Chapter Text
The atmosphere among the staff of UA is tense. Not only tense, but tired. For two years, they have fought on the frontlines against evil and villainy. For two years, they bled and died fighting against the League of Villains and its powerful and deadly leaders. Shigiraki was tough, and All For One even more so. But they came out on top of it all and were finally piecing society and UA back together.
And now? Now they will realize how they’ve tragically failed.
At the time, the world was chaotic, and the League of Villains required their almost full attention at times, but now they have a dead student on their hands. A student they should have saved, that they should have protected. Their rotting remains on the grounds of UA itself.
Unknown for up to two years.
“Kōhei Horikoshi. A year two General Studies student,” Detective Tsukauchi said to the dark room full of teachers.
Their faces were sullen as his picture on the video screen behind the detective showed a bright-eyed boy.
He had long black hair, sharp facial features, and in his uniform, he looked more than strong enough for a fifteen-year-old. His quirk, InkMaster, was a quirk poorly suited for hero work, but the boy was aiming to transfer to the business course the year of his disappearance. He was going to go on to college for design and graphic arts, and he would have been starting his third year courses after all classes were delayed due to the war.
But that obviously wasn’t the case anymore.
He was a grim reminder to everyone in the room. That, despite their struggle with the League, most villainy didn’t threaten whole nations. Most of the time, it just threatened one person.
“Two years ago, in the beginning weeks of our struggle with the League, he went missing. According to reports, he was a quiet student and didn’t have many friends. A creative who liked writing stories and collaborating on internet manga projects,” the detective explained, a familiar file held in front of him.
The heroes who were on staff during the beginning knew the story well, but a few needed to be caught up on it. It had been a busy two years after all.
“The last anyone had spoken to him was his parents the morning of his disappearance. He left his home at 6:48 AM and headed toward the train station.”
A video started playing beside the detective, and it showed the boy getting on the train. He was hard to miss with the mop of black hair that went down to his shoulders, and even more so with the medical mask around his neck. The video then cut to the inside, and it showed the boy awkwardly looking for a seat in the semi-crowded train car. Looking nervous and fidgety with his bag's shoulder straps. However, it then cut to another angle, outside the train. Horikoshi was the only person to get off at this particular stop that morning, and the boy seemingly looked even more nervous as his posture stilled as the train left the station.
The Musutafu train stations were usually busy, but the boy had just missed the morning rush, and the train station was mostly cleared out. So, he stood out clearly. And even in the less-than-stellar quality CCTV cameras of the station, he almost looked like he started to shake.
He abruptly starts towards the stairs and runs up them hurriedly. The feed cuts to the street, and cuts a few more times as it follows Horikoshi from the train station and through the sprawling city for twenty minutes. The video sped up, of course. However, inevitably, the last cut of the camera ends up viewing the boy from across the street. Positioned perfectly to look down the alleyway that the boy turns down. The boy momentarily stops at the mouth of the alley, and you can see him take a single step back, but with a very obvious deep breath, he sets forward after a few moments. He walks the length of the alley, and he makes a turn.
Kōhei Horikoshi is gone. The video stops.
“The search was extensive, and thanks to the quick actions of Nedzu, Immediate.”
In a rare show of emotion, the Principal at the head of the room, off to the side, let out an almost defeated sigh. A few of the staff almost seemed surprised by the principal's display, and amongst many of them, a more than noticeable tingle of suspense spread down their spines.
“However, by the time we traced his location hours later, he was gone. No more videos. No trace. No witnesses. Neither his parents nor his few friends knew why he got off the train that early or why he would go to this part of town, or this alleyway in particular,” the Detective said in a solemn tone.
“Nothing?” Present Mic almost seemed a little distraught. “I thought they had people on this?”
“No. All leads after his turn down the alley were a dead end. So, given UA itself had been attacked only weeks earlier at the USJ, the Commission tentatively attributed it to the League.”
“But why would they go after him? He wasn’t even in the hero track.” Present Mic pressed.
“We don’t know. Given the boy's apparent nervousness and lack of criminal history, we suspected that the League forced him into stealing information for them. We even suspected that he could have been the source of the USJ schedule leak, and the numerous others, until Yuga Aoyama was discovered.”
Both All-Might and Eraserhead deflated a little bit at the mention of their former student's name, but they didn’t let it show for long after a tempering glance between the two men.
This time, All-Might cut in. “Why weren’t we told any of this?”
The man of legend was currently a mummy of bandages. He wasn’t currently teaching and was bound to a mobility scooter until he could walk again, but he was invited to this meeting nonetheless.
“Old Commission leadership wanted to play this one close to the chest,” the Detective said, emphasizing the word ‘Old’ , with a disapproving shake of his head.
“That old hag,” All-Might ground out, surprising a few of his colleagues for even using such a word, “For years I trusted her, and now this on top of everything else?”
“Please continue, Detective Tsukauchi,” Nedzu cut in, his voice cutting and clear.
All-Might looked like he wanted to bound out of his mobility scooter if he could, but with a pointed look aimed at the Principal and a heavy breath, he reigned himself in.
“As I was saying, all we had were suspicions and theories, and thanks to the current acting Director of the Commission, Hawks, he has decided to open their files to us.”
A visible wave of silent relief went through everyone in the room. The Hero Commission may have provided the crucial element of regulating the Hero industry, but anyone who’d been in the game for any amount of time knew how the Commission operated. They’d take over crime scenes, classified incidents, and even cover up misconduct. It was a confusing bureaucratic nightmare, and few knew how to effectively tackle the issue without becoming one of the thousands of politicians in Japan. Which in itself was a whole other messy issue.
The League had exposed some of the rot with the old Commission, and after sacrificing his own quirk in the battle against All For One, Hawks and his open goal of rooting out corruption and criminal conspiracies inspired much-needed confidence. Especially in the wake of the war.
“However, the Commission's old leadership isn't why we’re here today,” the Detective said firmly as he clicked to the next slide.
It was a picture that left many of them nauseous, and the few who saw it in person, such as Cement Toss and Snipe, looked away. Present Mic himself seemed most affected. Sucking in heavy, wavering breaths as he looked away after a moment as well. Everyone understood, of course. Present Mic was his teacher after all.
The scene in the picture was that of a stone wall with part of it ripped open. And in front of that wall, five small and lumpy black trash bags were lying on the ground, and there was another sitting in the hole of the wall, slumped over it like it was about to fall. However, the centerpiece of the photograph was one of the bags on the floor. Specifically, the one with its end ripped open to reveal soggy and decayed flesh covered in what seemed like maggots.
There wasn’t much blood despite one of them being opened, but the five numbered bags lying on the concrete floor held a weight none of them wished to carry.
The weight of failure
The scene was discovered by Cement Toss. Initially, the stone slab the body parts were found behind appeared to be loosened, cracked, and an unstable section of the foundation that was initially thought to be damaged due to the shock and stress of UA’s elaborate underground building moving system. Several other places on UA’s campus had similar foundation issues due to its use, and it was just supposed to be scheduled routine maintenance. Cement Toss was only able to remove a portion of the slab before the bags spilled out.
He also opened the bag, and as the teacher glared at the picture, his stone fists were clenched.
“I asked Nedzu to hold all your questions until after we collected everything, but three days ago, as you all know, the body parts of Kōhei Horikoshi were found in the foundations of the General Studies 2A dormitory.”
He clicked the next slide. A picture of twenty numbered bags, all roughly the same size and about the size of a backpack, against a white backdrop.
“Every part of his body, except for his head, was in that wall,” the Detective said solemnly.
No one reacted at first.
“His head… do we… ” Midnight tried to ask, but the Detective simply shook his head.
Many of the staff let out heavy breaths, and Present Mic looked like he was about to get out of his chair. Probably to storm out, or puke in the trash, but before he could really move, Eraserhead put his hand on his friend's shoulder. The loud-mouthed hero stilling in his chair.
“Have you found anything? Any leads?” Eraserhead cut in, a hard look on his face as he seemingly glared at the picture.
“Due to Skeptic’s intrusion into our systems during the war, as well as physical damage to our server infrastructure, several years of information were lost. Including surveillance records,” Nedzu said from his seat, his frustration obvious.
All-Might and Cement Toss both seemed like they wanted to smash the tables in front of them.
“However, we do have something,” the Detective said in about the only upbeat tone the dark room has heard so far in this meeting, “Our investigators noticed that the bags containing Kōhei’s body parts were deteriorating at different rates. Bag #1 is the least decayed and intact, while bag #20 has seen the bugs have their way with it.”
The staff, other than Nedzu, looked at the picture closely. Present Mic and Stonetoss had to force themselves, but after a moment, they saw it as well. Bag #1, other than some creases, could almost be mistaken for the bags in their own trash bins right now. Bag #20, on the other hand, had pin-sized holes throughout it, and crusted-over fluids stained the outside of the plastic. If they were all put in there at once, there would have been a similar rate of decay, but there wasn't, and that sent a chill down everyone's spine.
“The person who put Horikoshi into the wall did it over time. Meaning they had sustained open access to UA’s dormitory facilities.”
“The League?” Snipe thought aloud.
“No,” Nedzu said firmly, ”We had rudimentary systems to detect Kurogiri’s portals if they appeared on the grounds, and not even All for One could get past the wall without setting off our alarms and security.”
“Then who?” Ectoplasm asked aloud, his eyes pointed at the detective.
“This is where Hawks' openness aids us.”
The Detective clicked to the next slide, and the staff looked at the image with surprise. The ID badge pictures of thirty students appeared. There were first, second, and third years. From all courses as well. As the room observed the names, they noted that a good portion of the students on this list have already graduated.
About 13 of them.
“The Commission's records make up for some of UA’s losses, and on the day of the students' disappearance, these thirty-three students were all absent from UA grounds.”
You could have heard a pin drop in that room. The faces of many of the hero teachers held doubt and disbelief at the mere thought of what was being implied.
“You’re not seriously implying that a student of UA did this?” Vlad King asked gruffly, almost sounding offended.
“The League, or some other Villain, was always the more probable perpetrator in the Commission's eyes. Hero students being abducted has happened before to other Hero Schools in the country, then to UA again during Quirk Training Camp not too long after.”
Bringing up their old failures stung several members of the staff, but they brushed it off. They were able to save their abducted mind controlling student after all, and they eventually defeated the League in the end.
“However, ‘Old’ Commission leadership was always paranoid. They turned their eyes to staff at UA, hero or janitor, and did cursory investigations into everyone's whereabouts.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Vlad King grumbled out.
“Lucky for everyone here, they found nothing. All staff at UA had rock-solid alibis, so, after a brief pause in the investigation, they turned to the students.”
A few of the teachers, especially Midnight, shifted in their seats. Visibly uncomfortable with the idea that any of their students could kill their classmates. Let alone cut them up and put their body parts in the foundations of a dormitory.
“The Commission pursued this avenue for only a short period, and due to the abduction of Hitoshi Shinso from ‘The Beasts Forest’ during UA’s Quirk Training Camp, they ended the investigation and concluded the League had abducted and likely killed Kōhei Horikoshi.”
Detective Tsukauchi clicked to the next slide, and it was a more thorough breakdown of the thirty-three students. Their current age, quirk, height, weight, and a few other little bits like their current class and subsequent dorm. It didn’t allude to anything, but the teachers quickly found themselves familiarizing themselves with the list.
“But now that the missing boy is found dead on the grounds? Old theories are being brought back out, and who else has near constant access to UA grounds?”
“But our students?” Midnight asked with narrowed eyes.
Her tone was defiant, and she almost looked offended.
“We do hire outside contractors,” All-Might mentioned.
“We get someone new every time, All-Might.” Nedzu said simply, “That’s not possible.”
“You said thirty-three students were gone on that day? Why?” Present Mic cut in, a harder but thoughtful look on his face as he looked them over.
“At the time, these thirty students came down with a serious case of food poisoning in the days leading up to Horikoshi’s disappearance. The Commission, and only speculatively, suspected that our potential student perpetrator was responsible for infecting a small portion of Lunch Rush's food with E. coli to disguise his absence.”
“It can’t be that simple… ” All-Might said to no one in particular.
“Anyone else with access to the grounds was ruled out,” Detective Tsukauchi reminded.
The heroes let out dejected mumbles of their own, but they all had varying degrees of recognition of the event that happened two years ago. Even Midnight. Food poisoning is such a small thing in the world, especially in heroics, and while it was abnormal, it was so normal that it didn’t raise anyone's suspicions. Sometimes food just goes bad. The heroes looked to the hero, Lunch Rush, and his lack of mask was something of a rarity to everyone in the room. His arms were crossed as he looked at the table. Deep in thought as he mumbled something to himself. After a few moments, he looked up, a darker look on his face.
“I remember that day,” Lunch Rush said in an almost angry tone, “It was probably my worst day in the kitchen at UA. We threw our whole stock of onions and several other ingredients out after we traced it to that day's soup.”
“I remember that, too.” Vlad King said after a moment, “I had to cancel our training sessions for a week given half my students couldn’t strain themselves.”
“Weren’t over a hundred students affected by that?” All-Might asked aloud.
“106,” Nedzu said from his seat with one arm crossed and another hand on his chin, “Such a tactic would be ingenious. The perfect alibi.”
“Wait… “ Lunch Rush seemed to light up as he sat up straight in his chair. “As we were deep cleaning the whole kitchen that night, one of my aides found a vial that had rolled under the oven where the soup was broiling.”
The Detective pulled out a small notebook and wrote down the details, “And it didn’t strike you as odd?”
“For our more specialty meals, I keep rare and expensive ingredients in vials in my office,” Lunch Rush explained, his eyes going left and right, deep in rapid thought before they widened, “It was a busy day, and we already had students showing up to the nurses office, so when I later noticed that one of my ingredient vials was missing I wrote it off. The idea of someone stealing it didn’t even cross my mind.”
“Do you have it?”
“No,” he said through gritted teeth, “I was replacing my vials at the time, and I had my aide throw it away. Even if I did have it, I would have cleaned it a hundred times by now. There would be nothing there.”
All-Might groaned on his scooter as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “If the Commission had told us, we could have at least scoured our dumpsters or the trash yard.”
A few teachers mumbled in frustrated agreement.
“Were students allowed in the kitchens? Your office?” the Detective asked.
“The kitchen, yes. But under the supervision of me or my aides only. No student is allowed in my office unless I invite them in.”
“Did you?”
The chef looked down at the table with a scowl, but he shook his head, “No.”
The detective wrote down the new information, and the mood of the room only soured more as it sat in everyone's head. A lead so obvious had slipped right through their fingers. A fingerprint, or dried speck of spit, would have been all they needed to arrest this vile murderer this very instant.
But they only had a list of thirty-three current and former students.
While helpful, it wasn’t as initially useful as many would think. If someone was skilled enough to evade detection and place a body in the basement piece by piece, they likely had a good alibi. Nearly two years was also more than long enough to hide anything they hadn’t noticed, and for video surveillance tapes to be deleted by businesses in the surrounding areas. Working this list could take a while, and while it did narrow their list of suspects, they’d still need some sort of physical evidence to make anything stick in court.
“Hound Dog, did you remember smelling anything?” Nedzu asked quickly.
The man growled in his seat in the back of the room. His fists clenched in anger as his arms shook with rage.
“If I had smelled a body part in a student's bag, I would have… “ Hound Dog words turned more into a snarl with every syllable, but he stopped himself with a sharp intake of breath and roughly tapped the table in front of him. “Let's just say we’d be having this conversation two years ago.”
The room's eyes turned back to the list of students on the screen, and it was like the alleged killer was hiding in plain sight. Mocking them with a supposedly innocent smile.
“Is this list definitive?” Snipe asked.
“Yes,” the Detective said with a hard nod, ”The Police and Commission are putting together a task force and plan to investigate the out-of-school activity of every student on this list.”
“And they’ll be keeping us informed of their progress,” Nedzu cut in sharply.
“We will, but that’s where you all come in,” the Detective said as he gestured to the room full of heroes in front of him.
At this, it seemed a part of the sour mood washed away in a moment. The staff in this room may be teachers, but they were heroes first. Most of them sat a little straighter and waited to hear the strategy. Hound Dog specifically looked ready to jump up and hunt down the suspected students on the grounds at this very moment.
“Normally, such an incident would be all over the news, but Hawks was able to convince the family to not reveal our discovery to the public,” he clicked to the next slide, “For now.”
The slide held one line. A descriptor of what was to come.
OPERATION: HERD DEFENSE
“For now?” Midnight asked, her tone apprehensive.
“There is a high likelihood that if our suspect is, in fact, one of these students, that they are still on the grounds of UA at this very moment,” Nedzu says in a hard tone.
The skin of every teacher prickled at that hard reality.
“Hawks deemed it best that we not give our suspect any advance warning that we’re on his trail, lest they start destroying evidence or build a false alibi that can’t be debunked,” the detective said a he opened up a plastic tote on a table to his side, “We need as many facts as possible and we’ll be collecting them soon, but for now, we need all of you to keep an eye on these students.”
“We can’t just leave a killer amongst our students, Nedzu,” Present Mic said with a firm conviction in his eye, “only monsters cut people apart like that.”
“I understand, Hizashi, but you’re not really here to watch these thirty-three students, or even to teach.” Nedzu said firmly as he stood up in his chair, “You are here to protect the student body from anything that may threaten it.”
Nedzu jumped across onto the Detective's table and sat down behind the Detective’s thick and sturdy police laptop. The Detective looked a little concerned, but Nedzu pretended not to notice. He started tapping away, and after a minute, the heroes watched as the screen switched from a powerpoint to a checkerboard of livestreams displaying the current location of every student on the list.
A girl in the lunchroom. A boy walking outside towards the main campus doors. A closed bathroom door. At a cursory glance, nothing looked suspicious, but who knew? They could be scoping out their next victim right now, and they would have never known if the League hadn’t forced UA to activate the school's failsafe systems.
“It’s a risk we’ll have to take, everyone,” Nedzu almost looked uncomfortable saying it himself, “But this time, we’ll be watching, and should any of these students do anything on UA grounds, you all will be informed immediately.”
“Question,” Eraserhead said loudly to the room, “What if they already know? We haven’t said why, but we did evacuate 2C’s dormitory. My own students are speculating on it in class just this morning.”
“Isn’t that…” All-Might’s eye scanned the live feeds before settling on one and pointing at it, “Izuku Midoriya? In 2C?”
The Detective took a peek at the screen and just sighed as a look of resignation sprouted on his face, but he did pull out what seemed like a big stack of fat manila folders from the plastic tote.
“If they’re still a student here, they may very well have deduced our discovery of Kōhei, but if they’re one of the thirteen students who have already graduated, then we don’t want to give them the chance to disappear.”
The detective walked to each hero and presented them with a folder as he talked.
“However, if they are still here, and they’ve deduced what we’ve discovered, then they know that running now will only reveal themselves.”
“So we’re playing a game of catch and mouse with a serial killer?” Power Loader asked aloud with a tired and worn-out tone, “Wonderful.”
* * *
I didn't dare smile. It was so tempting to let one rip right in front of my homeroom teacher and the Principal, and in a perfect world, I would have. But I couldn't. Not yet, at least. The Stout ran a school for a reason, and that's not because he was a fool. Present Mic also wasn't anything to scoff at, despite being lesser in comparison to many heroes. Fidgeting with my fingers as I sat on the floor and leaned against the back of the couch, I waited silently as everyone began to notice the two at the head of the room.
“Principal Nedzu?”
“When did you get here?”
“So sneaky!”
“We got an announcement, little listeners, so you better quiet down,” Present Mic said in a tone of mock chastisement.
A few students chuckled, but the room was quick to go silent after a few moments. In that brief silence, I caught the eye of Nedzu and Mic in succession, and while their faces looked wholly at ease, their eyes lingered for longer than I would have liked.
A little class announcement like this was a normal occurrence here at UA, but I've had my suspicions for the last few days.
The dorm’s common area has everyone in it. Corachi, Denki, Enochi, and the rest of his second-year Gen Ed class. The room around us looked bare, and while there would usually be posters and other types of ornamentation on walls and shelves, none of us were able to bring any of our old stuff along with us yet.
“I know it's been a surprising couple of days,” the Stout started, “and I know you all have questions, but first I must inform you of the situation.”
Please do, Nedzu.
“On Friday afternoon, you were evacuated from your old dorm, and while we apologize for taking the whole weekend, we had to make sure of everything,” the Stout continued, the principal's eyes going over everyone.
“Cementoss was conducting some routine ground maintenance and, upon inspecting the foundation of your dormitory, discovered a cracked slab in the Southeast corner.”
The Southeast? He couldn’t… fuck. Is he just going out with it?
“Cementoss would have simply replaced the slab, but upon tearing down the old one, he noticed that a redundant gas line was cracked open completely.”
A few of the students around him gasped, and a few others breathed out a sudden sigh of relief. But me? A feeling of dread slowly reverberated down my spine as those words settled in my own head, and while I stopped myself from reacting physically, I couldn't stop the hair on my exposed arms from raising. The Stouts' beady, observant eyes looked right at me, looking down ever so slightly.
They found Horikoshi.
There was no redundant gas line in the Southeast corner, and only I would know that.
“This is why we rushed you out as quickly as possible, and also why we haven’t let you back in to collect all of your personal items,” the Stout explained.
“Will it be fixed soon?” a student asked. Riku, if he remembered correctly.
“Given the presence of a broken gas line, redundant as it may be, I’ve decided to move you all to this dorm as we inspect the dormitory's utilities. So, for now, this will be your new home for the year.”
“At least we were only there for two weeks.”
“Thank Kami it wasn’t the main gas line.”
“We were almost goners, dude!”
As the class voiced their concerns and worries, I felt like a deer in headlights as the two teachers let everyone talk. Their eyes were going from one student to the next, and while they looked completely innocuous, my intuition, combined with my knowledge of what was behind that wall, was telling me something else.
If they had proof, they wouldn’t bother with this charade.
I needed to blend in. Now.
“We survived the League of Villains, only for a gas line to nearly take us out,” I said with a tired sigh as I slumped forward a little and shook my head.
"When you say it like that, Midoriya… ”
“How did it break?”
“Should we go to the hospital?”
“We suspect UA’s emergency transportation protocol jostled everything on campus grounds during our struggle with the League of Villains, and while we’ve worked diligently to repair everything, it’s obvious we still have work to do.”
The principal reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pen and paper. Scribbling something quickly into it.
“The gas line was inactive, so none of you should need to see a doctor. But you’re all open to see Recovery Girl if you have worries.”
I looked around at my classmates, seeking to distract my reeling thoughts for the moment, and they all seemed to have varying degrees of worry and relief on their faces. But beneath that, I also noticed something familiar on my classmates' faces. Fear. The League nearly toppled Japan as we hid in our castle here at UA. But despite that near-impervious wall, it didn’t keep fear out. In the waning hours of the war, I swore I could almost feel their fear radiating through every crevice of this campus, and to see it again, even just slightly, was a pleasant surprise.
The League was defeated and six feet under, but from their perspective, it would seem the League would have gotten some kills from beyond the grave.
A tantalizing thought.
If it were true.
“All carbon monoxide detectors in the dorms are fully functional little listeners, but if you smell rotten eggs or feel unusually light-headed while in the dorms, report it to us immediately, you hear?” Present Mic said with a pointed nod.
I nodded along with the rest of the class, and the two heroes glanced at each other before a little electronic note echoed from Present Mic’s pocket. He pulled out his phone, and I watched as his brows scrunched in concern before he excused himself from the room. However, Nedzu stayed behind.
“We’ll be moving your things to your new rooms over the next few days, so you’ll have to make do with our standard complement of amenities for the time being.”
“But what about our uniforms?” I asked.
“And our homework?” asked another.
“Rest assured, students, that has all been worked out,” Nedzu said reassuringly, his eyes once again finding mine.
His rat eyes eventually moved to others as he began to go over the finer details, but as I sat there on the floor, I simply stewed.
What did they know?
Who did they actually suspect?
Was I one of them?
These questions, while so simple, could drive a person mad. Which was only compounded by the fact that I couldn’t read Nedzu’s facial expressions in the slightest. I did my best to tamper myself as I kept my eye on the rodent. Fidgeting with one of my pocket zippers as a feeling of fear and uncertainty spreads in my mind.
Never in my life had I felt so on edge. So close to danger. With every step through these halls over the last few days, my skin tingled with an excited dread that filled up every part of my body to the brim. At first, when we were escorted out of the building, I was sure they were going to find out immediately somehow, but here I sat. Still free. Still in the open.
Just another student with a spotless history.
Just another student with a secret to keep.
I’d have to be careful now, and hope to Kami that my efforts to hide my tracks hold up. Because while I may ask myself ‘am I a suspect?’ , I knew I was. I needed a way out of school that day, and I couldn’t be the only one gone, and consequently, the only suspect. Though as Nedzu finished up his explanations and answered some questions, an old thought resurfaced.
Why hide the body here? I could have dumped Horikoshi anywhere. In a lake, a river, or even in the mountains. Maybe even an abandoned property. All the little alternatives flipped through my mind, alternatives that wouldn’t have named me as a suspect in a million years, but I couldn’t help it as the beginnings of a harmless smile formed on my face.
It was simple, really.
Was it my frustration with being contained here? The macabre wants to add to the terror of the League? No. No, it was much simpler than that. Nedzu turned with a final wave and jumped down to the floor. His little mouse body jostled around as he walked out the front door and onto wherever he needed to be next.
I let my smile morph. Just a little. And in that moment, I knew why I did it.