Winds of Destiny: Rising
Chapter Twenty-One: Culmination - Part One
Misaki walked into the large conference room of a hotel a few blocks away from Jaku General Hospital where the Safety Commission's remote command center had been established. She had ridden in a few minutes ago via shuttlecraft with Detective Tsukauchi and Gran Torino, as well as a few dozen police officers who would be involved in the initial incursion. Her team of analysts was just finishing the setup process for the workstations, which had been transported from headquarters overnight by way of several independent couriers in order to avoid suspicion. They were all dressed in casual attire, having arrived the previous night under the guise of being travelers on a guided bus tour. Misaki was also incognito, dressed in faded skinny jeans and a burgundy and heather gray baseball tee covered by a hybrid denim hooded sweatshirt. Her hair was pulled back into a mid-height ponytail and a pair of comfortable black and white sneakers adorned her feet.
They all stopped what they were doing and looked up at her as she walked in.
Swallowing heavily, Misaki clutched the to-go cup of coffee in her right hand a little tighter and took a deep breath before smiling at all of them in greeting. "Good morning everyone. I hope all of you got a good night's rest."
She'd ordered them not to begin the setup process until the morning, urging them to take the night to relax and get some sleep. She had a feeling it was going to be a very long day, and she wanted them all as fresh-minded as possible.
They all affirmed her sentiment and she nodded, setting her coffee cup down on the table next to her before addressing the group in her best authoritative voice, "You all should have received a color card designation with your assignment. As you'll notice, each station has also been color-coded. Once I've called out your designation and explained your task, please head to one of the corresponding stations where you will find your individual assignments listed."
Glancing down at the tablet in her left hand, she continued, "Red team, you'll be monitoring and maintaining communication with the police and the hospital infiltration team. Green team, you'll be monitoring the situation with each branch location raid team. Blue team, you'll be responsible for coordinating medical support and optimal routing for evacuation teams. Yellow team, you'll be maintaining the team's comm signals and surveillance, as well as monitoring chatter through any media outlets and online information sharing sources."
A small, blue-haired young woman approached her as the others began reporting to their stations and hesitantly addressed her, "Ma'am, my card is black?"
Misaki sighed softly to herself before turning to respond to the woman. "Migi, you and your sister will be tag-teaming the relay of information to and from the villa raid team. Hidari will be fulfilling the same role within the command center at HOMEC. Keep me informed about anything important happening at the villa."
Migi immediately nodded and gave a short bow. "Yes, ma'am."
Migi and Hidari were identical twins. Their quirks allowed them to communicate telepathically over great distances, making them ideal for sensitive counterintelligence operations; there was no risk of a wire being discovered if they weren't wearing one. The Safety Commission had scooped them up from the boarding house they'd been living in after they'd gotten caught sneaking food from the kitchen and had been turned over to the police for theft. Migi was the more introverted of the two and was often charged with being the relay while Hidari handled the more active infiltration roles.
Shadou had suggested using the two of them to monitor the situation at each command center and report to each leader if there were any complications that occurred with either of the main raids. She'd wondered about the necessity of using the twins for that instead of the standard comms, but Shadou had insisted that their relay was more reliable than a hackable comm signal. Misaki had grudgingly agreed, knowing that it was more likely that he was using them to spy and report on her leadership abilities than any worries he had about their signal possibly being hacked. He'd been his usual curmudgeon self when she'd laid out her plan for everyone two days ago.
...
Misaki turned toward the people gathered around the conference room table and asked, "Any questions?"
Shadou's typical snide-sounding voice spoke up, "What if they'd been color blind?"
She made a conscious effort not to roll her eyes as she turned to him and answered, "Each card and station also have the color written on them."
He scoffed. "You thought of everything, huh?"
Having had just about enough of his constant naysaying, Misaki caustically asked, "Would it kill you to be supportive for once?"
"No," he answered immediately, tilting his head to gesture to the screen on the wall showing a birds-eye view of the area surrounding Jaku. "But it might kill some of them."
Misaki swallowed heavily, quickly getting her frustration under control before calmly responding, "Plans and preparation are only as effective as those who execute them. I believe in our heroes."
Shadou inclined his head, staring down his nose at her as he said, "We'll see just how well that works out for you."
...
Never in her life had she wanted to knock someone's head off as much as she did his sometimes.
"Commissioner," one of the red team analysts turned in his seat to address her. "The hospital raid team is prepping to move in. T-minus five minutes and counting."
A blue team analyst quickly followed up. "Evacuation teams are standing by in their designated sectors. Ready to begin routing civilians away from the area once the raid team makes entry."
"Online chatter is clear, no mentions of anything related to the PLF," another analyst, this one from the yellow team, chimed in.
"Branch location raid teams are prepped and awaiting the green light," a green team analyst reported.
Migi glanced over at her. "The villa team is preparing to move in now."
Misaki took a deep breath in slowly through her nose and let it out from her mouth, clutching her tablet in her hand as she watched the heroes on the main screen begin making their way out of the meeting room where Detective Tsukauchi had been debriefing them about the situation. "Here we go..."
In no time at all it seemed, the heroes and police approached the entrance to the hospital, and a red team analyst called out, "Hospital infiltration team is making entry."
"Evac teams are on the move," a blue team analyst confirmed.
Misaki tapped on one of the yellow squares on her tablet screen, activating a direct commlink to one of the yellow team analysts. "Pull up the hospital security camera network on the main screen."
A few seconds later, several camera feeds began filling up the screen, showing numerous hallways and lobby areas. She watched as the massive team of heroes began to break off and she instructed the analyst, "Follow Endeavor."
The screen immediately focused in on the camera in the hallway Endeavor and several others were marching down, sending the remaining camera feeds shrinking down to line the edges of the main feed. Not more than a moment later, the familiar form of a squatty, bespectacled man in a white coat came into view, waltzing down the hall ahead of the heroes, seemingly without a care in the world.
She narrowed her eyes darkly. "There you are you sick son of a bitch."
As soon as the doctor became aware of the heroes, he attempted to make a mad dash in the opposite direction but was tripped up by Eraser's binding cloth. He fell forward onto his hands and knees and almost immediately began to visibly age under the influence of his Erasure.
Surprise, surprise – the doctor really did have a quirk.
She'd suspected that he had possibly falsified his records in the quirk database, considering how paranoid the old bastard was. She knew from personal experience that it wasn't that difficult to do, especially for a quirk doctor. It appeared that he had some sort of revitalizing or longevity-type quirk. All of the good he could have done with that quirk and his abilities, and instead he had used it to build a bunch of zombie puppets to be directed by the whim of a mad man. It was enough to make her sick.
But she didn't have time to be dwelling on that at the moment. While Endeavor and his team confronted the doctor, several of the other heroes were concentrating on swiftly evacuating the patients and hospital staff. Mirko was leading another group of heroes into the entrance to the morgue, which they believed would lead them into the underground lab.
"Nomu incoming!" One of the red team analysts suddenly called out, just as the wall in front of Endeavor's team exploded into the hallway, revealing a large whale-like Nomu, carrying another with several drill-like arms in its gaping maw.
One of the drill arms caught the doctor in the side, and he immediately began to melt into a puddle of sludge. Misaki's eyes widened in recognition and she cursed under her breath, "A double."
That was not a good sign. She could only hope that the doctor hadn't given that quirk to any of his Nomu. Or worse, Shigaraki.
"Mirko has entered the underground lab. She's reporting that the doctor is there, along with several High-End looking Nomu. She's moving to assess whether or not it's another double," the same red team analyst announced.
They didn't have a camera feed past the entrance to the morgue, so all they had to go on to track the progress of the raid on the underground lab was the reports from the engaging heroes. Each red team analyst was tasked with monitoring the frequencies of several heroes and determining priorities on what to report about their current situations. Their workstations would handle converting the speech to text and highlight certain words or phrases that stood out to draw the analyst's attention. Anything that was determined to be a high priority, the analyst would announce to the room so that Misaki could determine if any further direction was required.
"Where are they with evacuating the hospital and the surrounding area?" Misaki asked one of the blue team analysts sitting nearby.
"They're moving the last patients out now. Seventy percent of civilians in a five-kilometer radius around the hospital have been evacuated as well," the analyst swiftly answered.
If any of those High-End Nomu were activated, they were going to want to make sure any civilians were as far away as possible from the potential battleground.
"The doctor has activated the High-Ends in the underground lab! Mirko and Crust are engaging!" The red team analyst who had been monitoring communications with Mirko suddenly cried out.
"Send word to the city evacuation teams to pick up the pace," Misaki immediately ordered the blue analyst next to her.
They needed to get those civilians to safety.
"On it," the man swiftly replied, instantly opening up a commlink to the evacuation team leader in the field and informing them of the current situation in the hospital.
Feeling confident with the delegation of the evacuation process at the moment, she turned her attention to one of the red team analysts to ask, "What's the status of the heroes in the main hospital?"
"Still engaging the lower level Nomu," the analyst replied succinctly.
One of those High-End Nomu had nearly ended Endeavor's career, and she had a feeling that if the doctor got to Shigaraki before they did, things were going to go from bad to a whole hell of a lot worse. The more backup Mirko and Crust had, the better the chances were of making sure that didn't happen. She trusted the heroes in the hospital to understand the severity of the situation and act accordingly, especially Endeavor and Eraser, who had faced that level of creature in the past and just barely walked away with their lives.
"They've managed to neutralize the majority of the Nomu in the hospital. Several heroes are currently headed to back up the others in the underground lab," the red team analyst next to her reported.
"About time," Misaki couldn't help but grumble.
Not that she was disparaging the efforts of Endeavor and his team, but time was of the essence now that the High-End Nomu had entered the fray. The doctor was no doubt using them as a diversion to keep the heroes occupied while he headed to wherever he was keeping Shigaraki. They still didn't know how far his procedure had progressed, but one thing was for sure: letting Shigaraki join the battle would be the absolute worst possible outcome for the entire operation.
"Mirko has located Shigaraki!" The analyst tracking Mirko announced from the front of the room. "He appears to be asleep in one of the capsules. X-Less and Present Mic are headed for their location as we speak."
She could hear the sound of her blood rushing through her veins over all of the chatter in the room. Seconds ticked by like hours, making the world seem to move in slow motion around her as she waited with bated breath for some kind of status report. With her eyes firmly fixed on the screen full of hospital surveillance camera footage, she impatiently urged under her breath, "Come on, what's going on in there, guys?"
"We have confirmation from X-Less that Shigaraki is non-responsive. They're calling him DOA," one of the other red team analysts announced, sending a ripple of relieved sighs echoing around the room, including Misaki's.
A different red team analyst spoke up to inform them, "The reinforcements have reached the underground lab and are engaging the High-End Nomu."
Even though she wanted to relax and celebrate, she knew there was still a lot of work that needed to be done. They couldn't call this operation a win until all of the Nomu had been neutralized and both the doctor and Shigaraki were safely in police custody – dead or alive.
As soon as she opened her mouth to issue an order to the blue team to divert some resources to assist with battling the Nomu, the yellow team analyst who had been monitoring the hospital surveillance feed spoke up. "Wait."
A feeling of dread spread through her like wildfire at the anxious tone of his voice. "What is it?"
"Something is happening in the hospital," the analyst said, a bit of confusion now lacing his unease.
"Show me," she ordered, turning her eyes back to the main screen.
The analyst zoomed in on the area closest to the entrance to the morgue. A series of fissures began to appear in the walls and floor surrounding the door, quickly spreading toward the camera just before the feed suddenly cut out. As she watched several more cameras rapidly go dark, Misaki's dread blossomed into full-blown terror. She knew what this was. On some instinctual level, she understood what was coming.
Death.
"We need to go..." She muttered, her fearful eyes watching the wave of Decay continue to cut out camera after camera as it spread through the hospital at an alarming rate. Raising her voice as loud as she could, she yelled, "Everybody out, now! Leave everything at your stations! Move!"
The hotel patrons and staff had already been evacuated earlier, leaving only Misaki and the analysts in the building. She made sure everyone got out of the room safely before following after them. As they exited the building, the bus driver yelled to them to hurry onto the tour bus as both heroes and civilians ran by in an effort to escape the oncoming Decay wave. It was still several hundred meters away, but it was closing in fast. One of the analysts ran toward the back of the bus and opened the escape door, ushering people in from the back as well.
"I heard you guys needed a lift!" A voice suddenly called out above them.
Misaki looked up just in time to see the Magic Carpet Hero, Sultan float down to sit on top of the bus. Sultan's quirk allowed him to negate the gravity of any object he sat cross-legged upon, up to a weight of one hundred tons, making it appear to be weightless and float. As long as he remained seated, he would also retain the state of the object. He was a hero who specialized in support and rescue operations, like this one. She wasn't sure who had contacted him, but she applauded the initiative. It was doubtful that the bus would have been able to outrun the decay under its own power.
As the last of the analysts climbed into the back of the bus, Misaki's eyes were abruptly drawn to an alleyway across the street. Huddled against the side of one of the buildings, cowering behind a plush, brown teddy bear, was a terrified, dark-haired little girl.
"Commissioner! We need to go!" Migi called out to her from the back of the bus.
Her eyes swiftly glanced to her left at the wave of Decay that was steadily making its way down the street toward them. They probably had less than a minute before it engulfed the whole area. Before her brain could allow her to consider her actions, Misaki had already tossed her tablet to Migi and begun sprinting across the street.
"Where are you going? Commissioner!" Migi's flustered voice called out after her, but she didn't stop to acknowledge her. She couldn't afford to hesitate when a child's life was in danger.
"The Decay will reach this area any second!" The concerned voice of Sultan announced from his position atop the bus and it slowly began to lift up off of the ground.
"Wait!" Migi cried out to the hero in a panic.
Misaki skidded to a quick stop next to the terrified little girl, who couldn't have been more than five or six years old, and immediately hoisted her up into her arms. "Let's get outta here."
She held onto her tightly as she quickly raced back across the street while the child clung to the back of her jacket with one hand and the arm of her teddy bear with the other. The ground began to rumble as the Decay wave drew closer and the pavement beneath her feet suddenly began to break apart. As she came within range of the back of the bus, which Sultan was currently hovering just off of the ground, she gripped the girl by her ribs and tossed her to Migi. The distraught young woman caught the shocked child and immediately turned to hand her off to another analyst behind her.
Migi swiftly turned back around and extended her arm toward Misaki, screaming, "Take my hand!"
Just as she reached for the woman's outstretched hand, the ground she was standing on cracked and she stumbled. The tips of their fingers barely brushed as the bus began to slowly lift further into the air.
"Wait!" Migi hysterically cried out to Sultan and reached out to her again, screaming, "Commissioner!"
"We must go now!" Sultan yelled in reply, his concern for their prospects heavy in his deep voice as the Decay swiftly began to crash down upon them.
Migi dove down onto the floor of the bus, reaching out her hand as far as she could and frantically calling out, "Reach!"
Quickly getting her feet back under her, Misaki used one of the bigger blocks of broken-up debris as a steppingstone and leaped as high as she could into the air. The moment her foot left the ground, she knew she wasn't going to make it. The bus was pulling away too quickly, and her makeshift jumping base had been too unstable for her to get a firm takeoff. Desperation gripped her and she extended her arm as far as she could, mentally urging her hand to reach when she suddenly felt a firm gust of wind push her from below. It vaulted her up just enough for her to grab ahold of Migi's outstretched arm.
The woman clutched onto her wrist for dear life and called out in hysterical relief, "I got you! I got you!"
The draft or air that had been supporting her vanished suddenly and she started to slip, dangling haphazardly by one hand from the back of the bus. A stark wave of dread swiftly drowned out her relief and she instinctively glanced down behind her to the crumbling landscape below. Swiftly turning her eyes away from the horror unfolding beneath her, she tightened her grip on Migi's wrist and swung her other arm up to reinforce her hold on the woman's arm. It was going to be a long descent into hell for her if either one of them let go.
Migi's other hand shot down and grabbed onto her jacket to keep her from falling as she desperately called out to the other analysts inside the bus, "A little help!"
Several more hands shot out and grabbed ahold of Misaki's arm, hauling her up into the back of the soaring vehicle. She collapsed next to Migi onto the floor of the aisle and promptly emptied her lungs of air in a huge sigh of relief. The analysts who had helped haul her in quickly pulled the back door closed behind them and secured the hatch.
Still panting from the rush of adrenaline coursing through her, courtesy of her near-death experience, Misaki lifted her eyes to the little girl staring back at her over the arm of one of the bus seats and asked, "Was that you?"
As if knowing that she was referring to the gust of wind that had kept her from crumbling into a pile of dust, the girl ducked her head and nodded.
Misaki smiled back at her in appreciation and sincerely told her, "Thank you."
The edges of her tiny lips turned up at the edges in a shy smile and she clutched her teddy bear up under her chin with both arms, nodding her head again in acknowledgment of her thanks.
"Both of you," Misaki said, glancing over at Migi who was laying on her back at her side, panting for breath even harder than she was at the moment. "Are you okay?"
Migi rolled her head toward her, glaring up at her as she breathlessly told her, "Don't ever do anything like that to me again...!"
Misaki let out a short laugh as she pushed herself up to sit back against the side of the row of seats next to her, shooting a wink and a grin at the little girl who was still watching them and making her giggle behind her teddy bear. "No promises."
Migi suddenly gasped and went shock-still. Her large, blue eyes shot wide open and all of the color immediately drained from her face as a look of abject horror settled over her facial features.
"Migi?" Misaki asked with rapt concern. "What's wrong?"
The young woman's head slowly turned toward her, and she answered in a fearful whisper, "The villa raid team is reporting that Gigantomachia is on the move."
Misaki's own eyes widened in shocked dread and she groaned, "You gotta be kidding me."
Just when she'd thought that things couldn't possibly get any worse. Now there was that guy.
Migi sat straight up. Her eyes were unfocused, and her face was a mask of concentration as she reported, "Mt. Lady is holding him back for now. It sounds like the students are working on a plan to try and put him to sleep."
Misaki blinked and asked, "Will that work?"
Migi's eyes refocused and she glanced over, offering only a shrug and a grimace as she shook her head to indicate that she had no answer for her.
Misaki dropped her head into her hands and groaned despondently. The situation was less than ideal, but they had prepared for this. She pulled herself up onto her feet and announced, "I'm activating contingency plan bravo."
Grabbing her smartphone from her back pocket, she quickly navigated to the saved number for the team they had on standby with the newly awakened Best Jeanist. The Liberation Front had been keeping his body on ice in a facility near Osaka just in case they decided to use it for the doctor's Nomu experimentation. Luckily, they hadn't actually attempted to do anything with him, and Hawks had been able to discreetly inject him with the counteragent for the one facilitating his deathlike state so that he could be covertly extracted. That had been less than three days ago, and he was far from in top form, but he'd assured them that he felt well enough to contribute to the operation if they needed him.
"Chirashi here," the pilot assigned to Jeanist's detail answered after the first ring.
Not wasting any time with pleasantries, Misaki swiftly ordered, "Start prepping the jet and notify Best Jeanist to suit up ASAP."
"Yes, ma'am," the pilot replied shortly before cutting the call.
Dropping the phone away from her ear, Misaki leaned back against the seat behind her and closed her eyes, blowing out a heavy sigh as she covered her forehead with her hand before running it back through her hair. Reaching around to rub the back of her neck, she sighed again before commenting, "We need to find somewhere to set up a temporary command center."
"Already on it," one of the yellow team analysts immediately responded. "There's a public high school about five kilometers west of here. It should be outside the Decay zone."
"And they'll have a computer lab," Misaki said to herself as she pulled up the high school on her navigation app. She looked up at the analyst, whom she thought was named Hakone, and told him, "Contact the school and let them know we're coming."
Stalking up the aisle to the front of the bus, she grabbed the receiver for the overhead loudspeaker and pressed the button on the side to allow her to speak into it. "Sultan, head southwest. You can drop us off at—" She glanced down at her phone for the name of the school. "Yamadori High School. I just texted you the GPS coordinates."
"You got it!" She clearly heard his rich, booming voice reply from outside one of the open windows.
She gave the bus driver an apologetic look for using his equipment without asking. He shrugged back at her and gestured to the fact that he wasn't even driving anyway. She nodded to him in thanks and moved to sit on one of the steps of the stairwell leading down to the folding doors of the bus. Glancing down at her phone, she scrolled through her recent call list for Detective Tsukauchi's number and hit call, silently praying to herself that he'd made it to safety and would be able to pick up.
She heard the telltale click of the line connecting just before the detective's familiar voice sounded out from the speaker, "Torimodo-san! Are you alright?"
She released the breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding and assured him, "I'm fine. My team and I made it out safely. We're in a tour bus headed southwest toward Yamadori High School. We're going to try and set up a temporary base there. What about you?"
"We managed to make it out as well," the detective affirmed. "We have the doctor in custody, but we're still awaiting status on Shigaraki. I think it's safe to say that the initial DOA call was false."
"There's a chance that the doctor copied his quirk and gave it to one of the Nomu," she offered as a somewhat half-hearted possibility.
"But to be able to use it on this kind of scale—" The detective's incredulous sounding voice replied.
"Yeah, I know. It had to be him," Misaki conceded dejectedly.
"I'm glad you and your team were able to make it out safely," he told her sincerely.
"Yeah, me too," she sighed in reply. Glancing from the corner of her eye toward the back of the bus, she said, "Listen, I picked up a kid on our way out. Do you think you could have some police meet us at the school, see if they can't locate her parents?"
"Yeah, I'll make a call," the detective offered.
Misaki smiled softly as she said, "Thanks."
"Good luck," Tsukauchi earnestly told her.
"You too," she returned the sentiment with equal sincerity before hanging up the call.
Rising from her seat on the stairs, Misaki headed down the aisle to the back of the bus and sat in the empty seat next to the little girl. She smiled at her warmly as she greeted her, "Hi. My name is Torimodo Misaki. Can you tell me yours?"
The girl looked up at her with big brown eyes and shyly replied, "Kazehaya Hotaru."
Misaki dipped her head in a slight bow and said, "It's very nice to meet you, Hotaru. You can call me Misaki."
"Okay," the girl said in a quiet voice, hugging her teddy bear up under her chin.
"Some police officers are going to meet us at the school we're headed to. They're going to help you find your parents. Would that be alright?" Misaki asked in an open and unobtrusive manner, hoping to make the overly shy child a bit more comfortable.
The kid relaxed a little bit and nodded.
Misaki tilted her head a bit to the side as she said, "You know, I think we might have some snacks and water. Can I get you anything?"
Hotaru softly shook her head and said, "I'm okay."
Misaki smiled down at her warmly and reached out to gently run her hand over the child's silky, black hair. "Okay. Just sit tight, we'll be there before you know it."
~ Author's Note ~
PLF war arc part one DONE! Phew! I've introduced quite a few new characters into the story all of a sudden, huh? They all have their unique roles to play in the overall story as well (yes, cute little Hotaru too! 😊) I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
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