Life After Death

chapter 58

Izuku and the heroes have continued the massive manhunt for Katsuki Bakugou and Camie Utsushimi. The news has made daily reports saying that the two are still at large meanwhile the public have become very cautious of anybody they encounter in fear that they may be part of the former heroes group. Meanwhile, Ochako and Nejire continued their internships under Ryukyu with their friend Tsu. Today, they were chasing a possible lead on the former Shinketsu student for it to once again lead to a deadend. Walking back to the agency, the four began to assess and go about their next move. “So where do we go from here?” Nejire questioned as the dragon hero went over what they had obtained in regards to leads. “There’s an abandoned building in the outskirts of town we should check next. If we’re lucky, we should find a lead there. If people aren’t seeing them around populated areas, then that should mean they’re either in the countryside or on the outskirts in abandoned buildings. Either way, they’ve been noticed in this area quite a few times. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

Ochako and Nejire were rather agitated remembering just what type of woman Camie was. Not only would it be satisfying to put her behind bars, but also be able to give a bit of a roughing up while doing it for what she did to their boyfriend. “AHH!” The four heard a scream come somewhere close by to run towards its location. While coming to the place, they noticed a man with horrid burns on the ground shaking. “Sir! What happened?" The man continued to tremble in fear as he tried to utter the word "A-A-akuma!" The man claimed to see a demon but his testimony would be useless since he seemed to not be in his right mind at the moment. “Woah, so like that’s what it can do. Like toats awesome.” The voice that said this made both Nejire and Ochako go pale knowing that only one person talked in such a fashion. They turned behind them to see Camie sitting on a garbage can in a black dress and a white fur coat. “How ya been fam? I heard you two became mommies, how’s that treating you?”

Nejire charged her power up to it’s max output to put her hand out ready to kill Camie. “Max output 100%. NEJIRE FLOOD!” The blast went directly at the fawn colored girl for it to destroy the trash can along with anything around it. “Like so lame girlfriend. You didn’t even wanna chat?” They turned around to see Camie beside them before she disappeared. “She’s playing with us. Be on high alert.” Ryukyu stated this with Tsu taking the man to safety. All the while, he was screaming thinking he saw demons everywhere. “So that girl was the one from when we chatted at the mall. She looks like uber fetch in her hero suit. So how’s Eri doing?” One of the clones said this to set Ochako off. She punched the illusion in agitation. “LEAVE OUR DAUGHTER’S NAME OUT OF YOUR FILTHY MOUTH YOU SKANK!” “Ouch. Major bummer girlfriend.” The trio kept attacking the clones with neither being the real one. Eventually, Ryukyu began to understand this was to mess with them and weaken them enough. 

"Girls calm down! She's only doing this to get the jump on you while weakened!" The two girls went back to back and took a deep breath before gaining a bit of composure. “Think for a minute you two. All these are most likely fakes with the real either hiding or running away.” “Oh I’m not running Ryukyu. This is like toats fun and I’m not missing it.” The dragon hero kept looking around until one of the copies she noticed had a hand raised right at Nejire. “NEJIRE! GET DOWN!” Ryukyu tackled Nejire to the ground to avoid a blast of fire coming directly at her. In the process, the flame was able to graze Ryukyu’s left shoulder before hitting the wall. “What the?” Ochako glanced at the flame to notice it wasn’t a normal fire. It was pitch black and definitely wasn’t normal in the slightest. ‘What did she do? I thought her quirk could only do illusions.’ She felt the fire to feel heat from it and realize this wasn’t an illusion.

“You ok Nejire?” “Yeah. Thanks Ryukyu. Did it get you?” The dragon hero looked at her shoulder to see a small burn. “It only grazed me. Both women got up before the dragon hero began to hear sobbing. She looked behind her to be absolutely mortified by what she had discovered. “Mommy. Daddy. *sniffle* I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t born right. Please forgive me!” The classmate Ryukyu knew long ago that took her own life was haunting her again. The girl she failed to save in middle school and watched her die on the ground begging for her parents’ apology. Tears started to come down her face remembering this failure and how it should’ve never happened. “RYUKYU!” Both Ochako and Nejire came to their mentor to try and shake her out of it. Fortunately, the image didn’t last long for her eyes as it disappeared after being shaken a bit. “What happened?” “You got hit with that fire and started crying on the floor.”

Ryukyu got up to notice they were alone in the alley. “What happened to Utsushimi?” “Gone. She was able to make a break for it when we were worrying about you. You kept saying something like, ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘forgive me Kokai’.” We didn’t know what it meant, so we got a little worried.” Ryukyu looked around before composing herself the best she could. “Let’s go. I’m certain Froppy is getting worried.” The two girls nodded as they left. As they did, Camie was discovered up above on a building smiling down at them. “Kokai, huh? I wonder who that is?” She started looking on the web about anyone named Kokai to find a small article about a girl by the name Asa Kokai that died by taking her life. If she was alive today, she’d be about the same age as the dragon hero. “I think my little testing of Nightmare Flame’s done.” She started to call someone on her phone before saying where to pick her up.

With Izuku

“So, you have a lead?” “Uh, sorta sir.” Izuku sat in Nighteye’s office with Eri on his lap enjoying a bit of juice, compliments of Bubble Girl. “Sorry that Eri’s here. I didn’t have a sitter and the girls are out on a job with Ryukyu.” “Not a problem. We weren’t doing any specific work that a child would cause a problem. So about the information you have.” “Well, it’s more as a lead….wait. A hunch is probably a better thing to put it as.” Nighteye, Bubble Girl, Centipeder, and Mirio looked at Izuku confused as he explained what he meant. “When I was looking into the information about the publisher and the villain Destro, there was next to nothing linking him, his family, or even in-laws to each other. But while doing this, I noticed a talk show about CEO Rikiya Yotsubashi. I didn’t think much about it until I looked into the man in curiosity. There, I found that the company Detenrat Industries had connections to the publishing company that did the remake of the book. So it’s a long shot, but maybe Detenray Industries or Mr. Yotsubashi himself has connections.”

The slender pro thought of this as Izuku kept explaining. “He has connections into almost everything now because his company’s doing support gear now.” “Seems like a huge long shot if you ask me.” “I wish I had better of a lead to follow for this Bubble Girl, but I did look into Yotsubashi’s family history as well as his connections to have next to nothing known of his birth parents and have connections to people he can easily hide behind. I’m not saying it isn’t a long shot sir, but I have a gut feeling he could at least lead us to what we’re looking for.” Nighteye thought about this before answering. “Bubble Girl, can you and Centipeder watch Eri for a few hours?” “Uh, sure. What’s going on?” Nighteye got up from his seat and adjusted his glasses. “We will be looking into this lead. I understand that it’s a long shot, but it’s the best we have right now.”