They used the evidence, of course,they used it. Despite where it came from, it was damn good evidence.
Nana still wanted to punch the Batman, a hard one, hard as he could handle; If for no other reason than to satisfy her own, unfairly acquired, non existent sadism.
But maybe in the throat to leave him choking a bit rather than the teeth to leave him permanently disfigured.
That was better, right?
Yeah. That was more heroic. Sounded more heroic in her head at least.
The file he'd left in Sorahiko's house was thin, but in conjunction with their own evidence it just sort of… clicked. Like puzzle pieces fitting together and dead ends falling away to leave nothing but the true blue meat to chase after.
Honestly, the main reason Bat was still on her shit list was because he didn't stop fighting things.
Everything honestly.
Petty crooks, Yakuza, Quirk gangsters, Thieves. The man even went bounty hunting. Chasing down and going after wanted villains to bring them in.
He didn't even stay to collect the damn bounty!
She knew! She checked!
He probably knew she'd check.
The dick!
And the more he brought down, the angrier the city officials got with all the heroes in the district for NOT bringing him in!
That included her!
She was too old to get yelled at!
Much less getting yelled at for four months straight!
Bastard.
She'd punch him.
Really, really hard.
She sighed.
At least Bruce was around to help her when she came home.
He jokingly said that he was turning into 'her Alfred' a few nights ago.
Her apartment was kept clean, actually good food had become a nightly staple (Bruce had all but thrown out her frozen meals and TV dinners. Bastard.) and more and more Bruce was tackling the full brunt of the expenses of the house, paying the full months rent and for most of the groceries. And even then, only when she argued with him about it!
He teased her that she just wanted to make sure he didn't completely ban cookies from her refrigerator.
(That was true, but not the point!)
All the while helping her put all of the pieces together on her proverbial end of the equation with Sorahiko. Going through evidence, reading newspapers, drawing up psych readouts on the people of interest she was looking into.
She wanted to trust, really. Not just because he was helping her on this case in ways she never thought she needed. Not because he made her favorite food. Just…
...But she wasn't stupid.
Unless Bruce was working sixteen jobs and secretly had a quirk that let him do them all at once there's no way he could afford to bankroll this and save up money like he claimed.
Her fingers tightened over the dango stick, the last little ball mocking her with its cheerful pink coloring.
When she got back tonight, she'd ask. She'd put it off long enough.
Her phone rang. Gran Torino's ring tone.
She pulled it free of her pocket. "Talk to me."
"I found him. I found the Doctor!"
(X)(X)(X)
Gifu.
The doctor was in Gifu.
Two districts away.
Normally she'd wait for backup, wait for Sorahiko but he told her flatly that this was some very time-sensitive intel.
The doctor moved his office with a new Alias every single year without fail. Just long enough to establish a presence, set up some ads in the local boards, bribe other doctors and pediatricians to send clients his way, and then he was gone.
New name. A new face. And all new victims.
They'd never find him if they missed him now.
His year was pretty much up.
Which meant he was on the cusp of leaving if he hadn't already.
Gran Torino was fast.
She was faster.
He was hot on her heels, he'd likely get there within the hour of her arriving, but one hour might be the difference between finding the guy or a trail or at the absolute worst, nothing.
She felt the power of One for All coursing through her body like a bolt of lightning, making her skin tingle and her muscles feel warm as her speed increased just that little bit more.
Her boots hit the rooftop at a run, bleeding out the momentum of her flight as she panned her eyes over the skyline.
"Two blocks west of the stadium." She muttered to herself, rising up into the air again a little bit.
"There." She spotted the landmark, flying quickly before dropping down to ground level.
People startled around her, jumping and pointing. Heroes and quirks were common place, but one dropping right onto the street was still enough to get more than a few glances.
Had to move quick, before any of them pulled out phones to record her. All for One was going to know of her involvement. No way around that, but the less he saw of her the better, the less information he could get. No doubt he had quite a few intelligence quirks he could draw on to extrapolate everything about her from just a few seconds long video.
She marched through the street, eyes searching, scanning looking.
Right there, a little corner building stuffed between a few others.
Ujiko's Pediatrics
Not a very original name, but when one needed to come up with a new alias every year she supposed it didn't have to be.
She sped her pace, pulling open the locked front door with a gunshot loud snap of breaking metal and stepped inside.
There was no one in here. Nana stepped forward, marching towards the reception desk.
Turns out she was wrong.
The receptionist was there, sitting in a rolling chair that had been rolled far enough back to not let her be seen from the front door, snoring softly. Nana could just spy a dart to the side of her neck.
Knocked out by who?
The Bat?
Was he here!?
How the fuck!
She moved fast looking through every patient room, every office area. She even caught a picture of the Doctor, smiling a practiced, gentle smile. The kinda smile you could trust your kids to.
She'd make sure he couldn't do that again.
Then she saw it.
Room nine.
The Bed had been pulled free of its place, and directly behind it was an entrance.
She ducked down, underneath the false wall and into the opening before standing up. The area past it was clean metal, with a small elevator at the very back of the opposite wall.
Kinda like that nightclub.
She looked to her left and her right; there were construction materials in place. Bags of cement, sand, cinderblocks, metal and rebar.
They were gonna seal this place...
She didn't hesitate any more.
Making her way to the elevator it opened and she found someone else in there, another gangster by the look of him. Big, muscle bound, black tank top. There was a gun at his waist but the back of his head was bleeding and there was a blood stain at a rather sizable dent in the metal wall at the back of the elevator.
Didn't take a genius to figure out what happened.
She pressed the button, standing, at the available area of the elevator as they descended.
She counted the seconds.
Seven. Then it dinged. Maybe enough for eight or twelve feet underground then.
The doors opened and Nana found a scene very very reminiscent of that nightclub a few months ago.
Big guys were groaning on the floor, quite a few of them with limbs bending in ways that they decidedly should not, and a copious level of damage had been done to the surrounding… everything. The walls, the floor, even the ceiling had cracks and fractures.
The Bat apparently liked to use bad guy's faces for redecoration.
She looked at each one. None of them were Ujiko.
"No- No ple-AAAAARGH!"
The scream caught her off guard, made her jump and Nana was suddenly flying down the hall where she heard it coming from.
Her fist punched at a metal security door, something big, heavy, meant to take a punch from a strength quirk.
It folded like wet cardboard.
She took in the scene, another lab, no one on the beds this time. That was either very good or very bad.
Dr Ujiko was on the ground, scrambling away as best he could while cradling his left hand, the Bat loomed over him like a monolith.
He didn't even look her way.
"Talk." He growled. "Or I keep breaking. Seven more to go."
The Doctor looked to her.
"Y-you're a hero right!? H-help! He's crazy! Get him away from me!"
Nana frowned.
On the one hand. This bastard was a servant to All for One. One that delivered kids to him.
On the other, torturing someone and allowing someone to be tortured… she was pretty sure wasn't in her job description, no matter the circumstances.
She stepped forward hand rising to place itself on the Bat's shoulder to pull him away from the sniveling doctor. "Alright, tall, black, and broody, I think that-"
One second her hand was on his shoulder, the next she was flying through the air, without her quirk.
Ceiling met floor, met wall, back to ceiling and her ass smashed into and shattered a nearby plastic water cooler.
She blinked, feeling the cold wetness of spilt water trailing down her body, making her costume stick very uncomfortably to her skin.er hair wasn't spared either, now plastered to her forehead and neck. Moving a few strands away from her field of vision, Nana huffed.
Strange… she felt rather serene about the realization.
The bastard just threw me.
Then her cape fell over her eyes and face. It too was damp and was trying to hug her face. The material got surprisingly sticky with how wet it was.
And oh… there's her rage.
One for All burned under her skin and Nana launched herself at the man.
If he'd been fast on the throw, she was faster on her revenge.
He had time to take one more step closer to the sniveling doctor before her shoulder rush slammed into him with the force of a barely restrained train.
He grunted, almost crying out in pain before his back and body smashed into a medical cabinet with a glorious crash of shattering glass.
But, of course, his cape stayed firmly tucked under his armored ass rather than all over his face. No justice in this world.
The dick…
Even so, she smiled, feeling more than a little vindictive pleasure.
It was confusing though, she could swear she saw the ghost of a smile on his own face before he straightened.
On second thought, it was probably a grimace. She hit him pretty damn hard after all.
"Thank you- Thank you so-"
"You shut up!" She barked, snarling as she spun around to look down on the Doctor. "I'll deal with you in a second. As for yo-"
He was gone.
Nana blinked staring at the spot where the bat *should be* only for him to NOT BE THERE!
Her eyes snapped to the door, and there he was, rushing down the hallway towards the only entrance and exit to this place!
"You mother-" The word stuck in her throat as she ran, making it just to the door before she doubled back, grabbing the crying, sniveling doctor by his lab coat and pulling him behind her.
He fell onto his knees.
"You can run or you can get dragged, but I aint stopping!" She snarled.
She rounded the corner, just in time to see the doors to the elevator closing and the bat giving her what was most definitely an *infuriatingly* smug smile.
Her fist smashed into the door, ripping it open as she heard the elevator ding above them.
She flew straight up, ignoring the doctor's blubbering wails.
"You're crazy! You're all crazy!"
Tearing through the underside of an elevator was a bit more complicated than metal. You had to be cautious of ripping out the primary cabling obviously.
She did it, but it cost her precious seconds.
She flew up, out the doctor still screaming in her grasp. Honestly, she was thinking about asking him what thread count he had in his shirt and lab coat, it was kinda a small miracle it hadn't ripped by now…
She turned, rushing to the door before she stopped.
No.
Front door was locked when she got here.
He wouldn't have locked it.
He had another way in!
"You got a back door!?" She asked the crying doctor.
The man whimpered.
"Do you have a back door!" She shouted again.
The doctor pointed.
She rushed forward.
She busted through the door, the metal framework exploding off its moorings.
There was a sound, like an air gun and Nana turned in time to see Batman's grappling hook firing off into the sky.
"NO YOU DON'T!"
She lunged, gripping him by the ankle, doctor still in hand.
Then she deactivated her quirk.
That grapple hook was strong, gave it a real damn good fight… But it wasn't really meant to lift up three full grown people all at once.
It stalled and Nana grinned, she was ready to hang there and just let gravity take its course.
He didn't have a strength quirk, so how much longer could he keep his grip?
She saw the Bat's boot come up ready to do the obvious thing of kicking her in the face.
Oh no.
Her quirk activated, along with One for All.
She pulled.
The concrete above crumbled, giving way completely and she threw the Bat onto the alley floor.
He rolled with the fall, springing to his feet without a proverbial hair out of place. And his cape still not catching on anything.
The dick…
She looked around.
Perfect.
Hovering to a nearby collection of pipes, Nana threw the Doctor onto the ground pulling free a steel pipe and then, bending and twisting it around the crying man until he couldn't move.
She threw him, maybe a bit harder than she had to into a far wall, should be far enough out of the way.
Then she turned around, and, so help her, if he was 'gone' again she wouldn't be held responsible for what she did!
Luckily for everyone, especially him, he wasn't.
Unluckily for her, he'd taken the opportunity in a different way.
"Alright you-" She turned around in time for a flashbang to go off in her face.
And, by in her face, she meant right in her face.
Her eyes actually crossed onto the thing it was so close.
She screamed, reeling, eyes burning as her ears rang.
The doctor screamed too. But he had a habit of doing that, so it didn't matter.
There was a blow to her gut, hard enough to knock the wind right out of her without One for all.
She swung, barely having the mind to check her strength, she missed, something broke. The strike to the back of her knee knocked her to the ground and then she was in a hold, his arm around her neck.
It was only her years of experience in hand to hand that let her put her hand in place to avoid a full choke hold, he wouldn't knock her out. She took the moment to breathe, gather her thoughts.
Tenacious bastard!
Her eyes were leaking tears, she still couldn't see, could barely hear, but one for all moved through her body again, ready to forcefully break his hold on her and then…. Maybe break his wrist or something because fuck this guy!
"Get away from her"
The scream was close, too close. Nana opened her eyes in time to see something fly over her head.
Then the hold was gone.
She fell forward, shoved away and she blinked rapidly, trying to get her sight back as she stumbled to her feet.
There was a sound, a fight, and then the unmistakable thump of a fist striking naked flesh, a scream and something smacked into her legs, a body.
She heard the grappling hook again, and Nana's blurry eyes had enough in them to see the black clad vigilante rushing onto the rooftops.
She didn't chase, instead she looked down behind her.
It was a kid. Looked like one at least, he groaned in pain from a punch to the face.
Musta hurt.
The fucker hit hard.
She was still crying, must've looked a hell of a mess. But she still tried to smile. "Hey kid. Brave of you to try that."
She looked around, eyes adjusted enough to now notice the splotches of color on the floor were textbooks.
She blinked piecing things together.
"Did you throw your backpack at him or something?"
The kid groaned, rubbing at a rapidly bruising jaw. "Seemed like a good idea at the time."
She laughed. "What's your name kid?"
He smiled, or she thought he did. Kinda hard to tell.
"Yagi. Toshinori Yagi, ma'am."