"Look, are you gonna talk to me? Or am I gonna keep playing the damn guessing game with you Shimura!"
Nana winced at his tone. Sorahiko never called her 'Shimura' not unless he was royally pissed at her.
Of course he was pissed. He had every right to be pissed.
Ever since the doctor, she knew Sorahiko's hackles were raised, right alongside his suspicions.
The note had mentioned her by name after all.
Gran was smart, he could do and take a lot of things. But one thing he couldn't do or take was accept being lied to.
And she had been lying to him.
A lie of omission maybe, but a lie nonetheless.
Her oldest friend glared at her, arms crossed over his chest, his beard a bit longer than normal. Funny the things you noticed in an awkward situation.
He let out a breath, half a sigh, half a growl "Nana… I know you know something! If I'm gonna keep chasing this I need to know what the hell I'm walking into!"
Nana clenched her eyes shut, feeling her own features twisting into a grimace, guilt coiling in her gut.
There was silence between them, broken only by the sound of their capes as they rustled, caught in the winds high above the city.
Finally, she let out the breath she'd been holding. "It's… dangerous Sorahiko. I… I can tell you but if you'd rather back out its best if I don't."
She kept her eyes closed, not daring to look at her longtime friend.
"Are you a goddamn moron?"
His voice was like sandpaper, she opened her eyes to see him glaring with a look that could curdle milk.
"I'm not leaving you to deal with this crap alone so stop making me pull teeth and just get it the hell over with, I'm not getting any younger waiting on you!"
A part of her was relieved.
Another bigger part recognized that he didn't fully grasp the situation.
She looked at him, dead in his masked eyes.
"I'm serious." She said, and she could see his eyes narrow. "This is you 'before' stepping into deep shit' and there will be a you 'after' stepping into deep shit." She said. "It could get you killed."
His expression didn't twitch.
"My answer hasn't changed." He groused. "So, if you're done with the dramatics- let's talk over a cup of coffee. Actual good coffee this time."
He gestured for her to follow him, as he floated down to the city below.
(X)(X)(X)
Later found them standing atop a roof, she'd already drunk her coffee, forcing it down really. Sorahiko's ridiculously tall mug wasn't even halfway done.
"So what the hell's been eating at you?"
"I'm not even sure where to start, or if you'll even believe me."
"The beginning is usually a good place."
"You know your dry sarcasm isn't helping." She groused.
"Stop stalling." He demanded, taking a sip.
She sighed.
The beginning… The beginning… right. Well…
"I wasn't born with a strength enhancing quirk Sorahiko."
He gave her an odd look, but didn't interrupt.
She was grateful. Made things easier.
Once she started it was hard to stop.
She wasn't venting here. She wasn't scared, restraining frayed nerves or shocked by the discovery of a surprise lab under her own nose.
No. Now she was in her right mind, composed.
And she was telling him everything.
Because this was Sorahiko.
Her oldest friend. Maybe even her best friend, who dealt with all her bullshit and helped her through everything, more than anyone else ever could have.
It was scary, telling him, not just for the sake of his own safety, but the confession that, for almost as long as she'd known him she'd kept this lie from him.
But also, liberating.
Come what may. It was out in the open now.
It took her time, a long time. The sun had moved from its place high in the sky by the time she was done.
"Well… there it is- I've been hiding since I gave up Kotaro. Until we found that lab… I may have stayed hiding. Just quietly passed it on to a successor when the time came. Another ten, maybe twenty years and I think the quirk will be ready."
There was silence for a time.
She tried not to shift awkwardly. "And well… that's it." She hedged again, too nervous to look at his reaction.
"Honestly this has gotta be the single biggest instance of bullshit you've ever pulled."
She flinched.
"Thinking you tellin me this was gonna change anything. Feh." He scoffed, tossing his crumpled coffee cup to fall down the side of the building. "It's like you haven't known me for half our damn lives."
The relief was like a flood of cold water flowing between her ribs and Nana felt she could breathe again, turning her eyes finally to see the dour profile of her old friend as his eyebrows scrunched together, thinking.
"A quirk thief… active for centuries. Even if he took just one quirk a month he would have… Jesus. Thousands of quirks. And he's harvesting them. Getting pediatricians and others to find strong quirks for him to get his hands on. Who knows how long that's been going on. Years at least."
She could see him starting to wrap his head around it, the colossal thing that was the prospect of taking down All for One.
"It's likely worse than what you're thinking." And wasn't she just a bright ray of sunshine to add to this conversation. "I've never heard of him having an upper limit to how many of those stockpiled quirks he can activate at once so..."
And then she saw it, the sliver of fear coiling behind his stoic gaze.
He likely thought All For one could take quirks but use them just one at a time.
Quirk combinations opened up an entirely new, exponentially greater threat level.
The third wielder of the power had discovered that particular advantage according to the stories she'd heard passed down to her.
Didn't end well for the third.
He shook his head. "What about this successor of yours? You been lookin?"
Nana smiled. "No ac-" She stopped.
Her mind drifted back to Yagi. She'd seen him again just a few short days ago, his bruise was a little better now, now a more yellow off color rather than a purple splotch covering the whole side of his face.
"Well." She amended. "I haven't fully settled…. But. Maybe."
"Hmmm?"
"It's this kid I met. You remember the one, he tossed a Backpack to try to get the Batman off of me."
"Hmm? Toshinori Yagi?" He did remember, he was good with names.
"He's a good kid." Nana smiled. "A little crazy though. He thinks that the reason society's stuck where it's at with all the villains and crime because people don't have a symbol to rally around."
"You only met that boy two weeks ago!"
"My last judge of character didn't turn out so bad." She defended with a sheepish smile.
"There's a world of difference between taking in a homeless person when you can bench press a city bus if he tries something and handing over this apparently really important quirk to a kid you just met!"
"I got a good feeling about him though."
"You and your goddamn 'good feelings! Hate your damn feelings."
She laughed.
Sorahiko rolled his eyes. "Just… don't jump in without looking. At least get to know the kid! Just a bit."
"I know I know, don't worry, like I said, it wasn't settled in my mind."
He grumbled.
He did that often.
"So. You're thinking this… All for One sprang the doctor? Personally or through a lieutenant"
Her smile fell. "Personal."
"What makes you so sure."
"Because I'm involved, and he knows it."
"He has a vendetta against you?" Sorahiko's fingers traced the beard at his chin. "Because you have One for All? Or a personal history before this?"
"Bit of both." She said. "My own Master always said that All for One was… I don't know. Changing. Becoming obsessed with this quirk. He wants it but he can't steal it. It's the one quirk he can't steal and it pisses him off."
"Hmmm… well if he was personally involved it would explain some of what the forensics and tech guys found."
She looked at him oddly.
He sighed, aggravated. "Don't you read the damn forensic reports! This is supposed to be your lifelong nemesis here or whatever!"
"I'm sorry I've been a little busy these last few days. I did read the police report!. Besides they'd just be confirming the suspicion I already had! All for One was involved."
The man rolled his eyes. "The security cameras were scrambled, not much on any of them except static, none of the guards remember seeing anyone, or even noticed when doors were opened directly in front of them when they were at the security checkpoints. Said doors were opened with those very same police ID's and the cell door itself was never opened according to computer records, Only way that could happen is with multiple quirks. Infiltration types too, good ones.
Nana closed her eyes. Taking a deep breath before nodding to herself. "Alright. So… as it stands losing the doctor kinda put us back to square one. What do we do? Keep chasing the Bat? He's definitely on the case."
"Maybe." The jet quirk user took a breath. "Gimme some time to think on this. We'll meet back tomorrow and see where we go from there."
"Sounds good."
He nodded, turning to leave.
Nana stepped forward, grasping Sorahiko by the shoulder.
"Hmm, what's-"
He stopped.
She turned him around and wrapped her arms around him in a hug.
"Thanks, Sora. Thanks a whole lot."
He huffed, offering her a stiff hug back.
"Don't mention it kid."
She peeled herself off him and Sorahiko moved to fly away, his boots activating with a vent of compressed air.
Then her phone rang.
Nana blinked. Most of her friends and contacts she had certain ringtones to, it was rare to default to her generic ring.
Fishing her phone out of her pocket, she saw an 'UNKNOWN' number glaring back at her. She almost didn't answer before she thought better of it.
Even if it was… All for One, better to find out by phone that he had this level of personal information than getting home and finding him standing on her living room floor.
"Somethin up?"
She looked to Sora, not answering before she clicked the answer button.
So help her if this was some salesman…
"Hello?"
"You should have let me interrogate the doctor before you lost him."
Her eyes widened, she snapped her fingers quickly, catching Sorahiko's attention. His feet hit the ground before he came closer and Nana put the call on speaker phone.
"Bat." She said catching her friend's eyes widening in surprise before narrowing in anger. "How the hell did you even get this number?"
"Same way I got your address. Regardless, we have the same goal. This… quirk thief taking people and stealing their quirks. He's got to be dealt with."
"You are in way over your head." She warned. "This guy doesn't have a few dozen quirks. He's been operating for a long time and you-"
"Doesn't change anything. We can keep fighting eachother or we can start fighting him, whatever your answer, my goal doesn't change."
She felt her jaw tighten, the muscle jumping under her skin. "Why trust us? The second we see you we could take you in?"
"You could. But then you'll both have less resources to draw on. Both my skills and the evidence I've gathered so far, which, believe me, is substantially more than what either of you two have."
She looked to Sorahiko, the man didn't look pleased as he met her eye.
"We need time to think about this."
"You have one hour. Meet me by the Kasegawa fishery by then. If you don't we won't speak again."
He hung up.
(X)(X)(X)
They were here.
Because of course they were.
They went back and forth, but if she were honest, it was a foregone conclusion.
Not many people knew about All for One, even as a simple 'quirk thief'.
Even less people would be willing to fight him, risking their lives and their quirks on a suicide mission.
Help, even from this source… wasn't exactly something they could turn away easily.
She'd already thought the Bat was crazy, she didn't think he was stupid.
But sometimes stupid was the best they had to work with.
She and Sorahiko touched down on the roof of the fishery.
The sun was starting to go down, its ruddy orange fire spread through the sky, casting long dark shadows.
The smell wasn't quite so strong up here, but it was still noticeable.
"Alright so… we late or something?" She asked, turning to Sora. "Where's the Bat?"
"Right here."
She jumped a foot in the air, whirling around to see the black clad vigilante standing three feet behind the both of them.
"Jesus christ!" She shouted.
She could have sworn she spotted a hint of a smirk on his face.
And she was back to wanting to punch him.
Gran crossed his arms. "Alright vigilante, we're here."
"So you are." He replied. "Let's get down to business. This quirk thief-"
"All for One." She answered, best just get that out the way, calling him a quirk thief was getting annoying.
"Hmm." The Bat seemed to take in the information nodding to himself. "Fits."
"What fits?"
"His name choice. The profile indicates image and projection are important tools he favors."
"You've made a profile on him?" Gran asked, interest piqued. "You have enough information for that?"
"Wasn't easy, but hit enough of his operations, interrogate enough people, things start to come together."
Was everyone getting in on this psychology thing now? First Bruce, now this guy?
"Alright so other than that what else does it tell ya?" Her friend asked.
"Frankly, it's the reason I contacted you at all." The Bat answered. "Most crime bosses have one goal, they've established power, and so they wish to maintain or expand it. But that pattern broke two weeks ago with the doctor."
"Why? If the doctor could give us information on his operation, it'd make sense to rescue him."
The bat shook his head. "Not the rescue."
He turned his head, looking right at her. "He called you out by name. Made a point of it."
She felt cold in her stomach.
"That tells me he knows you, tells me he took an interest. I'd say you've encountered him before and he's fixated on you. Not sure why."
"Musta left an impression." She smiled, deflecting.
"Hmm." He didn't look like he believed her.
Or he was constipated, one of the two.
He turned his eyes back to Sorahiko. "If the profile holds, All for One is the kind of criminal that likes to flaunt his power, as I said, image and projection are important to him. That means he's slow to act, slow to move on threats. Part of his projection methodology is to allow some of his operations to get hit, enough for the lower levels of his organization to sweat, worry."
"Then he swoops in like a hurricane to destroy whatever was causing trouble, making it look easy to the underlings that were getting scared." Sorahiko finished for him, putting the pieces together.
They were both better at it than her.
Kinda made her feel like she shoulda paid more attention to her own master. He'd been good at this sorta thing too.
The Bat nodded. "Correct. At the moment, we're still in his comfort zone. We're only just starting to make ripples. The doctor was a more important asset than we realized. But beyond that we still haven't climbed the ladder enough for him to seek us out to do what he always does to cement his image of strength to his underlings."
"Alright, so what's your plan?"
The Bat brought one hand out of the folds of his cape, a stacked file gripped in his fingers.
He smirked coldly. "Climb the ladder."
He held it out, and Nana took hold of the file, opening it to see a slew of images. Pictures of person's of interest, places, dates, even bank records.
She recognized some of these faces. A few she didn't even know were villains.
"Where the hell did you get all this?" She asked.
"Break a few fingers, you get answers"
She glared at him.
Holding out the file out to Sora, the both of them going over the contents for whole minutes.
"So… what? We hit these stash houses one at a time until-"
"No." He interrupted her.
Rude.
"All for One is powerful, if we move slow we'll give him the chance to fight us where he wants. I'm willing to bet he has more than a few intelligence enhancing quirks that'll let him predict where we'll strike if we hold to a pattern and even if we don't if we all move together it'll still give him too much information. Moving together means meeting up, it means varying time schedules converging, if he can access traffic cams or other means of information he can see where we're approaching from and leaving to. I'd rather not give him that opportunity."
"You want us to hit multiple sites simultaneously." Sorahiko, again, put the pieces together before she did.
"Exactly. Strong as he is, he can only be at one place at a time, and he has no teleportation quirk that'll let him move so rapidly between places he can catch us all. He wants a straight fight. We won't give it to him."
"It'll get him angry. Make him stupid."
The Bat nodded.
"How do you know he doesn't have a teleportation quirk?" She asked injecting herself back into the conversation. As far as she was concerned All for One by this point had every damn quirk.
"By my count, he used three, possibly five different quirks to rescue the doctor judging by the evidence-"
"Again, you got that evidence how?"
He ignored her.
Rude.
"If his quirk works like others there are limits, energy expenditure, mental strain, a human body's innate resistances and so on. Why expend five quirks when one would suffice? He didn't want to make a statement, otherwise the cops and everyone would have known about the escape. He kept it quiet. Let the cops keep it quiet too. No media attention. Even the other prisoners of his organization were left to rot in their cells. Which means if he wanted to keep it that way, he would have gone with the path of least resistance. Ergo, no teleportation quirk."
"That sounds like a really big assumption." She hedged.
"If I'm wrong and he does have one, then we're all dead the second he decides to go after us, no matter where we are."
She shuddered. "Right. No teleportation quirk then."
He turned around, beginning to march away. "I'll contact you in one weeks time. Read the file. Then we'll start."
"Wait a second." Sora called behind him. "If we're gonna work together we need to know what you can do. The hell's your quirk anyway?"
The Bat turned, eying the both of them.
Nana thought for a moment. "You know. I don't think the vigilante actually wants to give us information that'll help us catch him later."
Sorahiko turned, glaring at her and she realized then she probably shouldn't have blurted that out.
Oops.
He sighed, that patented Sorahiko sigh of exasperated aggravation.
He turned back. "Look we-"
And he was gone.
"What! Where did he-"
"Annoying isn't it?"
Sorahiko went up to the sky, panning his eyes around to search.
She thought for a moment.
"Wait. Is that his answer? Just disappearing? Seems like an answer."