Chapter 14: The traitor among us
A/N I know crazy double upload this not going to happen all the time
"My, my Midoriya. What a surprise to see you
here.
Izuku's eyes shot open in surprise before being replaced with confusion and paralyzing fear...
"Hagakure...
A tormenting laugh responded to his whisper with glee.
"Wow Midoriya, aren't you clever! Your control over you Kagune has improved vastly since the last time I saw it!"
Izuku plopped back onto his legs, sitting with his knees and calves below him, in shock. His skin becoming more clammy and cold as the seconds began to slowly tick by like minutes as her words finally began to reveal what they truly meant.
Izuku felt like the air in his lungs had been violently kicked out of him.
The first time..?
Hagakures laugh once again brought his attention snapping back to her. He could only imagine that manic glee smile growing on her face from the situation presenting its self to them both.
"Why at the USJ of course" She began with a giggle, a laugh which would have left him happy and warm before now leaving his bone-chilling. "You didn't really think you were the only ones Kurogiri had dropped in the ruins zone, did you? I thought your Ghoul senses would have alerted you more than that."
They would have it wasn't for the number of villains that had surrounded them. He hadn't had the time to realize there were more people hidden behind those dark shadows, behind the smells of fear and bloody bodies. His only thoughts at the time had been towards protecting Uraraka...
"You know, out of everyone in our class. You were the last person I suspected of being a ghoul."
Izuku felt his throat go dry as he sat paralyzed in fear at the revelations of what she had said about that day.
She saw everything...
She saw everything and never once told the teachers...
Izukus voice spluttered and stuttered as he tried to get out his words from his dry throat.
"Wwh. Wh-y d-idn't you r-un..." He asks her, too stunned to even think of running away or stopping her from running away herself.
Once again the only response he got began with a laugh...
"Oh Midoriya, I had a job to do! I was only doing what I had been told to do!"
A job to do...
Suddenly the conversation he had with the lone ghoul on that rooftop, what felt like so long ago...
"Oh wow, you're a one-eyed ghoul? Where you born with it or experiment?"
A human experiment. A Test subject. She had been watching him during the USJ and hadn't told anyone about it.
…Where you born with it or experiment?..
..."You know, out of everyone in our class. You were the last person I suspected of being a ghoul.
She had known before the USJ attack...
EXPERIMENT.
The Nomu which he had only heard about with multiple quirks...
Ghoul and One for all.
Izuku slowly felt his eyes widen in betrayal. The villains were trying to kill All Might where they knew he was meant to be... Hagakure had been watching him attack the villains in the ruins area.
She was observing him without telling anyone.
It had all been a test.
Izuku visibly gagged and choked on the thought.
It hadn't truly hit him the probabilities of being someone's experiment. Someone's plaything. All this time, he had been too concerned about trying to survive in a world so driven by quirks and what they were deemed as.
There was a deeper reason why all blood quirks were somewhat feared and seen as villainous, something much deeper.
But this conformation of his life being so dramatically changed for someone's experiment left him feeling numb.
"You work for the league...? Don't you...?"
Izuku could almost see her grin.
"Yov really are very clever, Izuku Midoriya."
Aizawa sprinted above rooftop to rooftop over the city of Musutafu, in search of the bloody stain (honestly who even came up with that name?!) who was set to kill tonight. As the night progressed on Aizawa felt it getting harder and harder to deter the thoughts and memories of the conversation he had with Recovery Girl only a few hours ago.
Uraraka...
The image of his bubbly warm happy student with a gravity quirk kept flooding his mind every time he thought back to the massacres the bloody stain had created with its spider-like legs or tentacles coming out of their backs.
He knew the chances of it being her were not completely certain yet all the evidence so far pointed to her. How did his student with a gravity quirk even obtain a second quirk like a ghoul quirk? Aizawa thought back to the USJ attack and the Nomu who had taken him out so quickly, was there a chance was affiliated with the League of villains even though they weren't seemingly on the same team? The chances of a monster with multiple quirks appearing out of nowhere and the revelation that the bloody ghoul was highly likely to be lurking inside UA with a second quirk were highly unlikely. The chances of them not being correlated in some way or another were even slimmer.
Aizawa closed his eyes and took a deep breath, shaking his head slightly in the process, trying to clear his head. He needed to focus; the bloody ghoul, while notorious for attacking villains and sparing the civilians around them, had attacked a well-known strong hero in a heartbeat and had taken them out almost instantly. Aizawa knew he wouldn't get another shot at this if he messed up now. Even if he was quite possibly their sensei, he knew he could take no chances trying to erase their quirk before placing the quirk suppression cuffs on them.
If he missed, or something went wrong; the chances of him dying were immeasurable.
And if he caught the villain at the wrong time, he didn't want to end up as a stain on a curb stone...
Aizawa continued to run from rooftop to rooftop, swinging from pipes around buildings with his scarf. After landing on a pipe on a building not far from the centre of the industrial estate of Musutafu, he heard a loud ear reaching screech and a crash coming from only a few streets away.
Instantly, Aizawa changed his direction and began sprinting in the direction of the scream, secretly praying it was who he thought it was.
The stains task force had worked tirelessly, trying to pinpoint a specific location the villain would target. In the end, they had decided on the only industrial estate Musutafu had. It was a weak guess, the likely hood of the villain even being their ad getting the right times where slim but it was the best option they had.
The sounds of thrashing only increased as Aizawa approached the area before suddenly everything became much too quiet. Fearing the worst, he picked up his speed and prayed the villain hadn't already finished and left the scene. As he arrived he quickly hid behind an air vent on top of a nearby building, the villain thankfully still stood in the alley, back facing him, hovering over a body.
Damn it, he was too late...
After a few seconds of preparing the plan of attack, he noticed something concerning.
The villain wasn't eating...
Aizawa watched as the villain stood over the bloody body below them, motionless. His eyes narrowed, this wasn't part of the plan. With the villain's attention off the body, how was he meant to approach without being smelt...?
He watched the motionless villain intensely, trying to figure out what was going on when the villain flopped back on its legs onto the floor; causing Aizawa to flinch back and hide back against the vent as the sudden movement.
A small whisper could be heard from down the alley below as Aizawa slowly looked around the corner again, the villain's head still staring straight ahead into space. The body before clearly too far gone, resembling the scenes from before, reaffirming their appearance at the USJ. The bloody massacre clearly mirroring the one from the ruins zone. Aizawa tries to bring his thoughts away from the person lying cold on the floor.
There was no point in worrying about them now...
Suddenly a crate from a little bit further down the alleyway fell over, causing the villain to spring up onto its feet. Aizawa's eyes widened in a mixture of fear and awe as the feared Kagune rapidly formed from its back. Their tentically like forms pulsated with veins of blood-red in the crevasses caused by the black entity surrounding them. The slightly blurred clip the news stations had used didn't give them justice at how purely incredible they looked as they began to lightly glow in the midnight darkness.
There was so much about this quirk that brought questions to his mind. Kagune? Transformative, something which he could quite possibly erase if he assumes correctly. However, the stomach which could only handle the likes of human flesh?
Mutant, something he wouldn't be able to change.
Or maybe it was something else that affected their abilities to eat normal food, at least consume it and use it in their digestive system, much like a human. The studies on the topic were few and far between, it left Aizawa on edge.
Aizawa watched the villain slowly spread his weight from one foot to the other, seemingly about to make a run for it. Not being able to decipher what the villain was saying, he slowly moved closer; rounding on the villain from the side, revealing its front and side. The dim light did nothing in aiding him in identifying the villain but the small movements from the hoodies material showed evidence of the slow murmuring coming from the villain's mouth.
Were they talking to themselves...?
There was no one else present in the alleyway apart from the villain and the deceased body, Aizawa had made sure of it...
The small pauses in the movement of the villains hood were subtle but visible enough for Aizawa to notice the small pauses in the speech, whether he could hear what they were saying or not.
The small pauses in the movement of the villains hood were subtle but visible enough for Aizawa to notice the small pauses in the speech, whether he could hear what they were saying or not.
Did that mean they were conversing with themselves too? Did that mean they could also have some form of Schizophrenia? The questions in Aizawa's head only brought on his growing headache more. The thought of one of his students having to suffer alone without support didn't help...
If it really was an illness such as Schizophrenia, brought on from the trauma of having to deal with a quirk that required you to have to eat human flesh, Aizawa knew he would never be able to imagine the stress it would cause to the brain.
That thought alone just made him feel worse than this, right in front of him, was someone from his own class; his own students. His stomach churned, some part of him still didn't want to believe it was true...
The emotional difference between his students and this in front of him...
He didn't want to fathom the possibilities...
Slowly he reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and quickly preceded in taking a photo of the frozen and unmoving villain before him, before sending it as an attachment to Detective Tsukauchi. As soon as he sent the photo he quickly began to type out a message.
Aizawa
What's the approach? [Location sent]-
Naomasa Tsukauchi
-If you feel it's safe, proceed as planned but do not take any unnecessary risks. Eraserhead. The tentacles were recorded as transformation quirk, so your quirk should work on them but this doesn't account for the inhuman speed.
There was a small pause between texts.
Naomasa Tsukauchi
-Remember you are the only one who might be able to get up close to them, don't risk yourself now if you feel unprepared.
Aizawa
Affirmative.
He quickly lowered his phone back to his pocket and leaned once again around the corner to see the villain still standing in the same position.
Silently he began to unravel his scarf and began to take a step forward.
The sound of the rooftop gravel instantly alerted the villain, causing them to spin their head around and stare directly into Aizawa's eyes. The single red eye glowing through the darkness caused by the hood surrounding it.
Good sense of hearing too...
In a matter of moments, the villain began to sprint full speed away, leaving the body and a cursing Aizawa behind. The villain began to use his Kagune to push and propel himself faster through the air than Aizawa had originally thought possible, clearly displaying the hidden power behind each of those now four tentacles. This villain was a lot faster than a lot of his students and much faster than he had ever seen Uraraka move, even with lightening her clothes. It was at this point he realized he hadn't seen the villain use any secondary quirk at all either. Either they were smart enough to know to keep it hidden to protect their identity or it wasn't physically possible for them to use both at the same time...
After one lucky swing of his scarf, he managed to get close enough to the villain to activate his quirk.
Having his eyes snapped open, glowing red at the villain before, he watched the villain's Kagune rapidly dissipate, as expected. Yet, what came next surprised him. The villain quickly fell down onto thevoof of the building, clutching their stomach and grunting out a quiet yelp of pain before quickly getting up and sprinting off at the same speed as before.
That wasn't expected...
Aizawa sighed in annoyance as his quirk did little to slow the villain down. As the seconds began to tick on, the villain continued to leap over the dangerous gaps which separated the building.
Aizawa grunted in pain as the wind and lack of moisture on his eyes began to take their toll. As the pair began to approach the end of the industrial estate, a massive gap began to approach them from in front.
Aizawa's eyes widened as he realized what the ghoul's plan and lack of decreasing speed meant.
He was going to make a jump for it...
There was no way for him to follow him across the wide gap of the 4 laned roads in front with cars driving down it.
Aizawa furrowed his brows, determined to keep the villain on their side of the estate boundary.
In a flash, the white material of his carbon-fibre-induced scarf shot out; rapidly surrounding the fleeing villain's legs before giving it a hard yank pulling the villain down from the air, smashing them into the rooftop they were both standing on.
As the weight of the villain hit down much harder than expected, a cloud of dust flew up into Aizawa's eyes, causing his already irritated eyes to subconsciously close.
As soon as he realized what he had done, it was too late. With the cloud of dust covering the hero's line of sight, the only thing Aizawa saw was a flash of light. The ghouls Kagune lashed out towards him, barely missing him, only leaving a small gash on his right cheek. He soon after felt his scarf give way as he fell backward onto his ass, his scarf being torn through almost instantaneously.
Aizawa quickly jumped back up onto his feet as the sounds of crashes and yells of fear from the street below him where heard. As the dust slowly began to settle Aizawa ran over to the building edge and looked down at the road below and what he saw made his eyes widen.
The road below was covered in a row of deep craters, cracks pouring out of the holes leaving large amounts of damage to the surrounding area.
Several people had begun to surround the areas of the crates, causing a commotion to grow on the street below. Shouts of panic and fear began to circulate the area as the word of the Ghouls' appearance only moments before already began to spread.
He could only image the shock of having the thick pulsing tentacles pouring down on them from above as the villain attempted at its escape.
As the concrete dust began to settle onto the floor, Aizawa quickly scanned over the street below, checking the area for any causality. After deducting there were none, Aizawa quickly began to look up and search the area for the villain they had been trying to catch for so long. Time was of the essential-
Aizawa paused in his tracks, they had already vanished..
Aizawa felt his breath pick up in panic at the missing villain, there was no possible way they should have been able to vanish so easily. The size and sound the Kagune created was as much as a giveaway as anything to their location yet the air about the streets was still...
Fast and slippery than previously thought...
He tensed up as a sudden rush of wind blew past his face, causing his body to freeze up slightly, forcing him to suddenly turn around and check behind him. He was utterly alone...
silence.
Aizawa cursed under his breath as he stared intensely the city's skyline, knowing full well they wouldn't get another chance to catch them for at lease another two weeks if they stuck to their new routine.
That single momentary pause of surprise had cost them this. Aizawa thought back to the chase only moments ago, replaying the scene of them falling to the ground over and over inside his head.
He could only hope his minor discovery would bring them closer to discovering the culprit of all those murders...
Aizawa turned around and kicked the edge of the roof harshly, causing his foot to throb as he began to make his way back to the body he had seen the ghoul hovering over only moments ago, dialling the ghoul task force as he did.
It was only when he reached the body's location with the police did they learn the body was nowhere to be found; their only evidence was the blood covered walls of where it once laid..
As soon as Izuku felt the sharp pain in his stomach vanish and the surge of RC cells begin to swim around in his back like rabid dogs did he make his escape. Quickly darting over the building edge and across the gap between the streets as fast as he possibly could, no care in how much damage he caused.
He ran for miles before slowly coming to a stop and collapsing onto the ground, trying to catch his rapidly increasing lack of oxygen. As his mind slowly began to catch up with him, so did the tearless cries. Izuku's head throbbing in pain in the back of his mind from dehydration.
He had broken his promise, his one and single promise to hand himself over when a hero came after him again. The fear of being caught and having his quirk suddenly erased had sent him into a panic like frenzy, the material harshly grabbing around his leg becoming the tipping point of it all causing him to attack a hero again.
Dear God, he had hurt Aizawa Sensei...!
The vivid memories and feeling of his sensei's blood being absorbed into his Kagune caused him to gag in disgust and collapse the rest of the way onto the floor, pulling himself up into a small, terrified ball.
He couldn't believe he had allowed himself to get caught in such a situation. The chase hadn't lasted long, but it was long enough for his sensei to use his quirk on him. The feeling of having his stomach being metaphorically ripped out of his body was fresh in his mind, only the adrenaline pumping through his body from chasing the smell of blood across the city and the tireless run away from his own sense allowing him to get back up and force his body to continue running.
He had caused him to bleed, their teacher who had already laid down his life for them once and this was how he repaid him...
He had sworn to himself so many times that he would hand himself over if any more heroes came after him, but his body wouldn't let him.
He was terrified of what would happen if he was caught.
What kind of hero doesn't hand over villains to the authorities.?
Not a very good one...
He didn't know how long Aizawa had been watching him from that rooftop, how he had not noticed him. How didn't he smell them? He was too busy eating-
Who was that he just ate...?
Izuku sucked in a sharp breath and lifted his hand up to his mouth again as he gasped into his palm.
Hagakure..
What was she doing?
Why was she with the league of Villains?
Where had she gotten that body?
Who did he just eat?
He didn't think he wanted to know...
He cried harder into his hand, was it her who had told the villains about their class trip to the USJ?
Was she aware of the gate break-in before it had even happened?
Izukus eyes widened, there was a mole in UA high school and no one knew but him. There was a mole and there was nothing he could do to get them caught.
He knew the second he had calmed down enough to think straight that he wouldn't be able to report Hagakure to any authorities or heroes, not even All Might, at least not directly... The blackmail which he had looming over his head prevented him from dons so. He was cornered and she knew so; even though the blackmail went both ways.
She was playing with him, teasing him like a child with candy, knowing he could do nothing but watch because she had nothing to lose and he had everything.
Dear lord, he really was useless... He couldn't protect the school from the league's mole because he was too afraid . He attacked a hero who had once protected his friends from death because he feared what they would do to him...
He had come so close to losing everything so many times yet each time he had gotten lucky and had managed to hang only with only a tread, desperately clinging onto the fine string of normality in his life...
Ha! Izuku almost felt like laughing, it was that pure horrible luck that he was still free to roam the street while being trapped in such an endless cycle of living his life in fear and terror of the people around him and himself.
As Izuku giggled quietly at the reality of the situation he slowly curled upon himself as his giggles turned to cries. He felt horrible. Izukus sobs slowly grew louder and louder, slowly filling up the dark alley he resided in. Shakily, he slowly moved his arm along in front of his face, biting down on his forearm in an attempt to quieten his silant cries for help. As he bit down on his arm the soothing taste of honey once again calmed his senses, causing him to close his eyes in anguish.
Tears flowed a silent trail down his face as he slowly sucked his own blood out his arm, hating himself more and more by the second. As the adrenalin finally began to disappear from his system the soothing taste of his own blood forced him to shut down, falling into a well-needed sleep.
The alley was silent once more and this time...
He was alone.
A loud bang caused everyone back in the ghouls' task force to turn their head to the door as a disgruntled Aizawa made his appearance known, loudly making his way in. Aizawa looked around the room while shoving the worrying police office away from him, who was trying to tend to the wound on his face, with a look of annoyance as he spotted the man he was after.
As Aizawa stalked his way over to Detective Tsukauchi's desk, not bothering to look in the direction of the other people in the room, and paused slightly when he saw Nezu sat in the detective's seat with a solemn look on his face.
Aizawa looked away from the principal face and saw the grim look on the detective's face.
"What happened out there?" The detective began.
Aizawa sighed angrily into his ripped scarf. "They got away."
Everyone in the room who had been waiting for the verdict slumped down, knowing all the work they had put in had come to nothing.
One random detective decided to let his frustration out.
"So the villain's still out there? Great..."
This caused Aizawa to twitch in anger. He had to retain himself from calling out.
They're not a villain, it's a student and they are scared. Of course, they're gonna run!
It had been a collective decision to keep quiet about the discovery of the link between the ghoul and his students. Not only to try and prevent it from getting to the media and causing whoever it was mass panic but to save the school's prestigious face too...
Tsukauchi shifted slightly, "We've already got the lab trying to find out who that was in the image you sent but we won't know who it was at least until tomorrow."
Aizawa nodded silently causing the detective to look at him worriedly.
"Aizawa is something-"
"When I used my quirk on them" He interrupted quietly, "Something happened that caused not only their Kagune to break-down but also caused them to collapse onto the ground and grab at their stomach..."
Aizawa brought his hand up to his hair and grabbed at his head with frustration, letting out a tired sigh.
"I don't know what happened, but I think my quirk turned off their stomach somehow or something..
Nezu furrowed his fur covered brows, "We'll go over the CCTV in that area to see if we can see what happened again, Aizawa, I recommend you don't use your quirk on anyone in your class till we figure out who the culprit is... We don't know what reaction it will cause and we can't risk anyone getting injured or killed in the school..."
Aizawa nodded silently in agreement, his anger slowly wearing off, before turning to look at the principle.
"Did Recovery Girl alert you yet?" He asked quietly.
Nezu nodded solemnly. "Uraraka Ochako, yes l've heard…." he paused, "...No matter how scared they may seem, we can't afford for this to go on much longer Aizawa, soon enough this will get out to the media and we will be forced to do an in-depth investigation. As our only suspect at the moment, we will have to keep her confined to prevent more backlash than we can handle. At the moment we are only scraping the surface of this case. I fear what may lie below it.."
Aizawa grimaced at the thought before sighing and nodding in agreement, keeping one of his students in solitary confinement was the last thing he wanted to do. If they found out they had kept the wrong student in confinement well...
There would be a lot more trouble than he wanted to deal with...
As he finished nodding his head in agreement, Nezu pulled out a bag from the space under the desk and placed it onto the desk. Popping open the clasps, he pulled out a file and handed it over to Aizawa; which he quickly read the label of.
[Case File]
The ' Bloody Stain'
[ DI
Rank A Staff ALLOWED Only.
Aizawa gave Nezu a questioning look.
"I've been asked to join the case since this is a concern for school security.
Aizawa nodded, remembering something Mic had said previously about the meeting he had missed after the USJ.
"This," Nezu pointed to the thin file which laid in his fingertips, "Is a file of all the evidence we have against whoever this ghoul is. All the dates, names, faces, times, and places."
Aizawa tilted the file onto its slide, silently noticing how thin it really was.
"It might be small," Nezu began, seemingly noticing his observation, "but it's enough, the info from the US attack is also in there along with all the photos too. We will do what we can to stop these needless murders, no matter how helpful and good they may seem in the media's light."
Aizawa nodded and silently gulped at Nezus' clear determination.
"We will catch them, Aizawa. And we'll catch them soon...
Aizawa could only hope he was right..
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone