Embracing the Role
It had been six months since Izuku's fateful encounter with All Might. It seemed like a lot longer to Izuku: a lot had changed since he was a bright eyed kid holding onto a dream of becoming a hero. He'd learned a lot about computers and hacking to help with his villain work and was planning on going to a high school that emphasized programming. He still did most of his villain work in internet cafes, but moved around frequently to prevent being tracked. He had also tried picking up as much as he could about money laundering to prevent anyone from tracking his funds. His prices went up with each plan he sent out and he had yet to reach a point where his clients refused to pay.
He had also been cleaning Dagobah beach. It had started as a way to deal with his guilt over becoming a villain. Maybe if he did something good for the community, it would cancel out the harm he'd caused. Izuku was gradually coming to terms with his new life, letting his bitterness at society combine with his pride at a job done well to drown out his regret. He didn't get panic attacks anymore when he opened the news and saw that one of his plans had been carried out. He still got nervous and somewhat nauseous, but even that was getting replaced with satisfaction. It didn't hurt that every message in his inbox fed his ego as villains were constantly thanking him or demanding his services. For the first time in his life, he had people who didn't think he was useless! It was like a drug and Izuku couldn't get enough of it. So far, he'd sold the murder plans for ten heroes and that wasn't even counting the numerous robberies, non-hero assassinations and other crimes that he'd planned.
But people were starting to catch on. Conspiracy theorists online were starting to connect the recent uptick in hero deaths and even the police were starting to suspect there might be one person behind it. Villains were starting to come to him with higher profile targets, but were also starting to demand face to face meetings rather than just through a screen.
Which was why he'd never stopped cleaning the beach. He knew that one act of good wouldn't make up for the bad he'd done and he was getting to the point that he didn't want it to. But it was excellent muscle training, and he needed to be strong if he expected to survive in the world of villains.
Izuku caught movement out of the corner of his eye as he hefted a microwave and began to carry it toward the dumpster. He had started to suspect this morning, but now he was sure. He was being followed, which meant that someone had managed to figure out that he was Mastermind. The only question was who? Izuku continued his task without letting on that he knew he was being watched, opting instead to keep an eye out and get a description of his stalker. Hopefully it was a villain. Izuku didn't quite know what he'd do if the heroes caught onto his identity this early in the game, so yeah, hopefully villain. Izuku had to resist chuckling to himself. What had his life become.
By the time he left the beach at sundown, he'd discovered that his stalker was a middle aged man with grey hair, a goatee, and apparently a love of cheap suits and cigarettes. He was pretty good at staying out of sight, but Izuku had years of experience hiding from bullies and, more recently, stalking heroes himself. He breathed a sigh of relief, this guy was almost definitely not a hero, but if he had managed to find Izuku, he must have significant connections in the underground. Izuku made a note to check his notebooks when he got home.
Izuku had become much more paranoid since he'd thrown himself into villainy. Call it a combination of a guilty conscious and an anxiety disorder or whatever, but the end result was that Izuku was neurotically careful when it came to not getting caught. He had an irrational fear that, somehow, a cop would try posing as one of his clients online, get him to send a murder plan for a hero, then somehow use the IP adress to track him and take him to jail. Yeah, maybe Izuku had been watching too many crime dramas, but it could happen.
Anyway, he'd started to learn as much as he could about the villain underground so that he could reasonably vet his clients. It helped that he'd started asking about his clients quirks and skill sets so that he could incorporate them into his plans, but a majority of his information came from the dark net and hacking into some of the less secure police databases. Just like he had notebooks of information on heroes, now he had them on villains and it came in handy in unexpected ways.
One client a few weeks ago had commissioned him to help their group rob a casino. It was a difficult job with a big payout, so Izuku had only demanded part of his fee upfront. After the job was done, he'd messaged the client about the rest of his money and gotten the response of Thanks, but you should be lucky with what you've got and you're not getting any more from us. Idiots really. He'd vetted them beforehand and checked their quirks against the police registry, so he knew who they were, where they lived and, most importantly, their weaknesses.
In the midst of his fuming, it hadn't taken him long to find a few villains with a grudge against their little group. Turns out Izuku wasn't the only one these guys had tried to screw over. It was a little harder to find out how to contact their enemies, but once he did they seemed more than happy to pay Izuku for the chance to take them down. Needless to say, no one had tried to cheat Mastermind out of his fee since.
It came in handy now as he looked through descriptions of various known villains in an attempt to figure out who was following him. The guy didn't have an obvious quirk from what he could see, but who would have a reason to come after him? A previous client? No dice. Izuku continued rifling through the pages until...bingo. Giran . A broker, Izuku leaned back in his chair, of course.
The name nagged at him though, like he should be more familiar with this guy than just a passing entry in his journal. His eyes skimmed over the notes, lingering on the known connections list when a note he'd made in the margin caught in eye, more specifically, a username. Oh, right. Giran was the broker who'd reached out to him online a few times early on, offering to arrange meetings with big name players in the villain world and provide any necessary gear.
Izuku had soundly refused. He had been so new to the game when Giran had reached out and hadn't yet grown comfortable with calling himself as a villain. He had also been scared. One of the main reasons he liked working online was that his skills could speak for themselves. He had a sneaking suspicion that Mastermind's credibility would tank the moment word got out that he was just a quirkless teenager.
Things are different now , Izuku mused, yeah, I'm still a quirkless teenager, but at least I've gotten used to the fact that I'm a villain now. I've got a reputation. A big reputation, if the copycat Mastermind's popping up to sell inferior plans was anything to go by. A reputation I need to uphold. So far, Izuku had been able to take care of the copycats fairly quickly, using the same methods he used for cheating clients, but one could never be too careful. Maybe it's finally time to start showing a physical presence.
And with that, Izuku pulled out a notebook and began to make plans.