The Emperor's Dragon

Developments, Scientific and Other

Yagi Toshinori looked at the pin board. It seemed ludicrous that they used such an archaic device to hunt for one of the world's most heinous criminals but the board allowed them to make connections that other tools didn't. There was software which could double as a pin-board but looking at these connections on a screen just didn't feel right. There was something about actually being able to move the pins around, to move the strings that made him feel as if they were making actual connections.

This board was stored at his Agency, in a tactical room only a select few had access to. Yagi knew there were questions about what they were planning in here but being the Number One Hero meant that everyone knew you took on the biggest and the baddest villains. And you didn't always take them head on.

The board was laid out as a timeline. Anyone unfamiliar with All For One would scoff at the fact that the dates began two hundred years ago, at the dawn of quirks. There were a couple of fuzzy images from various archives and then the timeline moved on. After all, all but one of the people alive then was dead now. At seemingly random intervals there were numbers pinned on the board in roman numerals. I was at the beginning. II was not that long after I but III was distant from II. IV and V followed in quick succession before there was again a gap. VI, VII and VIII were on there as well. There was no IX. If you studied the board long enough, you would deduce that the numbers represented major events, but those familiar with history would also know that there were no major events in some of the years the numbers corresponded to. The numbers were for those who were intimately familiar with the case. It said a lot that there were probably only five people in the world who knew exactly what they meant, and one of those people was the villain they were hunting.

The closer the timeline got to the present, the more pins and links there were. There were headshots of various people though some were crossed out. They were known to be dead. A few of the links went to lists and Yagi hated looking at those lists. They were lists of the dead or quirkless. There were a couple of crossed out headshots that were attached to a period of time. They were the people whose identities All For One had stolen. While the villain was more than capable of manufacturing a complete persona from scratch, it was easier to take over someone else's life. The paperwork was more authentic and thus harder to track. And when you were a villain like All For One, making sure the original person didn't claim their identity back wasn't even a chore.

Yagi stared at one of the few clear shots they had of the man. It was the shot Inko Midoriya had supplied. It was good enough to use facial recognition on, and Sir Nighteye had but there was a problem with that. The databases were limited to those who had a criminal record already. All For One was nothing, if not careful. He never took over the identity of anyone with a criminal history. He took their quirks, but he never took their identities. They had traced Hisashi Seki but all that had given them was grave stones. Dead parents, no siblings, no cousins and no leads. Hisashi hadn't spoken to his more distant relatives for years before Inko met him, and he certainly hadn't spoken to them since.

The last few years were traced out on the board, and they were marked with significantly less pins and connections.

"He's gone to ground," Yagi said.

"We don't know that," Mirai replied.

Toshinori understood the reasons. If All For One had gone to ground, it wasn't because of anything they had done, which meant it was part of a plan and that didn't sit right with either of them. The thought that there was anyone or anything else out there who could threaten All For One was laughable.

There were powerful organisations out there and they were still active, but none of them would threaten All For One. Not if they wanted to still exist. He was behind most of them anyway. Not that their members realised it.