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Midoriya smiles sheepishly up at Shouta, and he just knows this is about to be even more of a headache than it already is. Midoriya waves, jingling the handcuffs that hold him to the table in the interrogation room.
“Hey Aizawa Sensei! Sorry about all this…” the problem child trails off with an awkward chuckle.
Shouta sighs and all but collapses in the chair opposite Midoriya, next to a very bewildered looking Tsukauchi. “Problem child…” Shouta groans. “What happened?”
Midoriya’s grin turns even more sheepish. “Uh… would you believe me if I told you it was an accident?”
Shouta glances at Tsukauchi. The man looks like he’s slipped into an alternate dimension and is still trying to come to terms with it. “T-true,” he whispers.
Shouta sighs again. He’s going to be doing a lot of that today, isn’t he? “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
—
A heavy sigh is heard over the recording, followed by the scooting of chairs and the jingling of handcuffs.
“Alright, for the record, my name is Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa, quirk True Man. I am conducting this interview in conjunction with pro hero Eraserhead. Today, we will be interviewing Midoriya Izuku, alias Chisana Ki. Quirk: One For All.”
“Also for the record, I’m not the one who came up with that name.”
Another sigh.
“Noted. Midoriya, would you please, as Eraserhead said, start from the beginning?”
“Right! Sorry. Uh… it probably all started about halfway through my first year of middle school. I was out for a run, and I tripped, and then I was in an alley, and there was a gun and–”
“Slow down, Problem Child.”
“O-oh. Sorry. Uh, long story short, I almost got kidnapped, and then the guy pointed a gun at another guy, and I panicked. I lunged forward and the shot went wide, and the guy dropped the gun. Then he tried to grab me again, and I grabbed the gun and shot him dead.”
“And what about the other man in the alley that you mentioned?”
“Oh yeah. That was Dabi. You know, the arsonist? He helped me hide the body.”
There are several seconds of silence over the recording, followed by a low groan.
“And why, pray tell, did you hide the body instead of going to the authorities?”
“Uh… well, it wasn’t my idea. I was sort of… in shock? I guess? Dabi just sort of grabbed the guy under the armpits and told me to take the feet. Anyway, the rest of that… whole… week or so is sort of a blur. I think Dabi just wanted to pay me back for technically saving his life back there, ‘cause he took care of me until I snapped out of it.”
“And then did you go to the authorities?”
“Yeah, actually! Just, I was quirkless at the time, and also really small. And even I don’t know where we hid the body, so… they didn’t believe me.”
“Of course they didn’t.”
“Thank you for providing us with some context, Midoriya. Can you please explain how this led to you taking on the alias Chisana Ki?”
“Ugh. Again, I did not come up with that name. Anyway, I guess… It sort of started from there. The police didn’t believe me. Mom didn’t believe me. Katsuki definitely wouldn’t have believed me if I told him. I think I tried once… But yeah. I felt like I was going crazy. I couldn’t get the man’s face out of my head for the longest time. And so on my way home from school one day I saw a mugging and I just… sort of snapped.”
“You snapped?”
“Yeah. I think the thought process was something like ‘well, I’ve already killed one scumbag. What’s another?’ And I ran in and before I knew it, there was another dead guy. I have no idea where the other person went though. I guess they ran away.”
“And did this incident get reported?”
“Uh… no. No it did not. I called Dabi for help again.”
“And why is that, Midoriya?”
“I, uh. Well, I… panicked? But even if I had told someone, I was quirkless! And I’d been hearing the same thing for weeks, right? ‘How could someone so powerless kill a man?’ ‘Are you sure that’s what happened?’ ‘Yeah, okay.’ Even with the blood literally all over my hands, they could find a way to dismiss me. So I called Dabi, and from there, things started to spiral.”
“What do you mean, Midoriya?”
“I mean… hm. Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Aizawa Sensei, but I sort of… attract trouble? And, uh, it sort of got so bad after that, if I didn’t know any better, I would say it was my quirk.”
A long sigh statics over the recording.
“Fair enough, Problem Child. I’ve had the same thought.”
“Heh, yeah… anyway, several similar incidents later, rumors started to spread. Like, mysterious disappearances and some kind of phantom. Honestly, it was pretty dramatic. And Dabi definitely kept those rumors going.”
“How did you hear about these rumors?”
“Oh. Uh, ahem. So… I was… sort of kidnapped? As like, a sacrifice to the Phantom of Musutafu.”
“You were kidnapped by a cult.”
“Yeah…”
“As a sacrifice.”
“Mhmmm…”
“To yourself.”
“Ahahah… funny, right? Anyway, so that’s where I got my cult following.”
“Midoriya…”
“And from there it was a short step to–”
“Midoriya.”
“Yes, Aizawa Sensei?”
“I believe Eraserhead would like some clarification on the cult following comment.”
“O-oh. Um… I… do I have to?”
“Is it traumatic? Or just embarrassing.”
“The second one…”
“Then yes, Midoriya.”
“Okay… Um, so it’s kind of… Well, I figured out what they were talking about, and I tried to tell them I was the supposed “phantom of musutafu,” and… theydidn’tbelievemeeither.”
Silence.
“Is that all?”
“No…”
“Midoriya.”
“I just don’t see how it’s relevant.”
“Any information could be useful, Midoriya.”
“… Fine. So there I am, strapped to a chair, crying because apparently my own cult won’t even believe me when I tell them I’ve been accidentally killing or reforming villains all over the place for months, and Dabi walks in, takes one look at me, and starts laughing. Because apparently the cult was his idea to begin with. And then he goes on to tell everyone that no, they’re right, I could never do all that stuff and I’m definitely not the phantom, but they still shouldn’t sacrifice me because I’m one of the phantom’s subordinates and I go by the name Chisana Ki.”
…
“Aizawa Sensei, I can see you smirking.”
“Mhmm.”
“It’s not funny, Sensei!”
“Not at all.”
“Sensei.”
“Detective?”
“O-oh. Yes. Thank you, Midoriya. That was, um... Informative. Please continue.”
“Finally. Okay. So from there it was a ridiculously convoluted process of gaining the trust of the cultists and staging a coup to overthrow me the Phantom and put me Chisana Ki in charge, but basically a week later I was the unwilling head of my very own criminal organization.”
“And what do you mean by ‘unwilling?’”
“I mean it was sort of like getting elected class representative, only the class all has guns and no reason to keep you alive if you refuse.”
“And nobody else wanted to be in charge?”
“Uhhhhh… I’m not actually sure? As the Phantom of Musutafu’s second in command, I was sort of the de facto leader, and then I turned out to be kind of good at it? And I worked really hard to keep my people alive, because obviously. And… yeah. Or maybe they just kept me around as their mascot or something. Heck if I know.”
“Okay, so as the leader of a criminal organization, what did you do?”
“Well… the first order of business was getting my goons dental. Because what kind of employer doesn’t give their employees dental? And for that, apparently you have to have a legitimate business, and not a brand new cult-turned-criminal-organization. So that’s where the law firm comes in.”
“And the law firm in question would be Musutafu Family Lawyers, correct?”
“Yeah, that’s right!”
“You seem to have been relatively successful in the courtroom.”
“Yep! It took some time and some coaching, but my men are pretty good now!”
“And… did any of you attend law school?”
“…no.”
“Problem Child…”
“Honestly, I was kind of hoping someone would catch on and arrest me.”
“And instead you ended up starting a successful business as a cover for a criminal organization that you were in charge of.”
“Pretty much!”
“Okay… okay. Midoriya. What kinds of criminal activity did you engage in as the leader of this organization?”
“Oh! Well it started with the basics: drugs and murder. And then it sort of got out of hand from there, expanding into weapons, kidnappings, minor gang wars… the works. Oh! And information brokering. That was my specialty, since I’ve been doing quirk analysis since I was four. I sold a lot of information about various gang leaders and big names in the underground. Come to think of it, that’s probably a lot of how we rose to power. All the other guys just sort of… wiped each other out with my info.”
“I’ve seen your analysis notebooks, Midoriya. They’re full of pro heroes.”
“Yes…?”
“Did you sell any of that information?”
“Hmmm… well, not at first—”
“Midoriya!”
“Wait wait wait! Let me explain! I love heroes! I would never sell one out just for money!”
“So what did you sell it for?”
“…Okay, so this is going to take some background information, and you have to promise that all parties involved will be safe.”
“Midoriya…”
“We’ll do our best.”
“Okay, so we’d been running our own drug labs for awhile. Like… this was right before middle school graduation, so probably about two years, give or take? And our drugs were safe . Or as safe as they can be. We didn’t mix anything in that shouldn’t be there, and we were honest about what was in there, and stuff. So people trusted us, and we were probably at the top of the chain for distribution. And so then this guy approached us with a proposition.
The Yakuza were investing in Trigger, as well as a new drug they were developing that could nullify quirks. They wanted to partner with us to sell both. When I asked about the components, because that’s policy, they got really defensive. The deal for Trigger went through, but not the nullification drug. But… I couldn’t just leave it, you know? So I investigated.”
There’s a pause, and then quiet sniffling is just audible over the recording.
“A-and, um, the quirk nullification drug. I-it… It was a kid. ”
“What do you mean?”
“T-the Yakuza. They were e-experimenting on a little g-girl. T-they were using her for her powerful quirk, and the leader was… H-he would t-take her apart, on like, a molecular level. And then he would take what he wanted and put her back together again, and–
So he had to go.”
The audio is only gentle static for an uncomfortably long time.
“Midoriya.”
“Hm?”
“What did you do?”
“I… I made a deal with the devil, Sensei. We weren’t the top of the food chain yet. We still aren’t. That honor belongs to All For One— yes, Tsukauchi, he’s alive. So I made contact with an information broker, and he acted as the go-between. I got access to Kurogiri’s warp gate, and he got all the information I could compile on All Might.”
Once again, only static can be heard over the recording.
“Y-you—“
“ You sold out All Might?”
“Well… yeah? Sort of, I mean.”
“Elaborate.”
“Well first of all, I had his permission. More or less. He never really fully understood just how deep I was in all of this, but that’s not for lack of trying. I told him that I was in charge of a villain organization, and he laughed and said he was being hard on me but not that hard, and I told him I needed to save this little girl and I needed to tell a bad guy about a hero to do it, and he volunteered.”
“No questions asked?”
“Uh… All Might doesn’t really… I mean, um… hm. No. He never really asked questions.”
“But you still sold him out.”
“Kind of. But not really. See, there’s this thing called confirmation bias, and the villain in question, All For One, is really, really sure he knows everything all the time. I just offered an ‘analysis’ of all the things he thought he knew already. Most of it was accurate, but some of it wasn’t, and none of it was new information.”
A dull thud is heard, cutting off any other response.
“Um, Detective? Are you okay?”
“Let’s please just wrap this up.”
“O-oh. Okay, if you’re sure you’re okay…”
A sigh and a groan overlap each other.
“Alright Problem Child, how’d we get here? Feel free to leave out the details for now, it looks like we’ll need to revisit this at least once more anyway.”
“Alright… um. So, how we got here. Huh. Well, Eri-chan is my little sister now… With the Yakuza gone my organization became the biggest in Japan if not the most powerful yet— we just sort of… ate the Yakuza. Um… oh! All Might gave me his quirk so I could be a hero, and now I’m in your class, Aizawa Sensei. And after the whole thing at the mall today I met Detective Tsukauchi, who told me he had a lie detector quirk, and I told him about all the Chisana Ki stuff because finally somebody would have to believe me! So… here we are!”
“That’s… you… what?”
“Thank you Midoriya. At this time we are not going to be making any final decisions about how to proceed. This interview is over for the time being.”
The recording clicks as it is turned off.
—
They sit in silence for a long, long moment. Shouta’s way past the beginnings of his headache now. His temples throb in time with his heartbeat, and he has to make a conscious effort to relax his jaw.
Midoriya shuffles awkwardly in his seat. “Uh… am I under arrest?”
And just like that, his jaw clenches again. Tsukauchi lets out a world-weary sigh, his forehead still resting on the table, visibly forces himself to relax, and pulls himself back up to sitting.
“Thank you for your help today, Midoriya. For now, we’ll keep you overnight in a holding cell. We’ll table the discussion of what to do moving forward until tomorrow. I need to call your mentor.”
The kid shoots a glance at Shouta. He grumbles under his breath for a moment before speaking up. “I’ll be back in the morning, Problem Child. I’ll inform your mother that you’ll be staying at the station overnight. For now, we’ll just tell her it’s for your safety after the incident with Shigaraki at the mall. Try not to get into trouble.”
The kid scoffs. “What trouble could I possibly get into here?”
—
That question is answered four hours later, when Shouta gets a call at 3:30 in the morning from an exhausted Tsukauchi. He almost doesn’t answer it. If he doesn’t answer it, it can’t be what he thinks it is—
“They broke him out.”
Because of course they did.