This Thing A Quiet Madness Made

Chapter 25

"What... what does this mean?" Midoriya asked, the weight of unsteadiness straining his voice.

No one had an answer for him.

Along with Midoriya sat Iida, Todoroki, Tsuyu, Uraraka, and Yaoyorozu, all gathered in a circle in the center of Yaoyorozu's dormitory. The boys were there against the rules, notably, but not even Iida had the mind to speak out against it as he stared at the picture lying at the center of the group.

Uraraka and Yaoyorozu had urgently called the others for a meeting right after they made it back from the police station, their eyes frantic as they knocked on each door and quickly ushered them away. Once they had all gathered, Yaoyorozu laid out her phone, pulling up the photo she had taken.

The picture in question showed the first page of a document. It was a criminal profile report: not much of note in itself, yet the contents were what baffled them.

Full Name: n/a
Alias: Unknown, Ito Naoko (prospective)
Affiliation: Sacrosanct

In the top left corner, stapled to the page, was a photo of a very familiar raven-haired girl staring blankly back at them. She stood in front of a marked chart indicating her height.

...much like the kind used to photograph criminals after an arrest; the kind they saw in movies where the person would hold up a little board stating their name before having their picture taken.

And thus arose the first question: why did this photo exist? The presence of the picture, and the rest of the document for that matter, seemed to suggest Unknown had already been captured, yet the document was dated to nearly a year ago, months before they had even met her as Naoko.

So... why?

The first conclusion they reached was that she must have escaped after she was caught, but none of them recalled anything in the news about that. If it had happened, there was absolutely no way all of them could have missed it, right? Perhaps there was a cover-up, an effort to save face or to spare the public from mass panic, but the commotion that came with a break-out would have spawned a few rumors at the very least, yet there was nothing. Not a single trace of news or gossip anywhere on the all-knowing internet about this at all. They had even broadened their search to include anything about an escaped criminal around the recorded date, but still found nothing.

The document only brought confusion, question after question, all the while answering none of the ones they already grappled with. It did, however, offer one useful piece of information.

Quirk: Hydraulic Press
This allows direct manipulation of the pressure exerted by any object or substance. This quirk may be activated on targets within the user's field of vision, but does not require eye contact to be sustained. The strength of this effect increases as the distance between the user and the affected material decreases. This reaches an upper limit when the user comes into physical contact with a material, under which conditions eye contact is not required, and maximum pressures which exceed our current measurement capabilities can be produced.
Note: Due to the large variety of applications of the subject's ability, there has previously been significant difficulty in identifying this quirk. See document A-3.

Without the noted document, they could only guess at the exact meaning of the report's rather vague statement, however they weren't much concerned about that at this point. They now knew for certain what her quirk was, and their new insight was sure to prove useful should they ever encounter her again. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.