"You've got a death wish, showing up here."
Dabi didn't flinch as Chrono's blade hovered inches from his neck.
The sharp curve of the weapon glinted under the estate's security lights, the silence between them tense and crackling. The front gate of the Shie Hassaikai estate loomed behind him, guarded, sealed, fortified like a damn fortress and yet Dabi had gotten far enough to trigger a personal greeting.
He rolled his eyes. "Bit dramatic."
Chrono didn't move. His expression was unreadable beneath that usual blank mask, but the edge in his voice was unmistakable. "You have three seconds to explain why you're trespassing before I end this here."
"Looking for someone," Dabi said, voice dry. "Y/n. Chisaki's princess."
That got a reaction.
The blade didn't move, but Chrono's body shifted almost imperceptibly, enough for someone like Dabi to catch. A change in tension. A question behind the silence.
"She's not here," Chrono said slowly.
"That's why I'm here." Dabi's voice dropped. "Because she's not."
Chrono stared at him for another long moment. Dabi could feel the decision forming in the silence between them- whether to slice him open on the spot or give him a sliver of trust.
Instead of lowering the blade, Chrono's grip on it shifted- steadier, not retreating.
"You show up out of nowhere. Get this far into the estate. And the first thing out of your mouth is her name?" Chrono's voice was flat, unreadable. "You'd better start explaining."
Dabi didn't flinch. "I know she's missing."
"How?"
"Shigaraki. Whole damn city's buzzing." His tone was clipped, serious now. "Something about a hospital visit. Your men out in full force."
Chrono's gaze sharpened. "What else do you know?" He asked.
Dabi didn't look away. "I'll need to speak to Chisaki. Directly."
"No."
Dabi's jaw tensed. "Wasn't a request."
"Why do you care?" Chrono asked, voice quieter now. "For her?"
Dabi didn't respond.
That was answer enough.
Chrono went silent for a beat longer before he finally pulled the blade back.
Then Chrono turned on his heel. "Come with me. Say one wrong thing and I'll personally carve you into floor polish."
Dabi exhaled, rolling back his shoulders, and followed.
The walk through the estate was brisk and quiet, shadows casting long lines across the marble floors.
Chrono didn't speak again until they reached the end of a long, dim corridor lined with carved wooden panels and soft, humming lights.
He stopped at a tall, black double door.
Chrono stepped ahead without a word and entered first, shutting the door behind him with a low, final thud that echoed through the corridor.
Dabi was left standing in silence outside, eyes fixed on the grain of the polished marble panels. He could hear nothing from within, no raised voices, no footsteps. Just that suffocating stillness that always seemed to hang around places like this. The kind of silence that came before someone made a decision that couldn't be undone.
Seconds passed.
Then the door creaked open once more.
Chrono emerged, his expression unreadable. "He'll see you now."
Dabi didn't bother responding. He stepped past him and into the room.
The office was dim and cold, lit only by the pale glow of a desk lamp. Heavy drapes were drawn shut, muting the world outside. The air smelled like antiseptic and clean paper. Too clean and too precise.
And there, behind a sprawling mahogany desk, sat Kai Chisaki.
The man looked like he hadn't slept in days.
Dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes, and his gloves were wrinkled from wear. His posture was rigid, controlled. A half-full glass of water sat untouched beside a scattered pile of medical documents, some creased, some stained like they'd been clutched too tightly.
But even in exhaustion, Chisaki radiated menace. That familiar surgical calm. The predator kind that didn't need to raise its voice to draw blood.
His golden eyes lifted as Dabi stepped in.
Dabi didn't wait for an invitation to sit. He stepped forward slowly, carefully. His usual swagger dialed back into something tighter, more measured.
"I'll help find her."
His voice was low, rough at the edges.
Kai Chisaki didn't move. His gaze was as still and precise as a scalpel.
"I've got contacts in places your guys won't reach. People who hear things, move things. If she's out there, someone knows something."
Still no reaction. Just those sharp, hollow eyes boring into him like they could peel back layers.
Chisaki finally spoke, voice quieter than expected, but with a weight that carried across the desk like lead.
"And why," he said slowly, "would you care so much?"
Chisaki studied him for a long beat, like he was parsing a risk, calculating the variables of a situation gone off-script. His thoughts raced, until he concluded that he wasn't in a position to deny this assistance.
Dabi stayed silent. The answer rang deep within his chest, but he didn't dare speak it into the world. Yet.
Eventually, Chisaki leaned back just slightly in his chair, shadows carving deeper lines into his face.
"Fine."
"I need everything," Dabi said, raspy voice returning with his laidback demeanor. "Start to finish. What happened. Where. Who was there. Every detail."
He stood still in the quiet that followed, eyes locked on the man across from him.
Kai Chisaki watched Dabi in silence.
The boy didn't flinch beneath his gaze. Didn't fidget, didn't shrink. He wasn't trying to posture like most of the fools Chisaki dealt with, he was just here. Dead serious. That made him harder to read, but not impossible.
What Chisaki couldn't understand was why. What the hell did this patchwork kid care about his daughter?
He didn't miss the twitch behind Dabi's eyes when her name was mentioned. Subtle, but real. He knew the look of a man sitting on something. A man holding onto too many thoughts at once. Fine. He'd let him play it close to the chest, for now.
It itched at the back of his skull.
He hadn't seen her face in over a decade, but he remembered it in perfect detail. The sharpness in her cheekbones. The strange clarity in her eyes, like she could see straight through people. It was her quirk after all. She could see through anything.
He kept his expression locked, composed, the way he always did. But the tension was there, beneath the skin. In the way his fingers pressed just a little harder against each other. In the twitch of his jaw behind the mask.
He opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out a sealed black envelope. He didn't hand it to Dabi. Just held it in one gloved hand, letting the weight of it hang in the air.
"She left a card," Chisaki said, gaze fixed on the edge of the envelope. "No threats. No message. Just a signature."
His jaw clenched.
"Spectra."
Dabi didn't react right away, but Chisaki caught the faintest twitch in his brow. Confusion. Recognition, maybe. But not enough.
"You don't know the name," Chisaki muttered. "I didn't expect you to."
He returned the envelope to the drawer and shut it.
"Spectra is her mother."
There was no warmth in the way he said it. No weight behind the word mother. Just the facts, spoken like a file being updated.
"She was once part of this organization. Before the restructuring. Before I took the reins."
"She had a quirk unlike anything we'd catalogued," he said, voice flat but laced with something colder. "Visual in nature. The ability to see through anything, but with precision. Walls, objects, bodies- she could look through them at any depth she wanted. All the way to the other side, or just beneath the surface. Skin. Bone. Veins."
Chisaki's fingers curled against the wood of his desk.
"She could choose how far to look. Adjust it like a lens. One second she'd be seeing through a steel wall. The next, she'd be staring through your ribcage, watching your heart beat."
He didn't look away from Dabi as he added, "she disappeared fifteen years ago. Took nothing. Said nothing."
Dabi leaned back slightly, arms crossed, expression unreadable beneath the lazy slouch of his posture. But his eyes didn't move from Chisaki.
"So what does she look like?" He asked. Not out of idle curiosity, he wanted to know what to look for. Who to burn.
Chisaki's jaw ticked, like the question scratched at something buried deep. Still, he answered without delay.
"She wears a red dress. Always red. Every time. Black gloves. She dresses like she's walking into a ballroom, not war."
He paused.
"Black hair. Short. Eyes like scalpels. Walks like she owns the floor under her heels. She's... precise. Elegant. And lethal."
A beat passed.
"If you see her, you'll know."
Dabi didn't say anything at first. Just let the name settle in his head, flickering like static behind his eyes.
Spectra.
"Sounds like trouble," he muttered finally.
Chisaki's response was immediate, flat. "She is."
Dabi's fingers drummed once against the arm of the chair, slow and idle, like he was thinking something over.
Then his voice cut through the silence, low and even.
"And her real name?"
Kai didn't answer right away.
His gaze drifted to the far wall of the office, jaw tightening, something unreadable flashing behind his eyes. Not emotion- Chisaki had learned to kill those. But maybe the memory of what came before he did.
He finally spoke.
"Seraphine Kuroda."
The name hit the room with weight, like a folder being slammed shut.
"That's what it was before she vanished," Chisaki added. "Not that many ever knew it. She only let a handful of people call her that."
He didn't elaborate further. Didn't need to. The silence that followed said enough.
Seraphine Kuroda.
Dabi sat with the name in his head, rolling it over like a match in his palm.
Spectra.
Seraphine.
Y/n's mother.
The woman with eyes like scalpels and a signature red dress.
Got it.
Dabi leaned back slightly in his seat, not quite relaxed, but no longer poised on the edge of his nerves. His voice came quiet, almost casual, but Kai could tell the question had weight.
"Did she have a specialty?" He asked. "Back when she was with the organization. A particular market she handled, or scene she worked?"
Chisaki's brow twitched. He studied Dabi for a moment, then nodded once, slow.
"She was good at a lot of things," he said, voice clipped. "Surveillance, infiltration, extraction. But her main focus was biochemical distribution."
Dabi's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Drugs," Chisaki clarified. "Rare ones. Expensive ones. She had the instincts for high-end trade. Could spot quality and bullshit with the same look. Worked mostly with custom blends, quirk enhancers, suppressants, neural suppressors, illusion triggers."
His tone darkened, but stayed even.
"She didn't just sell it. She designed half of it herself."
Dabi's gaze didn't waver.
Of course she did.
"Right," he muttered.
The silence that followed wasn't empty, it was charged. Like something big had just shifted beneath the surface.
Because now they weren't just looking for a woman with a dangerous quirk.
They were looking for a ghost who knew how to vanish, how to build a trap, and how to drug someone without leaving a trace.
A ghost who left a name behind like a loaded weapon.
Seraphine Kuroda.
Spectra.
And she had Y/n.