The Emperor's Dragon II

Scams and Other Messages

Shouto frowned at his phone. The poor device just showed the same screen to him as it had earlier. It was in his messaging app and was displaying a message from an unknown number.

If you want your quirk back, message me.

There was no indication of who it was from and... He didn't know what to think.

Obviously, his quirk being stolen was something that- He still wasn't sure what to think about it. Hound Dog said he was still in shock and that it would take a while to get over it. The counselor had also said he shouldn't compare himself to the others. That recovery would vary for them all.

So while the fact that his quirk had been stolen was known to the public, his phone number was not. Endeavor, for all that he was not the best parent, had insisted on absolute privacy for his children. Shouto could vaguely recall an incident where someone had photoed Fuyumi at her school and Endeavor had been angry. Not at Fuyumi for being photoed but at the photographer and the magazine who had published the images. He didn't remember what had happened exactly but he knew it hadn't happened again.

So his number wasn't well known. And he had made sure that those people he gave it to knew better than to give it out to others. Which made this message...

It could just be spam or phishing or any number of scams.

He'd asked Momo and the others if they'd received anything like that. Momo had told him that her parents had received some bogus calls after the interview but all had been fake. Those had just been fake tip offs, there hadn't been anything that claimed to be able to return her quirk.

Bakugou had simply yelled - in text - that the only way to get their quirks back was to beat up the bastard to who took them. Shouto knew his father would happily do that but 'the bastard' as Bakugou referred to Mitei- Izuku Midoriya - had apparently gone to ground. There were obviously people in the world who knew where he was but they were also people who appeared to be loyal to him because the Police and Heroes hadn't had so much as a whisper of his location or activities.

All Might was reasonably good at hiding his concern but Shouto knew the Number One Hero was worried about it. It kind of made sense. He had dealt with Izuku's father so he probably had a better idea than anyone else what Izuku might really be capable of.

And all of that was an aside... He had to decide what to do with his text.

The obvious thing, the sensible thing would be to ignore it. Except...

He did want his quirk back.

And... at the moment whoever had sent the message just wanted him to reply. They hadn't asked for money or anything else. If it was a scam, eventually they'd demand that and he'd just have lost some time texting. But if, on the 0.00001% chance that it wasn't a scam then...

Shouto worried at one lip. If it wasn't then... The consequences were far deeper than he really wanted to think about but it would all come back to who sent the text.

Who is this?

Shouto typed and hit send before he could second guess himself.

This was just a scam. They'd reveal themselves soon enough. And if it wasn't... Then... He'd just have to see where this went.

-ted-

As the Principal of a Hero High School, Nezu got any Police report that involved any of his students. Mostly that meant he got reports of what his hero students did while on work experience. If they got involved in something on an internship, then the report went to their Hero Agency. Sometimes it meant he got reports of the Third years being a bit rowdy somewhere. Those reports were usually easily rectified with a minimum of fuss. A public apology by the students, and some community service at the venue or for the complainant and the issue went away, the students learned a lesson and people saw that UA did discipline their students.