Izuocha's Love Stories

50 - MISSING (CHAPTER 1-2)

By Encyclopika

SUMMARY: Two years after graduation, Ochako is tasked with taking on the next big case at the Ryukyu offices - finding and capturing a mysterious villain adept at fast mass murder and then disappearing like a ghost. Ochako expects this to be daunting, not just because she is charged with mentoring the new intern through this, but because she must also work closely with an estranged friend she finds she still has feelings for. 

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CHAPTER ONE

Nothing.

A concrete slab waned to the side, the brick crumbled under its weight. She peaked inside.

Nothing again.

Uravity listened intently for any sound - a rustle, a whimper, something - anything to tell her where a survivor may be pinned, but with the blaring of sirens on the scene, she and her partner were looking blind. The sun had already set, painting the sky a deep red fading to purple towards the zenith, and Uravity was getting to her limit. For hours they had searched through the rubble, carefully removing pieces of concrete, cut steel beams, and drywall to rescue any survivors. When Uravity had gotten the call that afternoon, a pit had fallen into her stomach. Incidents such as this had been happening way too often recently. A series of loud bangs and then an entire apartment building crumbles to the street below, trapping the residents in a tomb of cement, bricks, and mortar. It took everything in her to be positive today, to get on scene, and begin rescue operations, using her anti-gravity quirk to quickly remove rubble and save people.

Unfortunately, the minute they had arrived, they were given large, black bags, and Uravity could tell that the effort had already been declared a recovery project.

"C'mon, Flashlight, let's try the next pile," Uravity asked of her young charge as she moved away from the crater they had dug.

She wearily looked up at him as he moved his illuminated palms, the light resting on a wide chunk of concrete that was balanced on top of the rubble. Uravity was glad to have Flashlight as her partner this afternoon. Although they had only been working together for a few months, his usefulness could not be overstated. His quirk "Bright Hands" was perfect for these types of missions, enabling him to shine light from the palms of his hands at any intensity on the visible spectrum. His black, full-body costume was specially tailored to reduce the reflection of his person to maximize the use of the light he emitted. With a helmet like one big pair of sunglasses, he had ensured he couldn't blind himself during combat...not that there had been much of that lately. Since he had been hired, they were mostly called to these sort of disaster missions. After the first two, he had also ordered ATAC boots to elongate the amount of time he could spend on his feet in difficult terrain searching for people. Now, their only limit was Uravity's weight limit, something she had been working on, but would never be infinite.

And neither was his light. As Uravity gingerly removed pieces of rubble and checked the unevenness of the platform, the light dimmed slightly and then became bright again as Flashlight pushed himself to provide the right amount of brightness. Clearly, they were both getting tired.

"I think we'll call it after this section," Uravity murmured to him as she lifted the giant concrete chunk using her quirk. It floated weightlessly, but at this point, she was really pushing it. Her stomach churned from the strain and she figured her face was a shade of green at this point. There were so many things a hero had to come to terms with, a laundry list of accepted facts. The first one was one's own limits, in quirk and in body. Super powers or no, every hero was still human.

"No, I can keep going! What if in the next pile someone is waiting for us to rescue them? We can't stop now," Flashlight pleaded, but Uravity shook her head, his light reflecting off her helmet's visor.