Bacta Medical Centre, Musutafu, 6:17 PM.

Friday, 15th 2149.

The Bacta Medical Centre was the largest of the hospitals within the city, with seventeen floors, two of which were primarily reserved for heroes and otherwise active service personnel. Within those two floors, there existed a long-term ward for critically or slow recovery injuries. On the opposite wing of the building, there was also a medical containment facility used solely for injured villains guarded by at least one on-duty hero at all times.

That was the depth of knowledge I could discover from searching the internet. The service personnel, active hero roster, and general security were completely unknown to me. As I touched down on the top of the Hospital, I remained as an amorphous cloud of sand particles on one corner of the roof.

Given my complete lack of knowledge about the security and the hero’s identities, I couldn’t be as reckless with this part of my investigation. There were many heroes with sensory abilities, remote viewing techniques, and more esoteric methods of detecting people who could be here.

It was impossible for all angles to be covered, but whoever was on duty couldn’t have every single Quirk. Because of my uncertainty, I had decided on several strategies to lower the chance of being found. The first was to obviously minimise contact with the hero present—I couldn’t avoid the entire wing, unfortunately, because that was likely to house the doctors and nurses with the highest clearance.

The second was to avoid entering the high-security areas in a way that would raise suspicion. These kinds of facilities took their security seriously and were most likely handled by professionals. There would be mechanisms in place to stop common quirks, and if I tried to enter a high-security room, I’d need to do it in a way that avoided suspicion—an area in which my Quirk was quite adept.

After exactly five minutes and not a single indicator to suggest that I’d been found out, I took action—spreading out across the roof, looking for entrances. I found four separate roof access points, forty-five air ducts, seven fire escapes—on just as many floors—and a thick metal pipe that served some unknown purpose.

I entered through the fire escapes, a trickle of sand running along with the corners of each room, and then out into a larger hallway. I stopped for a moment, partially extended into the building, just watching. I slipped through the gap in the elevator and into the shaft before making my way upwards. I could tell, using my position on the roof and my position within the elevator, that it only went up to the fifteenth floor—the two high-security floors must have had their own elevator.

The fifteenth floor was surprisingly busy, with doctors, nurses, and even security guards walking the floor, moving between rooms and crowding around open areas with large curved counters. A woman wearing a white surgical mask pulled to one side, and an opaque hairnet crossed the hallway in front of me, unaware that she was being watched.

I soon found a secondary elevator on the opposite wing of the building and slipped into the shaft once more. I followed it upwards and then sent three grains of sand through the gap in the sixteenth floor. I felt a thrill of alarm as I found myself looking directly up at a figure wearing black robes. I recognised him by his costume alone; Kesagiri Man. He possessed a durability based Quirk, not unlike Eijiro’s, that focused on the man’s arms. As far as I was aware, he held no extrasensory abilities, which left me feeling quite a bit more confident about continuing. I began moving up the walls, using singular grains of sand to reduce the chain of being seen and keeping out of the man’s line of sight.

“How long are you going to remain hidden?” Kesagiri Man said, voice muffled.

I stopped cold as the man stepped forward and away from the elevator. He moved towards the first door on the left. There was a yelp as a young boy cut across the hall, gown flaring about his feet as he went. Kesagiri Man ‘gave chase,’ wandering after the boy at a walking pace. I used the opportunity to begin spreading through the floor, taking note of all of the offices, wards and rooms. I focused on the office of one ‘Dr. Marcoh,’ the first of the offices which contained a keycard.

I tracked Kesagiri Man as he wandered the building, playing a game of hide and seek with what must have been a long-term patient. I caught sight of someone else who was familiar as I mapped out the rest of the floor, tapping away on a tablet as she lay on her stomach on the bed. If I hadn’t already seen her outside of her costume at U.A., I wouldn’t have known that it was the Pro Hero; Thirteen. A clipboard sat at the end of her bed, her real identity spelled out—Anan Kurose. Her back was covered in pristine white bandages, newly changed, and with a translucent tube running from her wrist to a metal pole.

I dragged my focus back to my task, swiping the keycard across the reader to unlock Dr Marcoh’s computer. With the desktop open, I was left to begin my search; almost none of the applications were familiar to me, specialised software for medical diagnosis, databases for medication, and any number of others.

I eventually found a logo that matched what I knew of the quirk register website and opened it up, the card reader attached to the desktop beeped again, the light flashing blue. I manipulated the keycard into place once more, and it passed the authorisation check. I turned the monitor off as Kesagiri Man passed by the office in his ambling chase of the boy. Once he was gone, I returned to my task.

It was not entirely unlike the public version of the software, but there was a multitude of new buttons, search functions, filters and addons that were entirely new to me. Right at the top was a series of ‘quick searches’ saved for ease of use, and despite my rigid goals, I found myself clicking on the one labelled ‘U.A Student Body.’

The list was updated to show what had to be every current student at U.A. sorted by year level and secondarily alphabetical order. I scanned through the names, searching for the letter H until I discovered my own entry—a small picture of my face sat beside it, my graduation picture from last year.

Name: Hisoka Higawara

Quirk: Sandmaker

Sex: Male

DOB: 25th February 2134.

Relatives: Katashi Higawara(+), Kichi Higawara(+), Sajin Higawara(+), Hayami Higawara(+).

I wasn’t sure how the application tracked searches, and while scrolling down on a preloaded quick search wasn’t going to matter, clicking through into my own entry was probably a bad idea. Still, seeing the name of my parents wasn’t something I’d expected to see. I scrolled down the list again, quickly finding Momo’s entry.

Name: Momo Yaoyorozu

Quirk: Creation

Sex: Female

DOB: 23rd September 2134.

Relatives: Ume Yaoyorozu(+), Minato Yaoyorozu(+).

Satisfied, I lifted my mouse to click out of the search before I paused, grabbing the scroll bar and pulling it down until I hit the ‘T’ section. I slowed down until I found where the name should have been, but it was simply missing. I checked each of the remaining classmates, careful to only use the scroll bar and found every single one, except for one—Toru Hagakure.

I frowned, moving out of the ‘U.A Student Body’ quick search and then entered her name into the search field. Nothing. No name, no picture, no entry, nothing. In an attempt to gather some context for why she would be missing, I entered a name I’d only just learned—Anan Kurose. Nothing showed up, not a single entry like I had expected. I was already aware that she’d had her Q.R. entry scrubbed from the database, so it wasn’t unusual—I deleted the name, typing out her hero name instead.

Name: Thirteen

Quirk: Black Hole

What exactly did this mean? I already knew that certain people had their identities removed from the Q.R., but even Thirteen had a listing—albeit one that had everything else removed except for her Hero name and the ‘nickname’ of her Quirk. I tried two more, All Might and Edgeshot.

Name: All Might

Quirk: Strength

All Might’s quirk name seemed inappropriate, considering the sheer level of strength the man possessed, but the confirmation for the formatting was good at least.

Name: Edgeshot

Quirk: Foldabody

Unsurprisingly, both entries were in the exact same classified format, and it left me with only one conclusion—was Toru Hagakure listed under a hero name? That was the only thing that made sense. I couldn’t find her because her entry matched the formatting for those that had been scrubbed.

I typed in ‘invisibility’ in an attempt to locate her entry, but apparently, that term had been used as a ‘catch-all’ for anyone with an invisibility based quirk, and it was simply too broad of a search parameter, leaving me with 6278 names. I had no way to filter the entries either because nothing else would have been listed on her entry.

None of the students within my class had picked a hero name yet. I knew, because Midnight had already mentioned that we would be addressing this in a future class. Even if the students within 1-A had chosen a hero name, it wouldn’t have been publically available until it was registered and added to the license database.

For some reason, Toru Hagakure had been scrubbed from the Q.R. database and most likely already had a hero name—Kesagiri Man strode down the hallway again, forcing me to turn the monitor off a second time. By the time he’d passed by, I’d come to the decision to stop wasting time and do what I came here to do because I could always investigate the mystery of Toru at a later time.

I turned my attention towards my main goal—finding a member of the group that had been sitting at that table in the restaurant. Without a name, I was forced to use the exhaustive formatting options to start listing off physical attributes.

‘skin=blue’ ‘hair=black’ ‘eyes=black’ ‘heteromorphic=true’ ‘heteromorphic=arms’ ‘male’ ‘age>18’ ‘age165cm’ ‘height60kg’ ‘weight<100kg’

Thirty-seven entries, far less than I had expected. I scanned each of the pictures associated with the entries one by one. The shades of blue represented by the group were various, but none of them matched my memory. I scrolled through each of the entries twice more after fiddling with the height and weight parameters in case I’d been too strict, but the blue-skinned man simply wasn’t present.

Somehow he’d avoided being placed on the Q.R.—or had, at some point afterwards, had himself removed from it. Something that would have required physical access to where the government database was stored.

I wiped the search terms and began again, starting with the second most memorable person that had been at the table. The man had been a natural giant, towering over everyone else at the table and with the most impressively tailored suit to match—most likely because it would have needed to be custom fit to his large frame. There was no parameter for body modifications, like tattoos, which was a shame because the man had been covered in them.

‘skin=black’ ‘hair=brown’ ‘eyes=brown’ ‘heteromorphic=false’ ‘male’ ‘age>30’ ‘age190cm’ ‘weight>115kg’

Zero entries. The man hadn’t been ethnically Japanese, so I was expecting it to some degree. If he’d come from overseas and had never had his Quirk registered, then I wasn’t going to find him through this method. Still, two of the six people had been exhausted already, and I’d yet to find anything helpful. I moved on to one of the two women who had been at the table.

‘skin=white’ ‘hair=pink’ ‘eyes=pink’ ‘heteromorphic=true’ ‘heteromorphic=mouth’ ‘female’ ‘age>20’ ‘age150cm’ ‘height45kg’ ‘weight<60kg’

Fourteen entries—a shiver ran through my amorphous body as I immediately found myself staring at a face that I’d never forget; Long pink hair, bright pink eyes and a monstrous grin spread across her face.

Name: Susumu Hoshi

Quirk: Multitasking

Sex: Female

DOB: 16th January 2112.

Relatives: Yukiko Hoshi(+), Kazuhiro Hoshi(+).

Susumu Hoshi—after eight years of mistakes, false leads, of searching for ghosts, I finally had a name. I clicked through to the full entry. The entry bloomed into a full spread, with a larger picture showing the woman wearing a white lab coat while posing for the camera, sharp teeth interlocking across her face, permanently transforming it into a terrifying but forced grin. I read the entire entry three times back to back and then went back for the fourth time.

Susumu Hoshi was born in Tokyo, Shibuya and unlocked her Quirk at age 5. Her quirk listing was another ‘catch-all’ term for those with mental deviations based on multitasking. It did, however, list the specifics of her Quirk—namely, that she was capable of running two thought streams simultaneously. There were two updates to her file in regards to her Quirk, starting one year after her Q.R. registration. The first update listed that her Quirk was growing stronger, and she was now able to process three streams at once. The second update, one year after the last, was a similar update, with four streams.

After that, there were no further updates, but there were several notes on her file. The first was simply an offhand note that described some strange observed behaviours during the appointment—difficulties knowing when to speak and when to listen, uncomfortable level of eye contact, abruptness, visible impatience, and a comment about ‘ongoing social difficulties with her peers’. The second note simply reported that Susumu had adamantly refused to participate in any further appointments. Given that they weren’t mandatory to attend, I wasn’t surprised. I’d been asked to return twice to better update my listing to reflect my Quirk growth, but I’d declined both times.

There was another section beneath the Quirk details that suggested that her Quirk had directly resulted in a large deviation from normal behaviour for her age. Severe mood swings were common for her, from energetic to lethargic, and she had a history of suddenly growing detached or withdrawing from conversations with no visible cause. Reported by her parents, she would quickly develop unhealthy or obsessive attachments to both teachers and other students. Her behaviour grew worse, eventually culminating in an unnamed event that required her to be homeschooled from that point onwards.

I took in everything that was present, committing it to memory. It was unfortunate that there was no contact information listed. The original phone number that her parents had most likely held was now listed as deactivated—the light on the elevator to the sixteenth floor turned on before the doors opened.

I spent the next minute furiously removing all evidence of my presence, closing the searches, and turning off the monitor as Principle Nezu and Aizawa Shota stepped into the hallway. Kesagiri Man, still playing hide and seek, crossed in front of them, pausing as he realised somebody new had entered the wing.

“Principle Nezu,” Kesagiri Man said, surprised.

“Keiji,” Nezu said, smiling. “I see you’re hot on the tail of a wrongdoer.”

“Aha, making sure to use everything you drilled into me whenever I have the chance,” Keiji said sheepishly. “He’s a good kid, and it’s been something of a quiet night. Shota.”

“Yo,” Shota said, sounding tired. “Have they moved her since we were last here?”

I wasn’t taking any chances that either of them would somehow figure out I was present. I’d most likely left some traces on the computer, and the best method to avoid anyone figuring that out was to make sure that nobody bothered to look in the first place. Once I was certain I’d cleared what I could of my presence from Dr Marcoh’s office, I let myself dissipate, withdrawing from the Hospital as quickly as I could manage.

Hisoka’s Apartment, Musutafu, 8:46 PM.

Friday, 15th 2149.

For perhaps the first time since I’d begun the search all those years ago, finding information was actually easy. Susumu Hoshi had been a child prodigy and one that had only grown brighter as she had aged. She was born and raised in Tokyo, where she attended a local elementary school for two years before being withdrawn for ‘social difficulties’ and then homeschooled.

At age fourteen, Susumu passed the entrance exam and was accepted into the University of Tokyo, years before most would consider taking the exam. At sixteen years old, she had completed her doctorate, and at twenty, she had earned her PhD while working inside a private research institute—H.J. Labs. Now, seventeen years later, Susumu Hoshi was a career scientist who had spent her life researching quirk biology, or in her very own words, ‘The understanding, replication and production of high-value quirk byproducts.’

All of her educational achievements had been singularly overshadowed by a rather public breakdown in 2136, where she had violently attacked a colleague at H.J. Labs and was subsequently removed from the premises and had her employment terminated—the security recordings of which had been circulated on the internet.

Susumu had been highly visible all throughout her teenage years, a shining and rising star of Japan, but as time passed, she had fallen more and more out of the public eye. As far as I could identify, she was both childless and without a husband, wife, or partner. Her social media presence was now basically nonexistent, having retreated from the online world in the wake of her fall from grace.

I found dozens of attributions of her name throughout research papers, but all of those references pointed back to the studies she had participated in or performed in her early years at H.J. Labs. In more recent years, her name had become almost impossible to stumble upon. The most recent mention of her name seemed to be buried in a list of other names inside an article covering a scientific exposition.

I clicked through to the article and stared at the headline, feeling something run down my spine; ‘I-Island opens to the public July 13th; Introducing the long-awaited I-Expo.’

Both the cargo ship and the passenger ship had the same destination, I-Island—a technological marvel of a city that was the home of thousands of scientists.

I’d dismissed both of those ships already because attempting to sneak into I-Island was impossible. There were news reports about people that had tried and failed. There were security checkpoints that you were forced to go through—there was no way the abductor was getting through all of that security without being noticed, especially not with Nanami in toe.

I raked my eyes over the article, searching for the name I was looking for, and sure enough, I found it. Nestled in the bottom half of the article within a table that held hundreds of famous scientists, inventors, heroes and more. The article directly above it revealed some context—the names belonged to those who lived and worked at I-Island in some capacity, while others would be present during the upcoming I-Expo for some kind of talk, panel, discussion or demonstration.

I searched for more information about I-Island and then found several images to contextualise what I was reading. A floating technological marvel that held three cities within its borders. It was surrounded by towering walls on every side, a single platform on one side that held an airstrip to receive new entrants and a dock that allowed for resupply via shipping routes. The docks themselves were entirely automated and attended to by a force of I-Islands own robotic labour force. A recent change to the security had removed access for passenger ships seeking to dock there, and new entrants were now required to arrive by aircraft.

The largest security flaw of any system was physical access, and I already knew that Susumu Hoshi was involved in the abduction. So if the abductors already had someone on I-Island, would it be possible for her to help someone bypass some of those security mechanisms? They were built to keep people from coming in without authorisation, but if there was someone working to subvert that from the inside, then how much could that security really accomplish?

There was more than enough time between Nanami’s birthday and the abduction itself for Susumu Hoshi to return to the I-Island—eight days’ worth of time. If Nanami had been on either of the ships that had left Shimoda and were destined for I-Island, then she would have easily reached the docks.

The passenger ship seemed unlikely, given that they would have needed to pass through the front doors of the Island with Nanami and hope that she didn’t draw any attention to them. If she’d been on the cargo ship, then what would that have looked like? Had she been placed inside of a container? Hidden away somehow from the robots who were scanning them?

In the first instance, she would have needed access to whatever database tracked the occupants of the Island to make sure that Nanami and the abductors had the authorisation to enter. In the second, Susumu would have needed to interfere with the loading process and ensure that the automated cargo scanning system didn’t pick up on Nanami’s presence. Either method was possible if you had the right set of skills and access to the system.

I’d seen the statistics, the largest and still rising cause of missing persons were Quirk related abductions, and there would be no greater reason to target her. Susumu Hoshi, a disgraced scientist who studied Quirk byproducts, and Nanami Kureta, a girl with a quirk that enhanced and bolstered the effects of others—If Nanami was still alive, then there was only one place where I would find her.

“I-Island,” I murmured.

Train, Musutafu, 7:00 AM.

Monday, 18th 2149.

The weekend had vanished before I’d even realised it, but the time hadn’t been wasted. I’d learned a great deal about all of the available information regarding I-Island. Including its publically available route. At present, it was offshore, near California, on its continuous apparent world tour. Even if I’d been as reckless as to attempt to infiltrate what might be the most well-protected ‘city’ in the world without a plan, the distance would have made that next to impossible.

Thankfully, it was on a course back to offshore Japan, where the Expo would be taking place on July 13th. While I’d been capable of sneaking into the Hospital without being caught, the level of security present at I-Island was going to be far more severe. Given that it had been compared to Tartarus, the supermax prisoner that kept some of the most powerful, dangerous and deadly villains under lock and key, I wasn’t going to go about this in a way that might endanger my chances.

I had until July to come up with a better method of infiltrating the Island, but I already had an idea that would allow me to bypass all of the security entirely—I just needed to find a way to obtain a ticket to the I-Expo. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done, as the tickets that had been available to the public for purchase had been sold out for more than a year. According to the website, hundreds of tickets had and continued to be sent out, offered, and gifted to Pro Heroes, celebrities, and lawmakers. There had even been several instances where tickets had been handed out as prizes for national competitions and events.

Given the amount of money involved in I-Island, and the countless inventions, breakthroughs and research taking place, they were working hard to drum up as much interest and hype as they could manage. The more people they brought in, and the more eyes on their interests, the more funding they could potentially bring in—A familiar face approached, and I turned to meet her.

“Have you got eyes in the back of your head, Hisoka?” Setsuna said as I pulled myself out of my thoughts. “I was going to surprise you.”

“Yes,” I said, turning to face her. “It’s nice to see you again, Setsuna.”

“You too—I got put in 1-B, can you believe it?” Setsuna asked, exasperated. “Where’s the justice?”

“Did you participate in the entrance exam as well?” I asked, curious. “Or simply the recommendation exam?”

“No,” Setsuna huffed, “Maybe if I had, I could have bumped up my score; then again, my class hasn’t isn’t the one getting attacked by villains, so maybe it’s not so bad.”

“A silver lining,” I agreed. “I doubt there is much disparity between our classes in terms of coursework either way. Our classroom experiences are probably quite similar when compared overall.”

“Probably,” Setsuna agreed, “How are you guys doing after everything that happened at the USJ? We were supposed to go there the day afterwards, but it’s been pushed back because—well, you know better than me.”

I considered the question for a moment and the person who was asking it. We’d spoken during the recommendation exam, but I didn’t know much about her other than what I’d learned from that brief exchange. It seemed like a genuine question; however fueled it was by her own personal curiosity.

“The loss of Koji and Rikido has lowered the morale of the entire class,” I said truthfully, considering 1-A as a whole. “But it has also had an unintended effect of motivating us to work much harder, in the hopes that we can better combat a situation like this in the future.”

“That’s a really positive outlook, Hisoka,” Setsuna said, smiling. “I’m rooting for you guys.”

“Thank you,” I said, “How has your own experience been? I imagine the attack had an effect on everyone here, directly or otherwise.”

Setsuna tipped her head to the side and back again, visibly thinking about the question.

“It did,” Setsuna admitted. “Everyone was confused when the alarm first went off, and Vlad King—that’s our homeroom teacher—wouldn’t tell us anything about it. After he left, Monoma kept insisting that it was just another false alarm, like when the gate was destroyed—Kendo had to rough him up to get him to stay inside the class.”

I nodded in understanding, noting the unfamiliar names. It was easy to forget that we weren’t the only ones here that day and that while the USJ was rather secluded, it was still on the campus grounds. My own task to inform the staff what had happened had been an adrenaline-fuelled rush in which I hadn’t stopped to think about the others present.

“We were in lockdown for like three hours before getting escorted off campus by police,” Setsuna complained, “There was a rumour going around about villains, but nobody had the real story. Seeing how worried Vlad was… it was kind of scary, you know?”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I said.

Setsuna shook her head, sending her hair flickering about.

“Don’t be silly,” Setsuna said, bemused. “We were just scared, but you guys were the ones in actual danger.”

I wasn’t sure that distinction mattered in the end—the villains may have failed their primary goal of killing All Might, but they’d managed to damage everyone’s sense of safety. Everyone in U.A and everyone in the city at large would be negatively affected by the attack and what it truly meant—that nobody was safe from them.

“I don’t think that makes your experience any less valid than my own,” I offered. “Just different.”

“Gosh,” Setsuna said, amused. “That’s such a 1-A thing to say.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but she was open enough that I had a good idea of how she liked to interact with others.

“Sorry, Setsuna,” I said seriously. “I can’t hear you from all the way down there in 1-B.”

“What was that?” Setsuna said, scandalised.