Crimson Murders

Chapter Three

Third chapter! Um, yeah nothing important. Onwards!

Training is intense the past two months. He has ten months to work through, and he already feels like he's dying. Izuku sighs as he makes his way towards the Dagobah Municipal Beach Park, thinking about the murdered victim from the day he met All Might. He's lost a bit of his sleep from seeing the corpse in his dreams. The recent murders haven't been out to the public yet—maybe not to raise panic but he knows that they might release a small statement about being careful being alone and traveling at night. Because of this, Izuku's curiosity got ahold of him. See, he isn't a huge fan of breaking the law, but he asked an international friend to hack into the police files and downloaded them onto a USB flash drive and has sent it to him. They made sure that it is unknown, everything they used to hack is now gone and they are sure no one knows about the hacking—yet. That was last week and now he has a somewhat up to date files of the case. He only does this when he finds the bodies of a serial killer's victims. This is only the third time. He keeps everything to himself but sends in help to the police officer when he notices something they skimmed over. Midoriya is always careful so he keeps the journal hidden and only takes it out in his room. His mom doesn't know, a good thing or else she'll have a heart attack at what her son is doing. So far, everything is doing okay and he's been able to update some of his theories on the Crimson Artist. He just needs his conscious cleared of the corpse that he sees at night. Once the killer is apprehended, he'll be at peace and at knowing no one will end up like that innocent person.

"Young Midoriya!" Jumping at the sudden noise, the said teenager stumbles and looks up at the source of the voice. He smiles widely at seeing Toshinori in his skeletal form, but it fades at seeing Tsukauchi. He didn't find out. He can't have found out, so why is he here? He tells himself not to freak out and goes over towards them. "Tsukauchi Naomasa here needs to speak with you."

Don't panic. "Ah, hello, sir," he greets with a small bow. Please, make this quick. I have to get back to training and not dying. Please, make it quick. "What brings you here?"

"I know you have files to this case." Shit! "I don't want to know how you were able to attain it and frankly, I'm not going to ask. I do need your opinion on something though." Izuku blinks but nods, ignoring the look of disbelief on Yagi's face upon hearing the statement. "First, how are you feeling? Seeing that corpse?"

"Fine. But it's difficult to sleep at times." He rubs his eyes when he says that. "Although, it's quite interesting that the killer uses the quotes from various of killers from a long time ago. The portrait is probably a piece of a bigger picture," he murmurs.

"That's what I wanted your opinion on. Every dead body the police finds, it makes no sense. We've been thinking it may be a puzzle that the killer has made and wants us to solve. If so, why go to so much trouble?" He snorts and pushes his hair back, sighing as he says, "Never try to understand the mind of a killer, you'll drive yourself insane."

The two others stare at him, a silence falling onto them. "Sometimes it's a good thing to think like a killer," pipes up Midoriya, drawing looks of confusion from the two adults. Seeing this, the teenager presses on, his fingers twitching in nervousness, "Think about this. If you think like a writer, you may have an initial clue as to why they made such a piece. Stare long enough at the poem of a poet, reviewing different literary elements and putting yourself in their place, you may get an initial clue as to what was going through the poet's mind during the making of their poem." He presses his thumb onto his bottom lip, biting the side of the nail. "What I'm trying to say is to catch a killer, you'll have to think like a killer. Preferably one with an artistic view of death, and you may understand why the Crimson Artist is leaving portraits, maybe come up with a mental image of the big picture. They have artistic abilities, so they might be taking inspiration from old artists." He blinks once again, looking up at them and fixing his spectacles. "That's my thought process on the matter anyway. If it makes sense. I'm not well at verbally expressing my thoughts."