Several years before Izuku Midoriya started attending high school
Tartarus, the most dangerous maximum-security prison in all of Asia. Ever since its establishment, 349,726 criminals have been incarcerated, and only twenty-seven have ever left, those twenty-seven only doing so in body bags. When Lady Nagant put a bullet in her superior's brain and waited twenty minutes for the police to come and arrest her, she assumed that the only thing she had to look forward to was the possibility of becoming number twenty-eight.
"Quite the impressive record you've got here, Lady Nagant." Someone or something had other plans for her, it seemed. One minute, she's getting ready for her transport to Tartarus, and the next, she spends an hour sitting alone in an interrogation room until a heavyset black woman from the States sits down in front of her and starts going over her file without so much as an introduction. "Sixty-three dead, one hundred and forty-four incapacitated to the point of being unable to speak, and the latest addition to the list was the former head of the Japanese branch of the Heroes Association, joining the list thanks to a bullet to the brain."
"You make it sound like it's something to be proud of," Lady Nagant said. She jangled the chains around her arms and legs with a huff, hoping that they would just hurry up and throw her in prison, already.
"Well, why shouldn't it be? You were getting rid of threats to both your country and the world, and that's what being a Hero means at its base level, doesn't it?"
"Funny way of describing serial murder. Funny, but not historically inaccurate, I suppose."
"If that's how you feel, then I suppose it's a good thing that your latest kill was the man who forced you to do all of this," the woman said. "Honestly, this is why I keep saying that the Heroes Association is spreading itself too thin. Even if Bruce's kid does end up running things in a few years, they still won't be able to keep as good an eye on things as need be, and men who've never even seen a fistfight will still be doing crap like this where people can see it."
"Yeah, well—" Lady Nagant stopped herself short. Different parts of the woman's speech were standing out to her. How she said that the chairman was her "latest" kill as if there would be more to come, or how her criticism of what the chairman did came from how he did it "where people can see it" as if it were fine as long as no one saw it. "Who are you? Why are you even here?"
"My name is Amanda Waller, and as I said, I'm very impressed with you, Lady Nagant," Waller said. "You're an elite soldier who's been trained to be a killer since before you even knew right from wrong. I respect that. I need that, and I get what I need, no matter what." At that, Lady Nagant couldn't help but laugh at the truly ridiculous things Waller was saying, but she stopped herself to give her time to flash her middle finger at her.
"This is how they flip the bird in your country, right? It feels a little more composed than how we do it here, in all honesty," Lady Nagant said.
"I take it you need a minute to think."
"It only takes an attosecond to say what my finger is showing. You say you've read my file, so why the hell do you think that I would waste my time going back to being a hired gun for some bureaucratic fatcat?"
"Because this time, no one's going to spin some fat yarn about you being a Hero for any of this." That was at least enough for Lady Nagant to put her finger down. "I did read your file, so I know that you let things get this far because you kept being told that all of your dirty work made you just as heroic as anyone else, but I'm not going to lie to you. I'll have you do filthy, horrible things, and yes, they'll be for the good of society and something worth putting on your resume, but at the end of the day, no one's going to make up a lie about you being a good person for doing all of this. You're a bad person doing good things, and if you come work for me, I'll make sure that no one ever tells you differently, but if you don't like that, then I'll leave right now and you'll be back on your way to rotting in Tartarus for the rest of your life just because you got tired of being a liar. Your choice."
That was something Lady Nagant couldn't remember ever having before, not in any sense that mattered, at least. The first time the ball was being put in her court, and her choices were between rotting in jail like she had expected and going back to her old life without any of the self-righteous transparency. She entertained the idea of being stuck for a minute, but she knew that her answer was obvious.
"What the hell? Can't be any worse than what I've already had to put up with."
"Never say never." The next thing Lady Nagant knew, Waller had pulled out a gun and shot a tranquilizer dart into her neck, and Lady Nagant continued to question her life choices as she slipped off into unconsciousness.
Lady Nagant awoke feeling even less sure of herself on account of having no idea where she was. Her chains had been removed, an oddly optimistic choice on her new employer's part, and there was an odd tingling sensation in the back of her neck far removed from where she remembered being shot with the tranquilizer. She was in a prison chamber, that much was obvious from the rows of metal doors around her, the drab coloring, and the smell of undercooked sloppy joe meat, but beyond those basic elements, nothing resembled any prison in Asia she had ever been to, whether it be public, private or completely nonexistent as far as most people were aware. Naturally, Waller was nowhere to be found, so she figured that the first thing she needed to do was find her and get some answers.
All of which she would have immediately gotten to if not for the large, anthropomorphic shark she saw standing in front of her as soon as she stood up from the bench she awoke from. Dressed in nothing but a pair of cargo shorts, the shark man stared at her with a pair of lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes before he yelled at her with all of his might. Lady Nagant moved to activate her Quirk and defend herself, but she stopped herself when the shark man's yelling devolved into a coughing fit that saw his voice get higher and higher pitched with every cough that escaped his lips.
"Sorry about that, had something in my throat." Those were the words the shark man said to Lady Nagant in a soft, dopey voice that didn't fit his appearance in the slightest. "Good morning, Lady Nagant. My name is Nanaue, but most people just call me King Shark. Feel free to call me either, just don't call me late to dinner, know what I'm saying?"
"No, not at all," Lady Nagant said. "Wait, aren't you a Villain? Didn't you once try and eat All Might's Sidekick whole when the two of them stopped you from stealing priceless Atlantean artifacts?"
"Yeah. Good times," King Shark said with a laugh. "Anyway, as one of the senior members of the team, which just means I'm a little better at not dying than other people, I'm gonna be your tour guide through Belle Reve today. How's that sound? Well, that doesn't matter, so let's go!"
"Um—" Lady Nagant had a slew of questions, one of them being why she had been dragged into one of the most infamous maximum-security prisons in the United States, but King Shark had already pulled her arm and forced her to start walking behind him through the prison. She could hardly get a word in edgewise as he told her about the explosives wired into every cell door, the mounted ballistic missile launchers that would fire at anyone who tried to escape, and how you needed to make sure you were in the cafeteria as early as possible on Fridays because Friday was fried chicken day.
In regards to the cafeteria, when King Shark brought her there, he dragged her over to a table occupied by a light-skinned man with a metal eyepiece attached to his right eye polishing a sniper rifle between bites of chicken salad. King Shark loudly greeted him as "Floyd", and Floyd looked up from what he was doing to say, "Please don't tell me she's joining the team."
"I am. I don't know what this team is, but you mind explaining what's wrong with me?" Lady Nagant asked, not knowing why she even cared.
"Redundancy, for one," Floyd said. "Seriously, now we have three weapons experts on the squad when you only need one, and considering I'm the only one who doesn't need a fancy Quirk to do what we do, that should be me."
"I think Waller just wanted an even number of men and women on the team so HR would get off her back. Still, I think she's going to be a lot of fun!" King Shark said, laying a hand on Lady Nagant's shoulder.
"Don't touch me," was all Lady Nagant had to say to get it removed.
"Well, anything's an improvement over Quinn, I guess. Just don't get in my way," Floyd said. He went back to his food and his polishing, and King Shark directed Lady Nagant out of the cafeteria as she fumed over his rudeness. Barely giving her the time of day, acting like he was better than her without even seeing what she could do, she just had to wonder who he thought he even was.
"Wait." Then it hit her. The eyepiece. The gun. The disdain for Quirks. "That was Deadshot, wasn't it? The man who's one of the world's greatest assassins, despite being Quirkless?"
"Yep," King Shark said.
"He's gonna kill me on whatever sort of insane thing I've signed up for, isn't he?"
"It's not impossible, I guess." The way he was so nonchalant about it was unsettling, to say the least.
"Don't worry. With me around, he'd have to be a way better shot to get away with that." As was how a new face came upon them seemingly out of nowhere the second they exited the cafeteria, as if he were invisible, or something.
"Hey there, Chris. We were just coming to see you," King Shark said.
"We were?" Lady Nagant asked.
"I sure hope so, considering I'm going to be your superior on this mission," said the man named Chris, a tall, muscular man who seemed to be sizing Lady Nagant up with every second they were face-to-face. "Lady Nagant. I've heard about you. You do the kind of work half the people in here wish they could do. I'm impressed."
"Very unique way of looking at a complete corruption of bureaucracy, Mr. Chris."
"Call me Peacemaker, and you know why you're thinking like that? Because you were fighting for the wrong team. Japan might be the center of Hero-based activity, but your people have no real understanding of what makes a Hero a Hero, and that's not your fault, it's just not in your nature."
"Uh-huh."
"That's why you're gonna love working here. Now, you're working for America, AKA the real winners. So chin up, girl, you got a lot to look forward to."
"Right." Lady Nagant would lose no sleep at night from shooting Peacemaker in the face, but it was too late for that, as he had already walked away after patting her on the back, whistling "God Bless the U.S.A." all the while. "That was certainly a lot."
"Yeah, I won't lie, Chris is a big part of why HR has been on Waller to make the squad more progressive lately," King Shark said. "Well, let's go meet some of the other guys on the team, shall we?"
"I guess? Can we go see someone less intense than those two?"
"Sure, why not?"
"Also, you mind explaining what this is about?"
"Hah! Good one, girl." She didn't understand the humor, but rather than explain it, King Shark continued with the tour. She saw more jail cells, more offices that the guards who barely looked at them went in and out of, and more vending machines selling low-calorie candy bars than she would have imagined seeing.
King Shark brought her to the women's section of Belle Reve at some point, saying that she was going to meet the most low-key member of the time who also happened to be his best friend. When he opened up the cell that contained said best friend, a mischief of rats scurried out of the cell and bumped into her legs at various points, adding a lot to the school of thought that Lady Nagant had made a terrible life choice by going along with Waller.
"No. Stop. Stay. Well, I tried." The scattered words came from a young girl with messy hair inside the cell and eyes half-closed who was hanging upside-down from a large rat tail poking out of her jumpsuit and coiling around a metal bar. "Hi, Nanaue."
"Hi, Cleo! Meet Lady Nagant, she's gonna join us on our next mission," King Shark said.
"Yay. Sebastian, give our new friend a kiss," Cleo said. Predictably, Sebastian was another rat, that one deciding to crawl up Lady Nagant's body and kiss her on the cheek; Lady Nagant felt an odd combination of being impressed and being disgusted, and she acted on the latter when she swatted Sebastian onto the floor; she felt even more disgusted when he landed on his feet like a cat. "I do not like this woman, Nanaue."
"It's okay, she'll come around."
"Your friend made a rodent slobber all over me, and I'm the one who has to change my ways?" Lady Nagant asked.
"You say that as if Sebastian isn't the cutest thing in this prison," Cleo said.
"That's not exactly a hard thing to achieve in a place like this, Cleo."
"Ratcatcher. People who aren't my friends must call me Ratcatcher, and I don't like you. Go away now and let me sleep." Cleo waved Lady Nagant off for a few seconds before her eyes closed shut and she started snoring. Sebastian ran back into the cell and stuck his tongue out at Lady Nagant before King Shark shut her door.
"Ratcatcher. That name sounds familiar. She robbed a bunch of banks on the east coast and had a security guard's arm gnawed off by a capybara, right?"
"Yeah, but he was asking for it, trust me." Despite King Shark's request, Lady Nagant did no such thing.
"It's just hitting me that everyone on this squad is a Villain, which is just fantastic. Not like I have much of a moral high ground to take or anything."
"Aw, you're not so bad, and neither is the squad. Most of them, anyway. Come on, I'll show you!" Lady Nagant went along with his suggestion, though it wasn't as if she had any choice in the matter, and let herself be dragged through Belle Reve once more. King Shark took her to a large, open area in the women's section with an open concrete yard covered in chalk drawing after chalk drawing of some girl and an Olympic-size swimming pool. There were some vague splash motions being made in the pool, meaning someone was probably swimming in there, but what caught Lady Nagant's attention the most was the yard being occupied by the artist of the chalk drawings, a young girl with glowing hair of multiple colors who was muttering nonsense under her breath as she scribbled about on the floor.
"So is she the one who's not that bad, then? What's her deal supposed to be?" Lady Nagant asked. She took a step forward into the yard, and the second she did, a giant monster made of black sludge with tentacles poking out of its mouth and five eyes with skull-shaped pupils appeared out of nowhere right in front of her and roared at her, the roar being so loud and its mouth opening so wide that drops of goo—ones that felt surprisingly acidic to the touch—hit her face. "Okay, what is this?"
"You stepped on my art," the girl said, the speed of her drawing increasing and becoming frantic. "You weren't supposed to step on my art. Nanaue, tell her she wasn't supposed to step on my art."
"Yeah, Mae doesn't like it when people touch her art, especially when it's this kind of art," King Shark said, "but then again, she didn't know, so maybe you cut our new friend a break?"
"No!" Mae's drawing speed increased even further, and so did the franticness with which she moved her chalk. "There are only so many ways that I can maintain my beloved's visage in this mortal plane, and the last thing I need is for incompetent boobs like whoever this is supposed to be smudging them up with their filthy feet!"
"You ever think about getting an art studio? A tablet with a drawing program? Literally anything that keeps all of your craziness contained to just you?"
The next thing Lady Nagant knew, Mae's sludge monster pushed her onto a piece of concrete without any drawings on it and then proceeded to knock her onto the ground with a powerful, slimy punch.
"Okay, so a late introduction, this is Mae Dover and Her Monster," King Shark said, not making any sort of effort to help her up. "She used to be a normal kid doing normal kid stuff until her girlfriend was killed in a satanic ritual by the cult her parents used to run, so she made a contract with an eldritch deity to get revenge on them, which she did with a heck of a lot of gratuitous violence, but then she happened to go on a teeny bit of a massive killing spree after that, and after tearing her way through seven towns in southern Connecticut, she made her way here."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, but she's calmed down since then. Kind of. Just don't call her crazy; that really sets her off."
"Because I'm not crazy!" Mae snapped her head around and Lady Nagant, having pulled herself up, was able to see that there was a diagonal line of black sludge running across her face and through portions of eyes that had the same skull-shaped pupils as Her Monster. "All of those people had it coming, and I don't deserve to be here! Seriously, you light one bitch on fire, dismember a baker's dozen more, and then impale a pancake house's worth more on the horns of rampaging goatmen, and suddenly you're crazy? What the hell kind of country are we living in where that makes sense?"
"A good one, maybe?" Mae hissed at her, of all things before going back to her drawing, and Her Monster vanished in tandem.
It was hard for Lady Nagant to imagine liking someone less than Mae and Her Monster, but the fact that a human-sized object, probably a human, was crash-landing right in front of her made it quite possible that that would change.
"Dana, you almost made me mess up my tribute with your tremors! Get better at landing or I will vivisect you!" Mae shouted.
"Sorry, Mae! I was just excited to meet our new friend, is all!" said Dana, the woman in front of her. Lady Nagant looked at Dana and saw a tall brunette with an unnerving smile and muscles bursting out of a skimpy leotard version of All Might's Young Age costume. Unlike some of the other people she had met that day, she was able to recognize who Dana was on sight.
"Oh my God, you're Obsession!" Lady Nagant said.
"Nope! That's what the lamebrain media calls me, but my real name, as we should all know, is Mrs. All Might." Obsession punctuated her sentence with a lovelorn sigh that made Lady Nagant sick to her stomach. "You were a Hero operating in Japan, right? Have you ever met All Might? Has he talked about me at all? Have you seen him bat away Asian hussies because he's already found an everlasting soulmate in yours truly?"
"No, I'm pretty sure he only talks about you when talking about all of the craz—of all of the evil people he had to fight when he was interning for Iron Munroe."
"Because he's using me, his beloved, as an example of what people should aspire to, right?" Lady Nagant said everything she needed to say with her face. "Oh, come on, stop messing around. Anyone with eyes can see that All Might is crazy about me. That's what happens when you're in love."
"You know, Dana, I've said it before, but I really think you should try and date someone else. Ideally, someone who doesn't take so much offense to blowing up college campuses as a sign of affection," King Shark said, referencing the first in a long series of crimes Obsession committed to try and grab All Might's attention in his early years; she succeeded, yes, but not in the way she wanted.
"Well, how else was I supposed to get his attention after he blocked me online? You gotta think about the big picture here, Kingy."
"If you were thinking about the big picture, you wouldn't have constantly killed people to get his attention, you raging psychopath," Lady Nagant said. Obsession then turned her head at an angle and smiled at her like a serial killer; she was one, of course, but she had a normal smile before, so there was that.
"You love him, don't you?"
"Excuse me?"
"My All Might. You're in love with him, aren't you, hussy?"
"Excuse me?"
"I don't think it's gonna help, but you should probably say no," King Shark said. "I get it, All Might's a grade-A beefcake with a butt that just won't quit, but there's a time and place for this stuff, girl."
"I am not in love with All Might! I barely care about him—"
"Oh, so my precious soulmate isn't good enough for you, bitch?" Obsession cut in. "You'd be lucky just to be downing of All Might when he's breaking wind, you know! How dare you disrespect him like that?"
"I am not—"
"Don't fill the air with your dirty lies, skank!" Before Lady Nagant knew what was happening, Obsession had punched her hard in the gut and flipped her over her shoulder and into the pool. The Strength of Hercules was something else, she mused.
Before Lady Nagant could make a semblance of an effort to pull herself out of the water, something small and slimy had grabbed hold of her, and the next thing she knew, said small and slimy something threw her out of the water and back onto the concrete.
"Oh, so the skank knows how to swim, does she?" Obsession asked, looking ready to clobber her all over again.
"Everyone stop being annoying before I make your outsides your insides!" Mae said, not turning away from her chalk drawings.
"Eh, you always say that. By the by, you okay, lady?" Lady Nagant picked herself up, wrung some water out of her hair, and took a gander at her savior: a gangly girl who vaguely resembled a humanoid frog dressed in a black one-piece swimsuit with curly hair shaped like seaweed and eyes colored a mixture of blue, green, and pink; it would have been easy to assume that she was some sort of frog kid, but judging by the slight accent in her voice, Lady Nagant concluded that she was an Atlantean, most likely a pufferfish variant.
"Not really, but this isn't the worst thing to happen to me today, so that's something," Lady Nagant said.
"Aw, I'm so sorry to hear that. If there's anything I can do to make you feel better, just tell me. The last thing I'd want is for a nice lady like you to keep suffering," the pufferfish Atlantean said.
"Yeah, thanks." She meant it, she truly meant it. The Atlantean girl was the only person in Belle Reve who seemed to be acting with a semblance of normalcy, and she couldn't begin to convey how much she appreciated that. Her existence was the only thing convincing her that not everything she had thrown herself into would be completely insane, and she wanted to hold onto that for as long as possible.
"So since you look like you're feeling a little better, can I have your skin?" It didn't last nearly as long as she thought it would.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Come on, pretty please? Humans never even use it as well as they could, so can you just give me yours now? While it's still all calloused and moisturized and looking so tasty? Just asking for a friend who definitely isn't me." The drool dripping out of her mouth said otherwise.
"Okay, a little late getting to it, but this is Calamity Anne," King Shark said. "Nice kid when you get to know her, but I think you can figure out why she's in here."
"It's not my fault that human skin tastes so delicious, you know!" Calamity Anne blinked her multicolored eyes a few times before saying, "So says my friend who loves dining on delectable skin, not me."
"Do you want me to help you skin this bitch? Because I will do it in a heartbeat," Obsession said.
"I'm going to skin all of you if you don't stop being stupid!" Mae shouted without looking at anyone.
"Okay, you know what? I'm done." Lady Nagant showed no hesitation when speaking those words. "This was a mistake on my part that I let happen due to something I should probably be taking a pill for, but I'm done with this. I'm going back to Japan now, if that's okay with everyone."
"Okay, bye! Please let the door hit you on the way out!" Obsession said, happily waving goodbye. Lady Nagant wasn't planning on missing any of them, but she would be especially forgotten in due time.
"Um, I don't think you can just leave, girl. This is a prison, you know," King Shark said.
"I've dealt with worse. Besides, I'm just going to go right into Tartarus as I planned, so I don't think anyone will care. Goodbye." That was all Lady Nagant had left to say on the matter before she made her way to exit. Relatively speaking, of course; Belle Reve had no actual exit, which meant that she would have to climb a wall to get out while simultaneously avoiding the ballistic missile launchers, which was easy enough, in theory. The hard part would be getting transportation back to Japan that wouldn't catch the attention of the American authorities, but she would deal with that when the time came.
"NO." A robotic voice responded to Lady Nagant without prompting, and before she knew it, there was a blue robotic figure with a trapezoidal head and dark robes standing in front of her. Lady Nagant didn't see him come in, didn't hear anything in the way of movement to announce his presence, didn't get anything in the way of life emanating from his presence.
"Um, and you are?" Rather than say any words, the blue robot took a single step forward, and the next thing Lady Nagant knew, something went into her solar plexus harder and faster than anything she had ever felt before.
The half of a second it took to process that was all the time it took for her to lose consciousness, once more.
"Hassan-i-Sabbah, AKA Khyber, AKA the Old Man of the Mountain. The world's first assassin and the person from whom the very word is derived from, even now, he remains one of the world's deadliest and most precise killers. I don't know if this is the same guy who's been keeping himself alive for centuries however he can or if he's the latest in a long line of nuts to take on the mantle, like a less psychotic version of the Joker Legacy, and I don't care, because all that matters is that he's fighting for the right side, a side I thought you were on, Lady Nagant."
An explanation from Amanda Waller of who or what knocked Lady Nagant out was the first thing she heard when she regained consciousness in an interrogation room. It was the most normal thing to happen to her that day, but nothing about that made her feel good about it.
"You didn't say anything about having to work with a team of psycho Villains and genuine assholes," Lady Nagant said.
"You were promised a chance to do the dirty work and not have people lie to you about being a saint. If you were dumb enough to think you'd be teaming up with Wonder Woman or that Green Lantern who dresses in blue and yellow, then that's on you." The one who said that was the only other person in the room, a muscular man in cargo pants with twin pistols at his hips and a T-shirt with a cartoonish image of Bat-Emu on the front. "I'm Rick Flag, by the way. I'm going to be your handler on our mission."
"No, no you're not. I don't want to do this, anymore. This was an even worse idea than I thought, and I want out."
"Really? Just like that?"
"You got a problem with that, or do I need to start blowing holes in people?"
"No no, that's fine, you can leave," Waller said. Admittedly, Lady Nagant hadn't expected it to be that easy, yet here she was, immediately getting her way. There had to be a trick to it. "Just give me give you a stamp so we know not to let you back in."
"What is this, an amusement park? And aren't the stamps so you can get back in?" Lady Nagant's questions went unanswered as Waller pulled out a cellphone. She tapped it for a few seconds before putting it down on the table, and at the same time, heat started building up in the back of Lady Nagant's neck. "What were you doing just now? Adding on to some group chat of fellow scumbags like yourself?"
"No, just activating the bomb in the back of your neck." A less-experienced, less-hardened person would have verbalized their shock, the volume depending on how wet behind the ears they truly were, but Lady Nagant wasn't like that, so she kept her utter disbelief at what she just heard to herself.
"I'm sorry, the what?" She tried to, anyway.
"It was a thirteen-hour flight from Japan to Belle Reve, and three of those hours were spent surgically implanting a small, but powerful, explosive device into the back of your neck in approximate alignment to the base of your brain stem. Everyone who joins my team has this implanted in them as insurance that they won't try and ruin or abandon the mission because with the push of a button, I make everything above their collar bone look like Endeavor just sent a fireball up a sasquatch's rectum."
"Well, it must be defective, considering how I'm still alive, and all," Lady Nagant said.
"I'm also able to set a three-minute timer on it, and it's been one minute and twenty-three seconds," Waller said. Lady Nagant was afraid of something like that. "This is the only way people leave of their own accord around here. You can just let that happen, or if my previous offer still entices you, I can turn this off and we pretend like this little fit of stupidity of yours never happened. It's your call, and you have fifty-three seconds to make it."
It would have been so easy to just say nothing and let the timer run out. Whatever she had hastily signed up for had to be far worse than anything she had done in Japan, and even if it was only just as bad, having to further compromise her morals by working with a team of Villains wasn't something she was excited to do. All she had to do to avoid that was let herself die; give herself no chance to make amends for anything she did; validate everyone who believed she deserved to die, including herself.
"Just stop it, already." As if she could bring herself to do that.
"Good to know you're smarter than you look." With that being said, Waller tapped her phone again, and after two minutes and fifty-three seconds, Lady Nagant's neck stopped feeling like it was on fire. "Mr. Flag will take you to the meeting room where you'll meet the rest of your team and be fully briefed on your mission. It's a lot to put on your plate right away, but if you know what's good for you, you'll be a fast learner."
"I'll see what I can do." Lady Nagant stood up and Flag escorted her toward the door. Through all of that, Lady Nagant was able to see that there was another person in the room the entire time, for standing right behind Flag was an Asian woman wearing a white Noh mask on her face, a sarashi wrapped around her chest, a black leather jacket covering the same amount of skin, a red obi above matching leather pants. and twin katanas on her left hip. She had no idea how or why she missed her presence, and it wasn't something she wanted to think about. "Um, hello?" The woman said nothing.
"Sorry for the late introduction there," Flag said. "This is Katana; she's got my back."
"So she's your assistant, then?"
"I said she's got my back." It didn't appear that Flag was going to elaborate, and Katana didn't look like she would be opening up anytime soon, not even if she tried to ask about her perfume, which seemed to smell distinctly of the stench of death.
"By the way, Lady Nagant, welcome to Task Force X," Waller said, "and before you ask, because a newbie always asks, yes, you are, in fact, some kind of Suicide Squad."
As Lady Nagant was escorted out the door and it closed behind her, she couldn't help but feel that it was a fitting name for both the team and the fate she had brought upon herself.