Mind Games - Chapter 27

“What's the timetable?”

Those were the first words out of my mouth.

I'd read, of course, about the 'Instant Villain' incidents that had occurred a few years ago and with a smattering ever since. They were the opening shots in the new Japanese drug war against the societal menace known more formally as 'Idol Trigger.' One of the reasons I'd decided to make my first planned moves as a vigilante against this group was, in fact, because of the threat trigger represented not just to the people taking it, but to the country – and potentially the world – as a whole.

There were already a growing number of military consultants in the United States who had publicly advanced the notion of using quirk-enhancing drugs like these on the nation's active-duty military and, potentially, even the country's heroes.

Along with them, of course, was everyone and their fucking dog.

The Dark Age might have seriously dented the United States' willingness and ability to conduct large-scale interventions in foreign lands, but even the complete collapse of the world as I'd known it wasn't enough to obliterate the American Military Industrial Complex.

Go America... I guess?

Less sarcastically, I couldn't exactly put the genie back in the bottle on this one. Not that trigger was even the first attempt at creating such a thing.

It was just the most successful.

By far.

To the point that there were rumors that various powers had very quietly extended offers of sanctuary to the mastermind behind it. In that way, I suppose, the world was lucky. Garaki was inarguably a genius, true, but he was an ideologically driven and loyal one above and beyond anything else. The only way he'd take up one of those offers was if All for One told him to. And the only way that would happen was if the old bastard got tired of playing Criminal Underworld Demon Lord and decided to sell his services to the highest bidder on the international stage.

Both of which were vanishingly unlikely.

In that way, I suppose this world had gotten indescribably lucky two-fold times.

All Might was strong, yes, and photogenic, and stood for the values that people loved to extol. All of that was true, and he'd had a massively positive impact on the world because of that.

But it was equally true that, as evil as All for One might be, governments had done business – and continued to do business – with people colder, crueler, and more monstrous than he was.

The fact that Nestle still existed was proof enough for that.

If All for One had any interest in it, he could have been living as a god-king in some third-world cesspit crafting a religion around himself and bartering diplomatic recognition from the great powers of the world using artificially-created super soldiers.

Instead, he was pathologically obsessed with the jingle keys he'd loaned to his dead brother a few centuries ago.

And, yes, there probably was some kind of legitimate-sounding reason for that obsession, but even if someone did have a good reason for it, it was still an obsession.

One that, were it to be required, he would feed the whole of Japan to, in order to see it fulfilled.

Hence trigger.

Hence the Nomu.

There was a reason they were only emerging in these modern times, and it wasn't only that it had taken Garaki so long to create them. No, my past lives knew enough about engineered biological horrors to understand the timescale involved in their creation and while it might be lengthy...

Something was off in this case.

All for One had only truly turned to the Nomu and trigger after his debilitating injury at the hands of All Might. They, too, were a means to an end to see his ambition fulfilled. The destabilizing madness that was being unleashed with the advent of a successful quirk-enhancing drug was only a secondary concern, if it merited thinking about at all.

No, what trigger and the Nomu were meant to do was wear the Japanese state apparatus in general, and All Might in specific, down centimeter by centimeter.

A campaign of asymmetrical warfare disguised as a crime-fueled drug epidemic, in other words.

Drugging an entire city's water supply with trigger?

Yeah, I can see him doing that.

“What?” Pop Step asked, blinking.

“What's the timetable?” I repeated my earlier question. “How long do we have to stop it? Are they doing it right now? Or are they planning to do it in a week? A month?”

“O-oh!” Pop replied, blinking owlishly. “U-uhhh... two weeks, I think? That's when they said they'd have the last shipment in when I overheard them talking.”

My tension eased slightly. If we had two weeks, then the situation was bad, but not an imminent disaster. “Do you know where they're planning to put the drugs into the system?”

Unless they had someone with a very, very specific kind of quirk-

Which, seeing the fingerprints all over this, they might.

-there were only a handful of suitable places to inject that kind of complex chemical mix into tap water and have it be both undetected and remain within the water instead of being removed from it. Either as a result of its detection or through the normal filtration processes.

Although, the Bat Paranoia compels me to admit someone in the monitoring system might be on the take or being blackmailed.

Something to look into later.

“Uhh... the... water treatment plant?” Pop stated slowly, blinking at me.

I stared at her for a long moment.

“Is that a guess or did you actually overhear them say that?” I pressed.

“I-uh, I mean, what does it matt-” She began hissing.

Then I slapped a hand over her mouth to quash the noise as I pushed her against the car and held her there, something that she did not appreciate given how violently she began thrashing in my grip. After a moment or two of trying to pry off my hands, which she'd have had better luck with an actual crowbar given her apparent lack of a strength quirk, she finally settled down.

“Don't whisper,” I stated, finally removing my hand. “Talk normally at a low volume. Like this. Whispers carry further than softly-spoken normal words.”

She gave me a deeply unhappy glare as I pulled away, blushing in anger... and, thankfully for my sanity, it was actual anger that I could read in her body language instead of an overtone of 'tsun' hiding the 'dere.' “Fine. I'm guessing about the water treatment plant. I didn't actually overhear where they were going to put the trigger in, but doesn't that make sense?”

“No, it makes sense for them to target the water main after the treatment plant for this section of the city, given the comparative sparsity of guards and sensors that would tend to catch something like that,” I replied, my tone level and serious. The three heroes that had been tasked with showing me around Endeavor's Agency had, after all, shown me how to pull up a map of the city's utility grid from the different providers.

Pop Step opened her mouth to refute me, then slowly closed it.

“Is there anything else you know? Something that you heard them say and aren't just guessing about?” I asked her directly, channeling just a bit of The Bat into my voice, the trace of a low rasp making the hairs on her arm visibly stand up.

“I-ah, I know their names!” Pop Step perked up. “The Freak, Kaitou, and I have run into them before!”

As she spoke, now urgently trying to appease me, I stored the names for future use and returned to the trunk as I began rearranging things. In particular, I disappeared the spare tire into the Apartment and made more space.

“What are you doing?” Pop asked, following me as I worked. “There's nothing else really in there-hey, where'd that wheel go? It was bumping into my ass for the last few kilometers!”

“Quiet,” I ordered her, glaring through my tinted eyewear. “Do you want to have to fight your way out?”

She grimaced and looked down the corridor, then spoke more softly. “What are you doing? I meant it, there really isn't anything in there.”

“Do you want to fight your way out?” I asked again. “Or would you rather they simply drive us out?”

The pink-haired girl blinked, staring at me uncomprehendingly.

“I can tie what's left of the ropes up on you so that you'll be able to slip out of them easily,” I explained, “but it will still look like you're fully bound and gagged. That way, even if they check on you, they won't think anything's amiss.”

“I don't want to get back in there!” Pop barked in a harsh undertone, gesturing towards the trunk. “Besides, where will you be?”

“I'll be impersonating the spare tire, which was set up to keep anyone back here from working the middle section of the back seat free,” I stated, leaning in and pushing on the part of the seat I was talking about. With one firm shove, the middle half-seat of the back row hinged free and provided enough room for a person to squeeze through.

Provided, of course, they were lithe enough to do so.

“So, what... you're just going to pop this open, slide through, and disable the driver and the guard before they can call for help or stop you themselves?” Pop asked, looking askance between me and the plan I'd come up with.

“Yes.”

Pop Step stared at me for a long moment, frowning at the surety in my voice before shaking her head and turning towards the rolling door. “No. Look, nothing against you... whoever you are, since you haven't told me your name, but I'm not getting back in-”

I slipped up behind her, putting her in a choke hold.

“A shame, I wanted to do this peacefully,” I replied, my breath in her ear as I let her breathe just enough to.

“Fuck-” She started, then stopped abruptly.

“Go to sleep,” I ordered, instantly feeling her body sag in my arms.

I sighed and set her back in the trunk, positioning the ropes just as I'd told her I would. “I'd hoped we could do this peacefully because it would mean I'd only have to squeeze through the access panel to the truck once, instead of twice.”

Which was irritating.

Almost as irritating as having to use my quirk in this situation, but combined with the sleeper hold I'd put her in, Pop would almost certainly believe she'd just lost consciousness instead of being put into a mind-controlled trance.

Closing the doors behind me, I squirmed my way into the trunk and pulled the tarp up over me as I curled into a ball, disliking every second of this mess I'd gotten myself into.

Yet...

I couldn't wish it was any different, save for possibly Pop Step being smart enough not to get kidnapped and bringing the information to an actual hero rather than-

I quirked an eyebrow as I skimmed the articles I had indexed under her name.

That was where I'd heard about her before... she was some kind of street performer cum vigilante. As I lay there in the dark trunk of a drug dealing gang's vehicle, I slowly built up a profile of the girl lying unconscious next to me.

Appearances and shows suggest pattern fits with a school schedule.

I checked how far back the articles on her went, mostly fluff pieces about a rebel musical idol in some second and third-rate magazines. Her following was, in traditional idol-fashion, fairly devoted though. They had a sizable presence on a few message boards that I'd scrapped because of the mention of a white-clad phantom thief wearing a suit, top hat, and cape.

Which sounded like Kaitou Kid, but...

He was the wrong build, had the wrong MO, and seemed to deliberately seek out crime far more often than Kaito Kuroba ever did.

And by 'seek out,' I meant deliberately chase after a specific villain with...

Huh... well, that's... potentially not good. His quirk in the wrong hands could be... problematic.

My eyes flicked back to Pop Step and I pondered the appropriateness of questioning her under hypnosis for a moment... then disregarded it, for the moment at least. I was already balancing too many plates in this little operation, I didn't need any more thrown into the mix.

Evening out my breathing, I instead set in to wait as I pondered what twist of fate had turned someone who should be a hero into an apparent villain.

Though, with a quirk-stealing monster from before the dawn of the modern age wheezing around, it might not even be him...

The rapid sound of footfalls distracted me from my musings.

“Take the other car! Follow me to the boss!”

“Yes Aniki!”

“Tell no one! Make no stops! The report and the girl are mine to deliver to Boss Yonenaga!”

I relaxed, car doors opening and slamming as I thumbed on the Mapper App and took note of the time. Gratefully, it had only taken them ten minutes to deduce that they had been thoroughly robbed, the thief was nowhere in sight, and there was nothing they could do about it.

The obvious response to that?

They needed to tell the boss about the situation.

Doubtless someone had already called ahead and informed the leader that there was a 'problem,' though the extent of which was likely left vague. News like this, in a criminal organization? Experience told me it was usually given face-to-face as a sign of respect. A phone call was cowardly. More than that, the head of this business would need personal instruction on what to do next as far as potentially involving the police or if they had their own investigative wing of their organization.

I wasn't betting too hard on that, but if they did I wanted to know who those people were, what their quirks were, and how they operated.

For my own health and safety, if nothing else.

I smirked as the engine started.

I'd give them... three blocks before I made my move. Long enough to obfuscate matters and for the lead car to lose sight of the follower, but not long enough to actually get anywhere. Then I'd direct the driver and the passenger to pull over, knock them unconscious, and leave the access panel open so that it would look like their captive had simply managed to cut her ropes and escape.

Honestly, for all that it was improvised, I liked this plan better than crawling out through a disused vent, which had been my backup. Plus, I got to save someone from a fate that was likely worse than death. I would need to momentarily turn off the bug I'd planted, though, to ensure there wasn't any recording of my own voice or hint as to the application of my quirk.

Maybe I'd give these two a light concussion just to ensure there wasn't any possibility they'd remember me?

Yeah, better safe than sorry.

…

Haneyama Kazuho blinked sleepily up at the light-polluted sky of Tokyo, yawning momentarily as she stretched before wincing at the bruised flesh on her limbs. What had she been doing-

Sitting bolt upright as adrenaline flooded through her system, the vigilante's head spun left and right.

But there was only an empty rooftop.

No yakuza, no confining trunk of a car, nothing to indicate that her recent misadventure had been anything but a bad dream... except for the aches and pains of being confined for two hours in a small space.

Her breathing returned to normal as it sank in.

She was free.

She was safe.

“But how the hell...” The pinkette muttered, frowning as she looked around again, slowly getting to her feet.

The movement dislodged something, falling to the asphalt tiles of the roof with a soft clatter as Pop Step bent to pick it up reflexively.

“Oh thank the gods, my phone!” Kazuho squealed lightly, grabbing the shiny reflective rectangle off the ground with much more speed and care. “Wait, what-”

She turned it over, finding a business card attached to the other side.

“Perspicacious Mauve Avenger,” she read aloud, noting the email below and pulling the card free from where it had been adhered to the back of her phone case.

Writing on the other side caught her attention.

Fine, perfect pen strokes spelled out a message that was equal parts reassuring and frustrating.

“They think you escaped on your own. Keep my name out of it. I've got that facility bugged for information, I'll take care of it. If you want to help with the water poisoning case, contact me.”

She paused, outright scowling at the last two lines.

“PS: Told you it would work. Also, get a burner phone.”

Kazuho stared at the card for a long moment, fighting the urge to tear it into small pieces.

“That fucking bitch!” She finally screamed, tucking the piece of paper into a pocket and stomping off angrily to the edge of the roof before activating her quirk and flying off into the night sky, the liberating freedom of the air soothing her.

Looking down at her phone again, she sighed.

Time to get yelled at by an exceptionally buff mother hen.

...and tolerate The Freak's disappointment, too. Ugh, he was going to try and torture her during training again, wasn't he? Ugh, sword-wielding weirdo!

She hit the contact and brought the phone to her ear as she landed on a roof three buildings over.

“Hey Mirio, it's Kazuho-”

Immediately, she pulled the phone away as his cries of relief and worry flooded through. She rolled her eyes and sniffed. Now if only she factored into his mind as more than someone to be worried about...

…

I quirked an eyebrow as I listened to the conversation between the girl I'd just saved and her friend, ruthlessly crushing any hint of guilt for bugging her phone. I'd done the same thing to the driver and the passenger, of course, along with photographing their IDs and stealing what cash they had on them. Which was how I’d found Pop’s phone, since I doubted either of the adult male criminals favored a female hero as their lock screen.

Oh, and taking a glitter pen Himiko had left in the Apartment and scrawling Pop Step's name across their faces, just to make sure they fingered the right culprit.

This way, even if Pop – Kazuho – told them differently later, they wouldn't believe her.

Petty? Yes.

But effective.

I pushed my key into the door and unlocked it, announcing my presence in my deeper male-identity's voice. “Hey Dad, I'm home!”

Sadly, dealing with Kazuho had cost me an extra five minutes, making me just a bit late.

Dad was understanding when I held up the missing ingredients for dinner, though.

~~~

Okay! Minor problem with that update I said I’d have on Saturday…

I skipped that day.

I still don’t understand fucking time zones.

Anyway! This chapter was written across two different countries, a cross-oceanic flight, and an unknown amount of jet lag.

Have fun!

Next update will be… something. Not sure. Maybe more Mind Games, maybe THWD.