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"Breaking News: All Might, Japan's former #1 Hero, also known as the 'Symbol of Peace' was found dead in Miami, Florida. The cause of death, as well as the reason for his presence here in America is under ongoing investigation. The police declined to give comment, save for the fact that they will be cooperating with Japanese authorities to discover the truth behind this incident–”
–
Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi stared blankly at the crime scene in front of him. It was flooded with police officers from both America and Japan, the FBI, and even the Public Security Intelligence Agency. Forensics was going over every inch of the scene with a fine-toothed comb, regular officers relegated to passing along messages or working to keep the perimeter of the scene secure.
A job that was taking an ever increasing amount of manpower. The area cordoned off was several times larger than what was technically under direct investigation. Even still Tsukauchi could faintly hear the buzzing of reports from all corners of the world, paparazzi, and civilians; all clamoring for a glimpse of the corpse. Well jokes on them the body had already been carted off for autopsy. There was a good chance his best friend was already on the table being cut open–
Oh god, he was going to throw up.
“Sir?”
The detective blinked the black spots out of his eyes at the sound of an unfamiliar voice addressing him in Japanese. He turned his head left and right before a small cough directed him to tilt his gaze downwards. A petite young (at least, she looked young) woman gazed back at him curiously with golden eyes. She wore a black suit and black gloves, her short lilac hair swept up in a small but neat ponytail. She looked official enough, and no one on the scene seemed to be paying her much mind but he didn’t recognize her from the officials that had come with him from Japan. Not to mention…she barely seemed old enough to be out of the academy, why wasn’t she in a uniform?
“Pardon me? Detective Tsuskauchi?”
Ah he should probably respond, he was being rude.
“Yes, that’s me” He responded slowly, sticking to Japanese for now “And you are?”
“Senior Special Agent Knight Sage of the FBI.” She introduced with a polite bow “As you are serving as the lead investigator for the Japanese government in this case, I have been assigned to assist you both in terms of interpretation and investigation. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir.”
Tsukauchi gave a small bow of his own “I see. I look forward to working with you Special Agent Sage.”
She blinked before offering him a sheepish grin. “Ah my apologies, I adjusted for Japanese customs when introducing myself. Sage is my given name, sir.”
“Special Agent Knight then, apologies.”
“It's fine.” Knight waved off the apology. “Where would you like to begin your investigation, Detective Tsukauchi?”
Naomasa took a deep steadying breath. He was here with the trust of his government to find out what had happened to their Symbol of Peace. It would be a disservice both the man and the hero his friend had been to give this investigation anything less than his best. He needed to shove his personal feelings aside and focus .
“Where’s the body?”
Agent Knight glanced at her watch “Forensics took the body away approximately 13 minutes ago, so it should still be en route to the coroner’s office.”
“Can you give me a run down of the timeline so far?”
“Yes sir. At approximately 8:00 AM Eastern Standard Time this morning a local resident was going on a jog and came across the victim’s body collapsed off the path. Believing the victim to be unconscious, the man rushed to his aid, and upon discovering the victim was not breathing he called emergency services. An ambulance and a local police officer arrived on the scene at 8:20 AM, followed shortly by local hero Gator-Aid. The EMTs attempted resuscitation but it was unsuccessful. Officer McArthur was calling in to report a dead body being discovered at 8:45 AM when Gator-Aid pointed out the resemblance to All Might. A search of the victim’s persons revealed a Japanese ID, a Japanese passport, and notably a Japanese heroes license identifying the victim as former pro hero All Might. At that point Gator-Aid contacted the city’s Hero’s Association, and the local police contacted the FBI. The scene was subsequently locked down at 9:00 AM and the higher ups made contact with the Japanese government to inform them of the situation. As I understand it, your government rounded up a task force of officers and PubSec agents and teleported all of you here via some sort of warp quirk? Though the body had been moved by both the witness and the EMTs in their attempts to resuscitate, it was deemed necessary to photograph it approximately how it was found at the scene, which is why it has only recently been put in transit to the coroner.”
An efficient summary if he’d ever heard one. Tsukauchi checked his own watch, and did the mental calculation to EST. It was currently 10:55 AM, a little under 3 hours since the body had been found. Once a foreign pro hero had been identified, the American authorities had worked quickly to get everything moving, and the Japanese government had gone into overdrive when they’d been sent a photo of the victim’s hero's license. In the grand scheme of things, 3 hours was a small window of time, and yet–
“The news is already reporting on the victim, do we have any idea how his identity got leaked?”
Knight scowled “Nothing concrete yet. The witness is in police custody still, and there are no surveillance devices around the scene that could have been used. The higher ups have enforced a strict gag order on the investigation. And yet the press showed up almost as soon as the perimeter was established, asking if it was true that All Might had been found dead. The victim’s Hero Agency told us we should confirm at least that, that it would be preferable to rumors spreading if we denied it but…”
“You suspect it was someone who saw the body before the jogger that told them. Either someone who didn’t come forward, or the person responsible” Tsukauchi surmised
“We’re investigating it as a possibility.” the Agent sighed “Its proving difficult already though. The journalists and reporters initially on the scene have refused to disclose their source, and they are well within their legal right to do so.”
Tsukuachi scrubbed a hand down his face, it was too early into the investigation already be this tired. “If those are the laws then there’s not much we can do, let’s leave that to whoever is already working with the press. I know that we’re still waiting on autopsy results but do we have any info on the state of the body when it was discovered?”
“I have the reports from Officer McArthur and Gator-Aid, as well as the initial statement given by the witness.” Knight pulled a small notebook out of her pocket, and flipped through it “All three gave very similar descriptions of the body. There was no blood on the victim nor at the scene, and no overt cause of death. The only injury that could be observed at the time of discovery was a bruise on the victim’s sternum, approximately 3 inches–er, that is, 7 centimeters in diameter. A cursory exam performed by the EMTs revealed no unusual pupil dilation or skin discoloration that would suggest poisoning or asphyxiation, though we can’t say anything for sure until we hear back from the coroner.”
With that info in mind, Tsukauchi began investigating the scene, speaking to forensics officers on the scene. He spent about 20 minutes on that, but he wasn’t coming up with much in the way of leads, or any evidence at all. No footprints, no tread marks, no blood, for all intents and purposes it seemed that the body had just appeared where it had been found. It may be better to let forensics keep digging here and to try to start with the body.
“I know the autopsy probably hasn’t started yet but do you think they’ve bagged the evidence on the victim’s persons yet?” Naomasa asked, making his way back over to his erstwhile assistant.
“It’s possible, I suppose it depends on how much traffic delayed their–” Knight stopped suddenly, hand jumping to her pocket “Ah, sorry. My phone’s vibrating, would it be alright if I..?”
“Of course.” Naomasa nodded, “It probably has to do with the investigation anyway.”
“Thank you.” She pulled her phone out and turned to the side, switching to English as she answered it. “Senior Special Agent Knight here. Hm? Slow down, what sort of problem?... What? ”
Tsukauichi watched in muted alarm as every ounce of color drained out of Knight’s face. “Agent?” he inquired, urgently.
She held up her hand, asking for silence. The detective could hear voices spilling out from the phone speaker, he couldn’t make out any of what was being said but it sounded chaotic on the other end. Knight went to bite her thumbnail before seeming to remember she was wearing gloves. She clenched that hand into a fist a few times before dropping it back to her side “I…see. You’ve already notified HQ then? Good. Keep us updated. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Good bye.” Hanging up the phone, she pressed a hand to her mouth, probably to muffle what Tsukauchi recognised from his years of friendship with Toshinori as a torrent of English curse words spilling from her lips.
“What’s happened?” the Detective asked, trying to remain calm.
“That was the coroner’s office.” Knight began tensely, switching back to Japanese.
“Did they discover something unusual about the victim’s body?” What could it have been that would have prompted such an intense reaction?
“The opposite actually. They called to let me know that the body never made it. It's gone missing.”
“...Missing.” Tsukauchi repeated back uncomprehendingly. How the fuck –
“According to the EMTs who were bringing it in, there was nothing unusual about the drive there, and when they went to unload the body, the door to the back was still firmly shut. Officers are being dispatched to the coroner’s office as we speak.” She shook her head, frustrated. “If this is the same person that tipped off the press, I have no idea what their endgame is here–Sir?”
Yikes, he wondered what kind of expression he was making for her to seem so concerned all of a sudden. He forced himself to relax a bit. “Let’s head over there then. It may provide us with a new lead.”
“...Understood.”
–
It was a very stupid thing to be focusing on, but Tsukauchi couldn’t help feeling mildly ridiculous being driven around by a girl who looked like she should still be in the police academy. It was a feeling that intensified when the officer on the scene did a double take as their car pulled up.
“Senior Special Agent Knight, Detective Tsukauchi.” The officer approached. “Let me show you where the ambulance is being kept.”
A ringtone pierced the silence of the coroner's office. It took a moment for Naomaso to register that it was his own.
“Sorry, one moment.” He flipped open his phone “Detective Tsukauchi here, what is–”
“Detective Tsukauchi is what they’re reporting true?! All Might is–?!”
Naomasa pulled the phone from his ear, glancing at the name displayed in surprise “Skycrawler, is that you?”
Sage’s head whipped in his direction at the sound of the Hero’s name. Tsukauchi winced slightly. Oops, he was usually better about keeping it on the down low when he was talking to heroes. He gave a wave of the hand and walked a few feet away,hoping to convey that it wasn’t a call related to the case (not exactly anyway). His partner seemed to catch his meaning thankfully, nodding and heading a ways away to discuss something with the officer.
“Yes! I’ve just heard the news! I called Makoto and she told me you had come to America to investigate.”
“That’s supposed to be confidential information.” the older man muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. In a more normal speaking volume he continued “It’s true. He…the victim was positively identified by his hero agency a few hours ago.”
There was a thump on the other end of the line, Tsukacuchi assumed it was the hero collapsing into a chair “...Oh. I-I, what can I do to help Detective, should I come down?! I can be there in less than an hour, I just need to tell Celeb I’m leaving–!”
“That won't be necessary.” Naomosa interrupted. Realizing that might have come across harshly, he made an effort to soften his tone “I know you want to help Koichi and I appreciate it, I really do, but for now it’s best that you stay up in New York. This place is absolutely flooded with reporters, and after your’s and All Might’s joke rivalry I’m sure they’d pounce on you the second you landed. Hell, I bet they’ll be forming a crowd outside Captain Celebrity’s office any minute now. We’ve got plenty of hands on deck here, we’ve got it covered.”
“I understand.” Koichi sighed “I’ll stay up here. Is there anything I can help with from NEw York though? Even with all those officers, you guys must be up to your ears in things to look into.”
Still sticking his nose where it didn’t belong and as stubborn as ever, it was nice to know some things never really changed. Tsukauchi rubbed his chin thoughtfully “Actually there is something I could use your help with. We’ve got officers working this line of inquiry already but as pro heroes you and Captain Celebrity could do wonders for our progress.”
“What is it?”
“We still aren’t sure how All Might got into the country. At the very least we know it wasn’t through official channels, we don't see his passport flagging out of Japan or into America. And its not like him to suddenly drop everything and jump continents. He has a lot of friends and acquaintances here in America though, so we’re looking to see if anyone heard anything from him, any indication of why he might have made a sudden trip.”
The scratch of pen on paper made its way through the phone's speaker “Can do! I’ll let Celeb know! And I’ll talk to Makoto too, I’ll bet anything she can slap together a list of who we need to talk to and at what priority in no time!”
Naomosa opened his mouth to protest, but remembering that his sister technically worked as a part of Captain Celebrity’s agency he didn’t really have much of an argument. “Thank you Koichi, this is a huge help. Call me if you find anything alright? Since you guys are now part of the investigation, I’ll let you know if anything comes up on my end as well.”
“Yes sir!” Koichi agreed firmly “...And just remember, we’re all in this together, you don't have to shoulder everything alone.”
The detective gave a tired smile “...I’ll keep that in mind. Goodbye Skycrawler”
“Talk to you later, Detective.”
Agent Knight raised an eyebrow when he made his way over to the ambulance where she was waiting. “Skycrawler was offering his and Captain Celebrity’s assistance in contacting heroes here in America who might have heard from All Might.”
“Ah, yeah that would be a huge help. I’ll let the higher ups know.” She pulled out her phone, typing out a message rapidly. “I took a look while you were on the phone, but I can’t see anything unusual about the vehicle, no signs of forced entry or anything.”
Tsukauchi accepted a pair of gloves from a nearby forensics officer “I’ll see if I can't find anything new.”
As it happened, he could not. There were no signs of the doors being forced open, the bag that had once held the body was still zipped shut (or likely re-zipped) with no signs of tearing. It was as if the body had simply vanished into thin air. This case just kept getting worse by the minute.
The pair of investigators jumped between crime scenes and the precinct, reviewing the evidence, interviewing the witnesses, and discussing the case with the other officers but in the end they turned up no new leads, and they had to disband for the night.
Agent Knight dropped Tsukauchi off at the hotel the government was putting him up at “Unless something pops up tonight, I’ll come pick you up at 7 AM tomorrow, if that’s alright with you?”
He stifled a yawn “Perfect, thank you Knight. I’ll see you in the morning”
“Right…try to get some sleep sir, I get the feeling we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
The detective waved her off, and made his way up to his room. The bed looked inviting, but he ignored it, instead posting up at the small desk the room provided. He spread his notes out in front of him trying to drink in all the facts. He was missing something, he had to be. He’d go to bed once he’d figured out what it was.
Naomasa’s reverie was broken by his phone ringing. “Tsukauchi here.”
“Good morning detective, I’m here to pick you up.”
Blinking, Tsukauchi turned his head towards the window, where sunlight trickled in. Huh, that wasn’t great, he must’ve stayed up all night. “Sorry Agent Knight, you uh, caught me right as I was waking up. Would it be alright if I grabbed a quick shower first?”
“Oh! Oh sure, sorry to wake you up!” when she apologized so sincerely it made him feel kinda bad about lying like this “I’ll just go grab you something for breakfast, just give a call when you’re ready.”
Naomasa forced himself to stretch, groaning at the stiffness in his shoulders. Stumbling to the suitcase that had been sent off to the hotel ahead of him, he grabbed a change of clothes and made his way to the bathroom. Hopefully the rest of his day went better than this…
–
Stepping into the police station, Tsukauchi could already hear a commotion.
“What now? ” he groused
“Looks like a group of…teenagers?” Knight said, squinting in the direction of the noise.
It was indeed a group of teenagers, and they seemed…familiar somehow. One of the teens noticed them and broke off from the group making his way over to the detective. Tsukauchi found himself face to face with a scar bearing boy he knew quite well.
“Todoroki Shouto and.. That’s the rest of Class 1-A isn;t it, what are you doing here?!”
“Aizawa-sensei is on vacation at the moment, All Might was left in charge of our class. When he didn’t show up that morning, we got worried. We started checking the news and we noticed a bunch of American articles blowing up about him being found dead. Yaoyorozu managed to get us all on a private flight over here.”
Tsukuachi felt incredibly tired all of a sudden “Does…does anyone know you’re all here?”
The boy blinked slowly “I don’t think so, but I can’t say for sure.”
A hand on his back caught the detective’s attention and he glanced over at Agent Knight who was giving him a sympathetic look “I’ll have one of our contacts reach out to UA.”
“Thank you.” He sighed out, before turning back to the hero in training. “I understand you’re all upset, but it was irresponsible of you to fly to another country without letting anyone know ahead of time.”
“We weren’t going to sit and do nothing when our teacher has been murdered.” Todoroki countered angrily
‘Whether or not this was murder is still under investigation. Look, I can’t force you kids to go back to Japan but there isn’t anything here for you to do . What little interference ability your provisional licenses granted you back home doesn't hold here. So just stay out of the way of the investigation, please.”
He stared coldly at Tsukauchi for a long time, before giving a stiff nod. “I’ll pass your message along to the others.” and with that, he trudged off back to his classmates’ sides.
Tsukauchi put a hand on Knight’s shoulder and started speed walking them towards the conference room that was serving as their base of operations “Come on, we’d better make ourselves scarce. Those kids are as stubborn as their teacher, if they start pestering us with questions, we’ll be here for hours.”
“Oh, um, yes. Understood sir.” Despite her words, the agent still craned her neck back trying to get a good look at the students clogging up the hallway.
–
“Agent Knight!”
Tsukauchi looked up from the sandwich Knight had shoved into his hands when noon rolled around. An officer had entered the conference room and ran over to the agent, speaking in quick English. Knight looked a little surprised at whatever message was being delivered but thanked the officer, sending him on his way. Agent Knight hopped out of her chair, shoving her own sandwich in her mouth so her hands were free to throw back on the suit jacket she’d abandoned an hour ago.
“What’s the news?”
“Mf-” She quickly took the food from her mouth and swallowed “Sorry. We’ve got an update from the team applying pressure to the media. Looks like one of the outlets was willing to give us the name of their source.”
“Really?” Now that was surprising “Won't that hurt their credibility? Confidentiality and all that.”
Knight shrugged, searching the table for where she left her keys. “Well, part of the deal was that we wouldn’t go around publicly announcing who leaked the info to us. And they were quite insistent that their source broke their deal first, it was supposed to be an exclusive tip it seems.”
“In that case,” Tsukauchi jingled her keys “Let’s get going.”
The one who had provided the media the tip about All Might’s body was one Isaac Jones, age 35, a local resident. He lived not too far from the initial crime scene.
“Knight, can you take point on interrogation? Given the language barrier, it’d be best to have you asking the questions.”
“Can do.”
The duo pulled up to an unremarkable house in the neighborhood bordering the park. Knight knocked politely on the door just as the squad car with a pair officers parked along the street. Jones, an unremarkable looking man, took in the two investigators and the police car parked nearby silently. When Knight pulled out her badge and introduced herself, the man wordlessly gestured for them to come inside.
Naomosa heard his name at one point, and assumed she was introducing him and his purpose there. He was certain of it when he heard All Might’s name used a few times. Knight pulled out a notebook and wrote what looked like everything the man said. It was a surprise then when she ripped the page out and passed it to the detective.
Looking down at the note, Tsukauchi saw it was written out in Japanese for him, she was translating the witness’s statements as he gave them. The two English speakers went back and forth, but even a non-speaker like Tsukauchi could hear when the conversation started going south. Knight’s expression grew more serious and Jones’ responses came out louder, angrier, seemingly defensively.
“What’s he saying?” the detective asked.
“He’s saying it doesn’t really matter whether or not he didn’t report the body, since it was found all the same. All he did was make some money, he didn’t hurt the investigation at all.” His partner translated, visibly annoyed.
“ ‘Doesn’t matter?’ Doesn’t matter?! ” Tsukauchi slammed a hand down on the table “Do you have any idea how much time and manpower has been dumped into pursuing this line of inquiry?!”
Jones looked a little cowed, though Tsukauchi doubted the man had understood a single word he’d said.
“Failure to report a body is a criminal offense in Florida.” Knight noted flatly, pulling out her phone. Switching back to English she repeated that fact and added “You will be charged with a first degree misdemeanor. Officers? If you could take this gentleman down to the station please.”
Jones shouted in alarm when a pair officers entered and began reciting what Tsukauchi assumed was the man’s rights, leading him out to the squad car.
“Christ almighty” Knight muttered “Well that was another dead end after all. Now what?”
Tsukauchi mentally counted to ten to calm himself down. Getting angry at that lowlife now wasn’t going to help move the investigation forward. “We go back to the drawing board.”
–
It was another day of no leads and no progress. Tsukauchi heard back from Skycrawler that no one on their list of heroic acquaintances of All Might’s had heard from him recently, certainly nothing about him coming to America. With the body still missing and all the evidence found at the scene amounting to nothing, Tsukauchi dragged himself up to his hotel room with a heavy heart and a pounding headache. After grabbing a quick shower, he dropped into his desk chair, he laid out all the witness statements you had provided translations of, and started comparing them to the information he knew.
It came as less of a surprise this time when he was jolted back out of his head by Agent Knight calling him. ‘Here we go again’ he thought without humor, making his way out to the car.
–
“Tsukauchi here” the detective answered his phone absent-mindedly, focusing on a photo of Yagi’s body. Something about it seemed off, he just couldn’t quite place it–
“Detective, it’s Iida Tenya, from UA Class 1-A.”
“Ah…hello Iida, what can I do for you?” Had they dug up some sort of info about the case?
“My apologies for interrupting your work. We of Class 1-A have decided to hold a small memorial service for All Might. Since a proper cremation and ceremony cannot be held until the investigation has been closed, we hope this may help put his soul at ease. We thought it would be crude not to at least extend an invitation to you, knowing how close you were to All Might.”
A service and cremation huh? Neither of those were going to happen if they couldn’t produce a body, Tsukauchi thought grimly. Out loud he said “That’s very thoughtful of you all. I probably won't be able to come but why don't you text me the info? I’ll try to drop by at least for a few minutes.”
After saying their goodbyes, Naomasa turned his full attention back to the photograph. The only injury on the body, an approximately 7 centimeter circular bruising pattern. What could have caused that? And how did it correlate to Yagi ending up in America? There was no documentation of the hero having left Japan or entering America, and from the testimony of the EMTs on the scene, the body had not yet entered rigor mortis at the time of discovery. It could not have been transported after the fact, he had to have been killed in America. Or was that bruise the point of contact for some sort of quirk activation? The bruise was pretty bad, almost like something had slammed into the sternum and launched him.
..Launched?
Launched his body? It was an avenue they hadn’t considered but that would require an immensely powerful strength quirk. Those aren't that rare but in terms of connections to the case the only one that came immediately to mind was One For All–
Tsuakuchi scrambled for his cell phone as he made his way out of the precinct. Agent Knight was still on the phone with her superiors but that was fine. The funeral parlor Iida had sent him the address for was within reasonable walking distance, and he wouldn’t be gone long. He just needed to put a theory to bed quickly, that was all.
But man, why was everything so blurry?
–
Izuku felt utterly numb to the events that were happening around him. He wasn’t 100% sure how the class reps had arranged this memorial service so quickly, or why the funeral home had provided an (empty) coffin for it but here they were. His classmates were all in various states of grief, some sobbing openly, others (coughBakugocoughcough) seething in barely contained rage, but for his part he couldn’t seem to express an emotion at all. His mentor was dead and the world will never be the same ever again.
When Iida put a tentative hand on his shoulder, Deku realized it was his turn to give a eulogy. It took far too much effort to pull himself to his feet and stagger to the coffin, but he did it. After everything All Might had done for him, this was quite literally the least he could do. Once there though, words failed the boy. All he could do was open and close his mouth wordlessly for a few moments. Maybe this was the best time to confess after all. He’d told the others about what he thought he’d seen the other night, but maybe he if he tried again he could convince them it was real–?
The door to the chapel flew open, and a very pale Detective Tsukauchi walked in.
“Detective!” Iida jumped up from his seat
“Dude are you…alright?” Kaminari asked, eyeing the man in faint alarm.
The detective shook his head dismissively “I’m fine! Sorry to crash your service but I’m here to bring someone in for questioning. Deku!”
Izuku’s heart stopped. How had he found out? Moreover, he believed it? None of the others had. “Me?!” he squeaked out as the older man made his way over.
“Yes you! Deku you are quite sus..sus..suspect!” Tsukauchi finally managed, swaying slightly on his feet “Now I’ll need you to come with me–”
The detective stumbled, and caught himself on the coffin. Unfortunately the top started sliding off, forcing Deku to lunge forward to keep the man from face planting.
The lid of the coffin crashed to the ground, revealing the body of All Might laid within. Deku and the detective spluttered for a moment, at a loss for words, but it was Tsukauchi who found his voice first.
“Y-you were trying to hide the body! You’ve been hiding it this whole time!”
Izuku burst into tears on the spot “I-I didn’t but you’re right, i-its me! I k-k-killed All Might!”
“No!” shrieked Uraraka. Shoving Izuku aside so she could stand in front of the detective, she didn’t notice her quirk activating, lifting her classmate up to the ceiling. “It was my fault! Deku didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Shut the fuck up idiot!” Bajugo interrupted, irate. “This was on me! No one else!”
As if a dam burst, all of Class 1-A started screaming confessions at once and all hell broke loose.
–
"It was me!'
"No, it was me!"
"It was all my fault!"
"You wont get away with this Midoriya–"
"Wahhhhh I killed the Symbol of Peace! Waaaagh!!"
Yagi sat up. Two things became immediately apparent:
- Whatever was going on involved most of his students and was an absolute cluster
- He was laying inside a coffin on an alter
What the fuck ?
"What the fuck?? " He repeated, out loud this time, to better convey his annoyed confusion to the universe at large.
The gatherers? Mourners?? All whipped around to look at them. It was blessedly silent for but a moment before the room erupted again.
" Ghost!! " Kanamari and Toru shrieked, jumping onto Ojiro in unison. He buckled a bit, but to the tailed boy's credit, he merely adjusted his stance to hold the two without dropping them.
" Incroyable !" Yuuya gasped, pale as a sheet. The sparkling boy fell to his knees, grasping his hands together and turning towards the sky "Dieu soit loué! We've been granted a miracle!"
"He's alive?!" Bakago roared, face twisted in rage but soaked in tears. It took the combined effort of Kirishima, Sato and,of all people, Mineta to physically restrain the other boy "Let me at him! I'll kill him for real this time!"
The rest of Class-A's reactions follow more or less along these three trends. All Might's eyes darted around in growing alarm, but no matter where he looked he couldn't see anyone reacting rationally. More concerning than that, he didn't see Midoriya, and if Yagi was right in his understanding that he'd been presumed dead and that was the center of this chaos, it was impossible that his young protege was not freaking out more than anyone else.
"All Might!" A pair of hands landed on the Hero's shoulders. Following them led him eye to eye with his trusted friend Tsuckauchi Naomasa. Any relief Yagi felt, (and any hope he had of someone behaving reasonably) was quickly thrown out the window. Put simply, the Detective looked awful , as though he had literally not slept in days, mildly twitchy with deep bags under his eyes.
"All Might, thank God you're here! You're a definitive witness! With your help we can close the case!"
"Definitive witness to what?" He asked slowly. He suspected he would not like where this was headed.
"To the murder Deku committed!"
Yagi choked on blood "Midoriya is wanted for murder?! Of who?!"
"Of you!!"
The hero was dumbfounded. "...But I'm not dead."
"And?"
Oh, oh no, All Might knew his friend and he could tell the other man was deadly serious. Lack of sleep seemed to have driven the detective delirious. Gingerly, Yagi removed his friend’s hands and lifted himself out of the coffin, keeping his movement slow so as not to agitate anyone.
"Alright, I'd be happy to give a statement to the police" the hero said, using his calm hostage negotiation voice. "Let's all just sit down and take a deep breath first."
“All Might…?” a familiar voice squeaked.
Toshinori’s eyes were drawn upwards towards the sound. There crouched atop a chandelier of sorts, was his young protege. “Midoriya, what in the world are you doing up there?! Come down this instant before you injure yourself!”
“There’s nowhere left to run Deku!” Tsukauchi shouted in his ‘the police are here’ voice. “Now that we have the victim’s testimony, there will be no talking your way out of your crimes!”
“Calm down Naomasa, I don’t think Young Midoriya has anything to do with–”
“All Miiiiiiight!” the boy in question dropped from the chandelier with the grace of a cat. As soon as he hit the ground though he immediately fell, sobbing, into a dogeza “I’m so
sorrrryyyyyy!!
I-I-I killed you!! And you aren’t dead anymore b-but still! I killed you! It’s all my fault. I can never atone for as long as I live! Not even if I offered myself up for execution.”
“No one said
anything
about execution my boy
please calm down
–”
“No! It wasn’t Deku’s fault, it was all mine!” Ururaka interjected, falling into a bow next to her classmate “Please, punish me instead, I’m the one who killed the Symbol of Peace!”
“Me!” “No it was ME!” “It was all my fault so please!”
The students all clamored forward, prostrating themselves and repenting for the supposed crime of ending his life. “Children, please let’s all just calm down . You too, Naomasa, let's all just take a deep breath.”
The detective was completely ignoring his friend though. Instead, he’d dug out his cell phone and seemed to be enthusiastically speaking to someone “--I have the murderer here, he’s even confessed, Please get here as soon as possible Agent Knight!”
It took only a few beats for the sound of pounding footsteps to reach All Might’s ears. The door to the chapel was flung open, revealing a young lilac haired woman the hero had never seen before. “I came as fast as I could Detective, where’s the sus….pect…?”
Her golden eyes trailed across the chaos dumbfounded before they met Toshinori’s own. If it was physically possible, he suspected they may have fully jumped out her sockets at that moment. Instead she settled for pointing at him in mute confusion.
“You’re one of Tsukauchi’s colleagues I take it?” The Hero asked kindly.The girl nodded, still too stunned to speak. “I am Japan’s Former #1 Hero, All Might. I think there might be a misunderstanding about me being murdered, could you help me clear this up?”
“I–Yes, yes of course.” She straightened up, and though still a little pale, took control of the situation “Detective Tsukauchi sir, I believe it would be best to call an ambulance to have Mr. All Might checked out by some paramedics. In the meantime the suspect…?” She faltered a little when Naomosa pointed at young Midoriya, but to her credit she kept a straight face. “Understood, I will personally take him into custody, but we should have all of the students give statements to the police. By the sounds of it, it seems there may be more to this that we still do not know.”
Tsukauchi nodded along vigorously “Excellent idea Agent Knight. In the meantime, I’ll–!”
The detective staggered, and it was only Yagi’s quick reflexes that saved him from dropping completely to the floor. With a grunt he lowered his friend into a sitting position on the pew.
“Sorry about that.” The detective said, placing a hand on his head “The room just started spinning all of a sudden.”
“Sir if I may, could I have you stay with the um, the victim? I believe it would be prudent to have someone keep an eye on him, lest he vanish again. I can take care of everything else.”
Yagi mouthed ‘disappeared?’ in her direction but the agent just mouthed back ‘later’. This exchange seemed to fly completely over Tsukauchi’s head, who simply nodded in agreement “Yes that makes perfect sense. I leave it in your capable hands.”
“Yes sir.” Knight gave a short bow. Pulling out her phone, she began delivering orders out in English to those on the other end. Before long, the chapel was flooded with police officers and EMTs, leading his students away.
–
Izuku stared blankly at the table in front of him.
After All Might’s miraculous resurrection, he had been brought to the local police station and placed inside what seemed to be an interrogation room. They had not bothered to hand-cuff him, so he could only assume this was some sort of super strong room used when interrogating quirk using criminals. Which is exactly what he was, a quirk based criminal, a villain . They didn’t need to go to the extra trouble though, Izuku had no intentions of trying to escape his due punishment. Even if All Might had somehow come back to life, it didn’t change the fact that he had killed his mentor, the man who had given him his quirk and allowed him to chase his dream. Deku would take whatever punishment was deemed necessary, whether that meant death or spending the rest of his days rotting away in Tartarus.
It was what he deserved.
“Midoriya?”
Ah, the FBI agent was still talking to him, right.
“It’s just like Detective Tsukauchi said. It was me, I killed All Might, I confess to everything. There’s no need to waste anymore of your time on this.”
“Right.” Agent Knight began slowly, trying to force eye contact “But we’re still a bit lost on what ‘everything’ entails. If possible, we’d like for you to help us fill in the gaps before we move on to any sort of signed confession–and are you certain you don't want a lawyer present?”
Izuku shook his head. There was no need, he wasn’t fighting the charges after all. “No. Its fine, I’ll tell you everything you want to know, it's the least I can do.”
“In that case, I’d like you to tell me in your own words what occurred leading up to and during the crime.”
Taking a shaky breath, the boy began to recount his tale. “At around 9 pm on thursday, ah this is all Japanese time, I was jogging around UA’s campus, near our dorms. I haven’t been sleeping very well recently so I thought maybe if I exhausted myself before bed, it would help. Anyways, I came across a baseball lying on the path and I decided to pick it up and throw it at a tree. It was s-supposed to be a test of sorts, of my quirk control, you know? But I missed the tree, and the split second after the ball left my hand, I saw All Might appear from the little grove of trees. The ball nailed him right in the chest and he flopped back among the bushes. I ran over to him to make sure he was okay but…there wasn’t anyone there. I-I thought maybe I was hallucinating from exhaustion so I ran back to the dorm and went straight to bed. Everything seemed fine the next day but then All Might never showed up to class, a-and we saw the rumors online. Everyone went back to the dorm together but I snuck away to check where I’d seen him last night. Now that the sun was up I saw something I didn’t notice the night before, a convenience store back that had fallen under the bush. I remembered Jiro saying the last she’d seen All Might he’d offered to run an errand for her since it was after curfew for the dorm. A-and that was when I knew, the All Might I’d seen was real. We heard from being near the crime scene that All Might’s only injury was a bruise right where I hit him with the ball. I m-must’ve launched him all the way across the ocean when I hit him. Th-that’s how he ended up in America. No one else did anything wrong, it was all me!”
“You–that’s it? That’s your whole statement?”
Izuku nodded furiously. For a moment Knight just stared at him. Then, no longer bothering to keep up the appearance that they weren’t being watched, the agent turned bodily in her chair to stare at the two way mirror with an absolutely baffled expression. When this garnered her no response, she turned back towards him, running a hand through her hair.
“Midoriya, I don’t think–”
She was cut off by the door to the interrogation room flying open. Agent Knight leapt to her feet, gun in hand, but immediately re-holstered it upon a good look at who it was. Standing there, expression screaming murder, was Aizawa Shouta. The underground hero marched over to Izuku’s side and knelt down, giving the boy a once over. “Problem child, are you alright?”
“Aizawa-sensei…” Deku could feel the tears building but pushed them down, even as his voice wobbled. All things considered he didn’t have any right to cry.
His teacher’s scowl deepened and the older man turned his glare on Agent Knight, who merely held up both hands in surrender. “He agreed to give an interview of his own volition. We read him his rights and have several times offered to get a lawyer to sit in with him.”
“Is he being held?” Aizawa asked curtly.
“He is not. Midoriya is not currently under arrest for any crime, he is free to leave at any time.”
“What?!” Izuku yelped, forcing himself into the conversation “What do you mean I’m not under arrest?! I’m here to confess to murder!”
“You’re what?” His sensei asked, voice alarmingly flat. Agent Knight merely shook her head in exhaustion.
“To be quite blunt Midoriya, even if we thought you were a suspect, which we do not, what charges would I be keeping you here on? All Might has not been murdered, and he has expressed to law enforcement that he has no intentions of filing assault charges against you. This interview was merely to try and piece together a more coherent timeline of what happened to him to determine if we need to press charges for illegally entering the country.”
“You want to arrest All Might ?!” Deku shrieked in dismay. He felt Aizawa-sensei put an arm around his shoulders.
“Breathe Midoriya.” The hero turned back towards Knight “Is there anything else?”
She gathered the papers on the desk “No, we have asked everything we needed to. We will release Midoriya back into your custody now.”
“Thank you. Come along, problem child.”
Izuku tried to protest, but he was led firmly out of the interrogation room by his teacher.
–
Tsukauchi gave a pathetic groan, consciousness returning to him slowly. His head was pounding, a mess of sights and sounds mixing together nonsensically. The last thing he remembered was Toshinori in a casket..but then the blonde had sat up and started talking, like he’d never died. Had he passed out and dreamed all of that? But no, he hadn’t been going to the little ceremony Class 1-A had been holding, he’d been following a lead. Where had that taken him again…? He just couldn’t seem to think clearly, but against the pain in his head, Naomasa forced himself to sit up. He was in bed. Was this his hotel room? He hadn’t slept once since the investigation had started, so it took longer than it should have to recognize it.
“Oh, are you finally awake?”
Tsukauchi froze at the sound of a very familiar voice. Slowly he turned and found himself looking into the blue eyes of his best friend. “Oh my god, I’m hallucinating.”
Yagi gave a tired smirk, and reached out, giving his friend a firm pinch on the arm “No, I’m definitely real.”
“B-but you–You died! I’m here investigating your murder! What in the world is going on?”
“The question of the hour it seems.” Toshinori plopped himself on the side of the bed “It seems like it's all quite messy at the moment. The young lady from the FBI is heading up the investigation in your absence, I haven’t heard much since she brought the students in for an interview.”
“Agent Knight?” Tsukauchi put his head into his hands, trying to push back the headache so he could focus “Why would Class 1-A be getting interviewed, we already took their statements.”
“You really don't remember, do you? I guess it isn’t surprising given how far gone you were when I woke up.”
“I don't follow.”
Toshinori heaved a sigh “I can't say I know much, but I’ll fill you in the best I can. I woke up inside a coffin set up for viewing at a funeral home, approximately three days after the last thing I remembered. Within that chapel was all of Class 1-A, screaming and shouting about how something was ‘all their fault’. When I sat up, everyone became even more of a mess, claiming I had ‘come back to life’. You were there as well, but you also seemed quite out of it, insisting you needed my statement to use as evidence against my murderer despite the fact that I was clearly alive in front of you. You were accusing Young Midoriya–”
“Deku?!” Naomosa was flabbergasted “Why in the world why I have accused him?”
His friend only shook his head “Were that I knew. According to what young Mina told me before she was led away for her own interview, you burst in on their mourning ceremony shouting about how Deku was…’sus’ I believe was the word she used? Anyway, you accusing Midoriya seemed to have set off the chaos I woke up to.”
“I don't remember any of that...”
“I suspect you wouldn’t. Agent Knight told me you hadn’t been sleeping, and that it was taking its toll. That’s probably why you’ve been asleep for the last 13 hours–”
“ 13 hours? ”
“You were taking poor care of yourself my friend.” Yagi admonished, giving the detective a light flick to the forehead “I know you well enough to know you’ll want to head to the station now that you’re awake but I’m not letting you out of this room until you at least take a shower and eat something.”
“I don't seem to have much of a choice. Could you grab me something to eat while I take a shower? I don't want to leave Knight doing both our jobs longer than I have to.”
“I can manage that I think.”
–
“Detective Tsukauchi!”
Upon entering the precinct, Naomasa and Yagi were greeted by a concerned Knight, who jogged over to them immediately.
“Agent Knight, I cannot apologize enough for what happened. Not only did I pass out, leaving you to carry out investigation duties alone, I also forced you to play along with my brash accusations. I’m deeply sorry for my conduct” Tsukauchi rushed out, bowing deeply.
“O-oh no, you don't have to…When I arrived at the scene, everyone seemed quite stressed, I suspect even if you hadn’t made that accusation, Midoriya would still have insisted on giving a formal confession.” The agent looked flustered by the apology “I’m just relieved that everyone seems to be calming down now that EraserHead is here. Are you feeling better? You looked especially bad when I last saw you…”
The detective straightened with a sheepish smile “Much better, thank you.”
“That’s great! Now that you and Mr.All Might are both here, should we meet up with the students? Now that we’ve determined that no premeditated crime has taken place, we’re hoping to put together their stories to try and figure out what exactly happened.”
“Lead the way.”
As Knight walked them towards the conference room, Tsukauchi had a thought. “So have their stories clarified how Tos-All Might got to America in the first place?”
The agent gave an exhausted smile “We’ve had an eleventh hour witness appear with the answer to that actually.”
Naomasa and Yagi shared a look of confusion. When the door to the conference room was opened though, it became apparent what she meant. Around the table sat all of Class 1-A, their irritated homeroom teacher, and a pink haired girl that the detective didn’t recognize.
“Young Hatsume?” Toshinori exclaimed in surprise.
The girl’s eyes snapped over to focus on All Might, and she made to get up “All Might! You’ve really done some great experiments on my baby, you have tell me everything–”
Iida put a hand on her shoulder, and forced her to sit back down.
“All right.” Aizawa began as the two investigators and the ‘victim’ took their seats. “Now that we’re all here, tell me exactly what happened.”
The story, it seemed, went a little something like this.
On Thursday morning Eraserhead began his Principal Nedzu-mandated mini vacation and left after homeroom. The school day was relatively uneventful, but the beginning of this chain of chaos came after the final bell.
All Might was attempting to get some supplies for tomorrow’s lesson out of a closet, but found it to be stuck. Unable to open it with his current strength, he asked a passing student from the support course if she could bring some sort of tool to help open the door. The student, Hatsume, ran off to the workshop to grab what she thought would be the perfect tool for the job. It took her quite a while to dig it up though, so in the meantime All Might stopped Uraraka and asked for her help. Uraraka said she knew just what to do and ran back to the classroom, where Ojiro and Yaoyorozu still were. She asked Yaoyorozu to use her quirk to create a large axe. The other girl agreed after hearing what it was for, but she created one much larger that was strictly necessary because that was what she had the information to make, which ended up ripping a large portion of the back of her shirt. Uraraka and Yaoyorozu did not immediately notice this and the brunette girl ran off to destroy the door for All Might. Ojiro did notice though, and, embarrassed, gave her his shirt to wear so she could run and grab her jersey, rather than expanding the energy to make a new one.
While Yaoyorozu made her way to her gym locker, Asui came back to the classroom for a book she’d forgotten. She opened the door and upon seeing Ojiro shirtless with a ripped female uniform shirt in his hands, reflexively slammed the door shut, unfortunately on her tongue. Ojiro freaking out and Asui’s pained yell summoning Shoji, who ran her to the nurses office. Shoji then took up a post outside the main building to catch Yaoyorozu on her way back to let her know why Ojiro was no longer in the classroom. But he was worried about Asui and so he was pacing a bit.
This uncharacteristic display of nervousness from their stoic classmate caught the attention of Todoroki, who was doing some light sparring with Bakugo nearby. Distracted, the boy missed a fairly telegraphed punch to the face from his opponent. Infuriated by what he saw as being underestimated, Bakugo started throwing a fit, which scared the living daylights out of Mineta who was just passing by. And so Mienta used his quirk to scamper up a tree, hopefully out of sight and thus safe from Bakugo’s hair trigger temper.
Mineta stayed in the tree for about an hour before deeming it safe to come down. But the grape boy did not think to remove his quirk from the tree after the fact. Which is how Koda came to find a family of birds, one of whom had gotten stuck on one such ball. Koda brought the family of birds inside until he could get ahold of Mineta to remove the balls, and wash off the one that had fallen victim to the other boy’s quirk.
While helping the birds out, Koda ran into Tokoyami and Aoyama, who the birds took to instantly. This ignited a discussion between the boys as to whether Tokoyami and Dark Shadow were affected by sparkling things the way normal birds were. The avian student firmly denied it, but his twinkling counterpart wasn’t as convinced, and ran off to his room to get something to prove it. On his way back with a jar of glitter, he ran into Sato who accidentally knocked the jar out of his hands and over the stair landing. Unfortunately on that landing Hagakure, who was now made semi visible by being covered in glitter, a notoriously difficult to remove substance.
Having not seen who dumped the glitter (the two boys fleeing terror), Hagakure assumed it was Kaminari, Mina, and Sero playing a prank on her and plotted her revenge. Her revenge being running to Iida and telling him that those three were intentionally not going to study for the upcoming quiz even though their last mock exam results were abysmal
As the moral center of Class 1-A, Iida felt it was his duty to interfere, dragging all three slackers to his room for an emergency study session. Sero and Mina attempting several escapes and mutinies extended the whole thing, and by the end of it, they’d all missed dinner. Exhausted, starving, and dazed, Kaminari dragged himself to the kitchen and grabbed what he thought was the last package of his snacks, dumping it into his mouth in one go. Turned out, those were Jiro’s and she was pissed. She was chewing Kaminari out still when All Might came to see what the commotion was. When Jiro complained about what happened and how that snack was going to be a reward to herself for finishing an assignment, All Might offered to make a run to the convenience store for her.
It was on All Might’s way back to the dorm from the store that he happened upon Young Midoriya. He made to approach his student when the boy made a throw that went wide, launching a baseball straight into the former hero’s sternum. That was the last thing All Might remembered before waking up in that coffin.
And as for how All Might got to America from there? That required backing up almost to the beginning of this tale, and the first student he asked for help from.
Hatsume had been working on a prototype teleportation device in her free time. Believing simply teleporting All Might in and out of the supply closet would be the most efficient way of handling it, she went to dig it out of her pile of inventions. It took quite a while though, and by the time she returned, All Might was no longer there. Not one to be deterred, she searched all over campus for him. She finally ran into the hero when he was re-entering the grounds after a run to the convenience store. Hatsume gave him the device along with a whirlwind (and nonsensical to the hero) explanation of how it worked before running off. The hero merely pocketed the device and resolved to hand it over to Power Loader the next morning.
When the ball thrown by Midoryia knocked All Might to the ground he accidentally nudged the device, which transported him all the way to America. Moving across such a massive space can be quite jarring, and Hatsume’s device was not yet perfected so it put him in a minor, death suggesting coma, (which Hatsume insists is only an issue with long range travel). The young engineer also posited that the body ‘disappearing’ from the ambulance was probably just an instance of the drivers hitting a pothole and the device getting nudged again.
As the story concluded, Tsukauchi noticed how positively done Aizawa looked, and wondered if he was wearing a similar expression.
“So because of those reasons, in front of an officer of the law you all confessed to committing murder ?” Eraserhead asked.
“I-it felt logical at the time…” Yaoyorozu mumbled. The rest of the students murmured in agreement but none of them seemed able to look their sensei in the eye.
“To be fair to the students” All Might cut in “By the time any of them had attempted to confess, I had already been dead for a few days, and they had flown across the world to try and deal with that. Stress, jet lag, and a lack of sleep can cause even the smartest people to make some truly impressive leaps of logic.”
Tsukauchi jumped in as well “He’s right, and I’m sure my behavior at the time was no help to the situation. It was foolish of them I agree, but I believe they were stating the truth as they knew it in that moment.”
Aizawa pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing deeply. “You are all still in a lot of trouble for leaving campus without permission, but I suppose we can drop the issue of giving false confessions, as it seems you really did believe them when you said it.”
“Well I think we consider this case closed then!” Knight chimed in, relieved.
–
It was a sunny morning when a fleet of black sedans pulled up to Miami International Airport. Out of them spilled all of Class 1-A of UA’s Hero Course, chatting and smiling like kids on a school trip. Following at a slower pace were the adults in charge of the group.
“I still can’t believe they're making you and the UA crew fly back instead of warping you with the rest of the officials” Knight yawned out “Cold blooded.”
Naomasa chuckled, “Its our group punishment for causing so much trouble. Nothing says suffering like a 14 hour flight after all.”
“Fair enough.” she laughed, stopping. “I suppose this is where we part ways. Safe travels, Detective Tsukauchi!”
“It was a pleasure working with you, Agent Knight.” Tsukauchi smiled, holding out his hand.
After a beat of surprise Agent Knight gave a grin, shaking his hand “Right back at you. I’m glad this all turned out to be a huge misunderstanding. Hopefully next time you’re state side, things won't be quite so crazy.”
“Haha, I can only hope so!”
A few meters away from this heartfelt goodbye, was another equally emotion filled exchange
"I leave for 3 days and somehow you get yourself murderer and half the school is clambering to take the fall for it–"
"Technically I wasn't murdered–"
Aizawa's eyes flashed red, and All Might could feel the tiny embers of One for All flicker at his gaze. "I will end you ." The man hissed
Yagi held up his hands in surrender, but couldn’t fully suppress his smirk. “Sorry, sorry!”
“...Well I suppose it's for the best that you're still here. Wrangling these kids would be too much work for just me.”
“Of course, of course. No other reason I’m sure.” Toshinori snickered. “We’d better pick up the pace or those troublemaker kids will get themselves lost in the airport.”
“Shall we then?” Tsukacauchi cut in, walking up to the pair.
The three men gave one last wave to the agents there to see them off before jogging to catch up with twenty teens already wandering around and causing havoc within the airport.
–
“Breaking News: Japan’s former #1 Hero and Symbol of Peace All Might has returned to his home country alive and well. Listeners may remember when news first broke here on Thursday morning that he had been found dead in Miami, Florida. Details are still forthcoming from the authorities about what exactly happened to cause All Might to be presumed dead. The Hero himself however had this to say about the incident:
“I cannot apologize enough for the pain this incident has caused to people across the world. While the full scope of the situation is still under investigation, I express my heartfelt thanks to the authorities, both Japanese and American, without whom my safe return to Japan would simply not have been possible. So please rest assured, I am still here and you will not be getting rid of me anytime soon, Hahaha!”