Chapter 22 – Meeting with Tsukauchi and Analysis

A/N: Since at this point it will get more confusing for the POVs, when Raiko is in his Knockout persona, it will be "Knockout's POV" and when it will be Raiko himself, it will be "Raiko's POV.

Raiko's POV

The Next Day

I entered the police station, as the meeting for Knockout's investigation was here. The reason they had asked me instead of my mom to help them with Knockout's case it that my mom was now much more focused on research rather than helping the police, because I was there to be her successor and she had always prefered research. So she didn't help the police anymore, really.

Also, I was pretty sure that they were going to try and make me see Knockout one way or another so I could "see" his quirks, but I had a plan for that eventuality, I would "clone" myself. I still needed to buy some quirks for that, though, so I just had to delay for a couple of months, which shouldn't be a problem.

I asked the receptionist:

"Hello, my name is Raiko Shuzenjii and I have an appointment with Detective Tsukauchi at 9 AM."

I gave her a proof of my identity and she answered:

"Detective Tsukauci is waiting for you in his office, last door on the right, M. Shuzenjii."

It kinda felt weird to be called Mister by someone 30 years older than you, but I quickly got over it and walked toward Tsukauchi's office.

When I entered, I immediately noticed the mountain of paperwork lying around. I was pretty sure that most of it was from the Vigilantism I did as Knockout and I was a bit sorry for him for a moment.

"Ah, right on time, M. Shuzenjii I was preparing every document we have about Knockout's quirk. But first, I need you to sign this, it's a non-disclosure agreement", the detective said, giving me a stack of documents.

I quickly read the document, and it was really just a NDA with a lot of clauses, but basically, I couldn't tell anyone about what I learned about Knockout in the investigation.

I signed it, as there wasn't anything fishy in it before taking a seat.

"Don't worry, I'm trustworthy. Raiko Shuzenjii, pleased to meet you M.Tsukauchi, I heard a lot about your achievements and I'm very interested in this case pleased to participate in it, to say the least", I said, introducing myself while shaking his hand.

Now, I knew that his quirk activated by physical contact, and he knew that I knew that, so this was a test for me. He was going to use his quirk on me, and I needed to act as if it didn't bother me and I had nothing to hide.

Except I was Knockout himself. Fortunately, I wasn't dumb and had a simple solution for this. Remember the quirk "Emotional Manipulation" ? I could use it to manipulate my emotion by brainwashing myself. In this case, I simply used to "convince" myself that I was telling the truth. It will work, because Detective Tsukauchi's quirk is about what the person thinks is the truth, and thanks my quirk, I would be convinced I was telling the truth.

Evidently, it worked when I saw no visible reaction on his face.

"I'm Detective Tsukauchi, pleased to meet you. And I must say, I also heard quite a bit about your achievements. After all, you got you degree at what, 12? 13? Very impressive. And it's difficult to think you're only 14 when I look at you, you seem at least twenty years old and you're pretty mature."

After the handshake, I noticed that he still kept physical contact with me, one of his fingers was slightly touching mine, but I didn't care, it was normal that he didn't find me trustworthy.

"Ah, you flatter me, I just grew a bit faster than others, that's all, and I really like Quirk Analysis, so I was very motivated. But let's get started."

We began to discuss Knockout's quirk and how he used them, Tsukauchi providing very useful insight, he had met Knockout a lot of times after all and had seen him quite a few times.

Yes, I was approaching this as if I knew next to nothing about Knockout, as if I was a "normal" quirk analyst. I wanted to see if I could track and capture myself if I really tried and it was really fun to analyze my quirks.

After a few minutes, I got a few hypotheses that I noted down in a notebook and, a good two hours of discussion and analyzing later, I spoke of what I had found out:

"Well, his strength quirk is the most obvious thing here, it's not a strength quirk at all, but a stockpile one. Why?"

"He rarely used it except in the most dire of situations, even when it could've saved him a lot of time and efforts. Even when he fought Endeavor, he sparsely used it. It makes me think that the stockpile isn't unlimited and quite hard or bothersome to recharge."

"Also, it appears that his body got tougher as time passed, if you look at his fight against MechAnicAL a couple of years ago, he clearly broke his arm when he threw a super-powered punch, but if you look at his fight against Endeavor a year or so ago, he could throw even more powerful punches without injuring himself."

"Additionally, even though he seemed a bit resistant to Endeavor's flames, but when Endeavor uppe dthe temperature of his flames, it's easy to notice that he was quite severely injured by them in the fight, hence his retreat, so he has a quite good fire resistance."

"As for his warp gate quirk, this one is trickier. My hypothesis is that he can open a warp gate quickly to anywhere close to him, it seems in 100-meter radius, pretty fast and easily but he can also open warp gates further away for more efforts. Maybe he must visualize the specific coordinates of where he wants to go if it's long distance…..No, that doesn't make any sense, he has multiple times opened warp gates on moving targets that he clearly couldn't visualize the coordinates… Maybe it's a marker? No, how could've he put a marker everywhere without anyone noticing him…"

"Ah! I get it, he must have where he wants to open a warp gate in his vision, and since he's a proficient hacker he can just hack security cameras and warp everywhere. His googles are probably special so that they can show him specific locations. Or maybe he's got someone like a support hero with him. He also probably has surveillance drones…."

"Cough"…."Cough"...Detective Tsukauchi interrupted me, clearly impressed by my analysis and a bit amused by my mumbling.

"Ah, sorry, I kinda forgot that you were here. So you wanted to know how I would take him down, right?"

"Yes, that was my intention, but your analysis of his quirk is very impressive, I must say. Your reputation isn't for anything."

"Well, his physical resistance seems to be a bit on the high side, so unless Mirko and All Might decide to get physical with him, it's probably not a good idea to get on close combat with him."

"So we have two options here:"

"First, Eraserhead can cancel his warp gate quirk and we attack him with elements; electricity, cold, fire, water, etc. We form a team that's specifically formed to deal with him and we hope that it works, but I wouldn't bet on that, it could be a repeat of what happened the last time you tried to ambush him."

"Second, we can erase his stockpile quirk and try to immobilize him quick enough that he doesn't have time to escape with a lot of heroes that specialize in immobilizing of capturing villains. He won't be able to escape since his strength quirk will be erased and we hope that we are fast enough that he can't escape using his warp gate quirk, since he needs to walk through his gate to teleport to somewhere else."

"Well, there's always third option of getting erasing his warp gate quirk and getting All Might to capture him, but that probably won't work since All Might most of time has no time remaining when Knockout his active. And if we All Might doesn't use his time for the day Knockout will probably know that something is coming since All Might didn't do hero work for the day. All Might is active each and every day after all."

I finished talking but I noticed that Tsukauchi was still stuck on what I said about All Might's time limit. He immediately got suspicious and asked, more demanded answers.

"How do you know about All Might weakened state?"

I smirked a bit and said:

"Well, I can literally see quirks using my quirk and I keep noticing that All Might's quirk keeps getting weaker and that his hero time each day diminishes slowly but surely. He's only got what, like 3h30 each day now."

"So one day, I tailed him and saw All Might's assissant, Toshinori Yagi, who had the same quirk as All Might. Curious no? At ths point, it didn't take a genius to figure out about his weakened state."

"And how did I know that you knew about All Might's weakened state? That's pretty simple once. I knew about Toshinori Yagi being All Might, it wasn't hard to connect to dots between him and you and since you're one of the only friends of All Might, I figured out that you most likely knew as well."

"And before you ask, I know that his quirk can be passed on. And don't worry, I won't tell a soul about this, it would be devastating for All Might and Japan. "

Detective Tsukauchi was still a bit baffled by all of what I said, before releasing his breath, which I'm pretty sure he didn't know he was holding. He then nodded and said:

"Well, I shouldn't be surprised that you figured it out, you truly do live up to your reputation. Thank you for not revealing this."

After saying this, he finally removed his finger from my hand, he had maintained physical contact all this time, but now he finally trusted me.

The meeting continued for a few hours, where we discussed about how to capture Knockout. We decided that it would be best if, before doing anything, that I saw him so that I could know his quirks in more details.

I learned something that day. Even with a quirk which made that I didn't need to sleep, carefully maintaining a persona for a whole day, not to arouse the suspicions of Tsukauchi, who's pretty damn perceptive, is really f*cking tiring.