A Precise Note Chapter 17 - Games

“You wanted to see me, Principal Nezu?"

Aizawa, clad in his sleeping bag and sleepwear, entered Principal Nezu’s office after hours. He yawned softly, and through his half-lidded, unfocused eyes, he swept the room at a glance. A cup of tea was, as always, on the table. The window was opened to allow in fresh air and comfort for his own sake. Furniture arranged perfectly to grant swift entry and exit, and the tiny bear-man sat in the very center of the room, with a laptop by his side.

Nezu surprisingly subscribed to certain feng shui principles, keeping things in an order that would allow for ‘maximum auspiciousness.’ Whether or not feng shui had any bearing on the man’s Quirk and ability, or whether it was entirely a personal habit, Aizawa did not know.

"Ho, ho, I've encountered something that's quite the surprise and would very much need your help examining it."

“Quirk related?"

“I do believe it is."

Aizawa made his way into the room, as Nezu grabbed the laptop on the table and slowly turned it towards him. With a push of his paw on the spacebar, he played back the video of the entrance examinations for the seventeenth time, rewinding and stopping, particularly as he focused on a green-haired, pony-tail-clad boy. Aizawa knew the boy. There was no one, not a person, who did not know the only student who had managed, despite the increased difficulty of the examinations, to attain a perfect score.

Nezu rewound more than once, then stopped more than once, and the angle of the scene changed to a bus, rushing at full speed, and about to strike the boy. He paused, freezing frame by frame as he sipped his tea, and tilting his head bit by bit.

“Tell me, Aizawa-kun, what do you see?"

Aizawa stared. “A runaway school bus attempting to strike a student."

“Now, if you could use your Quirk."

Aizawa raised a brow. “On the screen?"

“Indeed!"

Most people assumed his Erasure functioned on the Quirk Factor of an individual, preventing it from activating and triggering a prevention of the use of one's quirk, and that as long as an individual was not present, he could not use his Erasure.

However, Erasure could also function on the active effects of a Quirk. If someone was transformed or under an illusion or hypnosis by another person's Quirk, Aizawa could undo the effects of that transformation or illusion, or hypnosis. In that sense, he did not truly need to see a person or their Quirk Factor for his quirk to perform erasure. He could, with it, remove the lingering effects of other Quirks.

That was what True Man had needed him for; that caused him to miss the latter portions of the exam. There had been a person whose body had been completely remoulded and reshaped like rubber. Stretched, contorted, and formed into a giant rubber ball with bits of a lamppost and traffic light blending into a ghoulish sight of a thing that should have been a human. The person had been in considerable agony, and if it weren’t for the fact that the individual had a significantly high pain tolerance due to a physical quirk, he would have died from shock.

In such situations, he could, in fact, undo the effects. Taking a breath, his hair began to float. His eyes snapped open, a clear, red glint emerging from them. He stared at the laptop again.

There was the distinct feeling that there was something being unraveled before him. The frozen frame on the screen changed to his eyes, and Aizawa's brows went extremely high.

“There's someone inside the bus. A man."

“Ho ho, so it's as I thought..." Nezu nodded his head. “You've been improving leaps and bounds under Sazaki-kun's guidance, yes?"

Aizawa didn't answer; he instead furrowed his brow. “I recognize him."

Nezu marveled with glee. “Ho ho? You do?"

“He’s the main suspect in a recent case at the hospital Detective Tsukauchi needed me for,” Aizawa frowned. “During my time as an Underground Hero, he was a low-level villain who wanted to gain fame and attention. Then, he called himself the Gentle Criminal."

Aizawa had never encountered him personally, but Emi had. She spoke about him a few times and said she felt pity for the man who no doubt had chosen to be a villain because he wanted attention, because he wanted to be remembered by people, and because he likely had no one around him who either cared for, or supported him.

Emi wanted to rehabilitate the man. She never got the chance.

“He would commit petty, generally victimless crimes and upload them online, to try and garner attention. He did. The wrong kind of attention. During a livestream, he was abducted, in public, by the Followers. Many people had thought it to be staged, or an attempt to draw in views. Only one person had reported it to the police, a young woman. But nothing came of it.”

Aizawa scratched the back of his head, exhaling. “His next livestream, months later, was of him slaughtering his way out of a Follower hideout. That was when the police realized his kidnapping had not been faked. That video was his last, as it showed the aftermath of his massacre.”

The video had been taken down shortly after it was uploaded due to its graphic nature, but it had been downloaded hundreds of times and was spread online in various online hate groups and forums. The video of the man on his knees, covered with blood and scars, holding a woman with red hair, whom many presumably thought to be his daughter, and screaming like a wounded animal. There, he had roared, ‘All I wanted was to be a hero!’ 

“He vanished for a year after that. When next he resurfaced, he changed his name and became an assassin-for-hire known as the Gentle Hitman."

That video of the Gentle Criminal’s breakdown had gone viral, had stirred up a lot of resentment for his original Hero Academy, once his story was known. The man's history and file were leaked, as was the fact that he had been a student at a Hero Academy and failed the Provisional Exams multiple times. 

Aizawa had not believed it at the time. Elasticity was an incredibly versatile quirk. Merely being able to turn concrete or vehicles into rubber would be able to prevent significant accidents and aid cases, that it impossible to conceive of a student failing so many times. However, the file claimed that the man had no control over how long an object remained elastic and could not turn an object he had made elastic back into normal at will.

His repeated failures were due to others stumbling into a portion of terrain that he had altered whilst unaware of it, and hurting themselves and/or others.

Then, as a student, Gentle Hitman was caught up in a case of vigilantism and obstruction of justice that left a permanent black mark on his record after trying to use his quirk to save a person from a falling building, but ended up hindering the hero on the scene and causing severe harm. What had followed was a case of setback after setback, paying legal fees, hospital bills, and fines, being disowned by his parents, and shunned and mocked by society.

Even after falling from being a Pro-Hero Aspirant to a Villain, he had tried to be a "good" villain, oxymoronic as it was. Unfortunately, the Followers of One found him. Whether or not it was intended, they had broken what little good was left in an already broken man and turned him into an emotionless, methodical killer.

“Supposedly, on the tasks he has taken, he only uses his quirk to kill indirectly, and he only kills by causing chain reactions, similar to…"

Aizawa paused and turned to glance at Nezu.

“Ho, ho, a Rube Goldberg Machine, is that not it?" 

A Rube Goldberg Machine, or a chain-reaction machine, was something he had seen growing up watching old cartoons and animations. Named after the pre-Quirk era American Cartoonist, Rube Goldberg, it was a complex machine created for a simple purpose. Many knew of it from a cartoon about a certain blue cat chasing a certain brown mouse and using all sorts of mundane household items to create an overly elaborate device that would aid in capturing the mouse.

Aizawa nodded. “His Quirk is Elasticity. It allows him to make anything he touches elastic. Even air. It makes it easier to set up such things when anything and everything can become a spring, or receive momentum at a moment's notice. Before he was captured by the Followers, his Quirk could not be used on people. However…"

Aizawa closed his eyes, and his floating hair dropped, his quirk deactivating. He recalled the grisly sight of the human giant rubber band ball, and how he had almost vomited in his mouth looking at it.

“I can't see how his quirk would be capable of hiding or erasing himself from recordings."

“Think carefully, Aizawa-kun," Nezu slowly rubbed his paws. 

“Multiple quirks?” 

“Among competing hypotheses that explain the same phenomenon, the one with the fewest assumptions is more correct than not, yes?" Principal Nezu hummed. “It is more likely, and probable, that he found a novel utilisation of his quirk, or that he has an accomplice."

Aizawa contemplated it for a moment. “The Gentle Criminal worked alone. You think he gained an accomplice with a Quirk that enables them to alter digital media?"

“Or rather perhaps, he always had an accomplice with profound knowledge of computers, digital media, and technology, who taught him to use his quirk to alter digital media."

Nezu changed the screen. There was a scene of nothing on the screen, before there was a momentary flash of something, like static, and then everything returned to normal.

“The man seems unnaturally aware of the locations of every camera in the vicinity, and avoided being caught openly on them. He moved as if he were receiving directions and instructions on how best to avoid being seen, or as if he knew the camera locations beforehand.”

Nezu slowly cracked his paws. “Ho ho. He managed to sneak his way into a location filled with hundreds of Pro-Heroes and was never once detected by any of them. You claimed that the man could use his elasticity on air, yes?”

Aizawa nodded. “It was his primary means of escaping capture. Fleeing on platforms of air.”

“With elasticity, one can make the corporeal and tangible become malleable. If air, a gas, and fluid is subject to his quirk, it is not out of the realm of possibility that sound is as well. If sound is subject to his quirk and can be bounced away, then his Elasticity affects waves and vibrations, and if such is true, even light, too, would be subject to his quirk. If light and sound can be altered, one can, for a time, temporarily alter information that relies on both to be recorded. That is the only reason, Aizawa-kun, that your Erasure would be able to affect a recorded video, because you are ‘un-bending’ it into its proper shape."

Aizawa saw a slight issue. “There were no fewer than a hundred heroes present. Many of whom have ways of sensing that don’t rely on sound or sight, or smell. Even if he was invisible—"

“Now, now, Aizawa-kun, who said anything about invisibility?”

Aizawa paused. He lifted a brow. Nezu’s smile grew.

“Tell me, Aizawa-kun, how confident are you that he cannot also use his Elasticity on himself?”

“According to what we know of him, it’s not possible.”

“With the amount of time you spend alongside Sasaki-kun, you’ve heard of something called a Quirk Awakening, yes?”

Aizawa fell silent. He gave the bear-man an uneasy glance.

“Rest assured, I am nothing like those rather masochistic individuals of the Metahuman Liberation Army, and have no love for pain or martyrdom. I ask only because we cannot dismiss it entirely. Given what you’ve told me of the man’s abilities and situation, it is not out of the question, yes?”

Quirk Awakenings were controversial. Highly controversial. There were so few recorded cases of them that it was impossible to verify. However, if even half of the claims about them were true…

“If, by chance, that was true, if he could use Elasticity on himself—”

“He would be something akin to a rubber man, yes?” Principal Nezu chirped. “A plastic man, who could change his facial features at a whim, sneak into tiny spaces, shrink into the size of a bottle, a keyhole, or even so much as the eye of a needle.”

“Why bother going through the trouble of altering the cameras, leaving a clue at the risk of getting caught?”

Principal Nezu smiled. “Why did he become the Gentle Criminal?”

The answer was obvious. Attention. The Gentle Criminal, before he became the Gentle Hitman, wanted attention. He wanted fame. He wanted to be known and renowned. Even after his changes, even he had been broken and twisted by the Followers of One, that part remained ingrained in him.

The man could have come and gone with no one ever the wiser, but he didn’t. Rather, he left a blatant clue that screamed: I was here.

Aizawa rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Why target Midoriya Izuku? If he was hired to do so, who hired him, and why?”

“Surely you must have a few ideas as to why people would wish to eliminate our number one applicant, yes?"

"The exam was still ongoing,” Aizawa countered. “They did not know he would be the number one applicant."

“Do you think, Aizawa-kun, the forces of good are the only ones with people like Sazaki-kun?"

People who could see the future.

Aizawa did not answer. 

While Precogs were incredibly rare, those who could calculate outcomes of events to come, Sherlocks, were less so. Predicting something like the top applicant in this year's UA Exams was something that a Sherlock could do if given access to all the applicant information, let alone a Precog.

Sherlocks, in the end, despite still being rarer than most, were far more abundant in number than many would think. It was the question of genetics. With enough time, even if there were only ten in a million people with quirks that gave them enhanced intellect or some sort of genius calculative prowess, as long as even one of those ten in a million wanted to spread their genes and sire children whose quirks would be better than theirs, the numbers would grow exponentially.

There was nothing that could be done to stop it. To prevent Quirk Marriages would be a violation of Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.

No one could legally prevent someone from trying to have children who would carry on their quirk and improve it. Aizawa was aware that every government in the world possessed at least a dozen or so Sherlocks, but only one or two Precogs. Sir Nighteye had mentioned as such that the Japanese government had one Precog hidden, because the government had once offered him all the privileges and more to work in that role.

It made Aizawa uneasy. Clairvoyant quirks were dangerous and unfathomable enough as it was. Sir Nighteye was proof of it. The man's Foresight quirk was the only reason that Aizawa was still alive.

“This attack was twofold," Nezu continued. “One, to target the boy, eliminating a strong contender for the forces of good, and two, to target me."

“You?"

“Why, me, indeed! It should be obvious, certainly? Who would be to blame, Aizawa-kun, if a student, an incredibly promising student, were to have died as a result of the changes I made in this year's examinations? More so, to have died in a manner that appears, at first glance, entirely to be the result of natural causes? A falling pillar, random debris, or a runaway school bus?"

Aizawa slowly nodded. “But the attempt failed."

"It did," Nezu nodded. “Their primary objective was foiled, but their secondary was attained. Success and failure were both tests. Tests of the limits of my Quirk."

Aizawa gave him a doubtful look.

“My Quirk is not omniscient, Aizawa-kun. It functions similarly to a ‘Rube Goldberg Machine,' just as this assassin's method does. Imagine you were to set up such a machine that would eventually lead to an outcome you foresaw, but, midway through it, someone uses portions of an already in-process chain-of-events to create an entirely unrelated outcome and an entirely new machine."

Nezu continued. “Because your machine does exactly as you intended, you fail to notice another chain of events started by it, and another machine is in motion. It is, brilliantly, a Rube Goldberg Machine within a Rube Goldberg Machine. You cannot see it, because you were focused only on your machine, the larger one."

Nezu laughed. Though the laugh sounded airy, Aizawa could faintly detect a sense of genuine, true amazement hidden behind it.

"Ho ho, they were probing for a blind spot in my Quirk. An exploitable weakness. Had I foreseen and captured the assassin, they would know this was not a weakness of mine. Had I failed and the student died, they would not only have successfully found a blindspot, but they would have done significant irreparable harm to my standing as Principal and to the reputation of this academy. However, they did not account for the possibility of the student being so exemplary as to survive multiple assassination attempts, all while unaware he was being targeted.”

Aizawa turned to the screen. There, again, he saw the boy, Midoriya Izuku, whilst talking to the Pro-Hero, Fluff, perfectly turning around and catching a projectile aimed at him from his blind spot, before throwing it back with the force of an Olympic javelinist. 

“Thus, we entered a deadlock,” Nezu continued. “They are aware of my blind spot, but did not bring any harm to me or the school. I am aware that they are aware of it, and can take countermeasures for it in the future, but in turn, they are aware that I am aware that they are aware, which means their next probes will be different."

Aizawa didn’t say anything. He could not. He would never, in truth, get used to mind games and grand strategies of Precogs or Sherlocks. The constant thinking and scheming, and plotting, the method of viewing people as pieces on a board, and each action as a move, was tiring. He admired them, but he did not envy them. 

“Fortunately, this blind spot is something I can remedy simply by accounting for machines within machines within machines. Doing so will be taxing and exhausting, leaving me open to newer unforeseen blindspots, and thus, new probing attempts... It is quite clever. Deeply, and truly clever. I did not expect such a level of cunning."

“Do you know who's responsible?"

“Several Formist Groups have never taken kindly to my role as Principal, considering it improper for an 'animal' to be the head of this institution for heroes,” Principal Nezu said, after a pause. “The Followers of One have always been a rather prickly thorn in my side, for rather obvious reasons. Then, there is the body we answer to, the Public Hero Safety Commission, which, you of all people, Aizawa-kun, should be familiar with their methods and tactics. The board is already partly controlled by Mrs. Nakamura, a very vocal proxy of theirs. I am afraid replacing me and imbuing a puppet headmaster so they may mold young minds as they wish has always been a plan of theirs."

“You have a lot of enemies, Principal Nezu."

“A thing we sadly share in common, Aizawa-kun," Principal Nezu chirped. “However! I suspect the usual suspects are not, in fact, the usual suspects. Not this time."

“They are not?"

“Rather, I have reason to believe this is the work of a specific young lad, misguided and taken from the light. I had thought I had nothing to worry about from him but..."

Nezu slowly rubbed the side of his head with his paws.

“He is far shrewder than I calculated."

Slowly, Nezu reached out of his drawer and slid a black steel card over the table.

Upon it were the letters: 

“L.O.V.”

A Precise Note

“…You what?!"

“Oi, keep it down, Kurogiri. Can't you see I'm playing Heroes Smash here?"

“Shigaraki-sama, this is no joking matter. You sent an assassin to the UA Entrance Exams? Why in the world would you—”

“Rubber Gramps doesn’t actually want to kill people.  It’s all part of his gimmick to get fame and attention. He hams up his tragedy, but every single job the geezer has taken has ended in failure. Hiring him to kill someone is like hiring a nun for striptease.”

“If you knew he would fail… why did you send him?”

“I’m playing a Gambit, Kurogiri.”

“A… what?”

“Rubber gramps didn’t get caught. You know what that means? It means the Chessmaster’s got a low ELO Rating. The mouse fumbled the opening. He got blindsided with an en passant, got pinned down by pawns while I forked his rook and bishop. He’s three points down and on his way to a losing mid-game. You know what that means?”

“Is this more video game terminology?"

“Video games? I'm talking Chess, Kurogiri. Do you even play?"

“No, Shigaraki-sama, some of us have actual work to do. Work which you instructed."

“Relax, Kurogiri. When you play a gambit, you take risks. You risk losing something, but if the gambit is accepted, you gain way more than you lose. This time, the gambit was accepted. Danger Mouse isn’t nearly as dangerous as I thought. Sensei’s worried over nothing. His bullshit anti-chessmaster quirk is overkill when he could have just flooded the mouse with too many gambits to keep track of. Make him a Pacman  and leave him running around chasing ghosts.”

Shigaraki Tomura snorted.

“Besides… that Chosen One I told the geezer to off pisses me off.”

He pressed some buttons on his gamepad. The game screen changed, from hero characters to tiny sprites, to a large map, which Kurogiri recognized as the layout of the city. On the map, locations were highlighted, each and every single one of them possessing a face attached to the side, a name, and a level.

On one, there was a name: Midoriya Izuku.

“Fucking cheat character. I swear I didn’t give this cheat bastard a card, Kurogiri. Yet he has one. A Black Card. It pisses me off. How’d he get one of my cards?"

“Cheat?"

“Kid’s using hacks. Speed and technique are off the charts, dexterity is in the triple digits. Strength is mid, but no stamina limit. He hard no diffs most other players in the game so bad it's not even a contest. Is he one of Sensei's pet projects?"

“No… not that I'm aware of."

“You sure? Background says the kid got his quirk late,” Shigaraki scratched his cheek. “Huh. Weird. Quirks like these sound like Sensei's work. He's got no sense of fair play. Always turning on God Mode even to take care of mobs."

Shigaraki flicked the analog stick on his controller.

“This is second place? Get a look at this guy, Kurogiri. Blonde hair that practically screams ‘I’m the Ken to his Ryu.’"

“Shigaraki-sama, is this… UA's accepted applicant list?"

Shigaraki snorted. “That's what you're focusing on? Come on, Kurogiri. Keep up. Did you think I gave those damned consoles and gifts because I’m Santa Claus? You know how many of those brats that came to my party and went home with nifty new gadgets they hid from their mommies and daddies? Know how many of them applied to UA and other B-List schools?”

Kurogiri fell silent. “Those consoles and toys you shared that day— they were all… bugged?”

“Congratulations, Kurogiri, you have the processing speed of an underclocked Pentium.”

Kurogiri paused.  “And… this won't be detected?"

"Even if their parents find it, they're designed to short-circuit once they leave a certain vicinity. Besides, we scared them good enough for them to never think about telling their folks, because if they did break that promise, we don't plan on breaking ours about leaving them on some island to play Lord of the Flies."

"What about the applicant list?"

“The heroes won't suspect a thing because it'll read that the only connection that got to it was from the house of the brat they sent it to," Shigaraki shrugged. “Normally, Ratticus would notice, but now due to using rubber gramps, he’ll be too busy planning his next move that it’d fly under his radar. Even if he knows I got the info, he can't do anything about it. With Sensei’s Fanclub, Big Brother, and the Spiderverse about to make their moves, shit’s going to hit everything, everywhere, all at once. No matter what he does, stuff isn't going to go his way and he knows it."

Shigaraki flicked the analog again.

“Ah, if it isn't Edgegar Allan Poe junior. Wasn’t this brat at our party?"

“…He was."

“Check out his backstory, Kurogiri. They called him bird-head and bird-brain and bird-face, for years. Plucked his feathers and put worms in his lunches. This is what I mean by casting seeds, Kurogiri. When the script’s been set up for brats like this, swooping in to reap the benefits is like  killing two birds with one stone."

Kurogiri regarded his charge again, as if seeing him for the very first time. Was it possible, possible, that Shigaraki was actually…? 

He flicked the analog again.

“Let’s see the top guys from the recs list… Big-titty-ojou-san, restore-my-honor and… huh.” 

Kurogiri stared. “Isn't that—"

“The emo runt of the Domestic Abuse hero?" Shigaraki's lips thinned. “Yeah, that's him, but that’s not who I’m focused on. This one with the monocle. Isn’t she from—”

“She… yes.”

“What the hell is Little Einstein doing attending a Hero School? Doesn’t she have a partnership with those loser MLA guys?”

Shigaraki scratched his cheek.

“Something’s not adding up, Kurogiri. I don’t see it.”

“Perhaps it was the girl's decision?"

“And what, mommy and daddy just folded their arms and let their big ticket galaxy brain daughter use her money-making quirk to work as an overpaid civil servant?" Shigaraki snorted. “I’m not buying it."

“Are you going to do something about it?"

“I don't have to," Shigaraki said. “Those trigger finger B-Villains are likely gonna do something. Or maybe Sensei's fanclub will do something first. These brats are hot cakes, and there's not enough of them to go round."

“So… what are you going to do, Shigaraki-sama?"

“Didn't I tell you? I'm playing a Gambit," He yawned again. “Did you know, when a game of chess is played perfectly, the only outcome is a draw? Stalemate, Kurogiri. Usually that’d suck, but I’m only one player on one board in one dimension while the heroes are playing 5D Chess. They’ll be like the Germans taking backshots from the Western Front and spitroasted from the Eastern one. You don't fuck a girl everyone else is trying to fuck, Kurogiri. You wait to see if she either turns 'em all down, or fucks 'em all. And if she fucks 'em all… then fuck her."

“I don't quite follow, Shigaraki-sama."

“You don't need to. You're my Queen, Kurogiri. My strongest piece, but also the piece you never bring out early. You need proper development first, and need to clear out the back ranks, castle, and build tempo. Your job is to threaten the enemy, to make them realize there’s a nuke in my pocket at all times, and to protect the King, and be ready to be used as an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile in the Gambit of the century.”

“If you insist, Shigaraki-sama."

“I do," Shigaraki cracked his knuckles. "Now, where was I? That's right, making a ten-year-old cry by showing him he's absolute shit at Smash. Fucking Mirko mains. If you're gonna be horny at least main Ryukyu. Higher over-all stats, point-zero-two faster attack frames, and smaller hitbox. Pft. This is why you don't play with noobs, Kurogiri. Never play with noobs."