Chapter Text
The only reason Detective Tsukauchi wasn’t found dead at his desk this morning was because the first thing he did after conspiring with Nedzu to force Shouta to work a vigilante case in Musutafu was give him a gift card to the cat cafe near U.A. high school. Shouta accepted the bribe and made it excruciatingly clear that it was the only reason Tsukauchi was still breathing. With how annoying this case is going to be, Shouta almost regrets expelling his entire class. Almost.
On the first day of school, not a single student noticed him. He waited in the room with them for five minutes after the bell rang before giving up and announcing his presence. Then, the students wasted time in the changing rooms, taking photos of themselves in costume and posting them online. During the quirk assessment test, every single student displayed versatile quirks with many unique applications, but seemed to use them in only one or two ways like their lives depended on it. In order to motivate them, he threatened the students with expulsion, but most of them dismissed his warning and continued to play during class and limit the use of their quirks.
One student took his words seriously. Her file showed that her quirk, Blink, quirk allowed her to stop the momentum of an object she looked at in the past minute when she closed her eyes. She’d been struggling to come up with uses for her quirk on the physical test, but after he mentioned expulsion, she threw herself into the evaluation and looked for anywhere her quirk could benefit her. She realized that she could improve her score by halting the momentum of the other students’ costumes while they were being tested and stop their balls from flying mid-air. It reminded Shouta of how he won his own skill assessment exam when Nedzu was his homeroom teacher.
She was the only student to show potential, so he expelled the rest of the bunch. Her class with him effectively became a private tutoring session, and she was thriving under the attention and personalization of his lessons. It was obvious she was grateful and proud to be the only student who made it past the first day.
Two weeks after class began, Shouta was approached by a student in the general education course with a mutant quirk. He asked if he was the teacher for Class 1-A and asked to speak with him in private in a soft, trembling voice. Shouta brought him to his office and gave him room to speak. He assumed the boy was going to ask to be considered for one of the open spots, but what he heard made his blood boil.
The boy confessed that his student had been bullying him and his friend for their quirks since the beginning of the school year. His quirk made him resemble a komodo dragon, and whenever she saw him, she acted disgusted and shoved him around while ranting about how he was venomous and villains like him needed to go to the streets where they belong and leave the hero schools in peace. His friend had a quirk that let her change the color of her nails, which made his student jealous. The boy said they were going to just try to keep their heads down, but just yesterday, she poured hot coffee onto the girl's hands from a thermos she carries around. Disgusted, Shouta realized it must have been the same coffee she brought him in the mornings. He reassured the boy that he’d have this incident properly investigated, but he didn’t seem to believe him. He shrank into himself and thanked Shouta for hearing him out dejectedly as he turned and left.
Shouta wasn’t naive; he knew quirk discrimination ran rampant throughout the entire country. Logically, some students who get accepted into U.A. must be prejudiced bastards. But he’d spent three hours with his student every day for weeks. How had he not picked up on it? What hints had he missed? Ignored? He’d let someone get away with bullying, turning a blind eye like his teachers did before he went to U.A.
Shouta didn’t believe the general education student was lying, but he still had to do due diligence, so he went to the surveillance room and resolved himself to a long night viewing security footage. It didn’t even take twenty minutes before he had enough to not only expel her without any lingering doubts, but give the general education duo a strong case if they chose to prosecute her. He considered calling her home to tell her not to show up at school again, but he decided to just fill out the paperwork and revoke her key card’s access to the entrance gate instead.
He knew he made the right call when he saw a group of general education and marketing students giggling in the hallways as they pulled out their phone cameras and pointed at something out the window. After glancing out, he saw his former student banging on the gate, likely begging Nedzu to be let in through the security cameras stationed there. The boy from the general education class must have found out Shouta expelled her that day, too, because he offered Shouta a small smile and a wave when they made eye contact during the lunch break.
So, no. Shouta definitely doesn’t regret expelling his entire class. But he still reserves the right to be pissed at Nedzu, who by no coincidence suggested Shouta find some way to fill his time less than a day before he was summoned to Musutafu, and Tsukauchi, who summoned him in the first place.
Apparently, a suspected vigilante duo has emerged.
The first to make it to the department’s radar was Echolalia, who made himself known by spending an entire night in the red light district, nonviolently apprehending anyone who became violent with the workers or started fights. They tied them up, called in tips to the police, and waited with the criminals until they arrived on the scene.
Echolalia’s quirk wasn’t difficult for the police to put together. They have the ability to make anyone repeat anything they say, most likely activated through eye contact or physical touch. It sounds ineffective for fighting crime on paper, but his targets aren’t able to move while under its control. Echolalia’s MO is tying up criminals as they force them to repeat long-winded phrases, often consisting of ridiculous statements and jokes at their own expense to keep themself entertained while waiting for the police to arrive on the scene.
During what would come to be known as the Red Light Incident in official records, Echolalia announced that they were running a promotional event to get their name out. That night, they taped dark purple business cards with their name printed on one side and what seemed to be an encoded series of symbols on the other to the uniforms of every hero and police officer he encountered without them noticing. All attempts to break the code have been unsuccessful; there’s a note in the file to send it to Nedzu if and when the case becomes a higher priority.
While Echolalia doesn’t use their quirk on anyone they aren’t apprehending, they treat the police with a similar level of respect as they do criminals, riling officers up with random comments, questions, insults, guesses, and predictions. The psychological profile is thin, and only consists of guesses for the cause of their childish, attention-seeking attitude. Shouta wonders if Echolalia’s persona is a front— while in sight of any potential witnesses, they kept their distance and stayed in the shadows, preventing anyone from getting a physical description of them.
The second vigilante in question appeared a few weeks after Echolalia. They’ve never spoken to or interacted with any heroes or other law enforcement, nor do they wait with criminals they apprehend. They also don’t tie up the criminals with rope, instead using zip ties and on one memorable occasion, handcuffs, to prevent them from escaping.
They’ve never given any indication of their name, so Musutafu PD has taken to calling them Yurei. This is because Yurei ambushes and knocks out criminals from behind, leaves barely audible calls to the police station drenched in static, and vanishes before the police arrive. There have been no witnesses to their vigilantism, leading the investigative team to suspect this has something to do with their quirk. Contrary to Echolalia’s playful, social approach to vigilantism, Yurei acts like a ghost. A rumor that may or may not really exist.
Appearing at similar times and being unnervingly effective at vigilantism for beginners aren’t the only things Echolalia and Yurei have in common. There’s exactly one tangible connection between the two vigilantes: the calls they make to the police department and their tip lines are drenched in the same static and corruption. The purpose is most likely to modify their voices, as it sounds like many people talking in unison.
Neither vigilante has a confirmed age, gender, or physical description.
Shouta has seen cold cases with more leads. Musufatsu PD usually handles identification and arrest of vigilantes independently of licensed heroes, but this case requires someone with strong combat abilities and the licenses for quirk and support weapon use to approach the vigilantes to gather information. Given that Eraserhead is the only available underground hero with a background in intelligence, sufficient skill set, and experience with cases of vigilantism, his services have been forcibly volunteered by Nedzu in place of his teaching job for the foreseeable future. Technically, he could be assigned to this case for the entire school year, but he doubts it will take him that long to make enough progress that Tsukauchi can take over.