Chapter Text
He felt like shit.
Hitoshi gripped the edge of the chipped bathroom sink as he stared at himself in the mirror. His ever-present dark circles were deeper than ever, a testament to how shitty he felt, and he knew they were off-putting (and just one more reason the kids at his former school shunned him), but he couldn’t sleep. Not until he knew if he had gotten into UA.
He’d wanted this his entire life; he wanted a chance to prove himself, to prove that he was more than just a villainous quirk. Hitoshi didn’t want the people that constantly told him that someone like him would never become a hero, to be proven right.
Today was the day. Hitoshi checked his phone; Sawada, the woman in charge of the home, would be home any moment, and she always brought in the mail. He put his phone away and turned on the tap; the splash of cold water on his face jolted him out of his dark train of thought.
“You’ve already done more than you thought you could,” he told his tired reflection, and forced himself to life his mouth into a small smile. It looked wrong on his face, so he scowled instead. “You’ll prove everyone wrong.”
UA had given him a once-in-a-lifetime chance; when he had been on the bus, thinking that he would fail because his quirk didn’t work on fucking robots, he had looked up at the sudden commotion and the words on the screen and realized that he finally had a chance. The cruel universe had finally cut him a fucking break.
A sharp rap on the door startled him out of his thoughts.
“Shinso, quit hogging the bathroom! Don’t make me tell Sawada-san again!”
Shinso sighed; he should have expected Akiko would be the one to drag him out. The girl was impatient, even on the best of days, and unlike the other kids she had no fear of his quirk. Hitoshi ran his hands through his unruly hair one more time before he pushed away from the sink and unlocked the door.
As soon as he stepped outside Akiko shoved past him without a word and barreled into the bathroom; the door slammed shut behind her and rattled the frame. Hitoshi simply shrugged and walked back across the house to his room, unphased by Akiko’s behavior. She wasn’t targeting him specifically; Akiko was rude to everyone, and Shinso could respect that.
His room was empty when he pushed open the door. Shinso shared his room with two other kids, but both of them had part-time jobs that kept them busy after school hours. He was thankful; it gave them less opportunity to ruin the stuff he didn’t conceal. He grabbed his jacket and backpack and took a steadying breath as a door slammed shut downstairs.
Shinso slipped on his jacket as he focused on the sounds coming from below. When he heard the familiar clatter of pans, he carefully made his way out of his room and down the stairs. Years of practice ensured that he avoided every squeaky floorboard as he descended into the entryway.
The kitchen was near the front door. When he peered in, he saw the usual mountain of mail scattered all over the large dining table, as well as the large insectoid form of the foster home’s manager.
Sawada had her back to him, thankfully; she was washing dishes and chopping vegetables with all six of her chitin coated arms. Her hearing wasn’t the best, so it was easy for Hitoshi to inch his way over to the mail pile. The UA envelope wasn’t difficult to find; the embossed envelope was strangely bulky and twice the size of the other pieces of mail.
Letter in hand, Hitoshi crept back into the entryway and eased the front door open. As long as he made it back by dinner, Sawada wouldn’t notice his absence. He tugged his hood on as he closed the front door behind him and tucked the letter into one of his pockets, away from prying eyes.
There was a park nearby that he used to hide from his bullies as a child; the plants there were overgrown as a result of a villain’s quirk from long ago, and remained untamed despite the city’s efforts. Shinso had found a rotting bench in a small clearing between the twisted trees years ago, and he made his way there now.
When he arrived, the park was empty, and the bench was still there. The wood creaked under his weight, but the bench still held. Shinso slumped back against the weathered wood and pulled the letter out of his lap.
When he opened it, a round object fell out of the envelope and into his lap. There wasn’t any note included, so he picked up the object and turned it over in his hands. It looked like some kind of alien disc.
Shinso tapped the device once. Was there an on switch or something?
“Shinso, Hitoshi.”
He instinctively flung the disc away as a holographic image of a long-haired man suddenly appeared in front of him. The “projector” bounced and rolled away from the bench into the roots of a nearby tree.
Hitoshi was extremely grateful that the whole park was deserted, because scrambling around in the dirt while a hologram announced his UA application status to the world was not how he wanted to learn his results.
After that embarrassing moment, he grabbed the disk and picked it back up, cupping his hands around it so the speaker wasn’t as loud.
“-normally, your results would not be enough to pass,” The stranger’s voice intoned, and Hitoshi refocused on the hologram apprehensively. His mouth was dry and his heart was hammering against his chest as if he’d just ran a mile. “You received 1 villain point-“
Shinso closed his eyes and blinked back tears. He was used to disappointment, but it was humiliating to have some stranger impassively air his failures. He made the right choice by leaving the house; the walls were paper thin and the other fosters were always looking for new ammunition against him.
“-but your cooperation with other examinees was noted by the examination committee,” the stranger continued. “Under the new secondary examination scoring, you received 35 rescue points for displaying ‘heroic values’. It was barely enough, but you’ve achieved a high enough score to be placed in the heroic course.”
He stared at the now frozen hologram for a solid minute before the stranger’s words finally sank in. Tears leaked unbidden from his eyes. Hitoshi quickly wiped them away before he stood up and tucked the disk back into his jacket pocket.
“I did it,” he announced in disbelief, looking up at the city around him. The words felt foreign in his mouth. He needed to head back to the house before Sawada finished cooking, but Hitoshi took a moment to look around the overgrown park, his sanctuary against years of being told he would never be enough.
“I’m going to UA,” he said spitefully. “I’m going to be a hero.”
“What’s this?” Aizawa asked, turning the laptop over in his hands. When he had been called to Nedzu’s office, he’d expected an update on Spectre; it’d been two weeks since the vigilante crashed the entrance exams, and though Nedzu had given his statement to the police, Shouta hadn’t heard anything about Spectre from the principal since.
Nedzu had also become eerily chipper and energetic after the vigilante incident, but Shouta just didn’t have the energy to dig further and find the cause. He’d just have to trust that Nedzu knew what he was doing and let it be.
The vigilante had also been suspiciously quiet since their raid on UA. Criminals still made their way to the precinct, but Spectre hadn’t sent Tsukauchi a text in two weeks. They were playful by nature; why had they changed?
Aizawa frowned, but he pushed aside the thought. He’d have to wait until the vigilante contacted them again before he made any further assumptions. Instead, he looked over the laptop the rodent had handed him.
The computer was matte silver and several times larger than his own. It looked brand new and had UA’s logo neatly printed on it’s back and sides. Several similar smaller laptops were also neatly stacked on Nedzu’s desk.
“Why, I’m so glad you asked!” Nedzu said cheerfully, and grandly gestured to the pile of laptops. “We’ll be implementing some minor changes to the Heroics and General Education courses. Because the school will be undergoing significant security changes after our encounter with Spectre, I decided that this was the perfect time to push my new curriculum proposal to the school board.”
“What does the curriculum have to do with these laptops?” Aizawa asked wearily; he suspected that whatever Nedzu had in mind would involve more work on his part.
“One of the issues brought up by past and current students is the gap between General Education and Heroics,” Nedzu explained, “though we offer chances for advancement, General Education students do not receive a significant amount of specialized quirk training or hero course material as part of their curriculum.”
“That’s certainly true,” Aizawa said bluntly, “The Sports Festival offers General Education students a chance to move up three times in theory, but the first year is the only time the two courses have anything close to equal footing. By the second year the heroics students have had internships, specialized tutoring, and intensive summer training to solidify their advantage.”
He had been one of the few students lucky enough to claw his way up into heroics during the Sports Festival; his quirk did nothing against robots, but it was super effective against first year hero students with only a few weeks of actual combat training.
“Well, to combat the problem, I hope to offer supplemental classes for General Education students interested in advancing to Heroics,” Nedzu stated, and he gestured towards the stack of laptops. “So we will be recording heroic course that will be made available as supplemental study material. The students can also send in the assignments for a small amount of extra credit if they fail to make it into heroics.”
“Who will handle the grading?” Shouta frowned. “Vlad King and I will have our hands full with the heroic courses.”
“Of course! Ectoplasm and Midnight will be handling the extra course load,” Nedzu nodded, “but if there’s an extremely promising student, I will have you or Vlad King look over their work. Ectoplasm has also stepped forward to offer supplemental self-defense and quirk usage classes for any interested students from the non-heroic departments.”
Shouta grunted in acknowledgment and looked down at the modified syllabus. Nedzu had also thoughtfully included a writeup of the new additions to next year’s entrance exam, along with proposals by the support department for alternatives to robots.
“It’s a start,” he admitted begrudgingly. He’d been pushing for changes for years, and though the changes were nowhere near what he’d like, it was still progress.
Nedzu beamed.
“Excellent! I’m glad you approve!”
Shouta grunted in response and tucked the hefty laptop under his arm. He’d drag a desk from one of the spare classrooms and set the computer up in the back of his class sometime before the start of classes.
“Are we done here?” He asked bluntly. The couch in the teacher’s lounge was calling his name.
“I actually have one more question,” Nedzu said, and hopped down from his desk. “What is Spectre like?”
“Why do you ask?” Aizawa asked, “I know you’ve received the report from Detective Tsukauchi.”
“It’s not every day that a vigilante breaks into the top hero school,” Nedzu replied, folding his arms behind his back as he gazed out of his window over the school grounds below. “And with the start of classes approaching, I wanted to hear about Spectre from you. You’ve interacted with them before, and they may decide to come back.”
Aizawa sighed; the suspicion he felt earlier was resurfacing, but he couldn’t find fault with the principal’s reasoning.
“They’re very childish,” he murmured, setting the laptop down on his chair and joining the principal at the window. “But they’re also earnest. They told the detective that they couldn’t be a hero, and that something happened in the past to change that dream. I don’t believe that’s the entire truth; there’s something more that we don’t know. They also have a strong sense of justice.”
“And do you think that they have the potential to be a true hero?” Nedzu asked, looking up at him. “Putting aside their vigilante status, of course.”
Shouta hummed.
“I do.”
Nedzu nodded to himself, and waved a paw in his direction.
“I’d thought as much,” the rodent said, “But I wanted to hear it from you, Eraserhead. You can head off to your nap now.”
Aizawa nodded and took his leave. The kid had potential, but until the police could pin them down and make an arrest, he didn’t think they would agree to go through vigilante rehabilitation. There was a wall between Spectre and the rest of them, and Shouta wasn’t sure how they could crack it.
For now, he’d just have to wait.
Izuku had been unable to stop thinking about Nedzu’s offer.
He hadn’t bothered to stick around and try to listen in on Nedzu’s conversation with Aizawa; there was little point in eavesdropping since the rodent knew he was there. Instead, he went back out into the city and delved into the poorer parts of the industrial district.
There was always work for Spectre in the areas where pro heroes patrolled less often, if at all, and Izuku patrolled the area often.
For the next two weeks, he simply lost himself in his work. The poorest parts of the city were full of crime; many neighborhoods were simply full of regular people who simply couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. Criminals took full advantage of the many abandoned buildings, the lack of hero oversight, the underfunded police department, and all the homeless people who had been pushed out of the wealthier areas of Musutafu.
Izuku wished he could do more; the people here needed more than a single vigilante. Spectre’s presence cut down on the opportunistic criminals who took advantage of the poorer area, but there were others he couldn’t help. Many crimes were simply done out of desperation.
Nedzu had to know what kind of offer he was making; Izuku would have a real education, a hero license, and access to all the hero network resources. Pro heroes were uniquely linked to charities, companies, and the media; if Izuku wanted to help, Nedzu’s offer was a chance of a lifetime, even with his unique situation.
But he was still hesitant. No one had ever stuck their neck out for Izuku when he was alive, and he didn’t expect anyone to do so after he died. Visiting UA had been a wish fulfillment; he legitimately had expected nothing to come out of it. There had to be a catch Izuku couldn’t see yet.
There was also the issue of Dragon, the man who had stolen (and likely killed, but Izuku couldn’t think about that) his mother and killed him; revenge was one of the primary reasons Izuku was able to keep going. Could he be heroic enough to merely put the man who had destroyed his life behind bars?
He mulled over the question as he followed his quirk on autopilot through the streets. Negative emotions pulled at him like fishing line; all Izuku had to do was pick one and follow it to the source. He’d learned to sort through the miasma of negativity that came with areas of dense population and select his targets, so it was a matter of minutes before he found his next mark.
The man he found had killed a neighbor in the past, and planned to strike again in the future; the first victim had been an accident, but Izuku knew that the next victim wouldn’t be.
When he delivered the man to the police precinct a short while later, Izuku remained in the parking lot. There was an officer stationed outside that he hadn’t seen before; Izuku felt slightly guilty as the officer met with the man and escorted him in.
This precinct wasn’t where Tsukauchi was stationed, but it received a lot of Spectre’s criminals due to its location. The new officer looked tired as he walked the man inside.
If you were a hero, then this wouldn’t be necessary. Izuku shook his head, but the lingering thought remained. He turned away and made his way down the street. Cars whizzed right through him, but Izuku was used to it.
He sighed and looked up at the glowing lights of the downtown district in the distance; he hadn’t spoken to anyone since the exam, and it wore on him. Humans, even dead ones, were still social creatures, and Izuku had been alone for a very long time.
I want to help… and I want Dragon dead.
Izuku couldn’t be a hero; he knew that for a fact. But he was tired, and lonely, and he hadn’t found a lead in years. Maybe, just maybe, he could accept this offer. Nedzu had an angle to push, but Izuku could work around it. UA had too much to offer.
The rodent might even be able to help him find Dragon; the hero info network was extensive. He could keep up his vigilante work at night, and attend UA by day; the principal had never specified that he had to stop. He could keep up his calling and pretend that his dreams were coming true.
Izuku felt like he was torn in two as he shoved his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone.
He reached out with his quirk; Nedzu was on the other side of the city and Izuku felt the strain, but he just needed to send a simple message:
Unknown Number
I accept.
After a week of silence from Spectre, Tsukauchi started to get concerned. The vigilante usually sent him a couple of memes and cheeky tip offs every day, but after they crashed the UA entrance exam the texts suddenly stopped, but criminals poured in each day with more confessionals.
When two weeks passed, Tsukauchi was tempted to send a message. He wouldn’t reach out, of course, but he was tempted. The silence was a break in the vigilante’s pattern; what had happened at UA to cause it?
As far as the reports went, Spectre had appeared and interfered in the practical exam for the benefit of the students. They’d made a fool of the teaching staff, but that was Spectre’s talent. Principal Nedzu reported that nothing else in the school had been tampered with, but Tsukauchi knew he was missing something.
He was relieved when Sansa stopped by his office with the news that Clue and Shadowdancer had returned from their mission; he’d been working on his other cases, but the vigilante’s silence nagged at him. The two underground heroes were a week late due to complications, but he could finally move forward with the Hammerhead interrogation.
“Is everything ready?” Tsukauchi asked Sansa, flipping through the small folder of paperwork. Everything had to be signed, recorded, and dated when it came to quirk use in relation to criminal cases. Hammerhead had already signed all the necessary consent forms needed; the villain really wanted Spectre taken down to cooperate with the heroes like he was.
“They’re waiting for you outside the interrogation room,” Sansa reported. “Hammerhead is already set up inside.”
It was strange to see Clue and Shadowdancer casually sitting on one of the couches in the main office. Both heroes favored stealth and dressed accordingly; the large amount of lighting in the precinct made their clothing look washed out, and both of them still wore their masks.
There was a third person on the couch who sat off to the side: Oboe Yui, a police specialist who was on temporary loan from the central district. Chief Tsuragamae had permitted her to visit since Oboe was a police counterpart to Clue; Oboe could record and transmit her own memories, which allowed the police to retain hard copies of literal witness records when used in conjunction with Clue’s quirk.
Tsukauchi was privately grateful that Hammerhead was a high-profile witness to the Spectre case; Oboe was often locked up in underground cases (usually in tandem with Clue), and Tsukauchi’s past requests for her had been denied since Spectre was relatively low priority in terms of serious criminal cases. The arrest of a long-time thorn in the police’s side likely tipped the scales in Tsukauchi’s favor when he had put in his newest request.
“I hope you had a successful mission,” he said as he approached, dipping his head in a small bow. “Thank you for your assistance in this investigation. Oboe-san, thank you for your time as well.”
Shadowdancer inclined their head, and their hands blurred as they signed a quick series of sentences to their partner. Clue responded in kind, and Shadowdancer looked back up.
“Clue is ready whenever you are, detective,” they said, and stood up. “We are happy to help in this matter, Tsukauchi-san.”
Oboe stood up and offered her hand with a small smile. She was a petite woman with brilliant blue hair. When Tsukauchi came closer, he could see little blue lines flowing under her skin like circuitry.
“I hear Spectre has been giving the whole department a collective headache,” she said amusedly as they shook hands. Tsukauchi nodded, smiling.
“Oh, you have no idea,” he said, and she laughed softly. “Shall we?”
It was a short walk to the interrogation room. Tsukauchi nodded to the officer standing outside as the man opened the door. Hitokuchi Jun watched them all warily as they shuffled in, but said nothing. Tsukauchi had already met the villain before and explained the protocol for Clue’s quirk, so no explanation was necessary.
There were two other chairs set up on the other side of the table, as well as a small laptop placed on a stand. Clue took their position in the chair directly across from the villain, and Oboe sat at her side.
“Hitokuchi, are you ready?” Oboe asked without preamble as she turned on the laptop. The shark-headed villain merely rolled his eyes.
“We’re ready to start,” she continued, undeterred. “Last chance to back out.”
“Let’s get this over with,” the villain groused, and leaned forward across the table. “I signed those papers because I want that fucking ghost caught.”
Tsukauchi was of a similar opinion, but he remained silent. Here’s hoping this gives us something to work with . He moved off to the side to stand with Shadowdancer near the computer monitor; Oboe could stream the memories in real time.
Clue reached out and took the villain’s head into their hands. Yui placed her hand on the hero’s back, and her blue hair started to glow softly. Clue leaned forward until their mask touched Jun’s forehead, and then activated their quirk.
—
The sun was setting when Hitokuchi Jun stepped out of the small, back alley bar. The shark-headed man drew up the hood of his jacket as he made his way further down the alley and out into a small side street.
He walked for ten minutes before he stopped and checked the address on the small slip of paper the bartender had passed him; he didn’t recognize the specific address, but he knew it was on the far side of town. Jun’s fence had an annoying tendency to set up meetings in inconvenient locations; he’d have to have a talk with the man about that habit.
He sighed and plugged the address into his burner phone; it was an hour walk since his face was still too recognizable to risk taking the train, even if Jun was in the part of town where most heroes avoided patrolling.
As he made his way down the street, Jun thought he saw a shadow out of the corner of his eye. It was there just for a moment, and when he turned to look, nothing was there, but he swore he caught a glimpse of a dark figure a few feet behind him.
The villain paused, and his hand went to the gun concealed in his jacket. It was a risk to even have a gun on him, but a lot of people, even in the age of quirks, were still vulnerable to bullets. He waited for a moment and searched the street, but nothing happened. The shadow did not reappear. He was alone.
Jun took his hand out of his jacket, but he couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was watching him as he made his way through the maze of deserted side streets and rows of abandoned buildings. His neck itched constantly, and his skin was clammy despite the layers he wore.
Was someone trying to scare him? If they were, it was working; as the sun dipped below the horizon and the shadows grew longer and longer, the sense that something was wrong was growing stronger. Jun stuck to the pools of light produced by the street lamps, but he still felt exposed; if he was being hunted, he was right out in the open.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Jun frowned; no one should have his number. He had picked up this phone right after he ditched his previous one during his last heist. Who could be calling? When he opened the message, there was already a saved contact.
Seiji Keiko
Hello again, Jun.
Jun almost dropped the phone. That name belonged to someone who was long dead and buried; who the fuck did this person think they were?
Someone had gone digging into his past. Keiko had been dead for five years; she was technically considered a cold case since the police had never found her body. Jun hadn’t even been a recognized criminal at that point in his life either. How the fuck did someone get that info?
He glanced around again, but the street was deserted. No cars drove by, and the usual homeless population was absent. Jun couldn’t even hear the usual sounds of the city in the distance. Something was definitely fucking wrong; was this the work of some quirk? The phone buzzed again in his hands.
Seiji Keiko
Did you think all your problems would vanish just because you killed me? You’ve evaded justice for so long, you’ve gotten cocky.
The wind suddenly whipped up, scattering stray bits of trash and tugging at the ends of his jacket. Dread settled on him like a physical weight.
“I know what you’ve been hiding.”
The words were spoken softly, and if the rest of the street hadn’t been dead silent, they wouldn’t have been discernible above the wind. Something cold and damp stroked the back of Jun’s neck, but when he whirled around, no one was there.
“Who’s there?” he snarled, drawing the gun and pointing it around the empty street. “Stop fucking around!”
No answer. The wind kicked up puffs of dust and bits of trash on the street, and the sounds of the city returned in a rush. A dog howled in the distance. His phone rang, and Jun stowed the gun back in his jacket with a growl as he jabbed the answer button.
“What the fuck do you want?” Jun shouted as soon as the call connected, and stomped the ground with one foot. His quirk activated, and the cement under his foot softened. He’d dive under the ground at the first sign of trouble.
There was no response on the other side of the phone except for a short buzz of static. He checked the screen to make sure the call had actually connected; it had, but there was no caller listed. Besides the static, he thought he could hear the faint sound of someone breathing.
A flash of movement caught his attention; Jun glimpsed a pale face with a thick curtain of black hair vanish into an alley ahead of him. No. No fucking way. It couldn’t be her; he’d only gotten a glimpse, and there were plenty of women with the same features as Keiko. It had to be an imposter, someone who was there specifically to unnerve him.
His phone suddenly squealed with a burst of loud, painful static, and then the call ended. Jun stared at his phone, his heart racing. Too much was going on for him to clearly process everything at once. Another text popped up.
Seiji Keiko
The others are restless, you know. Stop this and submit to justice, Jun. Or they’ll wake up.
He was being hunted. No, scratch that, Jun wasn’t being hunted. ‘Hunted’ implied that whoever was after him hadn’t caught him yet. ‘Fucked with’ was the term he was looking for.
Still, there was no way he was going to approach that alley. That was bait. Jun had never heard of anyone, hero or villain, with the know-how and drive to dig up so much about him. Hammerhead was a higher tier villain, but why would someone go to all this effort just to scare him?
Whoever it was, their quirk was nothing to mess with. If Jun could just ditch them, he still had time to meet up with his fence and pawn off the stolen goods before he fled the city. He could keep low and coast off his ill-gotten gains for a year easily.
Decision made, Jun stomped down, and the ground softened by his quirk rippled violently. Like a diver, he threw himself forward into the concrete; the material parted around him without touching his skin, and he soon found himself in a little bubble under the street.
It was completely dark under the street, but Jun had done this hundreds of times. His quirk let him maintain an awareness of the surface; when he looked up, it was like he was looking up through clear glass. He could see the bottoms of buildings and the undersides of cars laid out above him, but anyone walking on the street couldn’t see him. Jun grinned. Here in his element, he couldn’t be touched.
The earth around him parted as he walked up to the suspicious alley. Unsurprisingly, there was no one there when he looked up into it; they must have fled as soon as Jun used his quirk. He pulled out his phone to see if the mysterious person had called him again, but there were no new calls or texts.
Jun kept watch for another few minutes, but whoever had been waiting there was gone. After a few cars drove by on the street above and a few blue collar workers stumbled drunkenly past the alley he knew he was in the clear. Stage one of his plan was complete.
Still, he stayed underground the rest of the way to the meeting area. There was no need to tempt fate, even if he was exhausted when he finally emerged onto the cracked and overgrown pavement outside the hotel.
As suspected, the hotel his fence had picked looked like shit from the outside. The hotel’s paint had long since flaked away from the walls and most of the facade was covered in large swaths of offensive graffiti. The windows on the bottom floor were all shattered, and the glass was scattered all across the parking lot.
When Jun forced open the door, he saw that the lobby wasn’t in a much better state; he could tell from the light of the street lamps outside that the place was frequently visited by squatters, judging by the amount of trash and discarded sleeping bags scattered everywhere. There were no such people now; Jun’s fence must have scared them off.
There was no electricity in this dump; the hallways leading beyond the lobby were completely dark. Jun fumbled with his phone one-handed for a few seconds before he got the light turned on and the beam pointed ahead of him. He checked the slip of paper with the meeting place again.
His fence was supposed to be in the room near the back of the first floor, but Jun grew apprehensive as he made his way further into the abandoned building. The whole place stank of mold, and the rotting carpet squelched unpleasantly under his sneakers.
The hallways weren’t much better than the lobby; each room’s door was either broken or missing, and there was more offensive graffiti and garbage scattered everywhere. Jun had to carefully pick his way through overflowing trash bags and shattered boards, though someone had clearly come before him and shifted the worst of the debris.
He barely made it more than fifty feet down the hallway before the light from his phone spluttered and died. Jun cursed and tapped the screen, but the device was dead. The fucking thing had full battery the last time he checked!
Jun shoved the phone back into his jacket and stumbled down the hallway, swearing profusely as he crashed into the garbage and stinking fluid splashed across his pants and shoes. He couldn’t see shit in here; desperate, he reached out, touched the nearby wall with his hand, and activated his quirk.
The hotel walls and floor that he could sense were built from cheap plaster and wood; he’d have to make it out to the street if he needed to escape with his quirk, but the awareness it gave him would let him avoid the worst of the garbage piles.
Jun kept his hand on the wall and his quirk activated as he skirted his way past the debris and further down the hallway. Finally, he reached the first fork in the hallway and took a right. As expected, the room at the end of the next hall had light; Jun could see a soft white glow peek out from the crack under the door.
As soon as he reached the door, Jun pounded on the wood with one large fist.
“Hey!” he growled. “Open up! It’s me.”
There was no answer. Jun knocked again. No answer.
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Jun hissed angrily, slamming his fist against the door. “Gambler, open up!”
He was greeted only by silence. Something was wrong. A few well-placed kicks shattered the soft wood around the hinges and the whole door caved in under Jun’s assault. He stumbled into the room and inhaled sharply.
Gambler wasn’t a small man by any means. The fence always dressed in cheap, unassuming clothes in order to blend in with the usual salarymen, but he had at least six more inches height over the average Japanese citizen. His corpse looked smaller than Jun remembered; the man was dwarfed by the large pool of blood surrounding him.
The whole room was a mess. There had been a table at some point, but it had been tossed against the far wall and currently lay in pieces. Two chairs had met a similar fate. A battery powered lantern, the source of the light, was the only object intact, though it was dented and covered in droplets of blood.
Gambler had obviously been dead for quite some time; the blood was tacky underfoot as Jun edged around the pool to check the body. It wasn’t hard to tell how the man died; half of his throat had been torn out with significant force. The look of absolute terror on the Gambler’s face told Jun that the man hadn’t been taken by surprise.
Something scraped against the wall in the hallway behind him. Jun tensed up. A quick glance down the hallway told him nothing; all he could make out by the light of the lantern were ominous silhouettes cast by the piles of debris.
Jun wasn’t a fucking idiot; he wasn’t sure how the person pretending to be Keiko knew he was coming here, but they had set him up and he needed to leave. They’d waited until he was in a location where his quirk was almost useless and killed Gambler ahead of the meeting before the fence could warn him; whoever they were, they had planned their ambush well.
His heart pounded against his chest as Jun dashed towards the lantern. Blood splashed under his shoes and soaked into his pants, but he paid it no mind. He switched the lantern off as soon as he could and plunged the hotel back into darkness.
Jun kept quiet as he crept back out into the hallway and crouched behind one of the larger piles of garbage. The scraping sound drew closer, Jun swore he could hear faint footsteps. Without the lantern, the hotel was pitch black once more; with luck, his attacker would be just as blind as he was.
Jun felt the area around him carefully; he knew that the hallway looped back around to the lobby. If he could get out to the parking lot, he could escape. With that plan in mind, Jun started to crawl backwards. In front of him, the footprints picked up speed, and he caught a glimpse of movement mere feet from him as whoever it was darted into the room with Gambler.
This was his chance! Jun stood up and hugged the wall as he moved backwards. There was a crash from inside the room; it sounded like something was tossing more furniture. His pace was greatly hampered by the garbage behind him, but he nearly reached the next hallway corner before the assailant’s footsteps started up again.
Jun quickly ducked into one of the broken rooms; the door had been taken off its hinges and propped up against a wall, so he ducked under it and yanked the pistol out of his jacket. He held his breath, but he swore the sound of his pulse would give him away.
As the perpetrator crashed past his hiding place, Jun exhaled a silent sigh of relief and took his finger off the trigger. His whole body was covered in a cold sweat.
“You think you can hide from me? Cute.”
A pale hand shot into view. Jun fell backwards as the hand seized the door above him and threw it aside. Despite the total darkness, he could still make out the pale face of the woman looming above him. Keiko’s unmistakable face grinned back at him; her dead eyes lit up with malevolent glee.
Despite his trembling hands, Jun quickly raised his gun and fired two shots. The noise from the gunshots was deafening. It was impossible to miss Keiko’s impersonator at such a close range, and the body stumbled backwards a few steps before it slumped to the ground.
Jun sat there, panting, as the ringing in his ears slowly faded. Blood trickled from the woman’s forehead and neck and dripped onto the floor.
Was it over?
His hands were shaking too much. The gun dropped from his hands as Jun slumped back against the wall. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath, even though he was no stranger to murder. He stood up, leaning against the wall when his legs couldn’t support his weight. His heart hadn’t gotten the memo either; it drummed against his rib cage even as the adrenaline started to wear off.
Something wet landed on his face. Huh? He brought his hand up and swiped at the drop of liquid. It was hot, and when he examined it closer he recognized that familiar copper smell. But, he thought deliriously, where did the blood come from?
Slowly, he looked up.
There, poised on the ceiling on all fours like a monstrous spider, was Seiji Keiko. Her neck was bent at an unnatural angle, and her black hair hung around her face in a thick curtain. She was dressed in white robes, but they were steadily turning crimson from the blood seeping from the bullet holes in her face and neck.
“A stubborn one, eh?”
Jun glanced downward. Seiji’s body was still there, slowly bleeding out onto the carpet. When he looked back up, Seiji smirked and her head snapped back into place. She uncurled from the ceiling, reaching out for him. Jun could do nothing but stare, paralyzed.
“It’d have been easier if you just listened to me earlier.”
The apparition seized him by the jaw.
“Come on, turn yourself in! If you don’t,” she cooed, stroking a clammy hand down his cheek. “I’ll have to come back with friends- Sorry- former friends, after what you did to them.”
Seiji tossed him against the wall. The cheap plaster gave way behind him, and Jun screamed as he went through the wall and into the hallway. The next wall broke his momentum, and Jun swore he could feel his ribs snap under the pressure. The ghost crouched by his prone form; Jun made no effort to stand back up.
His legs were numb and shaking, and his mouth wouldn’t form words. This couldn’t be happening. Right? This couldn’t be happening.
“That’s a shame,” she stated when he didn’t answer or move, and at her side another pale figure stepped into his view.
It was Hirogane Aoi, one of his first lays, and Jun could still see the knife that he’d stuck in her wedged between her ribs.
“Surprised to see me?” she whispered, her voice hoarse. An ugly red handprint marred her throat and stood out against the white of her robes. “You thought you’d gotten away with it when you fucking framed my disappearence as suicide. You always took too much pleasure in finishing the job yourself.”
“You can’t hide from the darkness of your past,” Seiji chimed in before she laughed mockingly. “I’ll dredge up every little bit of cruelty within you.”
She came uncomfortably close, close enough that Jun could smell the fetid rot surrounding her and feel the chill of her skin. He tried to scramble backwards, but he could only groan as every rib in his body protested. Seiji’s eyes gleamed with a sick fervor, and she took great pleasure in bringing her chapped lips as close to his face as possible.
“By the time I’m done with you,” she breathed, “prison will be a blessing; the police will be a mercy you don’t deserve. When the heroes come, they won’t even find your bones.”
Gambler and his torn throat stepped up behind her and laid a hand on Keiko’s shoulder. One by one more and more of his victims appeared, clustering around him until he could barely breathe.
“S-stop!” Jun shouted, managing to find his voice again, and lashed out with his fist. His arm simply passed through them like they were made of smoke, but when Keiko seized his arm her grip was solid. “S-stay away! I’ll confess! Please!”
The apparitions said nothing, but the grip on his arm tightened. Jun barely had time for one more scream before he was yanked forward into the darkness.
—
Clue removed their hands from Jun’s face, and the lingering memory faded to black on his monitor. Oboe looked strained as she stood up and took her hands off of the computer; she was covered in a light sheen of sweat.
“Excuse me,” she said, giving a terse bow as she held her head in trembling hands.
Shadowdancer stood aside as the specialist pushed past them and left the room. Hammerhead and Clue didn’t look much better; the hero’s quirk took a lot of energy, and they had relived an intensely emotional moment. In a way, Clue had been under the effects of Spectre’s quirk themselves.
Despite the mask, Naomasa could tell that Shadowdancer was shaken. He was shaken as well. Spectre’s quirk… it was something else, something more than a simple hallucination quirk. It was hard for Naomasa to contrast the upbeat and cheerful texts with the nightmare the vigilante had put Hammerhead through.
“Well,” he said, breaking the terse silence, “that was definitely concerning.”
He needed to call Eraserhead.