When Izuku rolled out of bed and immediately started his nightly stretches before getting dressed in his vigilante clothes. Was it weird that the middle of the night was turning into his favorite time of day? It probably was. Kacchan would probably think he was crazy for wanting to go out in the middle of the night to bother heroes.
Izuku snuck out to the front door, but froze with his hand on the doorknob. Hadn't he decided yesterday that he really needed to take weapons with him? He hesitated another long moment while he debated the merits of just going out weaponless again. He could always just rely on what trash he could find, right? It had worked just fine last time.
But while he could do that, he probably shouldn't. Mom would kill him if she knew he was running into fights without any kind of weapon or plan of attack and while he wasn't planning on her finding out, it was the principle of the thing.
So something small and easy to hide, but also something he could grab quickly so he didn't cut too much into his vigilante time tonight. Hmmm...cut...maybe he should bring some sort of knife?
He turned on his phone's flashlight and went into the kitchen. Were there any knives that Mom wouldn't miss? He obviously couldn't take any from the knife block, they'd be missed immediately. He might be able to get away with taking a steak knife, but...it probably wouldn't be a good idea to put a knife in his pocket without any kind of sheaf, would it? He'd just end up cutting himself as he tried to run get heroes and that wouldn't do any good.
He needed a knife with some kind of protection already built in. Izuku smiled as an idea occurred to him and he started to rummage as quietly as he could in the junk drawer. It took him awhile to find what he was looking for since they used it so infrequently and he was starting to get scared that they'd actually lost it when his hand closed around the old box cutter. Izuku practiced extending and retracting the blade a few times to get a feel for it. Yeah, the cuts wouldn't be very deep, but they'd be enough to distract a villain in a pinch so Izuku could run away or find another opening. It was a good start.
Now onto a bludgeoning weapon. On a whim, Izuku went to the pantry and grabbed a can of soup. Running around with a can wouldn't be good in the long run, since it was heavy and hard to hold, but he could always replace it with something more streamlined later. Besides, it had worked so well last time that he knew it was reliable.
A can and a boxcutter didn't feel like enough, though. Izuku was going to be fighting quirkless against people with quirks, so he probably needed a few more weapons than most vigilantes did. He wished he had something like tonfa, but he didn't know how to use them and they were just a bit larger than he was comfortable carrying around in his hoodie pocket. Some kind of stick would work pretty well, though, if only...Izuku quickly went to the hall closet where Mom kept her old crafting supplies. Hadn't she done a project with wooden dowels a few months ago? If Izuku was lucky, there'd be a few left.
He grinned when he saw the dowels standing up against the wall. He grabbed two of the shorter pieces, each about twenty centimeters long and three around, but one was slightly shorter than the other. Izuku hoped that the difference wouldn't throw him too off balance if he had to use them in a fight.
Now that he finally felt armed enough, Izuku turned off his flashlight and walked out the front door. He was ready.
Izuku pressed himself against the wall to make sure he was completely hidden in the shadows while he watched the thugs. He had heard raised voices, so ran toward the side street and was currently hiding in an alley, but the thugs weren't actually doing anything. There were about ten of them and they were probably part of a gang or something, but they seemed to be joking around and roughhousing, not doing anything nefarious.
"When did your friend say she was coming?" One of the thugs asked. "And why did we have to meet her here? There are flies everywhere, man!"
"Oh, stop being such a baby." That guy seemed to be the leader. He had green skin and what looked like thorns on his face, which made Izuku wonder what his quirk was. "She'll be here soon."
Izuku shook his head and turned away. There were other people who needed his help, there was no point in waiting around here. He was just about to leave when the first thug cried out in pain and Izuku whipped around to see him clutching a hand to his neck, "Damn fly bit me!"
Within a few seconds, each of the thugs slapped a hand to their necks and cried out. Those must be some vicious flies if they bit all of them, but why bite all of them at once? Izuku should run, those bites looked painful and he didn't necessarily want to have to explain to his mom how he got an insect bite when he was supposedly at home in bed. He turned to leave again.
"You bitch! I'll kill you!"
Izuku watched in shock as the thugs all started powering up and attacking each other. What? And they all had such powerful quirks too! He thought quirks this powerful were rare, and the more powerful your quirk, the more likely you would be encouraged to be a hero, so a group of thugs all with powerful quirks was unheard of. But they were going crazy, like they were on drugs or something, but they hadn't even been smoking!
Just then, one of the thugs caught sight of him, "Boys, look, we've got a toothpick to crush!"
Izuku froze and swallowed thickly as every one of the thugs turned toward him. Time to run.
Shota crouched on a rooftop overlooking the bar district. Normally this was Amplifier's territory, but she'd come down with the flu and had to call in sick, so Shota had agreed to cover her shift. He would usually be trying to track down leads on the Trigger case, but he hadn't gotten any new information recently. He was starting to get frustrated with the whole thing. Trigger had been in Japan for years now and so far they had only been able to arrest low level thugs and pawns and were no closer to finding the people behind the Villain Factory.
He wouldn't admit it, but Shota was scared. People didn't do things for no reason, so there had to be some eventual goal to using drugs to temporarily turn normal people into powerful villains, but Shota couldn't see it. Trigger on it's own was bad enough, but the stuff it was sometimes cut with made the user violent and prone to attacking anyone in sight. And that wasn't even counting the people who had been abducted and had their bodies modified to accommodate their more powerful quirks.
Hopefully, the people behind the Villain Factory weren't doing this to gear up to a major attack, but there was no way to know if they were. The dealers didn't know anything about the production of the drug and even those higher up on the supply chain hadn't known anything about the kidnappings. Shota was just ready for this case to be over already, he was sick of not knowing anything.
There was a crash off to his left and Shota turned to see a kid running as fast as he could as he was chased by a mob of powered-up villains. The kid was wearing a green hoodie and goggles and kept glancing around as he ran like he was looking for someone. Was this the new vigilante Amplifier had told him about? It must be, but didn't Viridian lead heroes to villains and not the other way around?
As the group got closer, Shota decided it didn't matter much. He needed to stop them before any civilians could be injured, which in the bar district was a distinct possibility. Damn problem child, why couldn't he have left the villains where they were?
Shota jumped down, startling Viridian, who stared at him with wide eyes that Shota could barely see behind his goggles, then tripped and landed flat on his stomach, making Shota snort.
"Stay away from the fight, kid." He said. "I'll handle this."
He canceled the villains' quirks, then started to wrap as many as he could in his capture weapon, knocking them into each other and into the walls to disorient them. He couldn't see Viridian anymore, so hopefully the kid had enough sense to run away.
Izuku watched with wide eyes as Eraserhead fought the thugs. Eraserhead! He'd been trying to get Amplifier, mostly because she was the closest and the thugs' quirks were making it very hard for Izuku to stay ahead of them, but Eraserhead was even better. His quirk was so cool! Izuku could tell where he was looking just by seeing whose quirk could activate and whose couldn't. And then his hair! Did he have a secondary levitation quirk or was there something about his hair floating that was necessary for his quirk. Maybe it was built into his quirk to make sure that the hair didn't get in his eyes? If that were the case, if Erasehead was hanging upside-down and activated his quirk, would his hair float upwards like it was defying gravity, like it did when he was standing up, or would it obey the laws of physics and stay down so that it wouldn't risk getting in his eyes? What if…
Izuku was so caught up watching Eraserhead's quirk in action that he didn't notice that one of the thugs had gotten out of Eraserhead's line of sight and was looking straight at him. Izuku yelped as a tentacle wrapped around his ankle and started pulling him toward the grinning villain, who apparently had a squid quirk that gave him tentacles for hair.
Izuku hurriedly reached into his pocket and grabbed the box cutter he'd brought, fumbling as he expended the blade, then slashed at the tentacle. The villain screamed and let go as dark blood started pouring out of the wound. He growled at Izuku, who was holding his knife in front of him like a lifeline, then launched several tentacles at him at once. Izuku slashed and dodged as fast as he could, thankful that he was used to dodging explosions. He managed to cut quite a few of the tentacles that were attacking him, but the box cutter wasn't long enough to cut them off, not that Izuku really wanted to do that anyway. If he cut them off, would they grow back, or were they like an arm that once it was severed, was gone forever?
He really needed to stop getting distracted by interesting quirks because just as he was getting into a rhythm fighting the tentacle villain, another came up and hit him between the shoulder blades, throwing him to the ground and making him lose his hold on the box cutter. He looked up to see a villain with bulging muscles looming above him. This wasn't good.
Well, he didn't have any ranged weapons, but his best option was the dowels, probably, since he'd lost his knife. Izuku's heart sunk as he grabbed the wooden sticks from his hoodie pocket. They didn't look like they'd do a lot of good against a strength quirk. The man lunged for him again and Izuku dodged around him, then brought both sticks down on the back of the man's skull.
They broke.
"Uh-oh." Izuku gulped as the man slowly turned around, and glared at him. This was it. This was how he died. Wait...was he deflating?
"I thought I told you to get away, kid!"
Suddenly the man was wrapped in Eraserhead's scarf and pulled out of the way to reveal the hero himself staring down at Izuku with an exasperated expression. Ok, this. This was how he died.
"S-sorry, Eraserhead, sir. I j-just…"
A movement behind Eraserhead caught Izuku's eye and he realized that the tentacle villain hadn't been taken down yet and was going to grab Eraserhead! Izuku didn't even have time to think before he was rushing forward. His dowels may be broken, but they had splintered when they broke, which made them more like stakes. He didn't need to completely defeat the villain, he just needed to immobilize him for long enough for Eraserhead to erase his quirk.
He ducked beneath Eraserhead's arm and brought his stakes down on two of the tentacles, pinning them to the ground and making the villain cry out in pain. A few seconds later, the man was dragged toward him as his tentacles retracted back into his head. Izuku looked up behind him and could barely see a glint of red behind the gold goggles. Eraserhead waited a few seconds to make sure that the villain wasn't getting up, he must have passed out from the pain once his quirk was erased, then turned his glare toward Izuku.
"You must be Viridian."
Izuku winced, "I didn't ask for that article, I swear! I'm so sorry, Eraserhead, I was going to get Amplifier when these guys just started going crazy all of a sudden, but then one of them saw me, and then I…"
"Wait, did you say they went crazy all of a sudden?"
Izuku nodded and shrunk a little when he saw the scowl deepen on Eraserhead's face. He watched as Eraserhead knelt down and turned the tentacle villain over onto his back, then opened his mouth and took out his tongue.
"Hmm, black. Figures."
"Why is the color of his tongue important, Eraserhead?" Izuku asked hesitantly. "Couldn't it just be a part of his quirk? Don't some species of squid naturally have black tongues?"
Eraserhead looked up at him appraisingly, "True, but why don't you check one of the other villains. I doubt you can justify them all having black tongues naturally."
Izuku slowly made his way over to one of the unconscious villains and looked at his tongue. Sure enough, it was black, but, "The color's fading."
Eraserhead nodded, "It's the drug. It's called Trigger. You can tell who's addicted because the tongue stays black. These guys must have just shot up the one time."
"But they didn't shoot up." Izuku said.
Eraserhead froze, "...what?"
Izuku fidgeted under his stare, "Um, I was watching them. They weren't using needles or anything before they went crazy. They weren't even smoking."
Eraserhead frowned, "Strange…"
"Um, Eraserhead, sir?" Izuku fidgeted again. "I'm, um, I'm sorry for getting in your way."
Eraserhead sighed, "Just call me Eraser, kid, and while I wish you'd hadn't gotten involved, you managed to hold your own. Stay out of fights, kid, you don't want to die."
Izuku waited for probably a moment too long before nodding and running away.
Izuku tucked himself back into bed after tending to his injuries for the night and thought about those weird thugs. Eraser said it was some kind of a drug, but how did they get exposed to it? Izuku shook his head. He should leave the investigation to Eraser and the police, he would just get in the way.
Right as he was falling asleep, he remembered what one of the thugs had said right before going crazy. There are flies everywhere. Weren't flies supposed to be asleep at night?
Huh, weird.