"A third attack has been launched by the villain knows as All For One and his League of Villains. The target this time was Shiketsu High School, a school well-known for its hero course. Although we are still waiting on more information, it looks as though there are multiple wounded, but there have been no confirmed casualties."
The screen switched and a different reporter appeared holding a stack of papers in front of himself. "All For One himself has not been seen at the scene of any of these crimes other than the one that occurred last night, but we have gotten confirmation from the police that the suspect who was taken into custody after the second attack was one of the villains underlings. The suspect stated that they were given a mission from All For One and that they are only one of many others who will continue these attacks until their goal is accomplished. As of right now, the police are telling everyone to stay in their homes and avoid going anywhere that isn't necessary, we will have more information-"
You flipped to another channel and the screen was overtaken by the scene of a riot taking place in the middle of a city that you didn't recognize. Signs were being held up, and you managed to read one that said 'the heroes are the real villains.' The description on the bottom of the screen read 'Riots and protests taking place across the country, people are demanding answers about the recent villain attacks.'
Someone ran in front of the camera and you leaned forward to get a closer look at the poster that they held. It was blurry, but you could see an image of yourself, or what you'd looked like when wearing the vigilante suit. Underneath the image was a quote, "they've been lying to you." Something you'd said when during your appearance at Aizawa's funeral. When you examined what you could see of the crowd, you saw many similar signs that read different things.
As cool as it was that some people saw you as the face of a revolution, it was also a little terrifying. The heroes would be looking for you even more than they already had been, if they managed to catch you then it would give them leverage against these people, that's what they needed right now. The heroes wouldn't release their grip of control on society that easily.
As if the universe wanted to tell you that your thinking was right, you flipped to the next channel and were met with a picture of your face, and next to it was a picture of Bakugou's. The reporter was in the middle of explaining that the two of you were wanted criminals that were currently on the run. For some reason, you were the only one who was blamed for the murder of the two villains that the police found dead when arriving at the house you'd been staying in, Bakugou was only listed as an accomplice. There were other charges against you as well, mostly stuff that you'd done as the vigilante.
Your last straw was when they showed an image of the police officer that you'd attacked the night you'd found out that Hawks had been lying to you. They said he was a victim of an unprovoked, violent assault.
But, through the anger, It was satisfying to see that the officer had to resign from the police force due to the severity of the injuries he'd suffered.
The bathroom door opened and Bakugou walked in with a towel wrapped around his waist, from behind him, you could hear Bubbles complaining about how steamy the room had gotten and how he could no longer see through his container.
"Anything new?" Bakugou asked.
"There was another attack," you shut off the TV and looked down at the notes sitting in front of you on the bed. You and he had been scrolling through news channels for hours now, trying to find anything that could aid you in finding the villains. You'd tried to piece together different patterns but it was only giving you a headache.
"What? The second one was only reported like an hour ago!"
"All For One's obviously planned this out pretty well. He gathered enough people to do his dirty work for him, and they're obviously people that aren't important because he's not caring whether or not they get caught, which means that they probably don't have any real information that could lead the police to find him. He did the first attack himself to trigger the people's distrust in the heroes, and now he's sitting back and waiting for me to come to him."
You looked over, "I'm also wanted for murder... again. The police want to find us badly, especially since people are me as an example against the heroes."
Bakugou pulled one of the shirts you'd bought over his head. "So, you're like the vigilante version of All Might?"
"I guess you could see it like that."
He walked over and looked down at you, "that's fucking awesome."
"Alright, fanboy, let's keep looking here." You gestured to the papers in front of you, "I've got absolutely nothing."
"Yeah," he sat down on the edge of the bed. "When I was in the shower I was thinking a lot about this, and it just doesn't feel right."
"Well, yes, the destruction of civilization and murders of innocent people probably shouldn't feel that great to you."
"That's not what I meant, dumbass. These attacks are all random, the victims are all people that you don't know. His plan is just to sit back and wait while he sends random people to do his work? The people behind these attacks aren't even members of the League, all of this is just unorganized and based completely on the hope that you're gonna go to him, which you're not." Bakugou pushed the papers aside. "Think about what we know about All For One. His plans are always very elaborate, he takes time to put all the pieces into place and come up with something that he's sure is gonna work."
Like he'd done to get you to visit him at the prison. There'd been so many things that needed to be done perfectly to get you to go, he'd been planning it for months. "So, you think that maybe he's not the one behind this? That wouldn't make sense because he revealed himself during that first attack."
"No," he looked at you and when your eyes met you could just barely see a hint of fear in his eyes. "I'm saying that this is a distraction. While we're sitting here trying to find a pattern or clues in his attacks, he and the League are putting a plan in motion that he thinks is guaranteed to work."
A plan that would be guaranteed to work. There wasn't much of anything that would get you to turn yourself over to the villains, and he still didn't know where you were unless he somehow managed to find you and try and take you by force. The only thing that would ever get you to fall into his hands would be...
"He's trying to take someone. He knows that I've let innocent people die before, but he also knows that I've sacrificed myself for the people I care about. That's how the villains got me the second time, they threatened you and everyone else in our class."
And now that he was back with the League, he would have spoken to Illusion, she could have told him which false realities she'd created that had gotten closest to working. The ones involving your friends were always the ones that nearly made you cave into doing as they said.
"Didn't you tell them all to get out of town? Shouldn't they be safe?"
You thought about it, you'd seen most of them at the funeral, but that didn't mean that they hadn't left afterward. "Hopefully, but we need to check. All For One going after one of them is the biggest possibility."
Bakugou nodded in agreement, "who should we go to first? If anyone was gonna be taken, who would you give into All For One's demands for?"
A pang of guilt struck you as you thought about that question. "Other than you or Eri, I don't think I'd give in to his demands for anyone."
It was a harsh truth, but a real one nonetheless. Of course, you loved your friends deeply, and you would set the world ablaze if anything were to happen to them, but you just couldn't do it. The reason why you'd turned yourself over to the villains when they'd threatened your friends at school had been because you knew that you'd be able to withstand captivity. The villains had promised not to hurt your friends if you went with them, so you did, you'd never agreed to inherit the power.
"Ok, so I'm here, what about Eri? Do we know that the kid's somewhere safe?"
"Yeah, Hawks confirmed it in the information he gave us. There's no record anywhere of where she and Present Mic went when they left UA." That information was the only reason you were able to sleep at night. If you were unsure at all about someone being able to find her you would've done something about it.
"I still think we should go check on people though. The fact that I won't sacrifice myself for them only means that they'd be in more danger if All For One got to them."
"He'd kill them," Bakugou stated.
He would, and he would do it in the worst possible ways.
"Ok, since it's dark it won't be too hard to check their houses without being seen. The issue is the fact that our faces are all over the news and we have to somehow get to a city that's hours away."
Bakugou took your hand and raised it, almost like he was examining it. "You're telling me that you have all of these abilities but you don't have one that can shapeshift us or something?"
You snatched your hand back. "If I did, don't you think that I would have used it multiple times by now?"
"I'm just saying it would be a useful one to have."
You rolled your eyes. "I'll put it on the list of things to do after we manage to stop the world's worst villain along with all of his henchmen and then somehow avoid getting arrested." You paused, a thought hitting you. "Oh, I think I have a way to get us into the city."
There was a good chance that it wouldn't work, but it was really the only thing you could think of and there wasn't much time to get it done.
"How?" Bakugou asked.
"Just follow me," you stood from the bed and grabbed the backpack from the table. Bakugou followed you to the door but continued asking what your plan was. He was even more hesitant whenever you walked into the front office and walked directly up to the woman sitting at the desk.
"Hi, can we borrow your car?"
Bakugou snapped his head over to look at you, his expression saying something along the lines of 'how big of an idiot are you?'
The woman was still reading her book and you prepared to activate the quirk you were planning on using right when she looked up and you saw that flash of recognition in her eyes. You were taken completely by surprise whenever she looked up and replied with a casual. "Yeah, sure."
"What?" You and Bakugou both spoke at the same time.
"The keys are in my bag. I figure you're off to go do whatever it is that teenage vigilantes do?"
You blinked a few times, wondering exactly what kind of game this woman was playing. "So, you're letting us take your car?"
Bakugou was now looking at her like she was an idiot. "You're just casually giving your car to two people you don't even know?! What if we were villains?!"
She heaved a sigh and set her book down. "I know exactly who you two are, I've known it from the moment that you both walked in here." The woman held out her hand, "I'm Yui Aizawa."
You stilled, "what- what was that last name?"
"You heard me right the first time, kid."
This was not how you'd planned this interaction to go at all, was she a relative of Aizawa's? Was the name just a coincidence? Bakugou wasn't saying anything and you could tell that he was just as confused.
"Um, are you by any chance-"
"A relative of the pro-hero Eraserhead? Yeah." She stood up and grabbed her car keys from the black bag that hung on the wall next to her. "He was my cousin, I think I met him once when I was like ten years old, but other than that we never interacted." She tossed the keys to you and you nearly let them fall to the floor.
"There was a lot of family drama when it became common knowledge that he was taking you in, I never really cared about it, but it doesn't seem like a coincidence that you showed up here. I figured maybe the universe is trying to get me to help you out."
Bakugou stepped forward, "why didn't you say anything when we showed up?"
"Because you didn't ask."
Out of all the coincidences in your life, this had to be the biggest. How was it possible that you just happened to show up at the same motel that one of Aizawa's relatives worked at? Could she be trusted?
She sat back down and opened up the book that she seemed to be quite invested in. "I work the night shift here so have my car back by sunrise, and I expect a full tank of gas, got it?"
"Um, yeah, we will, thanks." You handed Bakugou the keys and turned back to the door, still not fully processing the fact that you'd actually managed to get a car, and that the person who'd given it to you was Aizawa's cousin.
Before you stepped back into the cold, she spoke to you once more. "By the way, I'm rooting for you guys, just don't tell anyone."
You looked back, "thank you."
-----------------
The roads were mostly empty at this time of night, and Bakugou used that to his advantage. He pushed the car to go much faster than what was legal and ignored your many attempts to get him to go a little slower. Getting pulled over would be the last thing that was needed.
After about an hour of driving, you began to plan out where you would be going.
"We'll go by Kirishima's house first," Bakugou said. "Then Sparky's and the Pink girls, did you want to hit Earphone Jacks too?"
Sometimes you really wondered if he actually knew the names of his friends or not. "Yeah, I wanna make sure Jirou's good."
"And what are we gonna do if they're at their house. It's not like we can go inside, wake them up, and force them to go into hiding."
"Hopefully, all of them were smart enough to go, but if that isn't the case, we'll figure it out when we get there."
The drive continued in silence for a little while, you stared out of the window, watching the lights of different buildings flash by. Something was comforting about drives like these, it reminded you of all the times you'd driven with Aizawa late at night to go and get food from somewhere, most likely because he'd forgotten that there wasn't anything in the fridge, or he'd run out of frozen pizza.
"That was pretty weird, the girl who works at the motel," Bakugou said, breaking the silence.
"Yeah, it was definitely the last thing that I was expecting."
"It was convenient as hell too, how did you plan on getting the car if she had turned out to be just a random person?"
Right, this was something you hadn't told him about yet. "I was gonna try and brainwash her."
The car swerved a little and you jumped, "yo! Chill out!"
"You can brainwash people now?! When did you learn that?"
Even the mention of Shinsou's quirk was enough to set Bakugou off. "I figured it would be pretty useful, but I haven't even tested it out yet so there's no way to know if it would work. His quirk is a difficult one and Shinsou also lied about how it worked, so not all of the information in the notebook was accurate."
Come to think of it, it had been a stupid plan, but it was the only one you'd thought of. And it had worked out in the end anyway.
"Why would you want to learn his quirk?"
"Do you not realize how useful it could be?" You gave him a look. "Like, imagine that I just go up to All For One and tell him to go kill himself, boom, problem solved, the world has been saved."
"Yeah, I guess you're right." Bakugou looked back to the road. "I just don't like the thought of any aspect of that guy being around you."
"Are you seriously still jealous of Shinsou, even after I've told you many times that I want him dead?"
Bakugou scoffed, "I'm not jealous. I know that the troll-doll-looking dude doesn't have anything on me. Even if the dude wasn't a traitor I'd have nothing to worry about. I doubt there's any guy that could even get you close to doing what I-"
You cut him off, "ok, enough said. You've made your point."
"Good."
It took around another hour to arrive at Kirishima's house. Bakugou pulled the car up further down the street before parking and then looked took a second to look at the house through the mirrors. "There are no cars here, that's a good sign."
"You stay here, I'll teleport inside and look around to make sure."
Bakugou looked over. "Wouldn't this be considered breaking and entering?"
You stepped out of the car, "I'm wanted for murder, Katsuki, this is nothing. I'll be right back."
You focused and after a second you appeared inside of the house. It was too dark to see much of anything, so you had to feel around to make sure you didn't hit any furniture. You were lucky that you hadn't teleported on top of the dining table or something.
Bakugou had told you where Kirishimas room was, so you found that first. The second door on the left of the hallway was closed, just like all of the other doors, and when you went inside you lit a small flame in your hand to give you a small amount of visibility.
The room was similar to his dorm at UA, very heavily decorated with martial arts supplies and things that the boy would consider 'manly,' but much to your relief, Kirishima wasn't there. The bed was made and the drawers of his dresser were all opened, but bare.
The other rooms were mostly the same, no people were present and most of the important supplies didn't appear to be in their places. It looked like they had all taken their things and gotten out.
After making sure you hadn't missed anything, you appeared back in the car, causing Bakugou to jump. "It's clear. Nobody's there and it doesn't look like they were planning on coming back anytime soon."
You saw a bit of the tension ease from Bakugou's shoulders, "glad to know he isn't an idiot."
"Yup, now let's head to the next one."
----------------
It took nearly two hours to go through your friends' houses, and by the time you'd finished at Jirous, you could heavily feel the effects of the teleportation.
All of the houses had been the same as Kirishimas. Nobody had been present and most of the important belongings were gone. Kaminari and Mina had even left notes on their beds telling you that they'd taken their families somewhere safe.
It was a relief, but now you were confused. "What the hell is All For One planning on doing then?"
Bakugou shrugged, "I don't know. We checked all the-" He froze, and then quickly began to drive. "I need to make sure that my parents are ok. My mom's too stubborn to leave and the villains could've figured that out."
"Shit." You should've thought about that. You should have pushed Mitsuki harder and tried to get her to leave. Bakugou would never forgive himself if something had happened to her.
Bakugou drove through multiple stop signs and nearly hit someone's mailbox before swerving into the neighborhood where his house was. He didn't wait for you to get out of the car and teleport inside, he ran out himself and you quickly followed.
You both stopped at the door, noticing the sheet of paper taped to the front. On it was a note.
---------------
If this is the police, screw off.
If this is a villain, screw off.
If this is the two brats who decided to leave without telling me, I do hope that you are prepared for the ass-kicking of your lives. Lucky for you, though, I decided to go out of town with my husband, so, the ass-kicking will be done later.
Masaru and I are safe, and I hope that you guys are too. Katsuki, I love you, please don't get yourself killed. I'll see you both soon.
---------------
Bakugou took the note from the door and pressed it against his chest, taking a deep breath before reading it again. "This is definitely her handwriting, we're good."
"Ok, good." You stepped closer to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, Bakugou's breathing was still heavy. "She's ok."
"I know, when I saw the note at first I thought it was something a villain had left, like a ransom or something. I'm just really glad that the old hag went and did something that I asked for once." He looked up, "but now we're back at square one."
"I know, but it's gonna be morning soon and we've gotta get the car back. Let's figure out our next move when we get back to the room."
He nodded and you both began walking to the car. You were happy, of course, more than happy, but something was wrong. Maybe, Bakugou had been wrong about All For One's plan? There was no way for the villain to get to anyone you cared about, so, maybe he really was desperate enough to attack random people.
You spent the car ride pondering different ideas, trying to think of the things that All For One had done in the past and how they may correlate with what he was doing now. But all you hit was dead end after dead end, you couldn't think of anything that he could be doing.
Bakugou looked to be lost in thought as well, most likely thinking about the same things that you were, but he also said nothing.
You got back to the motel, a million questions still spinning around in your head. Bakugou went to return the car keys and you walked up the stairs to the room you were staying in. When you got inside, after a good few seconds of having to force the key into the lock, you placed the backpack on the bed and started walking towards the bathroom.
You stopped when you heard the sound of the phone buzzing from inside of the bag. Wondering why Kura would be calling you so early in the morning, you grabbed the phone given to you by Hawks, but it wasn't the one that was ringing.
Slowly, you reached in and grabbed the other phone, the one that Bakugou had taken from Toga during their fight. It vibrated in your hand and you stared at it, debating whether or not to answer.
They were most likely calling to figure out whether Toga and Dabi had been successful or not, that, or they knew that the two of them had failed and they were calling with the knowledge that you had the device.
Against your better judgment, you answered.
You didn't speak, you simply waited, praying that the call would end and you could throw the device away.
"Ah, so it seems that my villains were unsuccessful in retrieving you, daughter."
The sound of All For One's voice sent ice through your veins, and somehow, he knew exactly who had picked up the phone.
"Yeah, they were pretty weak." You kept your voice casual, but your hands had begun to shake. "I figured you'd know not to underestimate me by now, especially since I've already killed one of your villains before this."
"I guess you're right." All For One didn't speak for another few seconds, "I grow tired of these back and forth games. Just come to me, have a little chat, all of this can be resolved."
"Right, there's no way in hell."
"Oh, come now." The villain made a tsk noise with his tongue. "There's someone here who's just dying to see you. You wouldn't want to disappoint her now, would you?"
"What are you talking about?" You asked, hating that you were playing along with him.
"Here, why don't you speak with her yourself." There was a rustling noise and then another voice spoke through the phone.
"H- Hello?"
Your heart dropped, you stopped breathing completely, and when she spoke your name, her small voice so filled with fear, you nearly collapsed to the ground.
It was Eri.
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