Another Form of Power

As Time Goes By

Aizawa Shouta looked around carefully. He was conscientious enough to ensure that his gaze wasn't obvious. He'd learned how to do that professionally as an underground hero. And despite it being ten years or so since he had been a hero, he hadn't forgotten his skills. There was no one watching, and the camera in the corner was his feed.

He unlocked the door, opening it just enough for him to slip through before it closed again. He stood in the dark for a few moments before flicking on the light. He paid extra for the storage unit to have power. It was for these times.

He looked at the boxes. They contained the regalia of his time as a Hero and some of his first cases after his reintegration. His examination was sharp. Shouta breathed a sigh of relief when he took in that nothing had changed. His capture scarf was still hanging half out of the top of one, and some of Hizashi's gear was strewn haphazardly around. All was in order.

Aizawa stepped through the boxes, working his way between them until he was standing at the back of the storage unit. At least that's what it looked like. It was a false back. It concealed barely five centimetres of room. That small was not noticeable, and could be explained as a measurement error should anyone come in here. Carefully he began moving the concealing boards, stacking them to the side.

Behind the wall was a cork board. Photos, printouts of news articles, and other random things were pinned onto it. They were all joined by several spools of different coloured threads. The board would make no sense to anyone looking at it. But the board was rather incriminating.

The former pro-hero sighed as he looked at it.

At the centre there was a picture of Representative Imoku Kakurete. A large question mark was over his head. It was symbolic because after so many years, Shouta seemed to always have more questions about the man and precious few answers. Threads connected him to just about everything on the board. There were pictures of the League of Villains, heroes and vigilantes. Other Representatives were pictured as well but nowhere near as prominently.

If you spent some time looking you could see a pattern. Some of the photos had black thread. That lead to those who were dead. It was mostly on the Hero side. Others had gold thread, and they tied back to Imoku Kakurete the closest.

Shouta let his eyes trace over the images, seeing all the connections.

So much had changed in the past few years. Not all of it for the better but he was one of the lucky ones. When heroes had been forced to integrate, as they called it, he had other skills to fall back on. Most combat heroes just took the offered positions with the Police, Fire Brigades or sometimes with the Military. Rescue heroes took positions with the Emergency Services... and any hero that had a healing quirk just walked into a hospital and was welcomed.

On the surface it looked as if everything was neatly dealt with. Heroes were integrated. New study courses were made for those who passed the renamed Hero Public Safety Bureau's psyche assessment. They had been renamed the Quirk Usage Assessments, and were performed by the Centre for Responsible Quirk Usage. The committee was still there, but they were far more closely monitored by a House of Representatives oversight committee. The committee that was headed by Imoku Kakurete.

The argument there was that since he was an Independent Representative, he wouldn't be influenced by the major parties. Aizawa didn't buy the public line. He was far too used to heroics, where the truth was seldom what it seemed.

And that's why the board existed. He hadn't taken employment with the Police. He saw where that was going. The heroes who had taken that option, had been forced to hunt down those who had become vigilantes. That had broken most of them, and they'd resigned, generally to retire to some other profession, after some retraining. In that way, the old Hero Public Safety Bureau had been generous. They had allotted more than enough funds to allow for retraining.