Koto's POV

With Glitter Bomb's help, I was able to perfect my technique rather quickly. As I was introduced to citizens and shook their hands, I would take the time it took for a single blink to activate Echolocation and search them for hidden weapons.

Glitter assured me I was doing well, but I worried it was pushing boundaries of what was allowed for heroes to do. Even so, I continued up until this very moment. Every little smile and handshake lead up to right now.

My eyes flutter closed as I grasp the man's hand, and I immediately activate my quirk, creating a sound map of his body. Something heavy rests on his hip, tucked into his waistband. I have barely enough time to channel my quirk into it.

The shape fits the bill. And the resistance in sound is indicative of the hollow barrel of a gun.

I take a deep breath and hope my smile is still plastered on my face as I open my eyes. "Very nice to meet you," I chirp. His hazel eyes stare down at me, an impenetrable wall behind his pupils, with a glimmer of knowledge illuminating the iris.

As I pull my hand back, I reach up to rearrange my curls to lay over my left shoulder, the sign Glitter and I had agreed upon. Her silver eyes mark the motion.

"Have a good one," she exclaims, patting the man on the shoulder. His white hair bobs with a nod, and he turns to leave. The specks of glitter the hero leaves on his jacket glint in the midday sun as he takes off to wherever he's going.

We very well could have grabbed the man right then and left him for the police to interrogate, but we decided it was better to follow him and hope he leads us right to the source.

"Don't look suspicious," Glitter whispers in my ear as she pulls me in the opposite direction. She continues her path, smiling and greeting the residents of the area. With a harsh tug, I'm pulled into an alleyway with a winged police officer waiting for us. He grabs Glitter and I around the waist and spreads his wings wide to launch us up to the roof of a building.

My feet crunch on the gravel-coated roof. The three of us huddle up against the edge, eyes searching the crowds. "Where is he?" I ask Glitter.

The pro curls her fingers around, and a small sparkle of light flickers from a couple blocks away. "Over there," she says lowly.

"Now for the tedious part," the officer says, once again grabbing us to fly us a few more roofs over. He and Glitter share an understanding smile.

"Wha-?"

"Who knows where he'll go?" Glitter asks me as our feet once again find a solid surface. "We could follow him around all day and get nothing."

Indeed, we continue following the man around as he seems to attend to all his daily chores. He gets a haircut, he picks up his bike from a repair shop, he buys groceries. At the end of it all, he finally makes his way back to an apartment building.

He shakes hands with a hooded person departing, and they exchange a few words before he continues to make his way inside.

"New target," Glitter murmurs. With a flick of her wrist, she sends a few sparkles onto the new suspect's shoulder.

The officer with us speaks into his radio, giving the rest of our team the address for the building and requesting lookouts at each of the exterior doors. He then grabs Glitter and I once more and takes off.

"You can really hear through that stuff?" I ask in awe, looking down at the sparkles covering her skin.

She shrugs, spreading her palms. "If I really strain to hear something. And even then, it's pretty fuzzy. There was just something about their tone and body language that makes me believe this guy is more in control of everything. He may not be the head of it all, but he's important. That much was clear. Plus, he's onto some important business. Look at the way he glances around."

We continue following this new guy around until he approaches a large construction site. He looks around, and the officer tugs me down to hide my vivid hair.

Assuring he doesn't know we're following him, the officer brings us up to some stable-looking scaffolding to continue observing. The man enters a trailer with raucous sounds of laughter already inside.

"We have to get closer," Glitter says, climbing down the scaffolding.

"I'll call in backup," the officer states, still perched up high.

I follow Glitter down to the ground. We keep our footsteps quiet as we approach the trailer. Dark shapes move on the other side of the window, blocking the golden glow.

"--soon," a melodious voice says from inside. "Three gets loaded onto the truck, four goes on the barge. If transport goes smooth, nobody'll be the wiser."

A grin slashes across Glitter's sparkly lips. "We'll see about that."

I glance around the partially built area and notice a few shipping containers. They are labeled with dark, fresh paint. I nudge my mentor and nod to them. "There's one, two, and five. The weapons are most likely in three and four. But where?"

Glitter's long lashes flutter as she concentrates. "They said a truck and a ship. We can issue an APB on those. We need to make sure there's nothing in these before we write them off. That's all you. Stay in the shadows."

I shove off the drywall and hastily sneak from column to column. Turning up my collar, I try my best to keep out of the light. Thankfully, it's a cloudy night, but that also means anybody else could be hiding out here.

I reach the container labeled with a large number five. Both sides are locked shut, so I place my hand on the metal wall and send my focus through the molecules. I illuse into the container, only to be met with the dull, steady rattling of machinery. I try to discern what the separate pieces are.

I sense a motor, a pulley, and large gears. It's probably to install some sort of freight elevator. Once I'm sure that there's nothing else in the container, I push off and head to the next one.

Shipping container two is full of glass panes. I falter to pull my quirk back before I unwittingly shatter them. Similarly, the first metal crate is packed with glass doors. The metal handles on them trip me up for only a moment before I can ascertain that they're not any sort of weapon.

I hurry back to Glitter Bomb to report what I've found.

"So the goods must be in containers three and four," she speculates.

I bristle beside her as she continues to hide behind the metal column. "Do we even have probable cause to suspect them? It seems like a construction site." When Glitter shakes her head at me, I go on. "What more do we have to go on than the tone of that conversation before? He could just be the original target's boss. Like for a cover job or something."

"Maestro," Glitter reprimands sharply. I blink and take a step back. "You're using your head, and I commend that, but you need to think harder before you start second guessing me. They're conducting a 'business meeting' at night, they're sending out shipping containers with goods in them. This is a construction site; wouldn't you think they'd only be shipping things in? And if something was broken and they had to send it back, why wouldn't they want anybody to know? They can get replacements without having to pay through the nose for more."

Her silver eyes cut me a steely look that harshly contrasts the girlish glitter that covers her. "I admire you trying to draw conclusions on your own, but you'll have to do much more thinking before you suggest that a suspect is innocent."

I shrink behind her as she turns her attention back to the trailer where the meeting is being held. "Okay," I mumble, face burning with embarrassment. How could I not have thought of that? It seems so obvious when she puts it like that.

I lower my head to readjust my gloves, hoping the action hides my flaming blush. However, I'm yanked back by a tug on my hair. Before I can cry out, a hand is clamped over my mouth. I instead illuse a resounding "help!"

Glitter whips around and shoots a stream of glitter into my assailant's eyes. They shriek and loosen their hold. I use the brief slip to touch a finger to a strip of exposed skin on their wrist and illuse into them, hitting pressure points inside their body to render them unconscious.

I turn in time to see the large man tumble to the ground, hitting the concrete hard. Glitter pulls me back around. "Not over yet," is all she says, curling her fingers to summon a cloud of glitter.

A group of people bursts forth from the trailer, brandishing weapons of varying severity. I blast them back with a loud boom. Several tumble back, but others hold their ground. I count nine people in total.

"Those sounds alerted them to our presence," Glitter once again admonishes me. I can't believe I've messed up so many times in one night.

The hero clenches her fists, and the glitter pouring off of her condenses into the forms of three large beasts. Their faces are no more than gaping maws, and their paws are the size of dinner plates. I watch in thinly veiled interest as the beasts charge the criminals.

Glitter hauls me to the ground as gunshots echo around the construction site. Bullets pass straight through the glitter creations as they break apart and reform around the projectiles. The creatures trample several people, scattering their weapons and bashing the trailer back. The vehicle tumbles back into a support beam, which groans with the sudden weight.

I crawl to the side of the fight and focus on illusing white noise into the trailer, pulling its weight off the beam and to a more clear area. Glitter remains intent on keeping everyone focused on her sparkly creatures.

At the edge of the fray, one criminal fiddles with his gun, pointing it at a charging beast. At the very last second, a burst of air shoots forth and demolishes the creature. The man swipes his arm and directs the air pressure aside, pulsing the loose glitter into a pit of wet cement. It sticks and doesn't fly back up.

Glitter Bomb breaks apart her two remaining beasts and sends all the glitter to surround the criminal, flashing with dizzying color.

I hear more blasts from inside the barrage of glitter, and the specks fly in every direction in a disorienting array of light. I try to focus on the man, but I can't see him. Instead, images flash through the glitter in random, mismatched pieces. She's trying to disorient him, but it's working against me too. I can't tell what's real or fake.

I turn to ask Glitter what she's doing when I notice another villain aiming her gun at the back of Glitter's head. Without a second of hesitation, I illuse just under the villain's hand, redirecting the firearm upwards as she clenches the trigger.

A capsule fires out from the long barrel, clicking open into a four-pointed star of blades as it soars upwards. The criminal and I pause as we watch it fly. The star tumbles end over end directly into the woven metal rope of a pulley.

Sparks fly against the metal, and the cable frays most of the way through. The sling of metal beams strung up at the end sways way high up. I make eye contact with the woman as the cable groans. At the sound of the loud twang, her and I both launch into motion.

She dives into a shadow and teleports away while I run to my mentor, arms out. The beams high above slam into the supports and scaffolding and begin tumbling apart. I wrap my arms around Glitter and drag her aside, forcing her to relent her barrage on her trapped criminal. Seeing the glitter let up, the man clenches his teeth in a sideways, triumphant grin.

I illuse into his stomach with a loud boom. He flies aside, tumbling into a pile of two-by-fours with a dull thwack.

Just in time for the hailstorm of beams to crush the trailer. A spiderweb of cracks in the concrete stretch out from where the man just stood. Dust pours out from the demolished area in a cloud. I illuse to keep a beam from settling onto a knocked-out criminal. Glitter sends in a wave of sparkles to clear the scene of any people, piling them up in an area that remains stable.

High above, the building groans and shifts. A loud flapping alerts us to the winged officer landing just outside. "What the hell happened?" He exclaims.

"Nine criminals contained," Glitter reports. "Suspicion of illegal weapons sales, and attacking an on-duty hero team. There's a truck heading out with a container labeled 'three' and a barge being loaded with one labeled 'four.' We suspect these hold illegal weapons. They are most likely of the same model as these." The hero gestures to the container of glass doors that has been punctured by a falling metal beam. Shattered glass glimmers from the inside.

"One got away," I recall to the officer. "A woman. She ran when she misfired into the beams. Everyone else is here and accounted for."

The officer nods and pulls out his radio. "Can you give a statement when the rest of the team gets here? We'll get an APB out on her while we transport and process these," he waves his hand at the criminals on the ground, their limbs splayed unceremoniously. I nod and follow the two adults' lead, searching the criminals for weapons.