
Again, there was no answer. Bubble Girl continued down the hallway and into the next large chamber, where several life-sized statues of pro heroes stared down at her. She recognized them all, from Endeavor to Edgeshot, but none of their stoic expressions brought her any comfort. Her breathing quickened as she made her way to the next hallway forward, only to come up to a dead end. A featureless black wall had cut off the next painted arrow upon the floor, leaving her trapped inside of the exhibit.
"Excuse me!" Bubble Girl called as she knocked on the wall. "Anyone!? I'm stuck in here! Sir Nighteye!?"
As if to answer, a grinding sound rang out somewhere behind her. Bubble Girl turned just in time to see light spilling into the room as one of the walls slid back to reveal an alternate pathway. With no other option, the woman began to walk toward the opening as she readied herself to fight.
"This isn't funny," Bubble Girl declared as she clenched her fists and walked into the hidden chamber. The walls were an odd, featureless yellow color, and the floor was covered in some sort of unnatural fog that seemed to glow in the bright overhead lights. "Where is Sir Nighteye!?"
Again, there was no answer. Bubble Girl held her breath as she made her way forward and toward a hallway at the far end of the room. The tunnel turned to the right and into the darkness, the floor still covered in rolling fog. Bubble Girl raised her phone and took a step backward as several figures appeared within the beam of her flashlight. The hero gasped at the sight, only to let out a sigh of relief as she realized that they were more statues, and she had likely found her way into a storage area. Upon approaching the first of the sculptures, however, she noticed something was very wrong.
The grey, cheap-looking statue was of a man in civilian clothing, and his pose was anything but heroic. He was leaning backward as if trying to get out of the way of something, with one arm held up to push back an attacker. The man's mouth was frozen into a scream, and there was a terror in his eyes that no sculptor could capture. As Bubble Girl raised her phone higher to see the path ahead more clearly, she realized that all of the statues littering the hallway seemed to be common people, and they were all terrified.
Several of them were also missing limbs, heads, or entire sections of their bodies, the stonework stained red around the shattered features.
Bubble Girl raised a hand to cover her mouth as she walked forward, inspecting the statues as she went. A whimper escaped her mouth as the smell of rotting meat assaulted her nostrils, and she momentarily closed her eyes to try to refocus. Just as she opened them once again, she slipped upon some sort of liquid on the floor and crashed into one of the statues, sending it tumbling to the ground with a mighty crash. A section of the stone cracked apart to reveal what was clearly flesh underneath, even when viewed beneath the thin layer of fog on the floor. Bubble Girl let out a blood-curdling scream as she shuffled backwards, trying to get away from the sight as quickly as possible.
"Awata! Run!"
"Sir Nighteye!" the woman called back as she heard a man's tortured yell up ahead. Without hesitation, Bubble Girl got to her feet and began to sprint past the macabre statues. "I'm coming!"
"No! Save yourself!" the voice echoed down the hall.
She had never heard fear in Sir Nighteye's voice before. The notion only caused her to run harder, her muscles burning with effort as she emerged into a second well-lit room with yellow walls. There at the center stood Sir Nighteye, his cheek bleeding and hair hanging down into his face in messy strands. The man's legs, torso, and arms were frozen in stone, his pose one of obvious attempted resistance.
"Sir!" Bubble Girl yelled as she ran forward, only to stop in her tracks as a figure moved out from behind her mentor's frozen form.
"…he did tell you to run," Tomura said thoughtfully as he ran a finger along Sir Nighteye's frozen arm, the rest of his digits curled around a familiar-looking phone. After a moment, he leaned in closer to Sir Nighteye's neck and let out a lazy stream of smoke from his mouth. Upon making contact with the pro hero's flesh, the skin immediately began to harden over into grey stone. "I guess that means what happens next is your fault, really. Don't move, or I'll just make it worse."
"Don't you touch him!" Bubble Girl threatened as she clenched her teeth.
"…you… can still run…" Sir Nighteye said, his voice strained with effort. "Leave me. He wants to send a message to All Might…"
"That's enough out of you," Tomura threatened as he plucked the older man's glasses from his face. "Catch."
Bubble Girl caught the spectacles as they flew through the air, unsure of what was going on.
"W-what are you…?"
"Now, pay attention," Tomura instructed as he cupped Sir Nighteye's chin and let his fingers fall onto the man's face one by one. "I want you to be able to describe every detail of this."
Bubble Girl could only scream in horror as she watched her mentor's flesh begin to crack and melt away once Tomura's pinky touched his cheek, the man's jawbone becoming visible through the skin as it sloughed off the side of his face.
Author's Note:
…so anyway, maybe next week we'll have another chapter at the beach! Katsuki and Izuku playing volleyball sounds fitting right about now! Yay!
-RD