Flicker. A lightbulb, far past its expiration date swung idly back and forth by an inch, its dusty body held up by a frayed, and even older cord, hanging from the ceiling. The bulb flickered again, its warm, yellow light dimming out of existence before shining again on the two men sitting inside the second floor of a decrepit "apartment". No one lived there anymore, and now it sat being used by unsavory figures as a base of operations. As the two men made eye contact, their weapons both resting in limply held arms at the sides of their bodies, the light flickered once again, before… "POP!" The glass of the bulb shattered, leaving the room in darkness.
"Ah fuck," a gritty, deep voice exclaimed through the darkness. "Knew it was just a matter of time, stay put, I'm gonna go get a new bulb eh?" He said with a questioning tone, not as a question though, but a statement. As the larger man turned around, making his way to the stairs, he thought he heard a noise behind him but ignored it for a moment. It wasn't until it was too late, the shorter man, had already been caught, the back of his neck grabbed by a figure in the shadows, and thousands of volts sent powering through his body and into his brain, sending him to the ground incapacitated before even having the chance to say a word, that the other man turned around, the thud alerting him that something happened. When he looked, he saw nothing for a moment but the blackness of the room; until a yellow spark, for not but a millisecond lit up the wide smile of an unrecognized face. The burly man sprang into action bringing his pistol up to his chest and firing off at the man. Each shot lit up the room, revealing the new location of the attacker as he approached quickly, but despite all of his shots being sent to where the man should've been, nothing seemed to land; Not even splinters rose up from where the shots would've hit the wood floor had they missed. Three shots were all he had time to get off though before his opportunity to fight back was taken away, two smaller hands grasping him by the neck, sending the same unavoidable charge through his body. All he saw was yellow lighting surrounding him before his vision went white and he was left in the same state that his companion had been reduced to
Chargebolt wiped his hands of the sweat they had taken from the necks of the two incapacitated men onto his pants and looked around the room. Standing in the center he held his finger up and let a small current travel up to the broken lightbulb, giving him enough light to look around the room. He had been sent on a solo mission to take out the criminals occupying this apartment building, a street gang called the "Rough Riders" a name taken from American culture, quickly and quietly. As he surveyed the room he found nothing of interest, save for a piece of paper detailing guard shifts for the floors and let his hand drop, bringing the room back to its state of darkness. Walking over to the paper he brought his hand up, using his sparks to create enough light to reveal the contents of the sheet. Directing his eyes to the current time, he found the names of the two men he'd just taken out. Dieter and Trax, which left the four people down in the lobby, and three floors above him with 3, 5, and 6 people respectively. The leader of this group was extremely slippery, having already escaped 2 other attempts to raid his hideouts; and now the hero network had contacted his agency, deciding that the best way to go about this was stealth. Which left him here, now deciding what the best course of action was to successfully complete this mission. He kneeled down, his fingers tapping against his leg as he thought. Firstly, he knew that any sign of danger and he would lose the boss and that on the top floor, he would have to take the boss out first to avoid him running away. Worst case scenario he could always shockblast the room, but he'd prefer to avoid losing his ability to defend himself at all costs. Getting up he walked back over to the open window through which he had entered the building and sat on the ledge, observing his surroundings. Grabbing a hook from his tool belt he threw up a line and made the climb up to the third story window, his fingers resting in the ledge, and peeked inside. As the schedule said, three more guards, two with pistols like before and one with a shotgun. He considered his options quickly before placing his hand against the wall and feeling out the power lines running through the house. A quick burst of energy sent through the lines knocked out the radio in the largest guards hands, and as they turned towards each other to diagnose the problem, Denki slunk through the window taking his opportunity to grab the smaller two's heads, slamming them against the larger one's torso and shocking all three to the ground at the same time. With two floors taken care of, he had more room to move around but the toughest two floors still awaited him. Sliding out of the window, he repeated the motion from before, moving his hook up and getting a view on the next floor. Five guards, two girls held large shotguns at their sides, and all five had animal-like mutation quirks. If they weren't all taken care of at once, any one of them could blow a hole in Denki's body, or alert the rest of the building to his presence. Thinking quickly he grabbed a different style hook from his belt, still attached to a wire on him, and threw it onto the power lines above the street. As it landed, the hook clasped around the topmost wire and just like that, Chargebolt had 50000 volts of electricity at his disposal. The wire moved freely inside of a coil connected to the belt, but on the other side, the capture weapon was able to be thrown like a rope. Lucky for the guards their mutations would make sure they didn't die, but it certainly wouldn't feel nice. Denki shot a small burst of electricity through the wiring in the floors into the leg of one of the guards, which caught the attention of the rest of the companions in the room, causing them to gather around him in worry. Denki took his chance, throwing out the wire and wrapping it around the five, before bringing it back to himself to make a deadly loop. In mere seconds all five guards dropped to the ground, their bodies unable to handle the charge placed on them by the wire, but the wire too was unable to handle the voltage and melted off at the belt, cutting off the current and stopping any further damage that would've been inflicted on the perpetrators. With a click he dropped off the wire tool and began his ascent once more, to reach the final floor. His worry laid not with the boss, as long as he was quick enough he would be an easy mark. No, Theodor Kayhill was just the brains of the operation, and simply had a quirk that made quick escapes easy. That's the tricky thing about teleportation quirks, they certainly aren't useless. No his worry was about the guards that surrounded Kayhill, and what to do about them, after Kayhill was taken out. He knew three of them from the file: Jax, an alligator mutant who was no stranger to killing and doing so brutally, Syd, a telekinetic, and Felix, a dolphin mutant who can control water. There wasn't much else to do but bust in and figure it out from there. With deft maneuvering, Denki positioned himself on top of the window sill and pulled himself back to pounce. Taking his last tool from the belt, a flashbang, he pulled the pin and counted to four before dropping it in the room and turning away. As soon as it went off he turned back and leaped from the window sill, flying across the room and tackling Kayhill to the grounds focusing as much electricity into his head as he could, sending him into a near-death state. He was lucky he'd made the jump as a portal had just begun to open up before he stopped the man. Standing up above the still body, he looked around the room. He didn't have much time before the effects of the flashbang wore off and he was in real trouble. He moved quickly to the three unknown guards, making quick work of them with hand to hand combat techniques, and electricity. Turning to the other three, they stared him down, and he quickly realized that he was in a more dire situation than he realized. The presence of Felix meant that a shockburst was not an option as he could withstand it and easily take care of Denki once he was brain-fried. He didn't have much time to think through as Jax charged him quickly picking him up with little effort and slamming his body down through the floor.
As Denki opened his eyes, he saw that his surroundings had changed, and he was now lying near a pile of the five guards from before, looking up he saw a cloud of dust beginning to dissipate from above him as flecks of wood slowly trickled down onto him. Once the dust cleared he saw the hole in the floor above him, through which he realized he'd fallen and began to feel the pain pulsing throughout his entire back. Taking a hit that hard definitely didn't feel great, but his logic quickly kicked in as he realized that his opponents weren't going to give him the privilege of working through that pain. He scrambled away from the spot he had been laying, just as the alligator man fell down through the hole he'd just created, leaving a sizable dent in the floor where he landed. Denki looked up and was again forced to make a snap decision, rolling off to the side as Jax threw a metal pole down into the ground where Denki had just moved from. Judging from the way the pole impaled itself into the floor, he guessed that rolling away had probably saved his life. Denki did a small jump and roll again to place himself opposite the pole and shot a small beam of electricity through Jax and into the pole. Jax was stopped in his tracks for a moment the shock causing him visible pain before he again began moving towards Denki. At this point, Denki had made it back up to his feet and was now able to move more effectively around the room. He made a run towards the window but was stopped, his leg wrapped up by the same wire that he had just discarded before on this floor. Jax had the wire wrapped around the middle of his calf and was twisting it tighter and tighter causing it to begin cutting off the circulation in his leg. From what he knew about Jax, there was no way that he was going to stop until he'd fully cut off denkis calf with the wire, and with no way to overpower the man, he did the only thing he could. Grabbing the wire, he sent a huge shock down the conductive material and into Jax's arms, resulting in a loud roar and Jax yanking the wire towards himself, dragging Denki along with it. As he flew towards Jax, Denki wondered if being mauled by an alligator would look good on a tombstone. The thought was cut short though when Denki slammed into a wall, again not having a moment to be dazed before Jax picked him up and held him high above his head. Denki had seen movies before, he knew that he was about to have his back broken. But at that moment, as Denki fought to stay alive he realized something that Jax hadn't accounted for. Reaching up he grabbed a loose wire that draped down from the floor, wrapping it around his hand to get as much conduction as he could before planting his hand on the face of Jax. It didn't matter what type of animal you were, house power flowing through your skull will take you down, and take Jax down it did, his limp body slamming to the ground knees first, with a loud thump. Denki looked back up through the hole.
"Alright, you fucks, who's next?" He called up tauntingly at the men. He was pretty badly beaten up, but he still had it in him to try and take them on. What he was met with was not the face he'd expected of a dolphin or a telekinetic, but instead, it was a scruffy-faced man with baggy eyes and long black hair that seemed to droop over his face as he looked down the hole.
"You still want to have a go with them?" Eraserhead asked sarcastically down the hole.
"Ah shit, hey Eraser, I didn't think you guys were gonna make it," Denki said with a cheeky smile pointed up the hole.
"Well, we needed to make sure that you'd actually taken care of Kayhill first, which it seems like you did."
"Yeah, and it wasn't easy either, that slippery fuck was about a second from making it out."
"Well you caught him anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter, let's get you out of here, I'm sure that fighting with Jax didn't leave you unscathed."
Eraserhead said, just as a group of policemen entered through the stairway, beginning to cuff the gang members and survey the area. Just as a cop offered to help Denki out he was cut off by Eraserhead, this time much closer having jumped down the hole next to Denki. "That's alright, I'll get him." He said offering his shoulder to Denki who took it, holding his injured side as he stumbled towards the stairs with Eraserhead.
"Thanks, Ai- er, Eraserhead, I appreciate the help."
"It's nothing kid, you've been a star player with these solo missions lately, the least I can do is give you a hand," Aizawa said as they exited out the front door, into a cacophony of sirens and a few reporters trying to get a story. Eraserhead took him over to the back doors of one of the ambulances and sat him down, to which one of the medics got to work diagnosing him and bringing over a healer to help him out. Denki groaned as he sat down, the biting pain against his spine making the task more than a little difficult.
"So where does that put me in the agency ranking?" Denki asked with a cheeky grin, knowing the answer already.
"How many times are we gonna go back and forth to explain that you are one of 3 pro heroes who work at my agency, including me?" Aizawa asked with his classic done-with-it expression on his face.
"As many times as I can while you're my boss." Chargebolt let out a chuckle as the medic finished wrapping his sides with bandages and allowed him to get up.
"You're not gonna be 100% immediately, so please take it easy on your back, else you could end up with permanent damage Chargebolt-sama."
"Thanks, sir, I appreciate the help," Denki said, getting up from the back of the ambulance and beginning to walk away, Aizawa at his side. "So is that it for the Kayhill file then Eraser?"
"Pretty much, we've got mounds of evidence against him so the trial should be short, and as we know of that's the only active hideout of his, the Rough Riders have officially been taken down," Aizawa said, allowing a small speck of pride to escape through a smile for his pupil who had allowed such a big takedown to happen.
"Hell yeah!" Kaminari exclaimed, allowing a small fist pump of joy for the completion of a successful mission. "So… did you drive here yourself?"
Aizawa let out a small chuckle. "Yeah, my cars parked not too far away, you wanna head to the office? Or would you rather write up the report tomorrow?" Aizawa asked Kaminari as they approached his car, an unsurprising, average gray sedan.
"Now who's asking obvious questions?" Kaminari said, letting out a small chuckle that turned into a cough as a sting hit his ribs. Opening the passenger door he felt the familiar pine scent of Aizawa's car, the felt khaki seats a welcoming joy as he sat down in the padded chair. Aizawa took good care of his car, as with most things that were not his own person. Kaminari had learned this after trying to put his feet in the dash and receiving a quick slap to the thigh from the man. A small tinge hit his spine as he sat down, feeling some small disappointment at the fact that adrenaline and shock had worn off. Moments later the driver-side door opened and Aizawa stepped into the seat in a swift motion, not wasting any time before putting the keys into the ignition and starting the car up. The vehicle purred to life and as just as soon as he had gotten in were they taking off from the scene.