Frustrations

All For One looked down at the small… thing. He wasn't sure what it was.

Doctor Garaki seemed happy with it.

"What is this?"

"The prototype," Kyudai replied.

Hisashi frowned. "I was expecting something more," he indicated.

The thing was rather spindly. It possessed dark skin and had an exposed brain. There was a clear helmet covering that and All For One could see that it had a beak type mouth. It's legs were short, as were its upper limbs. It was naked but had no sexual organs.

"I thought it was best to go small. Johnny is robust and does retain control over the warp quirk."

"Regeneration?" Hisashi asked.

Kyudai shook his head. They did not have a regeneration quirk, but since healing was something which was natural, he had been hoping to stimulate something similar to regeneration by other means. "Johnny has incredible life force but no regeneration."

"How hardy is it?"

"Very," the Doctor assured him.

All For One wasn't so sure, and moved before the Doctor could object, creating a blade out of one hand. He slashed it at the creature. There was resistance as his blade connected with the thing's middle. More resistance than the narrow nature of the body would suggest but not as much as he wanted. The Doctor cried out as the thing fell in two.

Hisashi pulled his hand back, looking at the blade he'd created. There was no residue but the edge wasn't as sharp as it had been. "Yes, it is reasonably strong," he agreed as the Doctor looked dismayed.

He reformed his hand, noting the minor scratches that now covered it. They would heal. "It needs to be stronger. I should not be able to cut it."

For a moment it looked as if the Doctor would object, then he sighed. "The human body can create carbon and calcium type armors but against some metals, they aren't going to be enough," he said. "Not without optimising for that," he added.

Hisashi took a deep breath, thinking. Quirks were so varied that it was often easy to forget they came from a human base. Those elements that comprised a body were the ones most easily worked with. Others, that the body either didn't possess, or only possessed in trace amounts, were more difficult. Rock type quirks for example often relied on the surrounding earth for materials.

"Strengthen as much as possible then," he conceded. "The next prototype should be full sized," he added the instruction.

"What quirk?"

"Pick anything," All For One waved one hand. "But push two into it. Emitter types. I want the next prototype to show me its unaltered physical ability," he decided.

Kyudai had picked up the brain half of the creature he called Johnny but he nodded.

"You may fix that one," Hisashi said. A warp quirk, even one as inconvenient as this creature's was useful, after all.

-ted-

Naomasa Tsukauchi was always a bit surprised, but thankful, at how easy it was for his friend to pass as a civilian. Put his hair down, out of those stupid raised cowlicks, and put a mask on him and Toshinori Yagi was no longer All Might. He was glad of it. There were times when his friend needed a break from being the Number One Hero.

Now appeared to be one.

He was sitting in the station, on the other side of his desk and to Naomasa's eyes, he was ready to tear out his ridiculous fringe.

"What's up?" he asked as the rest of the station moved around them.

It was somewhat silly actually that the station just assumed Yagi was allowed to be sitting there but Tsukauchi supposed that since his friend wasn't causing problems, the others had no reason to question.

"Have you gotten anywhere on that missing kid you told me about last year?" Toshinori replied with his own question.

It took him a moment to remember the case. It had pretty quickly been shelved, so quickly that Naomasa might have suspected political interference except for the fact that there were absolutely no leads. The father and son had almost literally disappeared into thin air. Knowing what he did though, that the Father was Yagi's enemy, that didn't surprise him. If what Toshinori told him was true, then that man had huge resources and there was a very good possibility that he wasn't even in Japan anymore.

He gave his friend a look.

"Yeah okay," Yagi heaved a deep breath. "It's just…"

"Just?" Tsukauchi prompted.

"He's gone to ground. And I doubt it's to raise that kid."

The Detective blinked. "You can't find him?"

"Nope." The word was flippant but Naomasa could tell how dejected his friend was.

"Not even a trace?"

"I can find traces," Yagi admitted.

"That human trafficking ring?"

He got a nod.

"The plutonium scam?"

Another nod.

"You got all of that one, right?"

"Every picogram was accounted for."

Tsukauchi let out a breath he wasn't really holding. He knew his friend would have gotten everything with that one. It was called a scam to the public but that was to cover the very real threat the scheme had posed.

"The Rain Cloud Cult?"

"Only peripherally him," Yagi replied. "He doesn't do religion," he explained.

"And there are no leads?"

"Nothing." Toshinori almost groaned. "None that have gone anywhere."

"What was the partial?" Naomasa immediately regretted asking the instant he saw his friend's face fall even further. "Who was it?" he asked breathily before Yagi could respond. He knew that look.

"Did you know about the Hero Saberwind?" He asked softly.

He grimaced. "Only that she'd been killed in the line of duty," the Detective replied.

The Police Department put out memos to inform officers about new Heros and of course if someone was killed or severely injured in the line of duty. It made sense. The public didn't really think much about what the Police did, but they might encounter those same villains and needed warning.

"I don't know if it was him," Yagi said, "but before she was killed, there was someone who sounds very much like one of his servants asking about her."

"So you think-?" He didn't have to finish the question.

The Number One Hero nodded. "Except I can't say why. Her quirk was named Baroload, and related to air pressure. It wasn't special enough for him to want it."

"Not everything is quirk related," the Detective reminded his friend.

"It is with him," Yagi countered.

"Well, could there be another reason? Could she have found something accidentally?" He continued with his reasoning.

"If she did, she didn't report it. Quantum Steel made everything available for the inquiry and there was nothing there. Nighteye couldn't find anything either."

Tsukauchi could tell it was bothering his friend. It would probably bother him as well if he knew more about the case. "Bad timing?" he asked. If you could find nothing else, then sometimes, some things happened just because of bad timing. As much as he didn't want to admit it, Saberwind could have been killed for simply being in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Maybe she saw something she wasn't meant to, and there was no pre-mediation behind her murder.

"It's possible," Yagi was forced to admit. "But that doesn't explain why we think his servant was looking for her."

It didn't and Naomasa didn't like playing devil's advocate but he felt he had to. "Do you know he killed her? Could he have sent his servant out to do it?" He really didn't like that word servant. Sure, as a Police Officer he was a public servant but that was impersonal. The way Toshinori used the word, Tsukauchi knew his friend was talking about a far more personal servitude and he did not want to know the type of man who took pleasure in that now a days.

"Probably. And from all accounts, this servant isn't too intelligent."

"So the servant was sent to kill her - for some reason - but to find her, he had to ask where she was," Naomasa summarised what his friend had no doubt, already heard before.

"That sounds about right," Yagi sighed again. "What have you told the woman?"

"What woman?" Naomasa was confused.

"The woman with the missing kid."

It was Tsukauchi's turn to sigh. "Not much. What can we tell her?" He asked rhetorically. "Ma'am, your husband is a world renowned, immortal criminal with more resources than we know about. The only reason we can see for him to be attracted to you is your quirk and we think he took your son because he inherited some sort of amalgamation of both your quirks." He made the statement blandly.

Yagi had the good taste to grimace. That was about the truth and it would not help the poor woman. "She said her son was quirkless."

"And she believes that, but before the case went nowhere, I did some research into the Doctor who made the diagnosis."

The Number One Hero perked up.

"Nothing definite," Tsukauchi told him. If he had something defined, he would have already given it to his friend. "The Doctor was registered as a Doctor Tsubasa, and has all the relevant qualifications and all that but he closed up shop about three weeks after the kid disappeared."

"And you didn't speak to him?" He could feel the frustration in his friend's question.

"We weren't looking at the quirk angle then," Naomasa admitted, which told Toshinori everything he needed to know. They hadn't questioned the Doctor.

"As sickening as it is, I have an easier time believing the kid has a quirk, than doesn't have one. I just don't know why he didn't take it, or replace it and leave by himself."

"You and me both," Tsukauchi confirmed. The case wasn't particularly special. There was no violence with it, no foul play beyond the disappearance but it haunted him. As one of the first cases he got when he became a Detective, it was one of his first failures, and no matter how the brass told him they hadn't expected anything else, not once the initial search had revealed nothing, he wanted to do better.

Naomasa looked at his friend. "Something will show up. He will make a mistake," he predicted. No matter how powerful this man was, and he knew that the criminal All For One was very powerful, he'd make a mistake somewhere. They just had to find it.

"He will," Yagi agreed with a snort. "And he's an arrogant enough son of a bitch that he won't even believe he's made a mistake."

"In the meantime then, come and get some food with me," Tsukauchi said as he rose and picked up his jacket from the back of his chair. "You can't catch villains on an empty stomach," he joked.

Toshinori sighed but nodded as he stood. Naomasa could tell his friend was frustrated, but he had nothing to offer him except support and friendship.

He hoped that was enough.