Chapter Text
July 31, 11:50 PM.
As she watched the crew of the speed boat disembark through her binoculars, Ochako smirked. She and her team had been investigating this Meta Liberation Army outfit for months with seemingly no hope of finding them until Tsu had come to her with this lead, a gang of smugglers who had been supplying them. Most MLA agents were willing to die before betraying their comrades, but these smugglers were all too eager to throw their clients under the bus in exchange for a reduced sentence. Any attempts to root out what few remnants of the MLA still existed were becoming increasingly futile, but who knew what they could find tonight? Ledgers, notes, an address, hell, a name, anything to get some momentum going would be useful. As she watched the undercover officers unload the crates loaded with fake guns, a voice rang out in her earpiece.
“Targets are approaching. Get into position.”
“Copy, ribbit”
“Got it”
“Uravity?”, asked the first voice.
“Yeah, I’m ready”, she replied. If all went well, she would spend the entire operation from this guard tower overlooking the docks. Shinsou was on the boat, and would capture the MLA members in one fell swoop, or the officers with him would get the rest. Tsu was in the water, making sure no one tried to flee that way, while Kirishima was with the SWAT team, and would burst into the warehouse the second Shinsou gave the word and seize and arrest everything inside. She only needed to get involved if someone managed to run, perfectly positioned to shoot off like a rocket at the first sign of trouble.
Once again looking through the binoculars, the MLA members were inspecting the wares, when four of them suddenly froze. Realizing that it was a trap, one of them tried to attack one of the undercover officers, but was quickly subdued. Another tried to make a run for it, but before she could even think about a pursuit, he was wrapped up in Shinsou’s capture weapon, concealed under his arm. The last remaining member, realizing resistance was futile, put his hands in the air and was arrested by one of the cops.
“Riot, take the warehouse!”, ordered Shinsou
“On it!”, replied Kirishima.
Refocusing her gaze on the warehouse, she saw Kirishima break down the door like it was made of paper while the SWAT team swarmed into the building. Setting down her binoculars, Ochako finally allowed herself to relax. The operation was practically over at this point. Kirishima’s quirk naturally lent itself to this kind of work, and he had been the lead on countless raids since he had gotten his license. What few members might have been in the warehouse would be quickly arrested, and they could all get back to the mundanity of filling out paperwork, writing the reports, and sorting through evidence.
“Uravity, come in!” said Kirishima, “We’ve got a runner, warehouse roof, dressed in black.”
“In pursuit”, she replied, scrambling to her feet.
Tapping herself on the shoulder, she kicked off the wall of the guard tower, activating the compressed air boosters in her boots. As the flew over the docks like a bat out of hell, her target came into view. Medium height, medium build, black jacket, black pants, black hood, completely unassuming were it not for the fact that they were sprinting across a rooftop at one in the morning. They jumped the gap between buildings with no struggle, losing no speed, wasting no energy. Probably a professional, or at least very experienced. But no amount of experience running on rooftops would be enough to outrun her. She kicked up at an angle, once again activating her boosters, reactivated her gravity, and began her descent. Like a falcon chasing a rodent, she dived toward them, prepared to take them before they had even noticed she was coming at them. But as she was inches away touching them, the figure fell to the ground and harmlessly soared over them. So much for the quick and easy takedown. With effortless grace, she rolled to a stop. Rising to her feet, Ochako turned around, shouting “Come quietly, before things get ugly!”, but the man, and she was now pretty confident her target’s a man after getting a good look at them, was already running towards the right side of the roof, jumping to the warehouse across the street. He easily cleared the gap and she followed in hot pursuit. The man was just as fast as her on foot, but time was on her side. If he kept running that way, he’d run out of the warehouse. Eventually he’d have to break left, right, or jump down, and that’s where she’d get him.
They jumped from warehouse to warehouse, and the moment was coming any second now. Next to the warehouse was the highway, not super busy, but a car could come at any second. Not an option for the increasingly frustrating criminal. He was going to make his move any second now, which was it going to be? Left or right? The man chose neither, jumping off a ledge and over the highway. For a moment she panicked, fearing that this was one of many MLA agents who chose death over prison. But it only lasted for a second, as the man raised his arm towards the apartment buildings across the highway and with a BANG, fired a grappling hook from his wrist. She quickly regained her senses, removing her gravity and kicking off to resume the chase. The man turned his head to face her for a moment, presumably to see if she was still after him, and she, and more importantly the camera in her helmet, managed to catch a glimpse of his mask. Bright red, with black lines trisecting it vertically through the eyes. Finally, something distinctive.
“Discord, can you ID this guy?”, she asked, tapping the earpiece in her helmet.
“Hmm, can’t say I’m familiar with your new friend. I’ll put it on the Hero Network, but don’t get your hopes up.”, responded Shinsou.
Ok, she was willing to admit that this guy was proving to be much more trouble than expected, but she held the advantage in the air. She remembered the days where she puked after a few seconds in zero gravity, but with a lot of hard work, and a lot of lost lunches, she had become fully adjusted to using zero gravity on herself. Combined with the boosters in her boots which fired blasts of compressed air, courtesy of Mei Hatsume of course, she could maintain impressive speeds in the air. Not as fast as, say, Katsuki Bakugou, but it was nothing to slouch at.
Once again, she found herself on the verge of putting an end to their chase. One last burst of her boosters would close the gap. But once again, the man slipped through her fingers. Twisting his wrist, the man began to fall toward the ground as the line he was swinging on detached from whatever it was embedded in. He landed on a fire escape and continued to run. This wasn’t working. She needed a new approach. She needed to somehow get the drop on him. Instead of turning on her gravity and following, she continued to float to the roof of the building, when suddenly, she heard a BANG ring out from the alley. She saw the grappling hook embed itself in the wall of a building across the street. There! That’s where he was going to land. The building facing the wall was a good deal shorter than its neighbors. She kicked off the roof, confident in her hunch. This was it. This is where she was going to get him. The man rolled to a stop on the roof of the shorter building, and got to his feet, just in time to be tackled to the ground.
“Discord, send a squad car, I’ve got him”, she said, with one hand on his neck and the other grabbing his wrist, his gravity negated. God, it was too late for this. Too early for this? Too something for this, and it was too something for her to decide which one it BZZRT. Her train of thought was derailed by an intense pain in both of her hands. She instinctively recoiled as she felt a shock from the man’s jacket. In an instant, she saw the night sky as her legs were swept out from under her, and in that moment of pain and confusion, the man spun around and pressed her hands together, restoring his gravity. Both of them fell to the ground and as Shinsou reoriented herself and got up, the man rolled away and jumped to his feet.
The two began to circle each other, and Ochako considered her next move as she heard a voice in her headset.
”ETA three minutes”, said Shinsou.
Ok, she now had a plan. Trying to take him down wasn’t working. She needed to stall until Shinsou got here. She could do three minutes. No problem. And if he tried to run, Shinsou had her GPS, he’d just meet them there. All they had to do was stay on him for a few minutes and, wait, what was he reaching for?
He threw something on the ground and the rooftop was covered in a thick blanket of smoke. Thinking quickly, Ochako removed her gravity and jumped, hoping to intercept where ever he was grappling. She desperately looked around but realized that he hadn’t grappled anywhere. Frantically searching for any sign of where the man went, she spotted a roof access hatch. Upon further inspection, she saw that it was slightly ajar. She cautiously opened the hatch and floated down, hoping her gut was right and he actually was down here. As she landed on the carpeted floors, she looked around whatever office she had landed in for a sign of where he could be hiding. He’s probably in the stairwell trying to go for the bottom floor. If she lost him and he got onto the streets, that was it. There was no way she’d pick up his trail again not tonight. She ran towards the stairs, hoping it wasn’t too late and she could still catch her prey, when she heard a crunch from her boot. There was broken glass on the floor. She looked to her left as her fears were realized. One of the exterior windows was broken. He was gone.
She looked out the window, desperate for any signs of where he might have gone. Looking down, she saw the police car pull up to the side of the building. It was useless to keep looking at this point. He was gone. Jumping out of the window, she landed next to the car. She opened the door to the backseat and got it.
”Where’s the runner?”, asked Shinsou, sitting in the passenger’s seat.
“Got away.”
”Yeah, I’m not surprised.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”, she growled.
”It means I got an ID. Couldn’t find anything on the HN, so I asked Sensei if he knew the guy. Lo and behold, Wraith”, he said, showing her a file on his phone, “Vigilante. Been doing this since we were in high school. Tons of high end gadgets. Stays under the radar. Aizawa had a couple run-ins with the guy, which is the only reason we know anything”.
“Any idea what he’s doing here?” asked Ochako.
”Beyond picking a fight with the MLA? No clue”, he answered, “Do you need a ride after debriefing?”
”Hmm”, she sighed, “Yeah, probably.”
There was a celebratory atmosphere as Ochako and Shinsou arrived at the police station. They did it. They won. They arrested a dozen MLA members, they seized a stockpile of illegal support weapons, and who knew what documents they’d find in the warehouse. Maybe this raid would be the beginning of the final push to rid Japan of the MLA. But Ochako wasn’t celebrating. She only had one thing on her mind. Who the hell was this Wraith guy, and how has nobody heard of him?