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The Hero Who Helps:
Episode I
Akita prefecture, one AM, the waters were turbulent but not completely untraversable. Salty spray soaked the occupants of the dinghy's with every dark wave they collided with and crested, then icy winds cutting in to the shivering drenched occupants. In a quiet moment one of the many pro-heroes careening towards their destination
Chin-length blonde hair with a fringe hanging over her right eye, slit pupil eyes focussed on the golden and white glimmering lights in the distance with bared, knife sharp teeth.
This was the Japanese here Ryukyu, ranked as No. 9. Headed towards an uncharted, likely man-made island off the coast. The Dragoon Hero garbed in her hero costume, crouching in the boat amongst the members of the Self-Defence Force and the few detectives that had tagged along to complete their investigation. A facility reminiscent of a warehouse with an accompanying lighthouse growing from the back corner like an aggressive weed, surrounded by flat cement grey land where crates, boxes and vehicles swarmed like bees.
A blanketed noise suppression Quirk gutted the sound of their engines on their approach and an additional illusory quirk allowed them to approach unseen. The rock shore approached without holdup or incident.
Communication was the jerking of heads and movements of the hands. Semi-automatics, small handguns and riot shields deployed, the clinking and clanking of their equipment still silenced before they were in motion. There was no long-winded run down of the plan at this stage, it was time for action, not speech.
Get in, neutralise any individuals found, lock down any assets and gather all information present and possible.
Teams split off to the north and the west and Ryukyu awaited her cue to action.
Ryukyu stepped ahead of the group she was responsible for and offered a brief nod to her partner for this coming operation, dressed up in his all blue jumpsuit with his wooden mask, shoes, knee pads and arms. The rising star, Kamui Woods.
"Ready?" she quietly asked as the stopwatch held in the hand of the detective behind beeped sharply just once. The young man nodded.
There was a rush of noise and the sounds of distant yells and muffled explosions. They moved.
It was a smattering of individuals that they encountered on the dirty track up the hill from the beach. They passed a few hasty looking guard towers and fences that they made short work of, their quiet approach still drawing curious assailants who had to be silenced before further alarms could be raised.
Kamui intercepted them all, rushing forth from their still moving convoy to deal with the burly men and women wrapped up in black and wielding higher calibre weapons than their own. They were left wrapped up in wood and blissfully unconscious. A few of their group split off to remain with them and ensure they remained appropriately incapacitated.
Despite their understated approach, the sliding doors of the dull grey building as more individuals in black careened out into the cold night air. A man with arms that reached to his ankles, another with an aggressive underbite tusks rising to his eyebrows, a woman with black smoke billowing from her nostrils and an individual with a striking resemblance to an alligator. The group approaching noticed them amongst the many others who rushed out into the dark evening to stand against them, illuminated by floodlights and the light of suddenly active and whirring helicopters and other armoured vehicles.
Ryukyu moved ahead of Kamui before he could move in this instance, the group ahead of them numbering in the high twenties to low-thirties at a quick estimate. This one was hers and hers alone.
She snarled, her muscles flexed, and she shed her human form to balloon in size.
Even in the age of pro-hero's, super villains and Quirks, a dragon is still a dragon. Ryukyu may have been bright pink; her human hair and fancy headband may have still remained (alongside the black leotard that made up the majority of her hero costumer) but she was still thirty feet in length and could obliterate a building with either a swipe of her claws or a gust from her wings (if she made an effort concentrated enough).
"Villains, stand down." Her words rippling up her now far longer, far broader throat with dark, deep authority.
They didn't, bolts of electricity, gusts of wind and a hail of bullets met her gravelly order, so Ryukyu started swinging. Claws chewed up asphalt and dirt as they sliced across the ground and into the crowd who just weren't fast or agile enough to flee in time. She was big and lumbering in this form, but she was also a UA graduate and had years of experience, so she wasn't as slow and cumbersome as one may expect a beast of her size to be. She made short work of them in that opening engagement and swept up the rest with a backhand of her clawed 'hand', a flick of her barbed tail and spooked the fight out of the rest she couldn't quite reach with a roar that pierced at their eardrums and rattled their brains in their skulls. She ordered them to stand down a second time, those left standing did so without argument.
They'd made land fall twenty minutes ago and started moving themselves about five minutes later. The operation lasted barely fifteen minutes longer. Their movements and numbers were too much for the smattering of staff on the slip of land that could have barely handled a small village.
There was only one more exciting little engagement before the curtain fell and the assets were being seized and the staff were in cuffs.
The girl.
Sensitive ears picked her up, Ryukyu's head snapping to the east where she was fleeing. Almost invisibly by the virtue of both her dark outfit and black wings, the flapping of which were what alerted the pro-hero to the villains attempted escape.
She offered a brief warning to her comrades and waited bare seconds after their acknowledgement before setting off. Taking to the sky with a single, calamitous flap of enormous, leathery wings. Her quarry immediately aware that she was in pursuit and doubling her speed and efforts.
She was some amalgamation of a human and a bat, fuzzy black wings spouting from an otherwise humanoid body (covered also in short black hairs). Fiery orange hair flying about in the wind they both generated and pushed against as the hood of the jacket she wore flew back. Hazel eyes flicked over her shoulder as Ryukyu approached, a display of fear and icy determination made before she once again concentrated on where she was going,
"Halt!" Ryukyu called. The girl dropped.
Arms and legs snapped together and against her body, wings curling tight around her body and tight against her petite frame as she made a nosedive to the black waves below. Ryukyu moved to intercept with a small growl and the two seared through the air towards the distant sea with their own minds whirring and their hearts racing.
The girl spun to face her, wings flared out on either side and, absently, Ryukyu briefly acknowledged how impressive of a wingspan the tiny young lady had as her small chest ballooned in size. She had taken a large inhale and Ryukyu had a sinking feeling of dread settling in her stomach as she anticipated what was to come.
She was correct, the girl screamed. A screech high and loud and shrill, assaulting the heroes ears like a high frequency scimitar. She was immediately thrown off balance in her own dive towards the child, her eyes instinctively squeezing shut in agony and her hands moving to her ears uselessly as was the natural human response before the noise ceased and she was able to blearily come back to her senses, head throbbing as her vision blearily returned and she was faced with a horrified look from a tiny little thing.
Thirty feet in length and weighing far more than her slim, diminutive human form. She jerked to the side as much as she could upon realising what was to come but it was too late to avoid her altogether, she collided with the red headed bat girl with a SLAP and she felt something give when her scaly body thwacked into her. A clawed appendage lanced out and snapped her out of the air as quick as she could muster and she desperately hoped she'd avoided inducing whiplash as she grabbed hold and kept falling.
She was able to recover before flattening the girl against the waves, regained her balance and hurled herself back into the air with a few more wind stirring flaps. Hurtling back to the island with her passed out prey in her claws.
It wasn't her most graceful, elegant or by the books capture, but it was a success all the same.
And it, unbeknownst to her, would be the start of a fundamental change in her very world. Ryukyu, or Tatsuma Ryuko when out of costume, entirely unaware that she would break apart the pro-hero world as she knew it by making this one capture.
…
Albus Dumbledore is more than just a hero.
A man bordering on two centuries of age, having operated as a Pro-Hero for over a hundred years, a soldier, a teacher, a statesman. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, somehow less known by his hero moniker Fawkes and more as a Professor and Headmaster of the Hogwarts school in Scotland.
Still a child when the world was adjusting to the rise of Quirks and the title of Pro-Hero came into being, he'd both watched and guided the world through the tumultuous shift of Quirk users from a minority to a majority. Through the laws, wars, bigotry and such.
And even though he was an ancient figure, brown hair now white and silver and face and body wrinkled and aged, he had lost exactly none of his grandeur and presence.
Which meant one thing in this very specific context (a fact that both his staunchest supporters and most vile detractors could both readily admit) …
Albus Dumbledore, Europe's Number One Hero, Britain's representative in the International Hero Federation, Headmaster of the prestigious Hogwarts Hero School, the Hero who defeated Grindelwald and stood as the only man to give Voldemort pause.
He was untouchable.
Tatsuma Ryuko (better known by her hero name Ryukyu, the Dragoon Hero) knew all of this. Of-course she would. It was actually the sole reason she had agreed to set foot on the plane alongside the IHF representatives and her countries larger than life Number One Hero.
This investigation went beyond Japanese soil, something she had lunged at without a second thought as her contemporaries fretted and fussed over themselves. She stood as the nation's Number Nine, a monumentally popular figure in the equally monumentally short time she had been a hero. Many were wary about leaving and being out of the limelight, Ryukyu could very easily drop in popularity due to her absence from a simple lack of ownership of the spotlight and this investigations success or failure could very well make or break her career.
But this wasn't about money, nor fame or glory.
It was about justice, and she was a hero, so why would she not?
At some point in the past few months, kept quite quiet and hidden from both the public and private eye, a crackdown had occurred on a drug ring operating off of an unmarked island just off of Akita prefecture. Alongside somewhat expected quantities of heroin, cocaine and so forth there were two glaring pieces of a puzzle none thought to find here of all places.
The first being a production facility of Trigger. The quirk enhancement drug illegal in all countries that called themselves members of the United Nations (and the vast majority of those who didn't). As well as the large quantities of the substance and equipment to make even more, there was the beginnings of a trail back to suppliers and potential buyers. Said trail was obviously still being followed to the best of heroes and investigators abilities, but most of it had been wiped when they realised they were screwed.
And the second, and somehow more incriminating and useful, was the girl.
She couldn't have been much older than twelve (revealed after a background check to be thirteen). Fiery red hair and a smattering of brown freckles around her tiny nose (once her black muzzle-esque mask had been removed), hazel eyes morphing from defiant to scared and broken under the intense interrogation.
She was young Ginerva Weasley, a British girl attending Hogwarts School for her second year. And she alleged that Dumbledore had sent her and a classmate to oversee a shipment to a facility the man ran as part of his group.
She died via chlorine poisoning mere hours after her questioning, dead in her cell with her guards (allegedly) none the wiser that she had been choking and dying inside.
Both of these were all that was needed for Japan to privately weasel its way into calling for an investigation into a vigilante group whose name had been whispered around and resolutely dismissed for the better part of two decades…
'THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX' and with a dead girl being transferred back to her country of origin accompanied by two heavily motivated heroes, Albus Dumbledore's untouchable days were about to abruptly end.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
Another little project I've decided to work on whilst I'm busy with real life and taking a short break from Define Normal.
Hope you enjoyed and want me to continue.