Chapter Text
"I really am sorry for the disruption," the man says. The kid climbing all over him pauses briefly to make an offended face, and then continues crawling all over him.
Shouta simply nods, because there is literally no conceivable reaction to have at this point other than to just go with it. To his right, Hizashi seems caught somewhere between fear, shock, and glee. His hair is down and his sunglasses hang unceremoniously on his collar, but even then the shock of blonde looks out of place in the Yokohama train station. Every one here seems . . . oddly plain in their features, though Shouta isn't exactly one to talk. He'd heard rumors, of course, but rumors are different from having it confirmed in person.
Yokohama really is a Quirkless city.
To Shouta's right, Nemuri clears her throat and grins. Shouta silently applauds the skill it must take to keep it from becoming a grimace. "It's no problem, ah—Hirota-san?"
"Hirotsu," the man corrects, eyes turning sheepish, "and again, I'm sorry for this one." He pats at the little girl currently wiggling in his lap. "I had completely forgotten that my daughter-in-law requested I watch Momoko-san here, and it was too late notice to find a sitter."
"Oh, yeah, no worries," Hizashi reassures him eagerly, apparently over his shock. "It’s no issue, seriously. Gave us time to enjoy the city, right, Aizawa?" He elbows Shouta in the side, grin practically blinding from its forcefulness, and Shouta grunts a little bit in spite.
"Sure," he says, and nothing else.
The silence that fills the space between their little group is quickly drowned out by the chatter of the train station surrounding them. Hirotsu purses his lips together and then stands with an unexpected gusto, considering his silvering hair and rather unimpressive physique.
The man is a mafioso, though, so it is to be expected.
Momoko slides to the floor with a moan of pain. "O-jiisan," she cries, and Hirotsu blanches and picks her up. He shows no signs of struggle, despite the girl being no younger than seven and no less than thirty kilograms.
Definitely more than he appears, but Shouta can't help disbelieving his profession. Shouta knows better than most that appearances can be deceiving, but Hirotsu has done nothing to indicate that he's part of the fearsome organization they'd been sent to proposition.
Momoko hisses like a stray cat from where she lay cradled in her grandfather's arms, and Hirotsu apologizes for her behavior once more before beckoning them to follow him through the train station.
Shouta is left with no choice but to follow when Nemuri takes off after Hirotsu like a shot, with a beaming Hizashi tugging him along.
Shouta really wishes it hadn't come to this.
---
When Nezu had called Shouta to his office, Shouta had admittedly not been expecting much. Nezu is well-known for his eccentricities, after all, and it's not uncommon for him to call meetings such as the one he'd called Shouta to as a means of simply requesting someone reach something on a high shelf.
But Nezu had not wanted something off a high shelf.
"No," Nezu had explained, pouring Shouta a cup of tea perfectly suited to his tastes, "it's much more pressing than that. I presume you've heard of All For One's recent disappearance?"
Disappearance was putting it lightly, considering he had all but vanished from Tartarus—an impossible task for the best of burglars, and nigh unthinkable for a man on a ventilator. But All For One doesn’t care for words like unthinkable, it seems, and so Shouta simply grunts and accepts his cup.
“No security footage was able to be recovered, as I’m sure you’ve read in the papers. However, good old-fashioned police work, while leaving something to be desired, can reveal quite a lot when the effort is put in. This morning, such effort payed off; a detective uncovered a hair that had been left near All For One’s cell that did not belong to any of the guards. Rather, testing revealed it belonged to one Kawabata Yasunari—thirty-eight years old, divorced, served a prison sentence several years ago for multiple charges of breaking and entering and one charge of grand theft auto. His bank accounts prove him deeply in debt, and yet one of the detectives' Quirk allowed her to trace Kawabata-jukeisha's history back to an account in the Caymans, where he apparently hid nearly fifty million yen."
Shouta didn't spit out his tea, but it was a near thing. "Fifty million yen."
"A rather large sum, I'm sure you'd agree." Nezu wrapped his little paw around his own cup and raised it to his mouth, tongue darting out to lap at the tea. He swallows and sets it down. "But that begs the question—where did Kawabata-jukeisha get this sum? Certainly not from his burglaries, as those funds were returned to his victims. And Kawabata-jukeisha's signature is undeniable—it's how he got caught the first time."
"Quirk?" Shouta asked.
Nezu hummed. "Quirk, yes—it's not unique to him, but his remains one of the more potent in the world and one of only two in Japan. Kayama-san has only a slight difference in her Quirk, actually. Kawabata-jukeisha's Quirk allows him to put any person to sleep with a touch. It's registered as ‘The House of Sleeping Beauties’ in the Quirk Index."
Ah. Kawabata was a Yokohaman, then. Yokohama was known for many things—being a city with an 95% Quirkless rate, having the highest percentage of organized crime in Japan, chasing out any heroes that try to establish themselves there—but perhaps the most well-known fact was, due to the infinitesimal Quirked population, those with Quirks named them horribly verbosely. Shouta made a concerted effort to know absolutely nothing more about Yokohama than he has to for his job, and even then he'd heard some of them—names like “Almost Transparent Blue,” and “Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World,” both of which took form exactly as you’d think they would and then completely subverted it in the same breath. With a name like “The House of the Sleeping Beauties,” Kawabata’s Quirk was obviously of the Yokohaman variety.
“Are we turning the investigation over to the Yokohaman police, then?” Shouta asked.
“That’s actually what I called you here to talk about. You’re aware of the way Yokohama is structured?”
Shouta raised an eyebrow. “I deign to know as little as possible about Yokohama.”
Nezu didn’t seem surprised by this. “It is referee to by its creator as the Tripartite Plan. Yokohama is comprised of three branches, so to speak, that handle Quirk regulation and usage. These branches are the Special Division for Unusual Powers, run by Taneda Santouka-shi, which manages the daylight; the Armed Detective Agency, run by Fukuzawa Yukichi-shi, which manages the twilight; and the Port Mafia, run by Mori Ougai-shi, which manages the dusk. The SDUP is the only one to be formally recognized, with the latter two regarded more skeptically, but the truth of the matter remains.”
“Not unlike the difference between the police and Pro Hero agencies here,” Shouta noted, then backtracked. “I thought Yokohama didn’t have Hero agencies?”
“You would be correct to think that! Despite the implications of its name, the Armed Detective Agency rarely dips into traditional hero work. In fact, the nature of their investigations can appear somewhat criminal without context—legally, they’re able to wiretap private and public property, tresspass, and withhold information from the police if they so wish it. Fortunately, though, I’ve heard that Fukuzawa-shi is a good man, and besides that they only have four total agents, all of which work part time. Even so, they are regarded as nigh-mythical by the populace due to their investigative prowess."
"And we aren’t turning the case over to them because . . .”
“If only it were that simple,” Nezu sighed, and took a moment to stare into his cup forlornly, as if it had the solution to all the problems in the world. Shouta knew it was faked for his benefit—one of Nezu’s attempts to appear more approachable to his staff—but he didn’t feel the usual flush of irritation that came when someone tried to deceive him.
“Kawabata-jukeisha, as you recall, had an undue wealth in an offshore bank account. Which begs the question: how did a man so deeply in debt acquire such a large fund? Considering his hometown, the answer is simple: Kawabata-jukeisha was a member of the Port Mafia."
". . . that doesn't explain why we aren't turning it over the Yokohaman authorities, whoever they are. If anything, this makes it all the more crucial that we do so."
Nezu smiled pleasantly, but the image was disturbed by the presence of his pointy little teeth. Shouta sometimes forgot that Nezu wasn't human, even within the expanded definition of Mutation Quirks.
"We'd be sorely disappointed to miss an opportunity to begin an. . . alliance, of sorts, with the Port Mafia. With both them and the MPD attempting to find Kawabata-jukeisha, it’d be perfect timing to secure a certain cooperative attitude with Yokohama—with Yuuei acting on behalf of Musutafu, of course.”
It made sense. Kawabata, at some point previous, was employed by the Port Mafia. He took a foreign job to help All For One escape Tartarus before stealing some of the Port Mafia’s money and taking off.
But the hero committee of Musutafu was known for its moral uppity—Shouta not included (which, on second thought, was probably why Nezu chose him to do whatever it was that he was planning). No way did the Hero Public Safety Commission agree to this. Nezu was more than willing to toe the line of righteousness when the situation calls for it, but to make the call for such a potentially dangerous alliance without communicating his plan to the Commission was . . .
. . . completely in character, actually.
“All right, fine,” Shouta had said, “but what do I have to do with it?”
Nezu had smiled with his pointy little teeth, and Shouta was dreading it before he even began explaining.
---
So.
Shouta, Nemuri, and Hizashi are, according to Nezu's formality e-mail, "representatives and liaisons of Yuuei and, further, Musutafu as a whole, to use their prowess and considerable experience to secure an alliance with the Port Mafia of Yokohama in efforts to capture or detain for interrogation Kawabata Yasunari." Shouta had been selected largely due to Erasure, as most of the Port Mafia members are unknown (much less their Quirks). Nemuri and Hizashi, on the other hand, are both some of the more powerful Quirk-users who have very little problem, in Hizashi's words, "sticking it to the man."
Also, all are virtually unrecognizable out-of-uniform.
The shiny black car that had pulled up along the curbside of the train station is just as cushy on the inside, if not more so. Shouta almost feels guilty about about disturbing the pristine leather seat covers before he remembers that he doesn’t give a damn and climbs right over ‘em to get to the last seat. If Hirotsu notices this, he doesn’t comment; as it were, though, he seems terribly occupied with holding his granddaughter by the wrist as she attempts to scamper away from him like a spooked squirrel.
Shouta thinks it’s overkill, but then he remembers that he has kids of his own—twenty of them. He imagines taking any of them to a place like Yokohama and, suddenly, he forgives Hirotsu for his lack of attention to them.
Hizashi slides in next to him, bumping his shoulder gently. “Weird to be in civies after so long,” he says. “I feel naked.”
Nemuri hums. “I know, right? I’ve been wearing just tights for so long that I forgot what it felt like to have actually warm legs. I didn’t even shave!”
“You’re the one who chose your uniform, Nemuri,” Shouta reminds her. Nemuri huffs.
“Well, yeah, but that’s because I have a brand to uphold!”
“It would have been worse if they hadn’t passed that law to limit nudity.”
“Hush up, you, with your . . . logic.”
Hirotsu finally wrangles his granddaughter into the passenger seat. She huffs and gripes and moans, but makes no more attempts at escape—just pulls out her cat-eared headphones and an ancient MP3, not even sparing them a glance as she nods off against the car window.
Hirotsu climbs into the driver’s seat. “Sorry,” he says again, cheeks pink. “I’m not usually so—ahem, disorganized.”
“We all have our days,” Nemuri offers. Hizashi nods sagely beside her, and Shouta resists the urge to slam his head against the door. At least Hirotsu seems less anxious, if the slight relaxing of his shoulders is anything to go by. They drive the rest of the way in silence, Shouta keeping track of all the turns they make along the way, until eventually they reach a skyscraper.
Mori Corporation, the front reads in sleek violet letters. Shouta recalls Nezu’s explanation of the Yokohaman Quirk management; this must be the main front building for the Port Mafia—the “Wardens of the Night.”
Fucking pretentious, if you ask Shouta.
“We’re here,” Hirotsu says. He unbuckles his seatbelt and—quietly, so as not to wake Momoka—pulls open the car door. “Quickly now,” he urges when Nemuri fumbles her seatbelt buckle for a moment too long. They’re all out of the car in a matter of seconds, save for Momoka, who lay drooling against the pane.
“Not very Mafia-y,” Hizashi mumbles, except he’s Hizashi, and so it comes out as more of whisper-yell. Nemuri and Shouta simultaneously elbow him in the ribs, much to his chagrin.
Hirotsu clears his throat and nods subtly to the doormen on either side of the monstrous glass doors. “We do strive for discretion.”
He leads them inside. The men and women—most in their late twenties or early thirties but several nearing Hirotsu’s age, all dressed in neatly pressed suits—bow shallowly when they walk in but otherwise ignore them. It’s quiet in the way that an office is a quiet, the hustle and bustle just as busy as it is subdued. Hirotsu clears the way easily as the mafiosos part for him, walking long-legged towards the steel elevator in the center of the square.
When he arrives, he glances around surreptitiously before reaching inside his coat and withdrawing a small, rectangular piece of plastic. A key card. Hirotsu shoves it into a slot next to the elevator’s keypad and types a pattern that Shouta can’t make out.
Two seconds pass, and Hirotsu returns the key card to his pocket. Two more seconds.
Ding!
The elevator rips open at an unusual speed, and Hirotsu steps to the side carefully, beckoning them forward. “After you.”
“What a gentleman,” Nemuri teases. Though there is no change in Hirotsu’s facial expression, he swallows and turns red. No red-blooded straight man in Musutafu can resist her charms, and it's admittedly somewhat pleasing to see that this effect extends even to the Quirkless City.
Once they're all inside, Hirotsu steps in after them and presses the button for the seventieth floor. The doors shut, but before the elevator starts moving—a buzzing noise. A small red light shines next to the button half a few centimeters beneath Shouta's collarbone and a small saucer pops out.
Nonplussed, Hirotsu leans down to align his eye with the red light while simultaneously drawing a small, plain switchblade from his coat's inner pocket. As the light scans his eye, he sighs and, without further ado, lightly pricks the tip of his thumb with the blade. A drop of blood beads and trickles down to the saucer.
The saucer retreats into the panel. The red light blinks off. Hirotsu rises again to his full height and lightly taps his foot.
Thirty seconds pass. A minute.
“Uh, sorry, but what are we—?” Hizashi starts, but then—click!
The arrow above the door flickers green, elevator jolting to a start and then rapidly climbing the skyscraper. Shouta sees Hizashi wince and shove against the corner—he’s always gotten nauseous on roller coasters and shit, so it stands to reason that elevators would make him queasy, too. Silently, Shouta steps to stand closer to him—not so close that they’re touching, but enough to show silent support.
Hizashi shoots Shouta a weak but otherwise beaming smile. Shouta refuses to acknowledge it.
“I apologize for the Elevator Procedure,” Hirotsu (thankfully) interrupts. “I suppose that may be a bit . . . ah, disconcerting if you haven’t seen it before. It’s just an additional safety measure to protect the Boss—I’m sure you understand.”
The rest of the elevator ride goes in silence, if only by the grace of Hizashi being too sick to annoy them half to death and Nemuri discreetly poking at him.
The doors to the Boss's office are grand, two guards posited by its mahogany edges. Shouta has no doubt that the guards are armed and ready to shoot, given how tense their shoulders are, and though their eyes are hidden by dark sunglasses he would bet money that they’re darting around nervously.
Hirotsu pauses half a meter away from the door. He now looks nervous, as well, though it's only evident from the tightening of his lips and the visible gulp that follows. Then, with a single smooth motion, he raises his fist and knocks lightly on the door.
No answer. They wait for half a minute before Hirotsu sighs, adjusts his monocle, and knocks again.
This time, there is a significant thumping noise and a childish wail. Shouta goes stiff with tension, feeling Hizashi and Nemuri do the same next to him.
What was a child doing in the office of a mafia boss?
Hirotsu doesn't seem upset by this—rather, he seems… annoyed, almost, in that respectful way he seems to do just about everything. He shoots a questioning look to the guard on his left, who shrugs.
"I dunno, Hirotsu-san," she says. "We tried to remind him, but he was busy with Elise-chan. Wouldn't hear it."
There's another scream—Elise-chan, allegedly—but this time it is followed by a man's hushed coos. The guard winces again.
"They've been at this for three hours," the other guard tells them.
Hirotsu sighs deeply. "If only Dazai-sama was here," he mutters. Then, in a louder voice: "Mori-dono, our guests have arrived." He hesitates. "I hope you're decent. We're coming in."
He waits a moment longer, and, glancing back at Shouta’s coworkers’ stunned faces with an apologetic look, he opens the door.
The inside of the office is just as extravagant as the outside, decorated with long, velvety reds and checkered tile polished to a finish. The mid-afternoon sunlight streams in through the floor-to-ceiling windows across one wall. Facing the windows is a singular plush armchair, though there are a few more strewn along the opposite wall. Across the room sits a mahogany desk in front of a haphazardly arranged bookcase.
And in the middle of it all sits two people.
Jet black hair tied into a small ponytail hangs around the man’s ears, and a red scarf drapes loosely around his neck. He has thin lips and high cheekbones. Looking down as he is, it’s difficult to see his eyes, but Shouta would bet that they’re a brilliant violet.
There’s no doubt that this is the Boss of the Port Mafia, Mori Ougai. What’s more concerning, however, is the little girl he’s sitting on top of—blonde and European, youthful face marred by a scowl more befitting of someone like Bakugou.
“Get off me, Rintarou!” she howls, kicking and bucking like her life depends on it. “I didn’t steal your credit card!”
“Well, if you didn’t do it, who did?” Mori Ougai—Rintarou?—questions, face screwed in chastisement but voice tinged with amusement. “Dazai-kun hasn’t been to the office all day, and Q-kun isn’t stealthy enough—or tall enough—to reach into my pocket without my noticing.”
“That’s what Q wants you to think!” the girl—Elise-chan?—whines, throwing her head back as she gives up squirming. Mori doesn’t get off her, but he does unpin her wrists, which she snaps back to her chest in order to properly cross her arms and pout.
“I think I would’ve noticed if they grew five inches overnight, Elise-chan.”
“You didn’t notice me stealing your credit card, did you?”
Mori gasps. “So it was you who stole it!”
Elise-chan does her best to sink into the floor. “Yeah, but the point is it could’ve been Q.” She huffs, and finally turns her head towards them. Mouth falling open, she scolds, “Stupid Rintarou! You’ve been keeping these dumb guest-people waiting for too long. Now they’ll never work with you—they probably weren’t going to do that, anyways. Who want to work with stupid, smelly Rintarou?” She wrinkles her nose and finally manages to push Mori off of her, effortlessly standing and brushing off her skirt. She shoots them all an evil eye as she marches away.
The doors shut slam behind her. Mori, now standing, sighs and smooths the lapels of his coat. “I’m sorry you had to see that. My darling Elise-chan can be a bit—ah, difficult. I take it these are the Yuuei representatives, Hirotsu-kun?”
Hirotsu clears his throat. "Yes, Mori-dono." With a bow that leaves his head nearly touching the floor, he, too, leaves. Mori watches him go, eyes twinkling, and then offers Shouta a pleasant, sharp-toothed smile.
"So," he says, "why is Yuuei visiting me today?”
---
Roughly 32.6 kilometers away, nestled into a small alcove behind a variety of tall, well-maintained bushes at Yokohama Station, sit nineteen dark blobs huddled together. One dark blob sneezes, and nineteen other voices immediately shush it.
A few moments pass. If a pin dropped halfway across the station, you would be able to hear it in this little alcove—which is odd, considering the fact that the blobs are, in fact, at an active train station that has no business being as quiet as it is. But, regardless of whatever reason that may exist, the station is quiet, and the blobs are quiet, and, for a brief, golden second, all is quiet.
Then, the sneezer huffs. “Oh, fuck this!” he says, standing from his hiding place (to the severe horror of his compatriots). He slaps at their tugging hands. “It’s literally been a fucking hour. If they fucking knew we were gonna follow them, they would’ve stopped us by now.”
“Bakugo-kun!” another dark blob says—well, yells, but semantics, really. “You know I do not approve of pointless endeavors such as this, but if we are going to do it, I insist that we do it with the upmost discretion!”
“Shut up, Glasses,” Bakugo growls. “Besides, there’s nobody in this goddamn station for who the fuck knows why! Get up. Didn’t you want to figure out where the old folks were going?”
“Aw, Bakugo-kun; Aizawa-sensei, Mic-sensei, and Midnight-sensei are hardly old!” another blob says. “But you’re right that we’ve been sitting here a long time. C’mon, Deku-kun, Tsu-chan, Iida-kun, Todoroki-kun! Let’s see if they have any vending machines!” She grabs two green-haired blobs with her hands and rushes forward, to both of their obvious embarrassment. One green haired blob grabs the wrists of two others, who stumble after them in shock. One of these "others" is Glasses, and he chooses now to yell some more, making sharp gestures in the air with his free hand even as he does not resist being pulled along.
"You know, it really would have been smarter for Hagakure-chan to go ahead of us," a different dark blob says, pulling nervously at the sleeves of her shirt. This causes a collective pause in the remaining group, and, after a moment of silent observation, collective panic.
Because Hagakure is not among them.
Being both invisible and notoriously distractible, it's not unheard of for Hagakure to disappear (pun unintended). As a result, her classmates had taken great lengths to ensure this would not happen—"great lengths," of course, being the installation of Life360 on her iPhone CLIV and a very stern discussion about, if nothing else, keeping her cellphone on her at all times. Normally, this reminder deters her from straying (in combination with her rather severe FOMO), but it isn’t foolproof.
Case in point: due to the fact that they technically weren't supposed to be in Yokohama and didn't want their parents to check their travel history, they had all left their phones charging in their Yuuei dorms for the remainder of the week-long break. This made their entire Life360 Plan null.
“Well,” says Bakugo, “fuck.” Another dark blob—this one with spiky red hair that must take upwards of an hour to gel into place each morning—moves from his hiding place to pat consolingly at Bakugo’s shoulder.
But, before he can—footsteps. Loud in a way that seems deliberate. The remaining dark blobs freeze, those still in hiding caught somewhere between grateful for their cautiousness and the panic at the possibility of being discovered.
If this were a normal person, they would not be so panicked. They’ve faced off against much worse than a train station’s security time and time again; and while they certainly prefer not to engage in such activities (at least, not with one of their own MIA and five of their strongest classmates off searching for a vending machine), they would deal. Danger came to them like a moth to a flame.
But something about those footsteps—heavy in such a deliberate way, loud and thundering but calm, too, as if the concrete is cracking underfoot, as if the world is pivoting at each footfall—screams danger, danger. Run while you can, but you will be caught.
The footsteps stop.
Standing there, hair ablaze in the mid-afternoon light, is a boy in a pork-pie hat and old-fashioned formalwear. Flanked at his sides are two older men in dark sunglasses, nonplussed by their leader’s abrupt halt.
The boy raises an eyebrow. He can’t be much older than any of them. “So,” he says, voice pitched just lowly enough to be on this side of menacing, “something tells me you’re not our fence.”