Chapter Text
“Did you hear what happened to Flashbright?”
“The Phantom Thieves of Hearts right? How could I not! Mitsu-nee was spamming my phone the entire time. She was there, you know.”
“Awww, I’m jealous! I wish we could’ve been there, instead of listening to Oyama-sensei drone on about the history of fishing. What a bore, am I right?”
Two girls giggled to each other as they made their way into Aldera’s hallways, exchanging gossip for the day while Izuku Midoriya packed his notes into his bright yellow backpack only a meter or so away. He had only the vaguest idea what they were talking about- the teachers might overlook the quirked students being on their phones, but they would never overlook that from him. All his information came from overhearing other students gossiping about the incident. Izuku knew something happened in Musutafu central square, and the name ‘The Phantom Thieves of Hearts,’ but that was it. He’d have to look it up on the way home.
Izuku finished stuffing his many, many notebooks in his backpack, swinging it over his shoulder as he prepared to leave for home. It was starting to feel a bit too light again, he’d have to find something heavier to store inside if he wanted to keep up with his training. Maybe he could ask Okumura-san or Amamiya-san? They didn’t particularly seem like people who would have weights at first, but Okumura-san did help him with that very heavy fridge…
Shuffling out of the classroom, Izuku pulled out his phone to check the news for the day. He could worry about training when he got home, right now he wanted to figure out what actually happened in the square. The headlines would at least give him a good idea of what was going on, even if he didn’t have time to actually read the articles yet.
Flashbright exposed! Pro Hero secretly a Villain all along?
Musutafu square hacked, how did their security fail?
Mounting lawsuit on Pro Hero Flashbright, are the allegations true?
Who are the Phantom Thieves of Hearts?
Distrust in the heroics industry running ramp-
Izuku left the building right in the middle of that last headline, no longer quite able to make out the words as the sun cast a glare over his phone screen. He’d read more when he got home, shoving the topic out of his mind as he wandered down the familiar route. Right now, he had to dodge Kacchan’s friends.
Izuku wound up being unable to make his way all the way home without getting tripped on the sidewalk, but other than that he did pretty well! Nothing was damaged this time, so he could finally go back to reading through those articles. They might have something new for his hero analysis notebooks. Stalker notebooks or not, he never really could kick the habit of recording anything and everything he knew about heroes.
…Wow. Izuku sat back, reeling from everything he just read. The few articles quickly spiraled into a rabbit hole, most of the professional media outlets focused more on Flashbright himself and his statements concerning some briefly mentioned ‘allegations of theft,’ but when Izuku looked at more niche- and sometimes more sensationalized- outlets, the focus was on the new mysterious villain/vigilante group, the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. Izuku, admittedly, skipped over Flashbright for a while to focus his attention entirely on the sudden appearance of a seemingly very well organized villain/vigilante group.
Any self-respecting hero nerd knew that organized crime of any kind was both very rare and very low-key nowadays. Be it villain or vigilante, the presence of All Might and general influx of heroes had made it near impossible to have a unified or organized group, least of all one willing to make such a statement so publicly. That wasn’t the only strange thing about the Phantom Thieves- after some searching for previous records, there was nothing about them before Flashbright, they basically debuted with a bang much bigger than any other vigilante in their time. Either they were absurdly overconfident and about to get caught right away, or they had operated under a different name before.
Izuku found himself watching shaky videos of the premiere over and over, trying to analyze the grainy footage as best he could before a channel under the name ‘Alibaba’ finally uploaded the full video, plus plenty of receipts supporting the claims made in said video. Izuku was certain he watched that video maybe 100 times, as the only publicly available evidence that the Phantom Thieves actually existed. He still decided to make a page dedicated to them, listing everything he knew from the video in neat bullet points.
Phantom Thieves of Hearts
- Debuted by exposing a Flashbright for their crimes, villainy or vigilantism?
- Vigilantism. Targeting criminals with use of quirks. See page 58 for notes on Heroes vs Vigilantes vs Villains.
- See page 13 for updated analysis on Flashbright
- Possible victims of Flashbright or knew some?
- 8 voices in the Flashbright exposé, possibly 8 members
- May be misdirect to keep heroes looking for members that don’t exist or not looking for extra members
- Possible technology quirk used to hijack TVs
- Large debut, may be overconfident or previously operated under different names. Look for vigilantes with a track record for exposing heroes or getting abused by heroes.
Izuku finished the frankly barren page with a sketch of their logos- the grinning cat and firey top hat- since he didn’t have any physical descriptions to go off. It.. wasn’t his best analysis page, but he really couldn’t go any further without going so far into speculation that he was just wildly making things up. Maybe if the Phantom Thieves continued to operate, he could-
No! Bad Izuku! Izuku mentally chided himself. Vigilantism is very wrong and you shouldn’t be hoping someone continues it just so you can get more information about them.
Out loud, Izuku just sighed and put his pencil down for a moment. Really thinking about it, would it be so bad if the Phantom Thieves were allowed to continue? The HPSC wasn’t exactly neutral when it came to supporting even the cruelest of heroes. Billions of yen in property damage and hospital bills and funerals caused by Endeavor and he was still sitting at the number two spot, having his destruction excused by the commission as ‘necessary.’
Contrary to popular belief Izuku wasn’t naive, especially not about heroes. The HPSC was no longer an oversight commission as it was originally intended, so someone needed to call heroes out when they went too far or didn’t do enough. Maybe having a group like the Phantom Thieves could kick something like that into existence. They didn’t appear to be malicious, at the very least, and while their debut was loud and disruptive it wasn’t violent. Izuku really couldn’t help that part of him that liked the Phantom Thieves, that wanted to see what they did next, even if they were vigilantes.
…He’d talk to All Might about it, the whole Phantom Thieves/Flashbright situation was worming its way into his head. Next time they trained he’d bring it up and ask for All Might’s opinion. Until then, Izuku wanted to check out that prior vigilantes idea, even if he didn’t find anything it could lead to some interesting new pages for his notebook.
—
Shouta Aizawa hated his job sometimes. Don’t misunderstand- Shouta could never stop being a hero, he’d always had a bit of a selfless streak that some (Hizashi) would classify as self-sacrificial, which made him utterly incapable of standing by while people got hurt. But, as he went through pages upon pages of paperwork, filling out incident reports and insurance claims for that building he encountered the kids on, Shouta found that he currently hated his job.
His head still throbbed, bright lights grating against his eyes as he tried to keep his writing legible despite the shaky lines his hands kept making. Hizashi had told Shouta to stay home today, to rest and recover from his concussion (And it was a concussion, the doctors had told him as much when he got it checked out last night,) but Shouta had insisted on going to work. He wasn’t about to let this case get snatched up by some spotlight hero that only cared about getting a big case under their name. After all, Shouta was certain that these vigilantes were young. They had acted so carefree when he first noticed them, jumping across rooftops with a bag full of clearly stolen objects away from the conspicuously open window of Flashbright’s agency. Then, when he activated his quirk-
The point was, Shouta knew better than most that cases involving law-breaking children should be handled with extreme care. Especially when considering how many villains were formed by people being mistreated by heroes. Spotlight types never handled these cases with enough delicacy, they were more used to the ‘good vs evil’ style of heroics, and he couldn’t risk one of those types getting assigned to lead the case in his absence. So, he came to work. And thanks to his injuries, he was stuck on paperwork duty until the doctor cleared him. At least it had guaranteed he was there for the discussions.
Shouta had just finished a small pile of injury reports when the atmosphere around him shifted, suddenly sitting at exactly 23 °C and just enough humidity not to feel too dry. Shouta blinked in confusion a few times, that’s not a symptom of a concussion .
“Eraserhead?” A voice exclaimed from behind him, sounding both slightly familiar and vaguely confused. Oh, it was a quirk, that made a lot more sense. Shouta turned around slightly to see a young woman with blonde hair and electric blue eyes wandering into the room and over near his desk.
“Stormwave,” Shouta grunted out a greeting, recognizing his underclassman now that he actually saw her. He was pretty sure she was one of the first years while he was a third year, but more importantly she was one of the many, many heroes in Musutafu. Some kind of weather quirk, which explained the sudden shift in temperature.
Stormwave beamed, “Nice to hear you know who I am! But please, call me Nastumi, we’re coworkers after all. What are you doin at the station so late? Or, better yet, why are you here at all? I heard you got injured last night.” The heroine came to a stop next to his desk, glancing over Shouta with a concerned look on her face, mixed with something Shouta couldn’t quite place.
“I’m fine, Stormwave,” Shouta refused her offer to use her name. “There’s still work to be done, so I’m doing it. What are you doing here so late? You’re a spotlight hero.” Or at least, not an underground one, Shouta knew every underground hero in the Musutafu area by name and by quirk. Stormwave was nowhere on that mental list, and her costume with its bright blue, gold and silver would be ill-suited to working at night.
The heroine frowned at Shouta’s dismissal, but knew better than to push it. Instead she shrugged, “I would consider myself more ‘daylight’ than ‘spotlight.’ Climate control’s versatile, but not very big or flashy unless I want to cause major property damage. But to answer your question,” Stormwave jabbed her thumb at herself, electric blue eyes glimmering with excitement, “I’m going to be joining the Phantom Thieves of Hearts case.”
Shouta couldn’t help but glower slightly at Stormwave’s exclamation. Especially with that look on her face. “You’ve never shown interest in a vigilante case before,” he says instead of outright telling her to fuck off, because that would be illogical and unprofessional.
“Never been on a vigilante case, doesn’t mean I wasn’t interested,” Stormwave corrected, “But anyway, this one’s different. They’re making a big splash, getting spotlighters all riled up, the HPSC is working overtime to make Flashbright out to be an outlier and cut all ties to him. I wanna make sure these kids don’t get hurt because some hotshot wants a big paycheck. And..” Stormwave brought a hand up to her neck, almost sheepish as she admitted; “it’d probably be nice to get my name on something big for once too. Like it or not, daylight heroism is a popularity contest, and I’ll be out of the race if I don’t start running.”
“Hm,” Shouta grunted. Slightly awkward metaphor aside, Stormwave was being refreshingly upfront about her intentions.
Still, he couldn’t help but notice how she talked about the Phantom Thieves. “Kids?” he asked, because while Shouta himself had a strong suspicion that the kids he met on the rooftops and these Phantom Thieves were the same, that didn’t mean anyone else would suspect the same.
Stormwave just gave Shouta a deadpan stare that rivaled his own, raising a single eyebrow in an ‘are you kidding me’ face. “What’s with people and not expecting me to connect obvious clues today?” she griped, before starting to count off a list with her fingers in the most exasperated tone; “you listed seven figures of teen age plus one child-sized creature in the BOLO, there were eight voices in the video. The figures were seen fleeing Flashbright’s agency, Flashbright was the target of the video. The video was literally released only hours after their first sighting. All that is putting aside the fact that most vigilantes end up being rather young, and that while the technical skills and evidence gathering shown in the video were impressive, both the contents and the massive display of said video were rather juvenile. Like a high schooler’s essay on why Flashbright is a bad hero. Need I go on?”
Shouta pinched the bridge of his nose, “No,” he grumbled, because Stormwave wasn’t wrong . Something about her attitude still rubbed Shouta the wrong way. “The logic makes sense, we’ll likely be going forward with the case with that assumption in mind. Now I have paperwork to finish, don’t you need to go sign on to the case?” Maybe that would give Stormwave something else to do, instead of bugging him while he’s trying to work-
“Oh, I already have,” damnit, “I was headed this way to check through all the information we got and to see who I’d be working with. Though I already have a pretty good guess as to who one of my coworkers will be. Right, Eraserhead?” Stormwave stuck a hand down to Shouta for a handshake, her eyes glimmering with an emotion he still had trouble discerning.
Shouta put the pen that had been sitting uselessly above a blank piece of paper with a sigh, taking her offered hand. “Yeah, I’m leading this case. Look forward to working with you,” he droned.
Stormwave’s face contorted into a grimace, “Yeesh, on a high-profile case like this? The media will be all over you, demanding statements and updates.” Shouta couldn’t help but notice how much like an excuse that sounded. The grimace seemed like a genuine gut reaction, and Stormwave was definitely right about the media, but there was a moment of hesitancy that made her concern seem.. Slightly fake.
Ah. Now Shouta could place what was bugging him. Stormwave was angry . The fiercely protective ‘you hurt my loved ones, and now I’m going to hurt you back’ kind of anger he was all too familiar with. She was good at hiding it, said all the right words, expressed all the right sentiments, most people probably wouldn’t even notice something was wrong. But Shouta was both a teacher and an underground hero, and you can’t have a successful career in either field without learning how to pick up on people’s emotions.
Shouta let out another sigh, because this was something that would have to be confronted now before it became an issue. “What happened?”
Stormwave blinked at him, confused, so Shouta elaborated. “You’re angry about something. Pretending you’re not is both illogical and irritating, so you might as well talk about it.” Shouta didn’t particularly want to be the one Stormwave talked to about it- that was always more Hizashi and Oboro ’s thing- but he’d at least pretend to listen for the sake of the case going smoothly.
Stormwave let out an awkward chuckle, rubbing her neck and averting her eyes away from Shouta’s own gaze. “That obvious, huh? Shoulda known better than to come into work when I’m all worked up. Not a great first impression, is it?”
Stormwave pulled a chair from the desk, practically crashing back into it. The air grew brisk, a slightly agitated breeze wafting through the room, and with a long-suffering breath the professional mask dropped straight off. Natsumi’s face fell into a slight grimace, “Encountered some kids earlier today. There were a bunch of ‘em, all quirkless teenagers without any family I could find, working hard to make ends meet. I’ve known of ‘em for a bit, tried to keep a close eye on ‘em to make sure they don’t get desperate and turn to crime. When I met with them earlier today.. One of ‘em was in pretty bad shape. Got caught up in a hero fight, but refused to sit down and rest like he should till he fell over right in front of me.”
Natsumi pinched her nose, “You know how it is for folks with weak or ‘villainous’ quirks in the big city. It’s just as bad, maybe even worse for those with no quirk at all. These kids are tryin’ their best, doing right by the world, and they’re still paying the price cuz they ain’t got no one to turn to. It’s a failure of the system.”
Shouta.. Didn’t expect that. He couldn’t tell you exactly what he was expecting, but hearing about Natsumi doing some sort of community outreach and the stress that comes with it would’ve been very, very low on the list. Was that what Natsumi had been doing since her graduation?
Evidently Shouta took too long to reply to Natsumi’s story, because while he was mulling it over in his head the professional mask went right back up and Stormwave let out another awkward chuckle. “Sorry, didn’t mean to bring the mood down. Why don’t you bring me up to speed on the case? I’m a bit behind on the latest discoveries, and I can help you with the paperwork while we’re at it.”
Shouta let out a small “hm” of acknowledgement, pushing a stack Stormwave’s way and picking his pen back up. Before he actually set to work, Shouta paused, glancing over at Natsumi. “Are those kids ok?” He asked.
Natsumi paused herself, turning her head slightly to face her coworker with a small, reassuring smile. “Yeah, they will be.”
“ I’ll make sure of it.”