"You know," Pro-Hero Iceman called out, "You should surrender now, and save me the trouble of hurting you."
He surveyed the warehouse in front of him, eyes flitting from one frozen villain to another. He'd caught them by surprise - good. He'd expect no less from a Pro like himself, but the petty victory still brought him a sense of satisfaction.
Not as much as he'd get from taking the worms before him in, but still. He hadn't trained his Quirk to such a pinnacle for nothing, after all.
"What makes you think we'd get hurt by the likes of you?" The man closest to him sneered, violet eyes surveying him with barely-hidden disdain, and Iceman clamped down on the urge to ice him for his cheek. Pro-Hero Anchor would be right behind him, he knew, even if he'd told her to hang back, and it wouldn't do to be caught on camera acting "out-of-line", no matter how much the scum deserved it.
"Good one, Jack," someone muttered, and his eye twitched, just slightly.
No, he'd save the "out-of-line" behaviour for the trip back to the prison vans.
"None of you have quirks powerful enough to go against me," he said, instead. Generously; they were mere snowflakes in a blizzard. He doubted their quirks could do anything without support from the rest of their team. "They're talking about plea deals at the station, you know. Come quietly and give names, and maybe I won't have to freeze you all solid."
"Goddamn." The woman to his left drawled. Her hands were in her pockets, chin jutting out with unearned arrogance. Autotomy, his brief scan over the mission brief told him. He discarded the name as soon as he recalled it; it wasn't like she'd been needing it soon, anyway, between himself and her delinquent attitude. "You're pretty confident, Hero-sama," she said to him. "What a cool attitude. Must make you a catch with the ladies, eh~?"
"Unlike you," Iceman told her, "I don't need to posture for people to like me. Heroes don't have anything to make up for." His gaze flickered over to the effeminate blond in the corner as he said it, the man holding a hand protectively over his stomach, and had to forcibly override the sneer that threatened to overtake his expression. Defective Quirk. It was a wonder nature hadn't done its job and cleaned the villain up for him already; but nature couldn't be perfect, he supposed. Not yet, anyway.
"That's a low blow," the huge one sitting next to the blond said, almost reproachfully, and Iceman nearly laughed; as if a mutant villain was going to talk to him about playing nice.
"What's low is you lot," he said, readying his fighting stance. "I've given you long enough, you know. Are you going to surrender peacefully, or am I going to take you in?"
He said it to the room, vaguely, but mostly to the man who hadn't spoken yet; the one standing at the centre of it all. The one who'd separated himself from the Pro-Hero attending with a scant wooden table. The one nursing an arm in a sling.
Iceman had seen that injury happen, after the fact, watching a news broadcast at his boss's request. The video - not one of Anchor's, but it would have to do - had shown the man slamming his fist into the Number 8 hero's gut, scoring the first direct hit on the man in months and putting him in hospital. The punch had also, if the video was to be believed, shattered the villain's arm in its entirety. A shame such a powerful strength Quirk wasn't in the hands of someone who could use it, but unless the rumours of quirk transference he'd heard were true (and he was sure they weren't; someone with such a powerful quirk would hardly be a lowly school principal, after all) there was nothing he could do about it.
Well. Nothing he could do about the Quirk situation. The villain's existence, however, was very solvable. It was a terrible shame the regulatory bodies wanted these ones in good condition.
The injured one held his eye contact like an equal, and this time, Iceman really did sneer; and people had the nerve to call him arrogant. The disrespect was palpable, from such a leech; so offended was the Pro Hero that he nearly missed it when the villain opened his mouth.
"You came here with someone else, didn't you?" he asked, and Iceman smiled. It wasn't a nice smile - Iceman knew it wasn't. But it was confident, and for the masses, that was always enough.
"I did. Does that make you want to stand down?"
The villain didn't flinch. Iceman was tiring of the charade; they hadn't done anything to warrant him using his Quirk, he thought, but if this dragged on any longer he might cut the corner anyway.
"We don't give up," he said, quietly but firmly, and then, before Iceman could decide enough was enough, "Do you know where your partner is, Iceman-san?"
It was a borderline ridiculous question, and it brought creepy grins and snickering to the villains around him. Iceman's gaze flickered from one to another, the arrogant woman and the rude violet-eyed one in particular bearing wide smiles full of teeth and not much else. His hands twitched; he felt the spare ice in the room throb in response, calling out to be used. "What sort of-"
"HIMURA-KUN!"
The voice was high-pitched and familiar, accompanied by faint, paired footsteps, and he whipped around. Light flashed behind him and the footsteps stopped; and Pro-Hero Anchor stood there in front of him, palms tied flat against each other, camera recording, one disembodied, suit-clad hand fisted in her hair and another holding a shining blade to her throat.
"You can take your arms out of your pocket, Tomy-chan," he heard the monstrous one say, and it clicked into place, all at once, that they'd been stalling him. He was one of the greatest people Japan had, and he'd been tricked into stalling by a bunch of worthless villains.
The moments he took to process it were the last they needed to have someone tucking a second blade under his own chin.
His quirk easily froze people solid and blocked off areas to all but the heaviest fire on the regular; had the potential to destroy bodies like tissue paper, should he be called upon to use his true power. It was honed to a point, already head above the rest at birth, and shoulders with the effort he'd put in to train it. It had the brute force to overcome anything the world could throw at it.
It did not have the ability to stop a knife that was already digging into his skin.
"You're quick on the uptake, Iceman-san," a voice near his ear cheered, cloyingly friendly and annoyingly high-pitched. A hand pushed against his shoulder and he forced his feet to move despite the way his pride ached. "Or, hm, what did Kizuki-san call you? Himura-kun, right?"
He chanced a twitch of his head, glancing down at his shoulder, only to see nothing there. Cold metal bit into him for his gamble, and the pressure on his shoulder grew tighter. An invisibility quirk. He was being held hostage by an invisibility quirk. It was like a bad joke.
"Interesting," the voice of the violet one drawled out. "I could have sworn we knew a Himura-san. Small world, isn't it?"
He gritted his teeth. "Anchor-san..."
"She told me to," his colleague hissed back. "I didn't have a choice, Iceman!"
"She's invisible! She doesn't have mind control, goddamnit!" he snapped back, and the villain with the broken arm laughed - really, fully laughed. The optics, Iceman thought, had gone out the window the moment Anchor had stepped into the room. "You-"
He twitched his head back towards the villains, and noticed that they were a lot closer to him than they'd been before. That was... suboptimal, he admitted. The whole situation was.
"Well, this is nice," the arrogant woman giggled. "I gotta say, it's not every day you heroes are so compliant. It's real kind of you!" She crossed her arms across her chest; it almost hid her empty wrists.
"Well, I knew we could rely on Anchor-san," the effeminate one smiled. He was leaning against the huge one, but up close he shone, cheeks rosy even if his stance spoke of ill health, and he stared straight into Anchor's camera like he was born for it. "Bonjour, mes cheries~ did you miss me?"
"You won't get away with this," Iceman growled. "Setbacks like this are only temporary, for a hero." For someone of his caliber, especially.
"That's a real can-do attitude," the one with the broken arm said, and his smile was almost genuine, green eyes just a little too relaxed for it. "I'm a big fan of it! But as for getting away with things... ah, that ought to be our line, I think. Don't you think attacking children is a bit much, Iceman-san?"
"You forfeited your right to mercy when you became a villain," Iceman spat. Apparently, it was the wrong answer, judging by the sighs he heard, but he didn't care. They were just leeches, after all. Their opinions didn't matter, worth less than his by orders of magnitude.
"Why are you doing this?" Anchor asked, and - well, it was at least a characteristic question, even if it made him want to rip his hair out. He could feel the ice in the room - if only he could reach it before they noticed -
"I think," the huge one said, "Your agency, of all agencies, knows exactly why we're doing this."
"Not that either of you knows what we're doing!" the voice at his ear chirped. "Hey, Mizukun, can I tell them? Please?"
The green-eyed one - Iceman was beginning to hate those eyes, beginning to think about pushing his quirk through them until they popped and stopped looking at him like he was on their level - hummed his assent.
"If you want to, Villain San."
"Yay!" The voice cheered, and suddenly it wasn't just steel but breath against Iceman's neck. He suppressed a flinch as the hand that had been on his shoulder grabbed his chin, tugging it upwards. "It's a real simple thing, really! You're gonna get rid of your colleague for us!"
The idea - it was so absurd, so patently ridiculous it started a genuine laugh out of him. "You think - you think that's going to work?" His mind, having recovered from the shock, was racing - were they planning to move him? Give him a weapon? Did they even have any plans to deal with his quirk, once they couldn't threaten his life directly? "You think someone like me is going to listen to anyone like you?"
"Iceman-san," Anchor hissed. "Iceman-san, don't reply to them..."
The effeminate one tutted. "You ought to listen to your beautiful colleague, Iceman. Ah, but you won't be needing my advice, will you? Such a shame..."
"I won't listen to any of you," Iceman snarled, and received a quintet of confident smiles.
"Well," the violet one began, and stepped forwards until he was nearly nose-to-nose with Iceman, separated by a step and a height difference. His smile was the widest, the eyes Iceman had first noticed dancing with wild glee as he surveyed the captured Hero. "Sorry, I guess. But you don't have a choice. You're going to do what we say, see, and we want you to kill Kizuki Chitose."