15 Chapter 14 - Aftermath

3rd person's POV

A reporter was standing where the MechAnicAl vs Raiko fight had taken place a few minutes ago.

"What you can see is the aftermath of Knockout's fight against AnArchY's leader. The whole district we are in was destroyed by their clash. The area of destruction extends in a radius of 250 meters from here. Thankfully, there has been no casualties, all residents or people have been evacuated by either the heroes or Knockout. Still, the entire area is destroyed, hundreds of people will be rendered homeless. What will happen to them? But the real question is: Why was a villain like AnArchY allowed to roam free in a society saturated by heroes? Why did it take a Vigilante to stop him? Why didn't the heroes to anything to a villain capable of this much destruction? And who is this mysterious Vigilante, Knockout, why isn't he a hero? With this much power, he could be very high ranking and paid well, but no, he is a Vigilante, he isn't paid, but why?"

The same random inspector's POV (you know, the same as always)

Today was supposed to be a day like every other, but what I didn't expect, this morning, was to find out that Knockout had taken down AnArchY and destroyed a whole district a few hours ago. He even delivered MechAnicAl on our doorstep, how considerate of him.

You know what that means, right? The amount of paperwork I'm going to have to do for this… I guess I won't be going home tonight. Curse you Knockout! Why did you have to take down a supervillain today!

Speaking about Knockout, I have to go to an emergency meeting about him, he had done quite the stunt and that was worrying the police and the heroes. They feared people would think heroes were useless and that Knockout would bring an increase in Vigilantism. Both of which are true…

Ever since he had started as a Vigilante, the Vigilantes, which were practically extinct, were on the rise again, and it was causing a lot of trouble for the hero association.

I entered the meeting room and I saw important faces: the Chairman of the Hero Association, Chief of Police, the Commissioner General, Detective Tsukauchi, known always working in important cases and always solving them fast. There were also a few other people I did not recognize, but that looked important.

I sat down, and shortly after, I was asked everything about Knockout's case.

"Honnestly, we don't have much on it. The man is paranoid about his identity, he uses a different voice every week, changes his patrol route every week, we never found a print, a hair or a drop of blood. Sure, we are now sure about his quirks and we know that he's a teen or a young adult, because he's growing, but that's it. You all know how many people falsify their quirks on their files, so that probably won't help us in finding him. We could try and search for his parents, someone with a warp gate quirk and someone with a strong strength enhancing quirk, that's probably our best lead, although, given Knockout's skill set, he's maybe from the underworld. He always works alone and is very cautious. Also, he always "give" villains he captured to this police station in particular, and I don't know why, though it may be to mess with me, he knows my identity and that I'm the detective working on his case."

The other people around me looked at me, in a mix of incredulity and frustration.

"So, you are saying that after more than a year of investigation, this is all you have found out about Knockout", the police chief said.

"Yes, he is extremely cautious, intelligent and elusive. And some of this information was given by Knockout himself when he hacks into our database."

Honestly, I was just waiting for someone else to take this damn case before retiring, so I didn't care anymore about what my superiors thought about me, so if they think I'm incompetent, I don't give a damn about it.

The meeting went on for a couple of hours, the main subject being how to handle Knockout.

They were worried Knockout would make people want to become Vigilante instead of Heroes and weren't exactly sure how to handle him.

On one hand, they could try to convince him to become a hero, but they knew it probably wouldn't work, as his methods were different from the hero's. He used illegal means to get information and often attacked people that were known to be criminal or villains, but that there was no proof of their crimes. He also didn't give a single f*ck about the law.

On the other hand, they could put more efforts into capturing him, and try to lower the people's opinion of him. People would then think more of him as a criminal and less of a Batman style of hero. Then, when they captured him, the public outrage would be too big. The problem was that Knockout was good at maintaining his public opinion and people already thought of him as a hero, so it would be hard to change their opinion.

Of course, they could try to capture him first, then, when he can't do anything about it or defend himself, destroy the people's opinion, but that wouldn't be very hero-like, would it.

Anyway, they needed to do something about him, he couldn't be ignored anymore, so they were in a bind.

In the end, the hero association chairman, who did not like Knockout at all, decided to go for the third option, so they doubled his bounty. Also, he asked me:

"Detective, you are the one person who had been working on Knockout's case the longest. IF we wanted to ambush him, where could we possibly find him?"

"Well, Knockout is very unpredictable, but he always brings the villains he captured at this exact police station, it's the only thing that could lead you to find him. Just wait till one or two in the morning in any day and you'll be able to see him here. But I strongly do not recommend ambushing him, it will end badly for you. He may choose to be a little less gentle if you chose to ambush him and a few of the ambush members may end up with more permanent damage. You also need to consider that he has an extremely potent warp gate quirk."

"We have our ways to deal with warp quirks, and he often comes at this police station in the night….Perfect", the Hero's Association Chairman answered me, completely disregarding the warning I had just said about ambushing Knockout.

"Also, he continued, Detective Tsukauchi will replace you on this case, please introduce him to it and give him all the information you managed to collect on Knockout. This case is now too big for you."

Well, that was blunt. He could've just said that I was incompetent, that would've been simpler.

Not wasting any time, I mentioned to the detective to follow me, as my presence wasn't needed anymore in this meeting. I introduced Detective Tsukauchi to the case, everything that we had gathered about Knockout; his crimes, supposed motives, age, appearance, powers, capabilities, personality, everything, which wasn't that much, considering I had this case for more than a year.

Finally, someone else had taken Knockout's case, so I could announce my imminent retirement, I was already more than sixty years old, and the case tired me and made me feel even older.

3rd Person POV

While Detective Tsukauchi was being introduced to Knockout's case, the meeting continued, they were planning how they would ambush Knockout in a few days.

"For his warp quirk, we should ask Eraserhead to come and erase it. He won't be able to use it anymore, so he won't be able to escape. Next, we only need to form a team that will be able to take care of his enhanced strength and we will be able to easily capture him."

While they were planning how to capture Knockout, unbeknownst to all of them, some invisible fingers were watching them, learning of their plans.

Raiko's POV

So they are finally planning to capture me. Took longer than I expected. Too bad for them I have eyes everywhere.

Having eyes everywhere and a photographic memory allows me to "record" everything the eyes see, and then later view them in my memory, so even if I'm not currently watching, I will be able to watch it from my memory.

Also, the detective that had my case will retire, I'll have to send him a goodbye gift.

They really aren't very bright if they think this will be enough to capture me. And they also think that capturing me is a good idea in the first place…

I guess when they will try to capture me I will have to entertain them a little…