The Emperor's Dragon II

There Will Be Questions

"Stay a moment," Shouto asked Momo after the others had left.

"What is it?" she asked.

For a moment Shouto wanted to tell her everything but knew it would be too dangerous. Instead, he gathered his thoughts. "What if there was a way to get your quirk back?" He asked.

"What do you mean?"

He handed over his phone, on the messages he'd received. There was nothing in there to indicate the date he was meant to be at the park, except for the date it was sent.

He watched as Momo read it.

"I'm sorry Shouto," she said finally, after flicking to the final message.

It took him a moment to understand what she meant and then he realised she thought he'd gone to the meeting and no one had been there. He thought to correct her but the words didn't leave his mouth. "Did your parents get anything similar?" he asked instead.

"I can check," Momo promised him.

Shouto nodded.

"How did they get your number?" Momo asked.

"No idea," he told her.

There must have been something in the way he said it because Momo gave him a sharp look. "Shouto, that's just a scammer, isn't it? You didn't go?" She asked worriedly.

This wasn't going how he thought it might. He could lie but...

"I did," he admitted.

"And?" Momo pressed.

He fixed his eyes on her and raised his hands before letting a tiny flame dance on his left hand while forming an ice block on his right.

Momo's eyes widened and she stared. Shouto watched as her eyes flicked between his hands, as if confirming that she really was seeing his quirk in use.

"How? What happened? Why didn't you tell anyone?" Momo demanded.

He let his quirk fade. "I thought it was a scam," Shouto told her.

He was surprised when her eyes suddenly became sad. "Shouto," Momo whispered. "What did you promise him?" she asked, almost too gently.

"Nothing," he said immediately. "I thought it was a scam, and they'd just demand money, or information or something. And then when whoever it was said they'd already convinced Dragon-" Shouto shook his head as the words tumbled out of him.

"Wait! Who's Dragon?" Momo asked with a frown. "It says him there but-" It didn't matter what name was there if the text had been a scam. The fact that he had his quirk back made the name important.

While Momo's parents were rich, he sometimes forgot that they weren't heroes. There was information they just didn't know. "My dad's been talking about someone in the underworld for a while. Some guy named Dragon. Except no one knew who it was. Your friend, Uraraka-"

"What does Dragon have to do with her?"

"She apparently has a pendant or something that was supposedly given to her by Dragon. During the camp, one of the villains recognised it, and left Uraraka alone."

"What?" Momo demanded.

"That's what I got told," Shouto defended.

"Why weren't we told?" Momo bit her lip. "Does Ochaco know her pendant came from a villain?" she worried.

"I don't know," he replied. He really didn't know any of that detail. "It's just... Dad said they figured out who Dragon was recently."

"No!" Momo was quick on the uptake. All the Hero students were.