Road Flare
Izuku is securing the wrists of the rookie officer that had reported their location just as he hears a low groan from his left.
“You’ve been busy,” Viktor says, voice slightly garbled from pain.
He finishes with a strip of duct tape over the cop’s mouth and a quick check of the man’s pulse. It’s steady and strong, so Izuku isn’t too worried about leaving him there.
“The building’s surrounded. Ten officers, four dogs. More coming.” Izuku says in a quiet voice.
“How do you know that?” Viktor forces out through gritted teeth.
“Lucky guess.”
Pulling the service weapon from the cop’s belt, Izuku quickly unloads the gun and tosses the weapon into one corner and the cartridge into the opposite.
“We could have used that.” Viktor nearly whines.
“I’m not big on guns.” Izuku shrugs and pulls his billy club from his back, snapping the weapon in half to hold onto his escrima sticks.
“Great little sticks, so much better,” The Russian man rolls his eyes and hisses in pain, hand going to the wound that Izuku had worked on while on the phone with Katsuki earlier.
“What did you do to me?” He snaps, glaring up at Izuku as the vigilante crouches down to bat the probing hand away.
“Road flare, I cauterized the wound so you wouldn’t bleed out,” Izuku responds brusquely and again slaps one of Viktor’s hands away from his side.
“You burned me?” Viktor asks incredulously.
“I saved your life,” Izuku points out.
Viktor stares at Izuku, searching for the face that’s half-hidden behind the mask. Izuku can feel his gaze roaming over him, looking over the injuries that the vigilante had sustained and calculated how much of a risk it might be to pick a fight. He must find what he’s looking for because he lunges for the cop's belt, hand reaching for the taser that Izuku hadn’t gotten rid of just yet.
Izuku again smacks at Viktor’s hand and the Russian curls into himself, jaw clenching to grind his teeth from what must have been a very painful attempt at moving.
“The bullet’s still inside you, I wouldn’t move around too much if I were you,” Izuku chastises and snatches the taser from the policeman’s belt, tucking it into one of the pockets of his cargo pants.
“You expect me to say thank you?” Viktor hisses.
“Not in the slightest. You really won’t be thanking me when we’re done.”
“So you’ll just stand there and watch me die, but you won’t kill me yourself? Coward.”
Izuku sighs and bends down again to get on the same level as Viktor. He does his best to seem like he’s looking right into the man’s face, staring him down as he waits for Viktor to stop squirming from the pain.
“Tell me what I want to know about Shigaraki,” Izuku demands.
“You think you’re different from me?” Viktor coughs and blood bubbles past his lips, “from him ? You’ll get there. Sooner or later, we all do, men like us at least.”
“A man like Shigaraki just took out your entire operation,” Izuku says flatly, “And he may not own all the cops, but he has enough under his thumb that you won’t even make it into a prison cell. Right now, I’m your only shot of getting out of here alive.”
Viktor doesn’t say anything, just shifts around as he decides whether or not to give Izuku the information he wants. The vigilante waits patiently, knowing that if he inflicts any more physical damage on the man he won’t be coherent enough to answer any questions.
“His lapdog came to us first,” Viktor mumbles, heart rate steady as he begins to explain, “you know that one that’s made out of purple smoke or some shit? He told us his employer , he wouldn’t say the bastard’s name, had taken note of us. He complimented us on how we ran our business but had ways to make it better, cleaner, that we had too many ties to other investments that could get us caught by the police. So, they started by helping us clean up our expenses, our money management. Then, they invited us to be a part of something bigger, to expand. Of course, we said yes.”
“What did Shigaraki offer?”
“Police to look the other way, aid from politicians, and an agreement with the Chinese and their heroin.”
“He works with the Chinese?” Izuku sits back on his heels.
He was sure that the gangs were all interconnected somehow, but he didn’t expect that they were connected this way. He had the idea that a figurehead had pull with each gang, somehow had investments or a reason to require loyalty, not that he had interconnected the different gangs in the city to be reliant on each other as a network.
“Who doesn’t he work with?” Viktor looks the vigilante up and down and scoffs, “you really don’t know anything do you?”
“I want names,” Izuku pulls out the small notebook he keeps in his back pocket, “Everything that you know about them and how they connect to Shigaraki.”
“There’s only one name that matters. The man that can tie it all together.”
“Who?”
“Have you heard of the name… Dr. Kuyudai Guraki?”
Guraki, Guraki. For some reason, the name is familiar, like it’s sitting on the tip of his tongue and he’s not sure why. It tugs on a memory that is just out of reach for Izuku like it should be incredibly important, but he just can’t grasp it at the moment. He jots the name down, sure that the characters are a mess since he can’t see them, but he hopes muscle memory is enough that Hitoshi can interpret it for him. At the very least, it keeps him from looking suspicious.
“Who is he? Does he work for Shigaraki?” Izuku asks.
“Japanese schools, I thought they were supposed to be better than Russian,” Viktor mocks sarcastically.
“Come on,” Izuku grabs the front of Viktor’s tattered shirt and lifts him slightly, satisfied when the man lets out a sharp yelp at being jostled.
“Alright, alright! Fuckin’- just put me down!” Viktor attempts to yank on Izuku’s hand but he’s too weak to have much pull. With one more slight shake, Izuku releases his shirt and lets the man drop back to the concrete.
“Dr. Guraki was a scientist who helped further Quirk Singularity Theory,” the Russian finally says after several seconds of getting his breathing under control.
“Okay, and what does that have to do with Shigaraki?” Izuku scrunches his nose.
That may be why he’d heard of the doctor, but there’s something else scratching at his brain that says he knows more. He pushes it aside. Later, he’ll look into the man later.
“You don’t even know the man’s quirk? Ever heard of All for One? The boogie man of the underground?”
“No?”
“Whatever, Dr. Garaki helps Shigaraki get the quirks he needs, the money he needs, helps bring him connections, and provides medical care. He’s the man on the outside as Shigaraki hides in the shadows. He is Shigaraki’s lifeline.”
Get the quirks he needs? Izuku is definitely confused by that statement, unsure as to why someone would need to obtain quirks, if that was even possible . He couldn’t ask what All for One’s quirk was right now, it would make it really look like he didn’t know what he was doing. He’d find out later from a few of the connections he’d made in the underground or through the notes he’d put in his notebooks.
“Who is he? Where can I find him?”
“We were going to rule this city, Vladimir and I…” Viktor’s voice fades, his eyes going half-lidded as he starts to lose consciousness.
“Viktor, the name!” Izuku shouts and grabs the front of his shirt again, pulling him up close to his face in a threatening manner.
“His name… His name…” Viktor’s voice grows softer and softer, so Izuku leans in to try to discern what he’s saying, “His name is…”
He fell for it.
Viktor headbutts Izuku hard enough to send the vigilante tumbling to his ass, shocked that the man had that much strength to fake him out.
Stumbling to his feet, Viktor grabs a slab of wood, swinging it at Izuku’s head hard enough that he fumbles forward from the momentum. Izuku easily steps to the side of the attack, letting out a heavy sigh of annoyance that the man is trying this right now.
“I refuse to die like this, to a man like you, a man who will turn out to be just like Shigaraki in the end!” Viktor shouts and tries to swing the wood plank at him again.
Izuku grabs the plank and yanks it toward him, using the motion to force Viktor to stumble forward and maneuver him into a headlock. Viktor attempts to fight back, using his legs to kick Izuku’s knees in. The two fall into a grapple similar to the one they were in while fighting at the cab service garage, rolling over and over each other as they both tried to gain the upper hand.
Finally, Izuku manages to grab both of Viktor’s shoulders and slam him into the floor. But, if Izuku had been paying attention, he would have noticed how much weaker the floor was here. The two men crash through the floor, falling through two stories before slamming into the concrete floor of a basement.
---
The car skids into the police barricade at a disgustingly high speed. Aizawa doesn’t wait for it to fully stop though, rolling out of the backseat before the wheels have stopped turning. He’s already running for what he can tell is the command center to look for the person in charge.
“Eraser!” Tsukauchi shouts behind him, “You’re too old to be doing stuff like that!”
“Can it, old man!” Shouta yells back and sprints for the command center tent.
He finds someone with a bullhorn who is pointing out orders for different agencies to follow, several heroes already surrounding the block, including Endeavor, and Shouta has to repress a shiver. The man would do but none that were suited for this kind of mission.
“What’s the situation?” Shouta asks bluntly, ignoring a greeting for time’s sake.
“Who are you?” the hostage negotiator asks just as bluntly.
“Eraserhead, underground hero. I’m the lead hero on the man in the mask case.”
“How do you know the man in the mask is in there?”
“Assumed it was him from the radio for backup.”
The negotiator looks Shouta up and down before holding his hand out.
Rolling his eyes just as Tsukauchi catches up to them, he pulls his hero license out and hands it to the man to scrutinize.
“He’s with me Hirata,” Tsukauchi says from behind Eraserhead and puts a hand on the hero’s shoulder.
The officer huffs out a breath of annoyance but turns on his heel and stalks into the tent, motioning for the two men to follow him. The tent is chaotic with officers rushing about setting up equipment and talking through their walkies to other teams. It’s a hub of noise and intense energy that makes Shouta’s skin crawl and beg to curl up in bed away from the world.
“We’ve got a rookie in there being held hostage. He’s no longer answering his communicator and doesn’t have a quirk suited for helping him out of the situation. We’re working on setting up SWAT and a few snipers on the roof, see if we can do this clean and easy,” Hirata-san leans over a table with a map of the block they’re on. There are tactical lines drawn across it in red marking where he must be setting up SWAT units.
“I think you could convince the k- man in the mask to come out, I don’t think you need to use SWAT to force them out,” Tsukauchi tries, his hands in his pockets.
“If you’re going to talk that way, get out of my tent,” Hirata-san growls, “that’s my rookie in there, I’m getting him out alive.”
“Mask doesn’t kill,” Shouta mutters, hands in his pockets as he stays out of the way of all the commotion.
Hirata-san’s head snaps to Shouta and his eyes narrow. “He hasn’t killed anyone yet, but what will he do if he’s desperate enough? If he feels this trapped? We don’t know him that well.”
Shouta stays quiet. He can’t reveal that Mask is just a kid, that they’re probably in there terrified, that they most likely are running through every option trying to figure out how to get out of there alive and with everyone mostly unharmed. The kid might put people in the hospital on the regular, but he only does it for reasons unknown to Shouta at this moment.
“Out of my tent, go watch from afar and make sure to stay out of SWAT’s way. This isn’t your scene detective,” Hirata-san eyes Tsukauchi like he knows the man can get away with just about anything, “You are not a hostage negotiator or trained in that art. If I need you for your quirk I’ll call you.”
With a grumbled curse, Tsukauchi pushes his way out of the tent while Shouta trails behind him. They step back into the street and make their way over to where Sansa is leaning against Tsukauchi’s car with another officer. It looks like one of Sansa’s partners that he works with regularly, Daichi Haru.
“We’re just going to have to stand by for now, evacuate civilians as needed, and wait until Hirata needs my quirk,” Tsukauchi murmurs to him as they walk.
“Roger that,” Shouta sighs and leans against the car, face buried in his capture weapon.
---
“Bakugou,” Shinsou calls from the other room, his voice tenser than when Katsuki had first entered the apartment.
“What, troll doll?” he snaps from the bathroom. He had been setting up the emergency first aid kit that he had packed, sure that Deku would have popped all of his stitches by the time he decided to come back.
“Get in here.”
“No, I’m fuckin’ busy.”
“ Now.”
Katsuki freezes. He’d only ever heard that tone come from his dad when he had really gotten himself into deep shit. Scrambling out of the bathroom, he comes to stand where Shinsou is watching the screen of the laptop, elbows on his knees as he stares intensely at the screen.
It’s the Hero News Network standing in front of what looks like some shitty abandoned building. Police lights flash behind the anchor whose face looks pale even under the amount of shittily applied makeup they have caked on.
“-reports of the Masked Vigilante that has been terrorizing Musutafu for several weeks now. The Musutafu Police Department refuses to say more on the vigilante’s motives for the attack.”
“Fucking Deku,” Katsuki breathes.
---
Izuku groans and digs himself out of the rubble, wounds aching with the amount of movement and dust that was getting into them. The slice in his ribs was throbbing now and so were several other deep cuts that would need stitches later. Hitocchi and Kacchan were going to kill him later if bleeding out didn’t kill him first.
Shuffling around a few pieces of debris, Izuku is able to grab Viktor and drag him out of the mess as well, the man fully unconscious and dead weight.
“Damn, why are adults so heavy,” Izuku huffs and deposits the ragdoll-like man on the floor. It’s when he notices that the Russian's chest isn’t moving that he begins to panic.
“No, no, no! I’m not done with you!” Izuku throws himself on top of the man, straddling him as he starts CPR. He’s too light for chest compressions to really work, even as gives the man breaths and starts to pump on his chest to the beat of a pre-quirk song.
“Come on, breathe dammit,” he huffs and puts all his weight into his compressions.
He repeats the cycle twice more, panicking at the idea that he might be left with a deadman that could be pinned to him. He doesn’t kill, dammit.
“Breathe!” Izuku yells and slams both fits down on the center of Viktor’s chest.
The gasp that comes from Viktor as his heart kickstarts back into beating is like a cold drink on a summer day, soothing Izuku’s insides and calming his terror.
“What are you doing on top of me?” the man huffs, a hand going to his chest where Izuku most likely cracked a rib.
“You died, I brought you back,” Izuku shrugs and rolls off the man. He stands and shakes out his aching wrists before starting to sift through rubble again to look for an exit or maybe a weapon. He’s not too worried about Viktor now, the man is too weak to try anything else, so he doesn’t even consider tying him up in any way.
“You lied,” Viktor laughs and rolls his head to watch Izuku work, “You can’t even stand there and let me die.”
“No, not until you give me what I need, not until I know more about Shigaraki,” Izuku informs him and ignores the way the man is watching him with a strange curiosity.
The man goes silent and Izuku has to check over his shoulder constantly to make sure he doesn’t need to restart his heart again. He doesn’t think a second brush with death would suit the man. He continues to work quickly and quietly, shuffling around concrete and rebar wherever he can. There has to be a way out of here somehow.
The whisper-quiet sound of feet shuffling above him by a window has Izuku snapping his head up so quickly he makes himself dizzy. He pauses in his work, zeroing in on the noise of someone or many someones just outside of the building. His hearing widens, taking in the police chatter, whining radios, the sounds of too many heartbeats too close to the building, and Izuku has to pull his awareness in just a bit more.
There.
There are about twenty heartbeats lining the outsides of the building, the soft click of metal on metal indicating they have weapons that they’re holding against bulletproof vests.
SWAT.
“Shit,” he hisses and starts to dig in the rubble faster.
“What are you doing?” Viktor calls from where he’s lying across the room.
“Looking for a way out,” Izuku replies bluntly.
“You’re not going to find anything, you know that, right?”
Izuku ignores the comment and keeps digging. He can hear it, the sound of dripping water below his feet, the smell of sewage permeating the bricks below him. There has to be access to the sewer system through here, he just has to find it.
The crackle pop of static stops Izuku in his work once more.
“I’d like to speak to the man in the mask, please,” calls a smooth voice over the radio. It sounds intimidating, important, even though the static of the airwaves. This person sounds like they know what they’re doing like they know their own importance and how to use it to their advantage.
Izuku hadn’t even realized that the radio had fallen during his tussle with Viktor. He turns his head to the Russian as if looking at him. The man’s heart has skipped from its sluggish beats to beating a mile a minute. He recognizes the voice.
“Hello?” the voice calls again.
Izuku walks slowly over to where he can hear the radio buzzing, leaning over to pick it up with careful hands. He knew that he pulled the communication unit off of the cop earlier, but he didn’t remember switching it to another frequency. And how did the man even know what frequency to contact him on?
“Are you there? Can you hear me?” the voice tries one more time.
Izuku is hesitant to reply, unsure if this is a trap by the police or someone else. The voice doesn’t have any background noise to it like he expects an officer contacting him would. It’s a new voice to him too, one that he can’t even pinpoint in his memories.
Finally, he holds the radio up and presses the talk button down.
“Who is this?” he asks quietly.
“I think you know,” the voice replies in its silken tone, “You’ve been asking about me. I thought it was time we spoke.”
Shigaraki. He needs it confirmed.
“Say your name,” Izuku demands.
“You first.”
Izuku grits his teeth, ready to chuck the communicator across the room.
“That’s what I thought,” the voice cuts in, a laugh running as an undercurrent to the tone, “You and I have a lot in common.”
“We’re nothing alike,” Izuku argues immediately.
“That’s what you tell yourself, I’m sure.”
“You’re feeding off this city, like a cancer.”
“I want to save this city, to save Japan, the world, just like you.”
Izuku scoffs and rolls his eyes before pressing the talk button to reply. “Tell that to all the people you’ve hurt.”
“Young man, life is not a fairy tale. Not everyone deserves a happy ending,” Shigaraki scolds.
“I’m going to find you,” Izuku turns his back on Viktor who is staring at him with wide eyes of warning, “and I’m going to make you pay for what you’ve done.”
“No, you are not,” the man is just as calm as ever, his voice not wavering the slightest bit even as Izuku feels the anger crawl up his throat and sit on the back of his tongue. “Not that I don’t admire what you’re trying to do. Trying to change the world with nothing but desire and your own two hands, secure in the knowledge that you’re doing the right thing. The only thing you feel like you can do. That’s something that I understand, truly. But we both can’t have what we want. So your part in this drama, by necessity, comes to an end.”
There’s shifting on the roof across from the building they’re in, Izuku can hear it in his expanded senses bubble, having forgotten to narrow his field of sensory information before answering the man over the radio. There’s a click, a safety being slid as someone prepares to shoot, and Izuku hurriedly turns back to the radio in his hand.
“It’s going to take a lot more than some random voice over a radio to stop me,” Izuku tries to brush off the anxiety he’s starting to feel.
“It’s not me you need to worry about,” Shigaraki replies over the radio, “It’s the city that you just blew the hell out of.”
“Yeah, like anyone is going to believe that.”
“You’re running around in a mask, committing crimes, labeled a vigilante. How do you think that's going over with the public, truly?” the voice pauses like he’s letting Izuku mull over the choices he’s made so far, like a parent lecturing a small child, “Now, you’re holed up with a known felon in the wake of a series of bombings. There’s that police officer you’re holding hostage, so... Yes, actually, I do think I can have the story spun my way. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The Russian, is he alive?”
“I’m still here you fat sack of shit,” Viktor half shouts from across the room.
Izuku rolls his eyes and decides against kicking the shit out of the man he’s trapped with. “Does that answer your question?”
“This is a one-time offer. You kill the Russian, and I’ll call this all off. You know what he’s done, to women, to children, to the people of this city that you claim to care about. But do you know how much he enjoyed it? Enjoyed every life he took, every child he ripped away from their parents, every woman he sent overseas? The man is the lowest of the low. Even I despise dealing with him.”
A grin starts to creep over Izuku’s features, one that he knows mimics Eraserheads feral one that he uses when talking to criminals. “You just told me how important he is. You need him dead to keep you from being outed, don’t you? He knows too much and you’re trying to use this whole situation to your advantage.”
“I see hasn’t told you anything of value yet,” the voice sounds like he’s almost scoffing now, a slight ripple in his even demeanor, “You’re just a child playing at being a hero. Give it up.”
“No, I’m not trying to be a hero. I’m just a guy that got fed up with men like you,” Men like the Shigaraki seems to be, like Stendhal, like every other idealistic fanatic that felt like their way was the only way, “and I decided to do something about it.”
“That’s what makes you dangerous,” Shigaraki almost sounds like he’s agreeing with Izuku now, “It’s not the mask or the skills. It’s your ideology, your morals. The lone vigilante who thinks he can make a difference, I’m glad we could talk.”
Izuku steps forward, about to press the talk button to argue when his foot clangs against metal. He drops to the ground and feels around, cool metal and ridges rising under his fingertips in contrast to the smooth concrete around the edges. A subway grate. Bingo. He sets the walkie-talkie down and starts to yank on the handle, bones and muscles screaming from the exertion after falling through multiple stories of a building.
“I respect your conviction., Even if it runs counter to my own,” Shigiraki says faintly over the radio.
Izuku pauses in his attempt to escape and snatches up the radio again.
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that you won. It’ll make what I’m gonna do to you so much more satisfying.” He mutters into the receiver.
“Your part ends tonight,” the voice counters, like this is some type of play and Izuku is just a side character in his show.
“Others will take my place. They’ll see what I was trying to do and they’ll make sure--”
“No, they won’t. The city will burn you in effigy. Your name, your very existence will be met with abhorrence and disgust.”
Izuku wants to argue, he really does, because someone out there will know that this isn’t his doing, that he would never do something this terrible to his city. How dare this man to decide his part in the story? How dare he deem Izuku a side character not even worthy of anon-stage line? Someone who is barely seen and hidden by the scenery as the true players in this charade continue to dance around each other like Shakespearean sword fighters, an elaborate dance that mimics the complexities of a chess match.
He has his thumb on the talk button, his rebuttal ready as the rage that had been building in his throat gathers on the tip of his tongue, when a shot rings out, extinguishing his argument in one fell swoop.