Maybe We'll fix Each Other

Chapter 6

A man in his mid 30s who worked in accounting, with an emitter quirk that could manipulate magnetic fields. A man in his late 20s who worked in hero analysis, with a mutation quirk of owl features. A woman in her early 30s who was a CFO, with a transformation quirk allowing her to change her teeth to that of a shark's. A man in his late 40s who worked in landscaping, with an emitter quirk that could manipulate plants.

The group had only three things in common.

They were all married with children.

They had all filed police reports against an unknown stalker.

And they were all found cremated within buildings that had blazed with blue fire sometime in the week following those police reports.

Aizawa let out a deep breath and buried his face in his hands, elbows propped on the edge of his desk. He had been pouring over Dabi's records and still couldn't figure out a motive. While the murders had certainly looked premeditated, he didn't know why. Why these people? They varied in almost every aspect of their lives, from career to neighborhood to upbringing to social class. It made no sense.

And these reports were about all the Commission had. There was nothing to give any sort of lead on the villain's identity. The man had seemingly sprung from nowhere around 6 to 7 years ago, graduating from mostly petty theft to arson with the occasional murder. He wasn't affiliated with any known criminal organizations outside of the League of Villains, and now even that was no longer true. The only thing about his quirk that was known was that his flames could reach insanely high temperatures in an instant.

No one even knew how old he was. Though looking at the man now, he didn't appear to be very old. And considering he first appeared on hero radars years prior, it meant he must have started extremely young. The thought bothered Aizawa. He pushed it from his mind.

At the sound of his phone ringing, Aizawa parted his fingers to peer through them at his cell. He considered letting it go to voicemail. After spending hours getting nowhere with these files, he was hardly in the mood to talk to anyone.

But just before it stopped, he sighed and snatched it up.

"Hello?" he drawled, pushing the criminal's records away from him.

"From the sound of your voice, I'm guessing you're not having any luck?"

"Hizashi."

"Shouta."

Aizawa sighed. "No. I'm not having any luck, and I can't even get more records because there aren't any more."

"Want me to come by and help?"

He shook his head reflexively, even though he knew Yamada couldn't see him. "No. You're busy with your own cases. And there's nothing more this paperwork is going to tell us anyway."

Aizawa stood back up and moved to look out the window. "There's only one way to get more information on Dabi, and it's by finding the man himself."

"Any idea where he could have gone?"

"No. When he was running he was...panicked, Hizashi. I don't think he had any idea where he was going."

He could hear Yamada hum in response on the other side of the phone. "So you'll be doing a blind sweep until you stumble across something?"

"Looks like."

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Eri was used to sleeping badly. But she wasn't used to the feeling of waking up terrified that the one person she cared about was dead. She had barely slept at all, taking only an hour at a time at most to rest before getting back up to check on Dabi. Each time, she was prepared to kick the door open and scream for help, not caring if it exposed their cover. She'd rather be caught than let Dabi slip away from her.