The Underbelly of Japan

"I'm gonna need you to check this out"

Those were the words that had Naomasa in a taxi at 5:30 in the morning, with a case file the size of his fingernails. He had read the documents over and over again, his headache from the morning had only grown more and more.

The case wasn't confusing at all, in fact it was as textbook as it got. Someone had attacked a couple small-time thugs, and had taken a packet of drugs. At first glance, the attacker seemed to have been a vigilante, considering that if it were a rival yakuza gang, they would've just taken the entire palette. And it was that very conclusion that was giving him a headache. For one, they had just finished dealing with the paperwork for All for One's crimes, and just as they were going to rest, some vigilante sneaks up, right underneath their nose? This was going to be even more headache inducing.

Secondly, vigilantes were an incredibly fickle group, considering that they were willing to go outside the realm of law to take down criminals. This meant that they had to be atleast atleast confident enough in their skills to think that they could evade heroes.

Lastly, vigilantes were incredibly unpredictable. Despite the fact that he was forced to catch them, there were a couple vigilantes that he actually respected. Daredevil, Orochi and Firestarter all had a strict no killing rule, something that he could most certainly respect. Others, such as Venom, Violet and Kaguya were all notorious vigilantes with a notorious thirst for blood. He could only hope this one was nothing like the others.

"You're here," said the driver. Naomasa took out a couple thousand yen (outragous price in his opinion) and handed it over to the driver before walking out onto the crime scene. With one big breath of the crisp morning air, He went past the yellow tape, the dozen or so cops gathering up evidence and walked into the warehouse.

"Hey there detective," Sansa said. Naomasa nodded at him and gave a small smile. Sansa smiled wrly back at him.

"Sorry that I had to drag you here at 5 in the morning, I wanted to postpone this until office hours," said the cat-man hybrid.

"So what forced you to call me?" he asked.

"The criminals spilled as soon as they woke up. Something about wanting that bitch killed." Naomasa sighed in relief, just as his friends laughed at his reaction.

"Ya that's, going to make this case a lot easier." Naomasa couldn't help but agree.

"So the vigilante is a woman then?" he asked. Sansa nodded.

"Yup. White hair, deep red eyes, though according to the criminals, they get brighter when she's using her quirk. She had a black overcoat on, with a red shirt underneath and black pants"

"Did the description match anybody in our database?" Sansa shook his head.

"We had a couple descriptions for white hair in the area, but nothing with red eyes, or the quirk they mentioned."

"And what is the quirk?" Sansa shrugged his shoulders.

"It seems unusual, but according to the criminals, she touched their heads, some reddish smoke came out and they passed out. After that, their memories get kinda fuzzy." Naomasa frowned at that.

"What do they all remember?"

"They said that the vigilante threw smoke bombs at them, and tried attacking them in the dark. She failed, and was thrown to the ground by one of the thugs."

"Clearly she's a rookie," Naomasa said. Sansa nodded, agreeing with what he said.

"Ya, that's what I thought too. But according to the thugs, she fought all of them at the same time, all without a quirk." Naomasa's eyes widened.

"She can't be quirkless, can she?" Sansa shook his head.

"No she isn't. Cause when one of the thugs tried to kill her, she just held him by the head and her hand started glowing with red smoke, and he just fell to the ground." he said. Naomasa motioned for him to continue.

"Then she started glowing red as well, and then beat the rest of them as well. I'm thinking that she has a strength quirk."

"A strength quirk?"

"You don't think so?" Naomasa shook his head.

"That doesn't account for the fact that someone just dropping unconscious with her hand," he said.

"So, unknown for quirk?" Sansa asked. Naomasa nodded his head.

"Who were the other people?" Sansa took out a paper and started listing out the names.

"Daiki Hiroko, his quirk was Kinetic Energy. Using his quirk, he could continually increase his Kinetic energy output. Every time he uses his quirk, he gets tattoos that glow blue. Next there was Genma Haruto, his quirk is Purple Hulk. It's a mutation that made him bigger and have purple skin, thus making him stronger. Then there's Anbu Hamakiri, his quirk is finger gun (that one was rather self-explanatory). The last one was the leader of this little operation. His name was Kato Hiroshi. He had a rather powerful quirk, he called it Switch point and it allowed him to switch the place of anything in his range of sight, including himself."

"Anything on their background?" Naomasa asked. Sansa shook his head.

"This is the most high profile offense they've been connected to." The detective frowned as he thought about the case he'd been handed.

"It seems that they were targeted randomly then."

"I know. That's only going to make this worse then." Naomasa nodded before he thought of an idea.

"We don't know anything about trigger do we?" he asked.

"Up until now, trigger has just been a confirmed rumor. This is the first physical evidence that we have for this drug."

"Whoever this might look into the trigger case as well. Once we get back to the station, contact as many hero agencies as you can to get as much information as we can for information. In the meantime, we need to keep our eyes peeled," he said.

Sansa nodded before going to talk with the cops, and he was left alone within the warehouse. Naomasa decided he would explore the warehouse to see if he could dig up some more evidence.

The warehouse seemed mainly empty except for the concrete and debris that was strewn all over the place (no doubt from the attack), but the more Naomasa thought about the vigilante's quirk, the more he started to frown.

The vigilante was supposed to not have a quirk at all, but then, after knocking a dude with a strength type quirk unconscious, suddenly starts a strength quirk? Clearly the vigilante has fighting experience, so wouldn't she have thought that the best idea was to take them down when it was the easiest? Instead she was thrown around like a ragdoll for the first couple minutes. And what kind of strength quirk has the ability to knock a man unconscious?

Naomasa thinks about all of the questions like puzzle pieces, with the answer being the final missing one. Over and over again, he thought of different pieces to the puzzle. Sleeping gas? No, that would've knocked everybody out. Maybe she crushed his head in until he was knocked out? No, she's a rookie, she wouldn't have that much self control.

Red smoke, red smoke, glowing red smoke. Naomasa vaguely recognized the quirk, but he couldn't really place where exactly he had heard of it.

Someone that clearly didn't have a strength enhancing quirk. Someone, who was able to incapacitate someone with a fairly powerful strength enhancing quirk, and after doing so magically gained a strength enhancing quirk. Naomasa's eyes widened as he finally remembered where he recognized the quirk.

There was only one other person whom he had a quirk that used red smoke. He'd seen it from the man who had ruled Japan and parts of the world for nearly a century. The man hailed as the strongest being in the world until a week ago.

The man known as All for One. And there was someone running around with that man's quirk.

Mari was currently sitting in her father's safe house (more like safe, nearly dead, tired from the fight from the previous night, and desperately wanting to bang her head on the coffee table.

"I'm so stupid. I'm so fucking stupid. I'm an actual goddamned dumbass," she screamed.

"What kind of idiot goes unprepared into a situation like that. What an idiot," she screamed, her anger and self loathing rising. Well, atleast they got two cool quirks out of it.

The first quirk was a quirk that seemed to increase her the amount of force that she output (including both speed and strength). The second quirk was called Switchpoint, which (as the dumbass so graciously put it) a quirk that was a mix of a teleportation and a switching quirk. She could focus on a specific point and switch places with it. On top of that, she could switch other objects with it. Not the most offensive quirk, but it used creatively, it could be incredibly effective.

But despite the fact she gained two useful quirks from the exchange, the first course of action was to deal with whatever she had gotten her hands on. Mari opened the box and finally layed her hands on the weird shotgun shell with the syringe at the end of it.

"Trigger," she whispered, frowning at the shell full of it. "Clearly it was made as a bullet. Maybe so that criminals could easily use it?" she questioned. From what the thugs had said, trigger was a quirk enhancing drug, and the kind that would probably be illegal. She had heard about it during her time with All for One, but it was all very hush hush. Chances are, the police are barely getting wind of this. Atleast they'd have proof of it now.

Other than proof that the thing even existed in the first place though, and the actual drug, they didn't have any leads as to who is making it. Clearly, she needed to crack this thing open and try to find out what thing was made of.

Despite the fact that the safehouse had a lot of very useful tech that she could take advantage of, there wasn't anything on examining drugs. No, there was only one place that she could go in order to examine these things. So Mari puts on a mask (really just a makeshift balaclava) and decides that she has an appointment to make.

Mari walks out into the driveway and gets into one of her fathe-her cars-and drove out of the house, past perfectly manicured lawns and expensive house of Musutafu's west side and into the crime ridden area of its east side. The crime would subside with the death of All for One, but right now, it was still high. She would make sure to clear this place out in due time, but atleast she could take advantage of it while it's here.

Once she got to her destination, Mari got out of her car and walked into the back alley of the building and in front of a door with a flickering lamp on top of it. She knocked on the door and after a couple minutes a thin man with a wifebeater and baggy pants opened. The man narrows his eyes at the girls before speaking.

"I think you're in the wrong place, little missy," he says. Mari shakes her head and speaks back.

"Nah I don't think I am"

"And what exactly do you think this place is?"

"I'm told this bar is where Nahi Kona lives," she says. The man narrows his eyes once again. He scowled once again and let her in.

Mari was promptly led past a rather generic bar (barstools, drinks and whatnot), and pushed rather rudely past the kitchen and into a room full of technology that Mari had a vague understanding of. Mari recognized a supercomputer here, an electron microscope there and multiple bunches of optic fiber cables tied together and strewn all over the place. And in the middle of it all, sitting directly in front of her, was the underground doctor/information gathering extraordinaire.

Nahi Kona, quirk: Analysis, was very famously a huge thorn in his father's side. Kona had an network of informers that rivaled many yakuza organizations, and with his quirk, he could analyze anything that he injests. The man was a neutral party, someone that would help anybody, depending on the price. Sure, the man wasn't exactly good, but Mari has a decent amount of dirt on the man. If he attempted to betray her, she was bringing him down to hell right alongside her.

Kona turned around, alcohol stains evident all over his t-shirt and a cup of what looked like whiskey in his hand. Kona scanned her from and down, one eyebrow raised all the while.

"And who the hell do you think you are?" he asked.

"That doesn't really matter," I said. Kona seemed to disagree.

"Oh I think that really matters. I don't want one of my clients slipping the tongue on me," he said.

"You work with criminals, slipping their tongue on you would be to their detriment"

"Ahh, but that's just the thing, you don't seem like a criminal," he said, a hint of arrogance dripping into his voice. Mari could only narrow her eyes.

"And why exactly would you think that?" Kona's perpetual smirk only increased.

"You just confirmed it. Besides, you feel like you don't want to be here. On top you're obviously rich, judging by the Balenciaga fit, and anybody who's rich definitely doesn't need to be here, they'd just send a servant" Mari was trying her absolute hardest to rip that smile off of his face. Especially because he was right about absolutely everything.

"I am the servant," she said. Kona snorted at that.

"That's a lie"

"It's not, I just don't like dealing with criminals"

"Then you've got to be the highest paid servant on the face of this earth"

"Perhaps I am"

"And any servant would've just confirmed that statement," he said. Mari was a tenth of an inch away from killing him.

"My god, you're terrible at this. This your first time being a criminal, honey?" he said, the smirk practicallly dripping onto his face.

"We were talking about business," she said. Kona laughed heartilly at that.

"Business? Jesus this really is your first time," she said.

"I've heard that you've got a Ph.D level knowledge in Medicine and Chemical engineering," she said. Kona snorted before speaking once again.

"Ya, that's one way of putting it," he said.

"This obviously means that you, along with you advance and probably illegal tech-"

"Well atleast you've got common sense"

"You'd be able to analyze the ingredients of chemicals, right?" she said, bringing the bullet up for them to see. Kona's eyes widened at the gesture.

"What kind of first-time criminal gets their hands on a bottle of trigger?" he asked.

"The kind of criminal who isn't afraid to beat the shit out of you if you don't go through with my demands"

"That's assuming you even can," he said. It was Mari's turn to laugh at Kona.

"Oh, I'm not assuming," she said. Kona's smirk cracked, as a more serious expression came onto his face.

"You asked me who I was, didn't you? I'll tell you exactly what I told the last dude who asked me that question. It doesn't fucking matter. I need this vial analyzed, and I know that your quirk can do that. If you don't, then you won't like what's going to happen next," she says, while leaking some of All for One's power. Kona's smirk finally slips from his face, and the serious expression finally takes over.

"Where's the money," he asks. Mari smirks at the question, knowing that she's won.

When Toshinori got a slightly panicked call from Tsukauchi, he really didn't know what to think.

The currently 7 foot tall only slightly muscular looking man (as opposed to his bodybuilder looking stature as All Might), was enjoying the fact that he didn't have a crowd following him everywhere he went (as opposed to the double takes he was getting, which was slightly uncomfortable) when he got a slightly panicked call from the detective asking for a chat at his favorite coffee shop. All Might had no idea what the panicked voice was supposed to mean, but he hoped to god that it was something manageable.

Toshinori walked into the café that Tsukauchi had requested, a nice place reminiscent of the coffee shops that he had missed going to when he wasn't that famous. Thankfully that wouldn't be the case anymore. He scanned the coffee shop, looking for Tsukauchi, who tucked all the way in the back corner of the, clearly trying to not be noticed. Toshinori walked up to the man and sat across from Tsukauchi, who was clearly very tense.

"I really got to go to these places more often now that I have a disguise," he said, trying to defuse the tension. Tsukauchi chuckled a little, but his tension still remained. Toshinori couldn't help but wonder what exactly had rattled him. Just as he was thinking about that though, he brought out what was clearly a case file. Toshinori blinked at the manilla folder.

"We're going over a case file in the middle of a coffee shop?"

"There'd be too many questions as to why All Might was focusing on such a low profile case such as this," he said.

"So, is there more to this low profile case?" Toshinori asked. Tsukauchi snorted at that. Toshinori was praying to god that this case wouldn't throw a curveball at him.

"Someone called me to some criminal warehouse. A couple of thugs were in there, unconscious, with entire crates of trigger untouched, except for a small box that was taken by the assailant," he said. Toshinori frowned at that.

"Trigger. So you finally have proof that it exists. Is it connected to something big, something you need my help with?" he asked. Tsukauchi shrugged noncommittally.

"Not directly. According to the criminal's testimony the assailant was a vigilante. The vigilante didn't seem to have a strength quirk, until a couple minutes into the fight, when after knocking out one of the criminals with some sort of red smoke, she suddenly started glowing red and punching people with super strength. And guess what the aforementioned thug's quirk is. The ability to increase kinetic energy output," he said. Toshinori frowned at that statement, but before he could say anything Tsukauchi continued.

"When I got our medical specialist to examine the thugs, 2 of them didn't even have their quirks, despite them having been registered," he said. Toshinori's frown turned to horror, then to confusion.

"All for One, you think All for One is connected to this," he asked.

"In some way, yes"

"But you also said the person in question who has All for One is a vigilante."

"That's what's stumping me," he said, frustration evident in his eyes. "Moreover, the vigilante is female, and is really bad at being a vigilante, judging by the paper trails she gave," he said. Toshinori frowned once more.

"Any description?" he asked.

"Other than white hair and red eyes, nothing," he said. Toshinori's frown increased. Tsukauchi noticed this and asked.

"Do you have any ideas?" he asked. Toshinori shook his head.

"Nothing definitive." Tsukauchi nodded and stood up.

"Keep me posted okay?" Toshinori nodded and kept thinking about the case.

As Tsukauchi left the coffee shop, Toshinori tried to relax, and get the case out of his mind. But despite trying his hardest, his mind still wandered back to Mari Naisho, the white haired girl with the criminal father, who had been his saving grace when he was at his weakest.