Behind a mask [Villian Deku]

Chapter 18: The day before

Warning: Someone dies here (no-one important per say).

Even with their experience, the brokers had never dealt with a hero. Angry patrons yeah. The occasional policeman. But not a hero. Heroes were centred more around city centres where more obvious acts of villianly occurred. This left underground crime syndicates to flourish in the outskirts of the city.

But here was a hero, plain as day standing before them in an alley way. He wore a simple hero costume, with what looked like a fin on the back of his head and orange gloves. According to their intern, his hero name was Manual, a hero stationed in hosu city and has a water quirk. Before coming to Hosu on a job, they had the boy research the hero agencies for them which proved to be useful.

"This is a restricted area! Who are you?!". The hero shouted, his voice echoing throughout the alleys crooked walls. They didn't reply, as there wasn't a good answer to their question. He repeated himself, except louder and more forceful. They didn't reply, they just looked at eachother at a loss of what to do.

"If you do not answer, I will be forced to take you into custody!". The men looked at eachother and nodded, activating any quirks they had, not that many were that powerful though. Most where physical mutations or small enhancements. Nothing that could take on a pro hero with years of training. "STAND DOWN!" The hero shouted, feeling slightly overwhelmed but confident in his abilities to capture them all.
"DEACTIVATE YOUR QUIRKS OR I WI-". He never finished that sentence. Instead, he was cut short by a sharp pain in his back. He turned, his breathing increasing as a warm stinging spread over his body, to see a small figure, wearing a green dress shirt and red tie, with a notably strange mask covering the majority of his face, with cracks and bumps dotting its surface. A warm, crimson liquid fell to the ground as the hero stumbled slightly.

Before he could fall, another sharp pain hit him in his throat, cutting of his muted scream.

He was dead before his body his the ground.

~~~~~~
Bakugo leaned back in his chair, dropping his pen on the table in boredom. It had been 3 months since he saw Izuku near the shop. Since that day, a lot had happened in Bakugos life. He recieved his acceptance message into UA, from All Might no less. He had been the top scorer in the entire exam. He started classes tomorrow with some of societies best quirks.

He wasn't nervous. He was better than all of them anyhow.

He got out of his chair and went downstairs, to meet his mother on the sofa watching TV, his dad reading a newspaper. "Oi Katsuki. Another hero got attacked yesterday, this time in Hosu. Be careful when you go to UA!" His mother barked, not turning to look at him.

"Yeah yeah."

A string of attacks had sprung up recently. All pro heroes which were all killed with a knife. They first thought that it was tied to the Hero killers victims, which had also started appearing more prominently. However, one attack happened at the same time as a confirmed hero killer attack which was proven from witness accounts. So it was concluded that this was the work of a separate person.

The attacks were always quick and concise, always sticking to vital points or areas that could easily disable a person, momentarily so they could deal a final blow or permanently which acted as a kind of cruel mercy.

No-one had seen the culprit. No-one had heard any screams or signs of struggle. The killer knew what they were doing.

One odd thing was that no sign of quirk usage was seen, at least from a hero perspective whose quirk could detect remnants of quirk usage up to two days after their use. It was quite useful for murder investigations as they could specify the kind of quirk. The two theories were that the culprit had a quirk that wasn't easily detected which was the more popular theory or that they simply didn't use a quirk. Some even say they could be quirkless. This was the least popular theory as they took down pro-heroes who spent years honing their skills.