Jpx099 - Yeah, Rabbit is a scary Rabbit when threatened.
Guest - Soon, soon.
Miqila - Oh, it will have quite some ripples indeed, yeah.
(***)
"Superhero Rabbit, head of the Sekoto Branch, managed to arrest Purity and ten of Overhaul's special forces operatives together with… well, most of his branch members." Aizawa replies. "He also incapacitated Kurogiri with his quirk, resulting in the Shie Hassaikai failing to warp Mustard out. We found a tracking beacon in Mustard's equipment, which meant…"
"Their quirks?" Yagi asks. Yeah, he clearly wants to deepen his understanding of the phenomenon.
"Rabbit's quirk is called Status Condition." Aizawa replies. "When he touches someone, he 'locks' onto them for some time during which he can apply a variety of status conditions to them via naming them out. Poisoned, weak, powerful, bulletproof, unconscious, to list a few, are status conditions. He managed to sneak upon Kurogiri and apply a powerless status condition on him, deactivating his quirk temporarily."
Which, honestly… Rabbit was kind of scary to Aizawa as well, now. He began to realize why Midoriya acted like he seriously considered eventually making him into Musutafu Branch head once he managed to get over his anxiety.
He was smart, had a terrifyingly versatile and powerful quirk, and several sidekicks that would probably die for him. Yeah, Rabbit was a scary Rabbit.
He just had to get rid of his unexpected maverick tendencies and he'd be a perfect person for Aizawa to work with once Defiant sets up for Tokyo and gets a comfy governmental position as the Number One Hero.
"This, since Kurogiri was trying to emergency teleport out of the compound, resulted in his own warpgate closing up on him, severing him in half." Aizawa continues. "Due to the nature of Overhaul's quirk we expect to see him up and running soon, but he was knocked out temporarily which resulted in a significant part of the Shie Hassaikai being left behind on the battlefield and subsequently arrested."
"So let me summarize." Yagi replies. "You came under a completely unexpected attack by a bunch of supervillains that used a teleporter, something that simply couldn't be tracked or predicted regardless of the circumstances and your level of preparedness, which resulted in deaths of one superhero, one sidekick, several police officers and at least one firefighter and a paramedic. In exchange, you arrested two supervillains while almost incapacitating three more, arrested one A-Rank villain, and eliminated more than a dozen of former special forces operatives working for the local crimeboss. Anything to add to that summary?"
"We've already managed to discover that Overhaul has been… experimenting with his quirk." Aizawa replies. "His quirk allows him to reassemble matter on a molecular level. For context, a few weeks ago the SST supported by the Takoba Branch of the Network boarded a ship that Shie Hassaikai was smuggling medical equipment and, apparently, body parts from China."
"Body parts?" Yagi blinks at him.
"We've had the specialists from the UA Hospital analyze them." Aizawa replies. "We believe that Overhaul was buying organs of people with random beneficial non-quirk mutations."
"Wait, what?" It's the chief prosecutor. Yeah, probably trying to figure out what sort of crime was exactly involved in this.
"China was running a massive gene sequencing project before the war." Aizawa replies. "Overhaul was paying the local warlords and crime organizations a sizable amount of money OR offered them his own healing expertise in exchange for finding and dissecting certain people that the project found as being in possession of beneficial mutations. Not the quirk type of mutation, think of it as a random mutation of a gene that makes your muscle fibers array themselves denser and so on."
"Supersoldiers." Yagi realizes. "You're telling me that the head of the local crime organization in MY prefecture was and IS producing literal, goddamn supersoldiers?" Look, Aizawa isn't happy about it either.
"Unfortunately, yes." Aizawa replies and he can see Yagi shrink a little in his seat. "Every single of his bodyguards that we've arrested… plus Purity… had their skeletons entirely replaced with some high resistance polymer that was sufficiently 'neutral' for the body in terms of chemical components as to not cause any long-term health issues. Chancellor run a simulation in his head after getting the polymer specs from Alchemist and we're practically certain that at least major bones like femurs are made basically impervious to gunfire, unless we talk about high caliber anti-armor ammunition and in their case it's still impact dealing damage to the surrounding flesh more than the bullet itself."
They are staring at him in shocked silence. Death Arms somehow looks more shocked than Yagi. Huh.
"The other improvements were much less uniform and less… extensive." Aizawa replies. "We suspect that those changes were deemed as optional by Overhaul, as forcing his trusted elites into body modification could ruin their loyalty and he is smart enough to avoid that. We're still running tests on them, and the captives aren't telling us anything, which makes things harder for us. What we found thus far are slightly more efficient lungs, slightly denser muscles, platelets working faster to patch up bleeding, livers clearing blood of poison better, and so on. Still within the general human range of efficiency in those fields, just pushed very close to the top of it."
"I correct my earlier statement." Yagi states dryly. "You didn't arrest or kill at least a dozen former special forces operatives. You arrested or killed at least a dozen genetically engineered supersoldiers." Aizawa nods. That's a correct assessment. "To conclude the summary, you've failed to stop the Shie Hassaikai from kidnapping the metahuman captives from the facility, but you've decimated its assault forces and prevented them from halting the evacuation entirely. You've also limited the number of kidnapees to what I dare to describe, based on the description of the battle, 'minimum number possible considering the absolute clusterfuck that this battle was turning into'. Anything to add to that assessment?"
Yagi looks vaguely terrified of Aizawa possibly having something to add. Aizawa, with a gallows humor that seems to be becoming natural to him, decides to add something.
"A dragon." Aizawa replies. Yagi blinks at him.
"What?"
"One of the captives decided to not stay put, used their quirk to shapeshift into a dragon, grabbed several other inmates, and flew off." Aizawa replies dryly. "We believe them to be a 1st generation quirk user scheduled for experiments. We also suspect the captives that hanged onto him or her to be inmates that the MLA assessed as having 'behavioral' problems and kept isolated alongside the 1st gen containment area. They flew north, past the army cordon, and we believe that they entered Shizuoka by now."
Yagi stares at him. Chief prosecutor stares at him. Lieutenant general stares at him.
"Yes, it can blow fire." Aizawa adds helpfully.
He sure as hell hopes that they get recruited by the League of Villains, because it's not HIS problem to deal with. If Overhaul grabs them, things are going to get messy. And he is present in that prefecture as well.
What a goddamn mess.
"... so we already had gun-toting zombies, brain controlling fungi, The Psychopathic Hulk, a walking chemical weapon, genetically engineered supersoldiers AND a dragon." Yagi looks like he REALLY wants to take a nap. "Anything else to add before we continue on?"
"Uhm, no." Aizawa replies. "That's all for that part of the battle."
Yagi looks absolutely relieved. And maybe a tiny bit afraid of the 'for that part of the battle'. Yeah, it's about to get worse from here on. They're yet to get to the magical girl part, which Aizawa considers to be the peak bullshit he ever gets to witness in his life.
Probably. With quirks, you never know.
Goddammit.
"I see." Yagi then nods. "What happened next?"
"We've succeeded in crushing most of the MLA resistance within the facility." Aizawa replies. "The part with the dragon escaping was due to the head of the facility releasing the more violent inmates in order to delay our progress, something that they failed to achieve. Except, that's when things took an unexpected turn."
"Oh, brilliant." Yagi groans. "That's just what I wanted to hear. What happened?"
"Defiant disappeared." Aizawa replies. "Not in the 'gone AWOL' way. He was suddenly enveloped by a black sludge and disappeared. It was some sort of targeted summoning quirk that teleported him into the deepest part of the facility, where he was confronted by its head, coincidentally the second SSS-Rank villain discovered during this engagement."
"I assume that we'll see the recording of said confrontation now." Yagi says. Aizawa shakes his head.
"Unfortunately, the MLA covered said deepest level with some targeted electronics scrambling quirk." Aizawa lies. "As a result, no recording was made and all that we have is Defiant's after battle statement. I am ready to vouch for him on the basis of his past achievements and general work ethic."
"I see." Yagi's eyes narrow. "What exactly happened?"
(***)
Day Earlier
The first thing that Midoriya does after suddenly finding himself in a completely foreign environment was to cover himself in an omni-directional anti-firearms field. Before using the one and only blade that was warped with him to decapitate the monster that was with him in this room.
The second thing was to lunge at the familiar face sitting in a chair in front of a large computer monitor by the wall in front of him.
"You're under arrest…" Izuku says, slightly breaking the law (he is just a volunteer, not a police officer, but there are none of the latter around). "... doctor Garaki."
Kyudai Garaki, despite being held steady with Defiant's telekinesis, doesn't struggle. He doesn't even say anything, merely staring at Defiant quietly.
It can't be?
Three seconds later Izuku realizes that yes, it can be. Doctor Garaki lacks a pulse. It's just another corpse puppet.
"Oh, dear." The mechanical-sounding voice comes, its inflections slightly off. Defiant looks around in panic, only to discover that the source of it was a speaker on the wall. "Looks like I actually managed to fool you, Midoriya."
Izuku's blood runs cold.
"How do you…" He says, but is interrupted.
"I investigated you, mr. Number One Hero, after you took Fumikage Tokoyami out of my hands." The voice comes back. "Izuku Midoriya, age 18, lives in Takoba. A single mother, Inko Midoriya, age 47. I know your phone number, street address, school history, even the location of a certain formerly abandoned building beside a river in Takoba city."
Izuku can feel his skin crawl.
"Do not worry yourself with that!" The voice adds. "I have no intention of sharing that information with anyone, nor using it against you. I simply believe that knowledge is power… and I'm very good at amassing power. In fact, I brought you here… merely for a short chat."
"A c-chat?" Midoriya says, his voice lightly betraying. "There are people fighting outside, and you just…"
"I'd like to say that I'm sorry for that fact…" The voice replies. "... but I'm not. I'm simply not biologically capable of empathy. I'm aware of the concept, and perhaps I'll somewhat internalize it at some point in my life. But in the meantime, while I'm aware of the fact that I should at least say that I'm sorry, it'd be meaningless either way." There is a mechanical-sounding sigh. "In fact, if you entertain me for a moment, I'll share a lot of secrets with you. One and only occasion for that, Midoriya, as from now on… I'm going to let certain secrets fade into nothingness."
What?
"So if I won't listen to you right now…" Izuku replies. "... you just won't tell those 'secrets' to anyone else? Ever? And I'm supposed to believe you?"
"What do you lose…" The voice replies. "... by staying for a few minutes? I'll let you know that your friends together with the police are rounding up the last of the facility defenders as we speak. You don't lose anything by staying behind to listen to my little ramblings."
Izuku weighs the options. The news about the Shie Hassaikai' assault reached him and the rest of the assault group of course, but he already heard that it was repelled. Aizawa didn't mention the casualties sustained, so Izuku is unaware of the fact that they lost someone from the Network.
"Very well." Izuku replies. "But I would feel better knowing whom I am talking with."
"That's absolutely understandable!" The voice says. A moment later the monitor in front of Izuku comes to life.
On it is a… rat. A rat standing on its hind legs on some board held in the air by one of the monsters. Another one is standing right next to it, holding a laptop.
As Izuku stares at the image in shock, the rat turns its head towards the laptop-monsters and squeals. Two seconds later, the mechanical voice comes from the speaker.
"I am Nedzu, head of the Meta-Abilities Research Division of the Meta-Liberation Army." The voice comes from the speakers. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Midoriya-kun. We have a lot to talk about."
(***)
Today
"A rat?" Yagi blinks at him. "What do you mean by 'the head of the facility was a rat'? Like, he or she had a rat-like face, or had the personality with traits typically subscribed to rats or…"
"No, he… it… they were a rat." Aizawa hopes that he looks like he is absolutely done with this new world, because… yeah, he absolutely is. "Defiant asked them about it, obviously. Nedzu claimed to be a rat that manifested a hyper-intelligence quirk making it much smarter than most humans, not to mention sapient to begin with. Unfortunately, it didn't do a lot to its emotional development. In simpler terms, it professed to lack the emotional capability for things like love, spite or simple empathy, instead being mostly driven by a self-preservation instinct and purely rational decision-making."
"And you trust Defiant enough to vouch for him over this?" Yagi asks. Aizawa nods without a moment of hesitation. He saw the recording that he declared missing a moment ago. He KNOWS it's the truth. However, even if he didn't see it, he'd still trust that kid. "Yuki?"
"I have no idea about the legal status of this 'Nedzu'." The chief prosecutor is clearly in the 'doubting its existence' party. "If it's incarcerated, are we supposed to treat it as an animal to be put down? As a human to be tried? This is something that's going to have to be decided on a much higher level, because I, frankly, am absolutely flummoxed right now."
"I see." Yagi's eyes return to Aizawa. "How exactly was it communicating?"
"Apparently, the monster… that he referred to as noumu… that was carrying him had some form of 'hearing animal thoughts' quirk." Aizawa replies. "The one carrying the laptop had some telepathic quirk to read Nedzu's thoughts from him, AND a technopathic quirk to directly transcribe them into the computer he was carrying. The carrier was mentally programmed to follow orders received from Nedzu via the text-to-speech device installed in said computer."
"Extremely complicated." Yagi comments dryly. "Alright, what happened later?"
"We got some answers, including the supposed source of the monsters and the existence of the MLA." Aizawa replies. "Defiant… didn't exactly like it."
(***)
"Are you insane?!" Izuku shouts. "You're doing the exact thing that's going to make people lash against metahumans and you claim that it's for our own good?!" Quirked playing gods and creating abominations, creating an insurgence army without a solid reason and under some false flag operations, it was just…
"When exactly did humans make themselves appear particularly open to those that are different than they are?" Nedzu replies promptly. "Especially when those 'different' are also better and more capable than they are? That sounds like a great way of causing anger, hatred and all those other meaningless human concepts to manifest.
"That's just being biased, oversimplifying serious matters and being pessimistic about Mankind as a whole." Izuku retorts. "If anything, the Metahuman Network proved that coexistence is possible, the MLA…"
"Oh, eventually, the world will simply have to get used to the fact that quirks exist." Nedzu cuts in. "Don't get me wrong, that's a mathematical inevitability. In two centuries from now on, give or take fifty years depending on the scale of a pushback, everyone's going to have at least a minor quirk. I calculated that for Destro. The MLA simply seeks to make sure that the Era of Quirks comes a tiny bit faster. Amassing and training metahumans while making sure that the unstable first generation metahumans are taken off the board as quickly and decisively as possible to avoid inflaming the popular response before the MLA will be ready to meet the government on the battlefield if need be."
"I'd argue…" Midoriya retorts. "... that the MLA would inflame the response on its own."
"Probably, probably." Nedzu replies. "I can make mathematical models for the next few centuries, but when emotions and human crowd mentality are involved, things get sketchy. Can't calculate what you can't truly understand, at least yet. I'm absolutely ready to jump ships if that happens. Self-preservation instinct, and so on. You can't get attached to the cause that you feel absolutely nothing for. "
"And who would take you in?" Izuku cuts back. "Other villains?"
"Why not the heroes?" Nedzu replies, while Izuku glares at him through the camera. "Oh, don't be like that! It's all a matter of good planning. I already have it all thought out. First, I'll secretly finance some scientists to experiment on me, while modifying my body to be slightly more humanoid… it improves your public reception, I believe. I just need to make myself look slightly fluffier and less rat-like in the process. Maybe have them make me into a rat-otter-stoat hybrid? Should be slightly reshaped into a more humanoid form, as stated."
"Wh…" Izuku tries to cut in, but Nedzu simply continues speaking.
"Then I'll arrange for some heroes to 'save' me from that ordeal, while pretending to be a poor victim of scientific abuse." Nedzu continues. "That'll score me some brownie points with the public, that will help me win the possible debate about human rights that'll follow. Once I'll win it, I'll be free to roam around. I might change my name a bit, but that'll depend on whether Nedzu the supervillain will still be remembered by then. Then, I'll get myself accepted as a hero with my intelligence quirk, before settling down somewhere comfy. A hero school teacher or even a principal, maybe? Yes, principal is the right option. We both know that Principal Sasaki's educational approach to the world of the quirks is here to stay. I might even start a fake feud with some nasty governmental figure, just to make sure that I'd become a focal point for the heroes more attuned to common human decency, thus lowering the chances of them betraying me. Isn't that a perfect plan?"
"No way it will work." Izuku replies dryly.
"Let's agree to disagree." Nedzu replies calmly.
"How do you exactly expect people to forget you?" Midoriya replies. "I'm absolutely going to tell the police about you."
"Oh, the Dawn of Quirks is going to be a mess." Nedzu replies. "Records not particularly trustworthy, legendary villains that never existed, and so on. Besides, I'm actually older than you, you know?"
"What?" Izuku blinks at him from behind his helmet. "Rats live what, two years? You can't be…"
"But I am." Nedzu replies, not even waiting for Izuku to finish. "Some side-effect of the quirk manifestation. I'm biologically immortal, Midoriya. I was here before you were born, and I'll live long past your death. All I need to do is wait a few decades for my supervillain self to fade into myth. All while, probably, playing a long game on the stock market to amass the hidden funds and shell companies in order to finance whatever school I'll eventually be the principal of… and, maybe, change it into a veritable fortress to soothe my self-preservation instinct. Isn't that sound? I think that's sound."
Izuku glares at him angrily. It doesn't work due to the helmet, but he suspects that his silence speaks volumes.
"Well, it seems like I didn't persuade you." Nedzu sighs, actually reading him correctly. "Not like I genuinely tried, that is! The thing is, I see no reason to sink your ship. Consider this a further reinforcement of my 'I will not share your secrets with anyone' bit. My relationship with the MLA is a marriage of convenience. Besides, you could say that the MLA and Network have the same enemy, who also happens to be my own personal enemy, and I'm rather vicious when it's about preserving myself."
"Is it about the government?" Izuku replies. "Because if so, then I regret to inform you that it's not my enemy."
"Nope, it's not about the government." Nedzu replies. "My imperfect understanding of human society is, well, imperfect, but I still tend towards suspecting the government of playing it surprisingly honest. And supporting your initiative. It might be due to my psychology making me… overprice the concept of self-preservation instinct."
"Then who is that 'common enemy' you speak of?" Izuku asks, his glare still as angry as before.
"The worldwide conspiracy responsible for the creation of quirks that our poor doctor Garaki was actually a part of." Nedzu admits cheerfully. "Not so sure about it, but I think that they might be slightly angry at me for reducing Garaki and the rest of the laboratory cadre into remotely operated puppets. And, well, changing their most valuable property into an MLA recruitment facility while fooling them with carefully crafted false data that not only led their research astray but also might have left them thinking that this compound is still working for them! And that's without taking advantage of their spy network to locate metahumans to be delivered right into Destro's hands! My genius is simply frightening, Young Midoriya. And I really hope that I'll get to see Hisashi Shigaraki's face when he realizes what I did to the last true quirk research lab available to the Council of Twelve after his younger brother's rampage! It's going to be a priceless memory, let me tell you that much."
Izuku stares at him in silence. How does one even react to words like that?! He has absolutely no idea. Creation of quirks? A worldwide conspiration?! Nedzu proving to be more insane than he fea…
Wait, isn't that the name of Rabbit's father? It's just a coincidence, ri…
"What?" Nedzu asks. "Surely you can agree with me at least on the fact that taking over an already furnished facility after wiping out everyone inside and changing them into corpse puppets in order to fool everyone that nothing has changed is the logical option when compared to wasting time and assets into setting up your own laboratory, right?"
(***)
Today
Aizawa finishes narrating a slightly altered version of the events. Because, yeah, certain things are going to stay secret.
"So let me summarize it." Yagi looks like he was on the verge of jumping out of the window. "There is an unspecified governmental conspiracy at play that was taking advantage of the meta-abilities for their own, unspecified but certainly nefarious purposes. And the MLA seized their facility, while making them think that it's still working for them. So they were basically running two false flag operations at the same place, with the same people, simultaneously."
Dropping the 'worldwide' and 'creation of quirks' part from the announcement was… yeah. Necessary. Just like most of Nedzu's revelations to come. Because frankly, even in front of the government, Aizawa felt the need to censor it. So much so that if he was applying a similar censoring drive to a book, he'd change it into a hundreds page long barcode.
Or something like that, he isn't good at simile.
"And then we walked right into it." Aizawa sighs. "Not to mention the facility being led by a hyper-intelligent sociopath who doesn't even register humans as 'people'. Needless to say, yesterday isn't even close to being a day that I remember fondly."
"I see." Yagi takes a deep breath. "I would have said something akin to 'okay, from now on, nothing can surprise me' but I already said that in my mind several times and you've managed to prove me wrong each time." And they're yet to reach the magical girl part, yeah. "Please, continue."
(***)
Day Earlier
"So…" Nedzu says as Midoriya is still busy processing the revelations. "Would you like to find out how the quirks were born?"
"And how do you even know th…"
"Because I was there, of course!" Nedzu cuts in. Despite his voice being artificial, he still manages to sound almost cheerful. "Surely you didn't expect an animal to be truly 'born' with a quirk, now aren't you? And, with your mate being a scientist and you spending time around the people from the UA's research department, you must have heard of the term 'lab rats'."
(***)
... as I said in the comments a few times. Sometimes the tales are altered by the passage of time... and sometimes they are purposefully changed. The next chapter is composed almost entirely of Nedzu sharing secrets of the universe with Izuku. Including 'how quirks started', and what's going on with our favourite white haired duo from canon right now. Also, as you can expect from one side of the clash not yet showing, the Council of Twelve might be on their way...
Oh, and fun fact? The DoA includes characters from Dawn of Quirks being born during canon times and canon characters being born during Dawn of Quirks. The only exception are those that were immortal and lived since Dawn of Quirks until modern time (even 'theoretically', like Yoichi). Do I need to spell what does it mean for Nedzu's 'future grand plan of opening a hero school'?
In case I had to, this Nedzu is the same one from Ties that Bind and Cure to Evil. Awkward as hell, Defiant, but he was right. It worked.
It also explains where all the money came from, hmm?