So this story is a first for me in that I was not the only author.

This was a collaboration between me and thatguy99998 from AO3. As such, he will be listed as co-author over on that site. We spent most of today working on this so please be sure to give it a read.

Tokyo, Japan.

A city that had two sides, like a coin. To the average resident, it was fairly safe and a busy place where you could raise a family. But that was the light side. On its darker side, Tokyo's criminal underbelly was thriving and constantly working to dismantle the sense of safety the general populous had. That never succeeded, but there was a new group rising that had the potential to do that.

And so our story begins with a man walking home from a bar, slightly tipsy as he was accompanied by his friend and they joked around about how shitty the neighborhood was. Neither of them were from around there, but the area was well-known as a hub for prostitutes and drugs—both of which the two men had come to indulge in.

Then they saw something sticking out from an alleyway. A woman's leg. The two of them headed around the corner… only to find a woman horribly butchered on the ground. Both screamed, the less-tipsy of the two fumbling to take out his phone and call the police. Within minutes, sirens were screeching and cop cars were pulling up. An officer with spiky red hair got out of the closest one and nearly gagged at the sight of the body.

"Holy shit…" whispered his partner, a man with blonde hair. "Is that another one?"

"Yeah. She matches up with the others." The red-haired officer—Kirishima, his badge said—knelt by the body and tried not to throw up. "What do we know about the guys who discovered the body?"

"Not much. Both of them were drunk as hell and they found her here. Neither of them had any blood on them and they seem like they're not coherent enough to do this kind of thing. I wouldn't rule them out, though."

"Good. This is definitely related to the case Bakugo's working."

"This isn't going to help him. He's going to be pissed that this isn't anything new."

"Oof. That's true…"

Around the corner from the murder, a man wearing a black hoodie smiled, his dry and cracked lips straining from the effort as he put a bloody knife into his pocket and started walking away.

Stupid damn cops…

Bakugo sighed as he looked over the report that had come in the night before.

Another woman— roughly in her late twenties, based on the autopsy—had been murdered in the slums of Tokyo. She was the fourth victim in the past month, the murder weapon seeming to have been a kitchen knife just like the previous three cases. The way in which she was murdered matched up, too—being brutally butchered in an abandoned alleyway. Though she was discovered much quicker then the others seemingly the killer could have been caught in the act, and yet a search of the area showed no fingerprints or any other sign of a rush.

"Who the fuck are you?" Bakugou mumbled to no one in particular.

A knock sounded at his door and he sighed, annoyed at the interruption.

"Come in!" he snapped.

The door opened to reveal his coworker and fellow detective, Izuku Midoriya. They'd been at the police department for the same amount of time and they'd known each other since they were little kids. That didn't mean they were necessarily close friends, though, so nowadays it was more like they were rivals for the position of top detective. Currently, Izuku held the title—a fact that Bakugo resented and made no secret of.

"Hey, Kacchan. I was just wondering if you'd finished going over the files for the "

"Just did. Anything on who the girl was?"

"Nothing much. Just that she was in her late twenties and there were drugs in her system."

"Any particular kind?"

"Coke."

"Hm."

"Um… Chief Tsukauchi wanted me to tell you that he wants us to work together on this one. Since we're the two best detectives they have…"

"Ugh…" Bakugo rolled his eyes in annoyance. "This is such bullshit. We don't have leads, we don't have useful witnesses, and we don't have any sort of motive."

"Well, maybe we could go and ask around where the body was found?"

"People in areas like that hate cops. It's gonna be like pulling fucking teeth to get anything out of anybody."

"There was a bar nearby. Maybe they heard something there?"

"Bar?"

"It's called Tsunami's," Bakugo stiffened and cringed. "You know it?"

"You could say that. Are you sure that's the bar?"

"It's the only legal one in the area, so yes."

"Fan-fucking-tastic…" He ran a hand through his ash-blonde hair, sighing. "I guess we're heading there. I really don't want to do this…"

"Why not?"

"Let's just say the owner and I had a slight disagreement and leave it at that. Grab Kirishima after work and we'll go tonight."

"All right." Izuku nodded.

In the car, Bakugo stared out the window at the passing cityscape as they went. Night had fallen and most people had headed home to enjoy the evening with their families. Not him. No, he was stuck heading to see somebody he'd had a fight with a year earlier, somebody who had made it clear—in no uncertain terms—that she never wanted to see him again.

And yet, here he was.

"This place actually looks kind of nice," Kirishima commented as they got out of the car.

"Yeah, well, the owner keeps it looking this way to attract more customers. Doesn't matter, though. The booze is good, so people keep coming."

"You sure you're up for seeing this guy again?"

"It's been a year. I'm sure it's fine."

Opening the door, the three of them entered the bar.

It was busy, which was to be expected given the hour. People were drinking like there was no tomorrow or singing along badly to "Bad Reputation" as it played over the speakers at a blaringly loud volume. Behind the bar itself there was a woman with shoulder-length brown hair grabbing some glasses off a shelf. She proceeded to turn around and set the glasses in front of a group of patrons and Izuku immediately felt his heart speed up slightly.

"Who's that?" he asked Bakugo.

"No idea. She wasn't here last time." The gruffer detective headed for the bar, leaning on the counter and looking at the brunette. "Hey, Pink Cheeks. Where's your boss?"

"Um… who are you?" she inquired, tilting her head. Her cheeks had a seemingly-permanent flush to them, which was only accented when she smiled.

"Doesn't matter. I need to talk to your boss."

"She's not here right now. If you tell me your name, I can tell her you stopped by."

"Nah, you're not hearing me. I need to talk to her directly. Kazumi Hamasaki."

He jerked his head back and a knife lodged itself in the support column right where his head had been seconds before, just as the music at the bar shifted to "Horseshoes and Hand-Grenades". Izuku whipped his head around to see a woman with white hair tied in a messy bun standing at the bottom of a staircase marked 'Employees Only', her eyes narrowed and her hand extended in a way that made it clear that she had thrown the knife.

"Never mind, Pink Cheeks. Found her." The woman—Kazumi Hamasaki, apparently—stomped over and ripped her knife out of the pillar, pointing it at Bakugo with anger in her ice-blue eyes.

"What the actual fuck, Kacchan?" she snarled.

"Nice to see you, too, bitch," he fired back.

"I thought I told you to never come back."

"No, you said you never wanted to see me again. There's a difference."

She exhaled sharply through her nostrils and several of her patrons walked quickly away from the bar, not wanting to be in the blast radius of her anger.

"Ochaco, for future reference, do not let him in here," she told the brunette.

"Who is he?"

"Nobody important." Kazumi put the knife back in a sheath on her belt and headed behind the bar. "So what the fuck do you want, you asshole?"

"Information."

"Of course. Of course!" She nodded. "You want information!"

"Yes," Izuku agreed.

"Fuck no."

"What?! Why not?!"

"Because I know what he wants afterwards. Our old system. I give him information and then we screw upstairs. No. Not today."

"I just want the information, Water Witch!" Bakugo snapped.

"And I'm saying you're not getting any." She glared up at him (she was at least half a foot shorter) and he groaned.

"Fine. Fine! You fucking win." He dug into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. "Give me two shots of whiskey."

"I said get out."

"I'm getting a goddamn drink. I need it to deal with you."

"Of course you do. Ochaco, get it for him. I need to go check the books."

"Yes, ma'am." Ochaco nodded and Kazumi went upstairs.

"Holy shit," Kirishima marveled. "What the hell happened between you two?"

"You heard what she said."

"That you used to get information and screw her? Yeah. But you said it's been a year since you've seen her, so what happened?"

"We had a falling-out."

"She uses that knife on people who don't pay their tabs," Ochaco stated. "That was more than a falling-out."

"You don't need to know the details. We had a fight. That is all you need to know."

"Must have been some fight. Anything else I can get you?"

"No thank you." One shot already down

"Dude, how are you so calm about that? She threw a knife at you!" Kirishima asked, eyes wide.

"You think this is the first time I came back here? I wanted to avoid this place for a reason." Kazumi came back down and glared at him again.

"Fuck you anyway, Kacchan. What the hell do you want to know?"

"We want to know if you heard anything between 2:00am and 4:00am last night, any strange sounds anything—"

"Unusual. Other than literally everything?"

"Take this seriously, please. A woman was murdered." Kazumi blinked and sat down beside him, her hostility somewhat diminished.

"I know you, Kacchan. You wouldn't come here for just one murder. You tell me the real reason, I tell you what I know."

"We have reason to believe that it's a serial killer, specifically the Mad Butcher of Shinjuku."

"Oh, God… do you have a picture of the victim?"

"Right here," Izuku replied, pulling it out of the file he had in a backpack. She took it and squinted at the woman pictured.

"Is… is that Setsuna?" She tilted the picture at Ochaco, who gasped.

"It is! I haven't seen her in a while… didn't her sister stop by here looking for her?"

"Fuck." Kazumi glanced around the bar, noting that not one of the patrons was watching them as one of the drunker men clumsily put money in the jukebox in the corner and "The Sound of Silence" began to filter through the room. "Okay, here's what's going to happen: I'm going to shut down for the night. I'm going to call Ashido and ask her not to come in. And we're going to discuss this upstairs."

"Yes, ma'am," Ochaco replied, going over to inform the customers. They all filed out, paying their tabs as they went (lest they incur the wrath of the owner and her knife) and Ochaco locked the door behind them.

As for Kazumi, her phone call was short and to the point. Once that was done, she proceeded to grab two unopened bottles of whiskey and tilted her head towards the stairs. The others followed her up, straight to a rather nice-looking apartment that seemed to double as the office for the bar. Kazumi went for the kitchen, where she pulled glasses out of her cabinet and set them on the bar counter.

"None for me, thanks," Izuku told her, waving his hand. "I have to drive."

"Smart. Okay, for the rest of us, then…"

"None for me, either," Ochaco piped up. Kazumi nodded, then turned her attention back to the picture of Setsuna that she still had in her hand.

"Setsuna Koizumi. She lived in the neighborhood, but she went missing a couple months ago. And she's not the only one."

"There were others?" asked Kirishima.

"Women have been going missing around her for at least half a year now. None of them have turned up, except for Setsuna." She set the picture down and crossed her arms, leaning against the stove behind her. "Do you have pictures of other victims?"

"Yeah," Izuku sighed, pulling more out of the case file. She looked at each one, shaking her head.

"Risa… Fumiko… Miyuki… all of them went missing a while back." Ochaco had tears in her eyes as she nodded in confirmation. "Their families called the police, but…"

"Nobody seemed to give a shit," Bakugo finished.

"Exactly. I know them. Setsuna was the oldest to go missing. All the others were in college or high school."

"You think it's connected to the human-trafficking case we got in a few weeks ago?" Kirishima asked Bakugo.

"I'm sure it is. It can't be a coincidence."

"If it's human-trafficking, then it's related to the dealers who popped up not too long before the girls started going missing," Kazumi stated bluntly. "I know it. I can give you the name of their head of operations."

"Okay, how the fuck do you know that?"

"He comes in from time to time and has more cash than any of the others. His name is Kai Chisaki, but he goes by Overhaul."

"Thanks." Bakugo threw back another shot, then stood up. "We'd better get going. See ya, Water Witch."

"Nope. You're banned."

"Fair enough."

Bakugo and his companions headed back downstairs and towards their car, which was miraculously untouched. Izuku glanced at his old friend, who wrenched the passenger-side door open and slammed it shut behind him.

He and Kazumi got in that fight a year ago. Around that time, he was really excited about something and then he was suddenly really depressed. It took him two months to snap out of it.

I wonder if their fight was the reason…

Unbeknownst to the officers, however, they were being watched.

The very man who'd murdered Setsuna Koizumi and all the other girls was behind a corner, his face twisted into an angry scowl as he saw them leave. His attention then turned to the bar.

"You bitch…" he whispered, watching Kazumi through the window as she and Ochaco cleaned up. "You'll get what's coming to you. Just wait. You'll ruin everything if I don't take care of this place…"

He began to scratch furiously at his neck, growling as he did so.

"I'll burn it. I'll burn it down and you along with it."

He then proceeded to turn and leave, ready to go buy a lighter… and lots of kerosene.

If you haven't figured out who the killer is… what am I saying? You've all figured out who the killer is. Most of this story is going to be angst and us torturing the characters.

Bakugo and Kazumi's fight did have a legitimate cause. We will just not divulge that cause as of now. We're saving it as a mystery.

So long and thanks for all the fish!