Chapter Text
No one noticed the first disappearances.
That wasn’t unusual, of course; homeless people go missing all the time, so why should anyone be paying attention to them? The homeless community cared, but their opinion didn’t matter much anyway.
Then, civilians started disappearing.
It started slowly. A labourer here, a worn-down office worker there. A few people were left behind to miss them, of course, but without any solid leads all the police could do was leave the case to rot in a pile on some overworked detective’s desk. They took notice when the disappearances increased, and they made sure to increase street patrols, but little came from it beyond busting a couple extra petty thefts.
When low level villains started disappearing, it was nearly a cause for celebration. As far as both the police and the heroes were concerned, they were the enemy, and anything taking out their enemies for them was surely good news for them. Oh, a few undergrounders may have raised an alarm when a vigilante or longtime informant vanished, and maybe one or two detectives took them seriously, but resources were stretched thin as it was and what little they had was far better used elsewhere.
It took the kidnapping of a pro hero to make them pay attention.
Mizushima Masaki - Pro Hero Manual - was well liked enough, sitting at a respectable number 222 on the hero rankings, and popular around Hosu, so people noticed when he didn’t sign into work one day. They noticed when one day turned into two and two turned into one week and a week turned into a month. By the second week, a task force had been set up, dedicated to not only the disappearance of Manual, but also those of the various civilians, vigilantes and villains that had been gathering dust in storage. Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa was chosen to lead the task force, and was given free reign to pick officers and heroes he felt would be a good fit.
The Pro Hero Eraserhead - Aizawa Shouta - had all but forced his way into the task force after the disappearance of The Crawler, a former vigilante he’d gotten to know well in the past few years. He’d been months away from graduating from the Vigilante Reform Program, and Eraserhead had sworn to make sure he would complete it.
Despite this, the task force had very few leads. Each victim was there one day, gone the next. They’d been taken from all over Tokyo, and even a few cities beyond. There was never any footage of their disappearance, nor were there any signs of forced entry at their homes. It was as if they’d vanished from the face of the Earth, never to be seen again.
Manual’s body was recovered two months after his disappearance.
It hadn’t even been intentional, in all honesty. Tokyo went to sleep and, in the morning, there it was, in a nondescript wooden crate on the steps of Hosu’s police department - the task force’s headquarters. Inside was Manual: he had been stripped bare and washed thoroughly, which almost made up for the fact that his corpse was dismembered, cut cleanly into even segments and placed carefully into the box. Not even a speck of blood was found, either in the crate or on the body itself. The abnormalities only increased with the words “STOCK REJECTED” emblazoned across his chest in red ink, clearly stamped on him. Of course, they immediately sent the body off to the coroner, hoping to gain some insight into his death, but the results only baffled them further.
Manual’s body had largely been dismembered post-mortem, and in such a way that caused little to no blood to flow. The cause of death was determined to be a severed brain stem, which killed him instantly. However, the brain was not with the body: it had been removed, leaving behind an empty cranial cavity that had been thoroughly cleaned, the man’s head neatly stitched up afterwards. Furthermore, while the corpse was dismembered post mortem, Manual’s hands had been removed while he was still alive, though with a similar surgical precision as the other cuts.
Though they searched every inch of the body and the crate, no leads could be found, and they ended up back at square one, tired, defeated and confused. Even Eraserhead, the normally stoic man, had an uncharacteristic burst of anger when he arrived home that night.
Detective Tsukauchi, on the other hand, was just tired . The case had barely even begun, and already he could tell that it would be going for a long time yet.
He took another sip of coffee, and got to work writing the incident report.
At the same time, in a warehouse across the city, a green-haired boy in a lab coat scurried around, weaving between vats filled with luminous liquid enveloping dark, vague shadows. He hurried up to a set of monitors and hit a button on the desk. In an instant the screens flicked on, showing various graphs and statistics, as well as vital signs for an innumerable number of creatures. The screen in the centre turned on last, not showing data or news feeds, but a man, head wrapped in a dark, skull-like mask. Even through the screen the man’s sheer presence could be felt, and the boy shakily bowed his head before jerking up.
“S-sensei.”
The man on the screen tented his fingers, leaning back in his chair. “Ah, Midoriya-shounen. I do hope I didn’t disturb you.”
“N-not at all, Sensei! I was just running some final tests on the most recent batch! Manual’s Quirk was rather useless for the project but I have a theory that his hydrokinesis could be converted into a more broader form of psychokinesis - we could even have a range of psychic Noumu! Ah, but that’s a while off yet. Still, I kept the necessary material and disposed of the excess, as you requested.”
“Excellent work, Midoriya-shounen. Your progress never ceases to amaze me.” The boy - Midoriya - blushed. “Still, the time for the debut is approaching: how is that asset performing?”
Midoriya grinned manically, “The All Might Buster? It’s exceeding expectations on every front! It is far faster and stronger than All Might at his peak, and is completely obedient to you and I, and will also follow Shigaraki-kun’s orders. The only way for All Might to beat it would be to push so far past his limits as to shorten his time even more than it already is which, while not as preferable as straight up killing him, would also be useful. Provided everything goes well on Shigaraki-kun’s end, we should be more than prepared by the time UA begins a new school year!” He took a deep breath and beamed at the image of his master, who chuckled fondly.
“Very good, Midoriya-shounen. I have but one more request: could you please send me your Quirk Analyses for the most recent batch of subjects? I find them rather fascinating.”
The boy nodded eagerly and got to work at his computer.
Soon , he thought, soon he’ll pay .
They all will .