Deep Red

61

"For the past two weeks or so, here at the Nighteye Agency, we have been... uh... conducting and independent investigation... of the designated villain group known as Shie Hassaikai!" one of Nighteye's sidekicks explained. She looked like a young girl and she seemed incredibly nervous to be here and to have all the attention on her as of now. I sighed.

"What started all this?" someone else asked.

"An incident involving a band of thieves called the Reservoir Dogs. The police wrote it off as a mere accident, but there were a few inconsistencies that prompted our investigation." the girl answered.

"Nighteye Agency Sidekick Centipeder, here. Under Nighteye's orders I've been following some of the leads." someone else said who had just gotten up. They basically looked like a human centipede, which was... a little disconcerting. At least for me, since bugs weren't my favourite thing in the world.

"According to my findings the organization has been making extensive contact with outsiders and underworld dealers throughout the past year. Their goals seem to be the expansion and accumulation of funds. And shortly after we began investigating... they made contact with a member of the League of Villains." Centipeder explained and switched on a screen that showed some surveillance footage.

"Jun Bubaigawara, who goes by the villain name Twice. They were all very wary of being tailed, so we couldn't pursue them then, but the police have provided further assistance. Their findings confirm some sort of conflict between the two groups." Centipeder continued. Someone else sat up in his chair.

"Something to do with the League, huh? So that's why you reached out to me and Tsukauchi, huh?" he asked. I glanced over at Shouta when he started a short conversation with his neighbour. He seemed a little nervous about the upcoming subject matter and I could understand why.

"Kid... Let's hope it doesn't come to this, but you might get dragged into some nasty business." the older hero said, suddenly leaning forward and looking at Midoriya, who just smiled back at him.

"It's no trouble at all!" he replied enthusiastically. I shook my head. What was wrong with this kid. He just seemed to take all this in stride, as if it wasn't something incredibly traumatizing to happen to him at his age.

Nighteye shot all of them a few annoyed glares, until they were finally done talking to each other and paid attention to what was going on again. He glanced back at his two sidekicks and cleared his throat.

"Continue." was all he told them.

"So, given these developments... We reached out to all of you for help via HN..." the younger sidekick started again, as she nervously looked down at her pad. Centipeder leaned over to her and mumbled something to her and she just gulped and nodded quickly. Poor girl was clearly nervous.

"Right..." she said and started looking for something on the pad. Uraraka leaned over to Nejire Hado, looking confused.

"HN?" she whispered.

"The hero network. It's a web service for licensed heroes..." Hado started to explain. I nudged Shouta.

"What are you teaching your students, when they don't even know what the HN is?" I muttered. Shouta muttered something unintelligible under his breath and glared at me. I chuckled.

"U.A. students or not, what're these kids even doing here? They're just slowing us down. The sun's gonna set before we even get to talking about the bad guys' grand plan." someone else protested. I thought I remembered him as Rock Lock... anyway, he caught Fatgum's attention with that.

"Baloney! These two are super important participants!" he exclaimed as he jumped up and pointed at Kirishima and Tamaki. Tamaki looked absolutely mortified and Kirishima seemed star-struck.

"You mean... us?" he asked, pointing to himself and Tamaki, as if he had never been called important in his entire life.

"Hassaikai was once suspected of dealing in illegal substances. Which is why I've called in a hero experienced with such things." Nighteye explained while Fatgum nodded enthusiastically.

"Back in the day, I squashed loads of dealers like that! And then, during Red Riot's debut battle the other day the perp went and shot up Tamaki here with a type of drug I've never seen before! A drug that destroys Quirks!" he shouted. The room broke out in whispers and hushed conversation and all the eyes in the room were on Shouta. Poor, poor Shouta. I felt really bad for him.

"Huh? You gonna be okay, Tamaki?" Mirio shouted and gave a concerned look to his friend, who was sinking further and further down in his chair, painfully aware of all the attention that suddenly was on him.

"Yeah, I'm back to normal after a good night's rest. Here, look at this fabulous cow hoof." he said and held up his arm which he had transformed into a hoof with his Quirk. What an oddly specific Quirk.

"So he recovered? That's a relief. This stuff must not be fatal." Rock Lock commented and shrugged.

"No... On that point, I turn to Eraserhead." Nighteye said, as now all eyes were truly on Shouta.

"It seems a bit different than my Erasure, because I'm not actually attacking a person's Quirk itself. What we call Quirks are special additions to an ordinary body or the plus alpha elements. Everything included within the Plus Alpha are what we call the Quirk factors. What I do is temporarily stop these Quirk factors from activating. I can't actually cause any damage." Shouta explained.

"We got Tamaki checked out at the hospital right after the attack. They said his Quirk factors were damaged. Luckily, his body's natural healing was enough to fix the problem." Fatgum added.

"Did they analyze what he got shot with?" Nighteye asked.

"It didn't do anything else to Tamaki's body, it only attacked his Quirk. The gangster in question clammed up, and the gun was destroyed. It looked like all we had was that one empty round. However... Since one bounced right off of Kirishima's body we got our hands on a vial of the stuff that's still intact!" Fatgum announced. Kirishima once again looked shell-shocked.

"Me? Seriously?! Didn't expect that!" Kirishima exclaimed and looked around the room, as if he had no idea what the hell was going on and was looking for a hint on whether what he had just said was an appropriate reaction or not. Poor Kirishima. He tried really hard, but Science and Maths really weren't his strongest subjects. At least he was trying to keep up with it.

"Way to go, Kirishima." Uraraka commented with a big smile. Kirishima still had no idea what he had done.

"Very cool, man." Asui agreed.

"Hardening, right? I know about him. Perfect guy for the job!" Hado giggled and gave him a bright smile. Kirishima was looking away, scratching the back of his neck and blushed furiously.

"Analysis of the substance inside revealed something pretty disgusting..." Fatgum continued after a while and gave all of us a sinister look. What could be so bad that he had to make it this dramatic?

"They found human cells and blood." Fatgum finally explained. Oh. That was scary. What the hell kind of thing was that? A bullet with an active ingredient made from blood and human cells? That managed to destroy Quirks? Sounded pretty disturbing, to be honest. And there was only so much blood and cells a person had... What Fatgum had just told us had left the entire room shocked.