Chapter Text
“Staring at your phone like it’s Endeavour isn’t going to make it ring any faster, dear.”
Izuku jolts slightly, unaware that he’d been letting his expression reflect his feelings. There’s probably something to be said about ‘staring at something like it’s Endeavour’ being shorthand for ‘with utter contempt and a desire to inflict grievous bodily harm’, but he’s not in any mood to say it. Nor does thinking about the Pro Hero with both the highest kill count and the most property damage on record improve his mood any. His mom is right, though; in the three months since the arrest of Toga Himiko, being upset hasn’t made anything move any faster. He feels bad for having gone off on Gori, one of the officers he knows personally and the one who had picked Toga up - the man had just been doing his job after all - but the charges were bullshit! She should be getting ticketed for carrying an unregistered weapon, but since she’d been declared legally dead by her parents, she has no way of proving she’s actually Toga. That meant an additional charge of making false statements about being registered, and the lawyer he had gotten her had just barely managed to get them to reconsider trying to nail her for identity theft - and only then because she hadn’t actually been carrying any counterfeit documents, just her grade school student card. It should have been simple to fix the registry. It should have been simple to get her parents’ declaration revoked. It should have all been so simple, and yet here he is, having to deal with how ungodly complicated it has all become.
His phone rings.
He snatches it off the table swiftly, flipping it open and holding it to his ear. “Dairi. Please tell me you have good news.”
“Wish I could say that I do, Midoriya-san. There’s been a development. It’s rough.”
Izuku’s jaw tightens, and he slips away from the living room to his bedroom. “What the hell do you mean ‘a development’? Today was supposed to be her sentencing trial. What happened?”
“Look, I really shouldn’t be telling you this; I know you’re the one who hired me, but-”
“Dairi.” Izuku keeps his voice deathly calm, despite how loudly he wants to scream. The man had been nothing but a pain in his ass since the start of this whole debacle, but he’d been the only attorney available to him on such short notice. “I could not give less of a shit about confidentiality laws right now. You work for the Collective, and that means that right now, you work for me. Not the courts, not the client, me. So, I am going to ask you again, and you are going to answer, or may the kami help me I will come down to your office and I will bring the fucking Shizuoka peacekeepers to look through the files myself. You know who I am, you know that’s not an empty threat. Now. What. Happened?”
He hears the man on the other end take a deep, shaky breath, and a sip from a glass of something likely alcoholic. “Right. Yes. Sorry. There was a report that was supposed to go to Team Iidaten. I don’t know how it ended up in Teki’s hands, but he put it in front of the magistrate, and everything went to shit. Your girl, Toga, she’s been connected to a string of murders. Seventy-six of them, running all the way from Nara to here in Shizuoka; the last one was at the end of last year in Hamamatsu. There were witnesses. I can’t tell you what the hell happened, because I don’t know. The magistrate, he should have held off the file, given me time to go through it with her and put up some kind of defense, but he didn’t. He just… Midoriya-san, he convicted her. On all counts. I’m sorry, I did the best I could, but I got hung out to dry.”
Izuku snaps his phone shut and hurls it across the room, where it smashes into the wall directly below his All Might Summer Calendar Collection. Luckily for his personal data, it’s an incredibly durable device. Unluckily for the wall, it’s an incredibly durable device. He hears a swift knock at the door.
“Izuku? Honey, are you alright?”
Shoving himself up from his chair, he grabs his phone and stuffs it in his pocket, snatching his day bag and opening the door. “I’m fine, mom. Sorry if I spooked you. I need to step out for a bit.”
“Oh my!” Inko’s brow furrows, and she Attracts him close, pulling him into a warm, strong hug. “Do you want to talk about it, before you go?”
Izuku leans into the hug, resolve wavering, and shakes his head slowly against his mother’s shoulder. “Something bad happened during Toga’s trial. I have to go see someone, get more information. I’ll be back soon.”
His mother gives him one last squeeze, then lets him go. “Alright. I love you.”
“Love you too, mom.”
The walk to the Tatooin Shopping District is one he’s made many times before, between shopping, catching the train to Aldera, and visiting his friend, but today takes him to another spot, albeit one just as familiar. A bell chimes as he pushes the door open to a used book store, raising a hand in greeting to the boy behind the counter, who scratches idly at a patch of scales on his neck that appear to be flaking slightly. “Dashi, are you using that cream I got you?”
The boy looks up from his book, a sheepish grin on his face. “Midoriya! Uh, I actually left my jar at my mom’s place the other day. I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare on you?”
Izuku rolls his eyes in playful exasperation, swinging his bag around to dig into its main pocket and producing a small white jar of thick scale cream. “I told you to take two of them so you could keep one there! I’m putting the next one on your tab, so don’t lose it again, okay?”
Dashi takes the cream and cracks the lid of the jar, sighing in relief as he rubs a bit of it on his scales. “You’re a lifesaver. You here to see someone? Thought today was your day off.”
“Two people,” he replies, slinging his bag over his shoulder again, “assuming they’re both in. Is Kaba here?”
Dashi blinks, surprised, then reaches under the counter to pull out a small log book. Each person who enters through the doors is written down here, and he taps the end of a pen down the list. “Lemme see… Yep, came in at the end of the morning shift. Go on through, I’ll page him and let him know you’re coming.”
“Thanks Dashi.”
With the loud thunk of a heavy bolt retracting, the staff door at the end of the counter opens slightly, and Izuku moves through it and into a short entryway, pushing through the much heavier steel door at the other end and into the hidden space that makes up the Musutafu branch of the Collector Collective. It’s massive, stretching deep into the district through a facade of old factories and beneath the Tatooin Station train overpass, and filled to the brim with all sorts of equipment, machinery, and work stations suited to the primary goal of the Collective: preservation of entertainment media. The Musutafu branch, in particular, deals primarily in print media, kitted out with printing presses both modern and antique, industrial scanners, benches for carefully deconstructing old books and magazines to be catalogued and repaired, and a shipping department that sends reproductions of their works all over the world. Izuku works here himself sometimes, translating English texts to Japanese and vice-versa, using the proceeds from his labour to fund his handouts of phones and money. The primary work he does, though, the thing that earned him his title as Finder and his high standing within the organization, is tracking down original media to be preserved. Between his network of people in the city’s streets and underbelly and his frequenting of Pro Hero and pre-Quirk collectibles forums, he often comes across things of significance only to a group like the Collective, stories and scripts and movies and books that very few people care about. Something like Disney or Marvel or Pokemon is widely appreciated, sure, but that also tends to mean that it’s easier to find old examples of it, even stretching back to the Dawn of Quirks and beyond; it’s far harder to track down things like third party manuals for tabletop games, videos released by independent film companies two centuries ago, interviews with B-list celebrities no one has ever heard of. Those are the greatest treasures for the Collective, the things that only they would think to preserve.
The highlight of his finds, the thing that had gained him the most recognition and led to those in the upper echelons of the society taking an interest in him and his ideas, had been twofold: the print edition of a little-known webcomic, and an operational thumb drive containing an archive of the author’s entire original works on a custom-built browser. It had, in fact, come to him in a much larger trade for reproduction Batman comics, and he’d thought at first that they were a modern item due to how well-preserved they had been. It wasn’t until he was able to find an antique laptop that was compatible with the thumb drive that he’d come to understand just what it was he had, and he’d brought the whole thing to the Collective immediately. But it wasn’t this that had drawn him to the organization to begin with, as much as he loves their mission of media preservation. Rather, it had been the part of the office he walks to now, the social area.
Founded on principles of inclusion and run by social outcasts from its very inception, it had become a place for those shunned by society, people with fearsome Quirks, unsightly mutations, or those with no Quirks at all like himself, to come together in a place of safety and acceptance. As the Collective grew into a globe-spanning organization, more and more resources had been put into making its branches as primary office into places where anyone from a middle schooler with a bullying problem to a villain fresh off a prison sentence to even a Pro Hero in need of a mental reset could visit, relax, and just be. The Collective is a neutral space, its doors open to all who were willing to respect its inhabitants and its rules. Those who refused to abide by this neutrality would be dealt with swiftly and harshly in order to maintain the peace.
Striding past various couches, pillows, beanbag chairs, and sundry other places to recline, he mostly ignores the people who greet him, moving with enough sense of purpose that none attempt to approach, until he reaches the semi-private booths towards the back that are his destination. He pauses only to knock politely before entering one of them and falling into the armchair there, glancing across the table at a well-kempt man with thick, soda-bottle glasses. “Kaba. Talk to me.”
Takamine Kaba runs a nervous hand over his slick hair and adjusts his tie, chewing at his bottom lip. “It is bad, Midoriya-san, very bad indeed. You’ll have heard by now about the trial itself, yes yes, about the file stolen from Team Iidaten; I left the room shortly after the sentencing, so I did so I did, and I spotted Tomoe - Tomoe Yuzu, you remember her, the Commission agent - arguing about Toga with someone from the, ah, the uhm. The. Oh me, oh my, oh me oh my.”
Izuku stares hard at the anxious reporter who acts as the Collective’s inside man at various court proceedings, reaching into his bag once more to hand over a bottle of water, which Kaba downs in a single breath. “The what, Kaba?”
He swallows, adjusting his tie again. “The procurements division.”
Fuck.
“You’re sure? Kaba, think very hard, are you absolutely certain that’s who they were?”
The man nods, tapping his glasses and blinking his starry-white eyes. “I know, I know, yes yes. I’ve had the unfortunately misfortunate displeasure of meeting her before, at the Red Light Ragshot trial, so I did so I did. Word was she’d been incredibly embarrassed by that spectacle of foolishness, and now she’s out looking to earn her way back into the President’s good graces, yes yes.”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
The procurements division is one of those cliche ‘officially non-existent’ entities, except that on paper, they truly don’t exist, to the point that the Hero Public Safety Commission doesn’t even need to deny that they do, because the general public isn’t asking. For those who know, though, they’re the worst of the worst. To call them recruiters is the politest term, and some argue they’re more akin to slavers. They’re known for bringing in off-the-books talent, covert operations and black budget dealings. If they’d taken an interest in Toga, if they were out to recruit her…
“There is more, yes yes.”
Izuku’s head snaps up, a snarl marring his lips, and he sees Kaba gulp loudly and completely remove his tie this time. “You learned something, didn’t you? About what they’re doing?”
He nods feverishly, licking his lips. “So I did so I did. They will be. There’s a convoy coming. To Musutafu. From.” The man’s voice cracks and rises at least three octaves. “Tartarus.”
Tartarus. The unholy island prison. If they’re taking Toga there… If they bring her past its fabled Bronze Gate, there will be no hope of ever seeing her again. He canʼt let that happen. He wonʼt let that happen. “When?”
“December.”
Good. Thatʼs good, that means he has time. He gives Kaba his last bottle of water, then leaves, stalking towards the private office rooms to find the second person he had come to visit, originally intended as a polite social call. But now he has business, business of the kind only one man can help him with.
Itʼs time to see the Sentinel.