Heroes, Vigilantes, and Villains

Chapter fifteen

Izuku POV

Standing up, I looked down at the scene that I'd just created only moments before. There was a small time thug knocked out at my feet, his hands high above his head as they were nicely bound to the alley dumpster with a pair of zip ties serving as makeshift handcuffs. The only evidence other than the ties of the fight from before was the slight redness on the man's jaw that matched the light bruises dusting my knuckles.

Turning the phone on, not mine but the thugs, I went to the emergency call function and called the local police, telling them where to find the man. The people on the other side of the line knew better than to ask for my name by now after recognizing my voice from all of the other countless times I've called them.

Leaving the small-time criminal at the mercy of the late night cops being sent out to collect him, I left the scene, running before they could try and get me too.

For the most part, even after doing this for almost seven months now, the only pro hero I've run into and spoken with was Eraserhead. No surprise there since he is one of the few underground heroes that actually work in the city at night instead of on classified missions, acting closer to spies than heroes. Most heroes in general tend to only patrol during the daytime, but the cops worked diligently both day and night, they saw both the big time villains that the public feared, and the small time monsters waiting in the dark to commit all of the crimes that people used to fear the most before quirks came into the play.

And they were diligently not fond of me.

On the slow nights, I'd scurry up to one of the neighboring roofs and watch on as the cops came and arrested the crooks, seeing how long the tranquilizer lasted after I used it so I could adjust the formula as needed. More than once during these nights I'd hear the cops grumbling below about the mess that I'd made and ordering men to look for the 'pesky vigilante'.

Yeah... not so fond of me.

So I ran off before they could get here, spending the rest of my night looking for the mundane dangers that the limelight heroes didn't want to deal with and the police couldn't always get to in time.

Though, I hadn't stopped looking for Tsubasa. Even as I took up more time focusing on my normal patrols, the missing winged teen was still fresh in my mind. Though it had been two weeks.

Two weeks longer than I was sure the boy had to spare.

I cursed myself for my incompetence at not being able to find the other teen, at wasting precious time following fruitless leads for far too long.

Tailing the doctor every night for a week had gotten me nothing more than a better familiarity with the abandoned parts of the city. I'd spent so much time sure that he knew something only to find the doctor taking something of the long way home.

Dr. Garaki's house, as it turned out, was on the other side of the abandoned part of the city, a simple fact that made his nightly exploits seem all the more reasonable and all the less suspicious as I had thought they were.

My only lead was a bust and still no one knew where the missing middle schooler was.

The heavy sounds of grunting and a body being slammed violently into one of the alley dumpsters filled my ears suddenly.it was a sound that I was all too familiar with, always being on the receiving end of those slams and pushes. Looming silently, I gazed down at the scene below me, analyzing the behavior of the people below.

Everyone down there looked like all of the other criminals that I'd seen in the past seven or so months, shabbily dressed, using their quirks however they wished to get what they wanted, motions of aggression taking over them. The only thing that set this group apart into factions was that three had blood on them, while the fourth person only looked like he had on his clothes and fear clouding his movements.