A Hero's Dirty Work (Villain Deku / Vigilante Deku au)

Spotted

Keigo Takami didn't think he'd be enjoying the U.A. sports festival nearly as much as he was. He came for the chicken; honestly, he could smell the concession stands from all the way across the city, and he didn't feel like torturing himself by not coming to have some. He'd caught the first event while eating, though, and he'd been convinced to stay.

Seriously, this year was cutthroat as hell! The obstacle race literally started with most of the contestants getting frozen to the ground right off the bat, and then some amazing idiot with a Regeneration quirk had drop-kicked another student off a cliff before mine-hopping down the last obstacle! Between that kind of entertainment and fresh, crispy, fried chicken, who could possibly expect him to just leave and go on his patrols?

The electric kid with the rocket boots was pretty neat as well, but it was only cool to watch for a short while before he got bored with the lack of conflict. The cavalry battle was slightly less entertaining, but that was fine. The fight between Endeavor's kid and the explosion kid was epic, and the Regeneration kid stuck with some purple-haired guy with probably a brainwashing quirk. The copy-cat quirk user was very interesting as well, but in terms of entertainment value, he was counting on the tournament.

And dear god did it deliver.

There were seven matches in total for the first round: Rocky vs. Black Guy—not referring to his race or anything, his quirk just literally made him pitch-black—Tape Elbows vs. The Literal Power Of God, Electric vs. Brainwash, Copy-Cat vs. Lil' Ingenium, Acid vs. Regeneration, Shadow-Bird vs. Jailbait, and Floaty vs. Explody. Technically there was supposed to be eight, but in place of one of the matches, they just had a fifteen-minute advertisement for a company called Hatsume Industries.

Naturally, the best matches in the first round were the ones with the students he'd already taken notice of. Even the Regeneration quirk one, who had actually been one of the two students giving the pledge at the beginning of the festival, had been fun to watch. The match wasn't that intense, of course, not compared to the two other stand-outs, but for some reason watching him was just fun. The youngster's fighting style was absolutely ruthless; Keigo was sure he was the only one who could see that, but even when he was holding back, his fluid movements looked so very lethal.

That, and the fact that the entire match—along with Explody-boy and Floaty-girl—was so chock-full of sexual tension, it was better than watching a cheesy romance drama. He wished he was in Midnight's position; his commentary would be way better. Oh, and the one gloomy, melodramatic kid had a bird-related quirk. Keigo liked him.

Keigo frowned, distressed. There were so many students that he liked! He didn't have anywhere close to enough spaces to take them all on as interns, but now that he was invested, he couldn't just not get involved in the kids' lives. He scanned the faces of the other audience members, looking for another hero that might be willing to help him.

He froze. Keigo Takami, also known as the number three hero Hawks, had just heard something very unsettling. Some called him paranoid, but he had a habit of keeping constant surveillance around a hundred-foot radius of himself using his feathers. Three rows up and fifty feet to the left, a man had just made a frantic call on his cell phone and whispered, "Tell Overhaul I found the kid."

Hawks sat up, on full alert, and listened more intently. Overhaul—his quirk was even more mysterious than he was. He led a Yakuza gang, but no evidence of any crime had ever been found on him.

"No, just Eri," the man said. "She's with a boy that looks about the same age as the Savior, but it's not him. He must have handed her off."

A pause.

"Yes, I'm sure! She has the white hair, the horn, even all the scars on her arms and legs are still there."

Hawks clenched his fists. The derisive tone the man used to describe a little girl's scars raised the hair on the back of his neck, and something about his wording gave the hero suspicions about where those scars came from.