Shahryar - Happy Froggy best Froggy, also Hagakure has the significant bad luck of falling into a politically radical crowd as a child. And yes, Izuku is growing up. And I guess it's nice that I've changed your perception of Kuroiro because that's a sign of interesting fanfic being written :D

Jpx0999 - Izuku... clearly isn't a fan of his dad, and it shows xD

Raw666 - The fic will probably end before chapter 105 (and I'm writing chapter 97 now). I'm planning to keep up the work just to be free from another fic that I somehow have to finish xD

(***)

General Bates returned from the United States a day later, and immediately showed up at Yagi Toshinori's office.

"What a fucking shitshow, Toshinori." She sighs while sitting on the chair on the other side of his desk. "What an absolute, fucking, shitshow. It's like watching a bunch of monkeys scream and throw feces at each other in a zoo. By the way, wanna go grab a bite after this?"

"I can only eat a few very basic things and you know it." Yagi sighs. "I also can't drink alcohol and can't smoke. I'm only barely allowed to have sex, because I really can't overexert myself. When my doctor told me that I can still live long if I follow those few guidelines, my answer was 'but why would I want to live long like this?!'."

Cathleen laughs.

"Yeah, that's somehow a very Yagi Toshinori way of responding to such an announcement." She says, looking positively amused. "So, I have good news for you. All of them completely confidential, but I don't really give a fuck."

She gives him a thumbs-up gesture. He responds in kind. Violating military NDAs like it's no big deal is a chad's way of living, probably.

They have too strong of a backing on their side to really care. Telling secrets to enemies of their country would still equal death, but this?

"President Skyline basically had a brain aneurysm when he heard about the meta-abilities." Cathleen says. "David Shield was suddenly flooded with more funds than he knew what to do with. Also, the FBI is trying to run some stupid fucking survey among the local police precinct to figure out what's the true scope of the problem, and thus far it looks like recruiting friendly local superpowered vigilante for assistance in case of the criminals pulling out a bullshit card isn't endemic in just the Japanese police. Unfortunately, we also are going to have to expand the definition of hate crimes, because of course we've already had some of those against metahumans, especially mutants."

That's… pretty much what Yagi expected.

"Bad news is that no one got even remotely close to what your Commissioner managed to do when no one was looking." Cathleen continues. "It's all much smaller in scope, lacks in equipment severely, and there is no organizational framework like your, errr, Metahuman Network, was it?"

Yagi nods. It's not exactly his, but… well, Aizawa technically was doing that according to his orders of 'make this prefecture livable' so it's almost like it was 'his' Network, yes? Yes. Probably.

He is a politician. Borrowing the successes of others is technically a part of it. He is decent enough to give credit to the person responsible AND only do it when it's even remotely applicable.

Besides, Aizawa keeps getting promoted for his hard work, he should be happy about it enough.

"Yeah, so basically Skyline's office is expecting the nation-wide shitshow following Reveal Day, and they are all running around like headless chickens right now." She says before groaning loudly. "They've pulled the Congress together for a closed session to try to figure out what to do now, but as far as I see it's just politicians screaming at each other and panicking."

"For as much as it feels entirely in-character for US politics…" Yagi replies dryly. "... I kind of expected the war to make everyone chill down at least a little."

"I honestly think it would be much less screaming if it happened before the war, we've kind of secured our position as the sole remaining superpower for next few decades, then this bullshit happened threatening it." Cathleen sighs. "I wouldn't be surprised if the two-party system kicked the fucking bucket."

"That bad?" Yagi blinks at her.

"Yeah, that fucking bad." General Bates sighs while leaning back on the couch. "Democrats practically split between the bunch of fucking idiots that are thinking of the meta-abilities as new guns and are pushing for regulating them probably to the point of allowing communities to forbid metahumans entry because it's basically concealed carry of borderline weapons of mass destruction in their eyes, and no I'm not making this shit up, and those that actually fucking remember that metahumans are going to be embattled minority and are trying to act accordingly."

"Wait, you're telling me that a big part of Democrats are pushing for what's basically a new segregation movement?" Yagi blinks at her again, because it was so much out of the blue that just… then she nods. "Well, well, well. How the turntables."

"Yeah, for the first time in a while Democrats are screaming at other Democrats more than they do at the Republicans." Cathleen sighs. "Who, too, split between genuine idiots that are also probably racist and are treating metahumans as a plague, danger or some goddamn evil plot of the United Nations probably, and those who basically went 'people are born with guns now? Cool'."

Yagi can't help but chuckle. This is a very American way of approaching the subject.

"Which is still a fucking problem because a bunch of those guys will go like 'wtf do you mean by metahuman registry' and are probably going to push into full deregulation of quirk usage for commercial purposes and this is going to make the shitstorm objectively worse." Cathleen continues. "Especially as I expect the 'embattled minority' branch of Democrats support them before realizing that they just made the unemployment skyrocket among other 'embattled minorities' due to metahumans putting them out of business. Honestly, why the hell can't those people see reason?"

"Because whenever you go past five people in a group, the effective IQ of the whole thing will be equal to the IQ of the dumbest member of it." Yagi replies. "Crowd mentality is a bitch and we both know it."

They saw people do dumb shit for a long time, both in the army and outside of it. Yeah, it's almost always a crowd mentality.

"The fact that Christopher Skyline is actually the smart and moderate one on this really begets the question of who the fuck is setting the IQ standard for the US Government." Cathleen replies dryly. When Yagi starts laughing, she gives him a vaguely insulted stare. "I contributed to this shistorm by asking my nephew, the one who really loves superheroes, for movie recommendations about the Government doing stupid things with superpowers and all but shouted at Skyline until he made watching them mandatory during the breaks in the current Congress session."

This time Yagi actually coughs out blood. It was… holy shit, are they all leaving in a comedy series or what? What a wild time to be alive.

"The good news is that Skyline's office is almost certain that we'll end up with some version of hero systems for ourselves." Cathleen decides to change the subject for something narrowly better. "Someone tried to suggest involving the army in peacekeeping instead, so Skyline brought Timmy Agpar to the Capitol."

"The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?" Yagi asks. General Bates confirms it with a nod. That was a big name to call upon. "What did he say?"

"Timothy watched through the Dabi recording you so graciously provided us with, then skimmed through the list of known meta-abilities." Cathleen replies. "Then took the podium and said, I quote: 'For as much as it pains me as a soldier, sending properly trained guys in spandex is probably a better option that carpet bombing our cities with Hellfire missiles, just make sure the guys we send aren't Homelander expies'."

Yagi wheezes loudly. Now he imagines a soldier saying that (no, better than that, deadpaning) to a crowd of panicked politicians in the US Capitol of all places and it really calms his soul.

"So now the idea of sending an army against metahumans seems to be mostly dead because the US Army suffered enough casualties during the war and dying to random, Prominence Burns, was it? just kind of doesn't sell as an idea." Cathleen continues, ignoring Yagi's reaction. "I totally expect him to push for meta-abilities weaponization program and I heard it on the grapevine that Agpar is already looking through the army ranks to find metahumans that ended up joining it while hiding who they are, so it's not all sunshine and roses, but it's still a step in the right direction I'd say."

That much Yagi can agree with. With the army pulling a respectful 'please no', the chances of someone trying to crackdown on metahumans as a whole was notably lowered. The concept of weaponization of meta-abilities is probably unavoidable, even if the UN takes its head out of its metaphorical ass and bans it.

They were probably already used in Chinese and Russian civil wars, it's just that most of those countries barely had internet nowadays. Yagi googled those wars a lot and surprise, there was a shitload of 'debunked' recordings of various sides of those wars deploying things that were almost certainly not very 'normal' human.

The 'debunkers' are in for a big surprise.

"We'll probably end up having different legislation in different states, to a large degree and at least at the beginning." Cathleen sighs. "But there'll probably be a hero system similar to what you're building in the end. Skyline also started calling our international allies for input. And that's the real source of good news for you."

"Oh, I like your words." Yagi nods. "I really need some good news, right now."

"In a moment, Toshinori, in a moment." Bates refuses to cooperate. "The state of awareness is highly random. Several European states already knew about the meta-abilities and were in the process of reacting to them in various ways. Mostly leaning towards limited acceptance, but you can expect most of them to ban using meta-abilities in public, and at least several tried to do that without employing metahumans heroes."

Yeah, that would work splendidly. Judging from the looks they exchange, they are in agreement on that. Goddamn Europeans.

"Then Skyline called the Polish president and things went simultaneously fucking stupid and life-savingly good." Cathleen continues. Yagi likes the 'life-savingly good'. "But this is going to be a longer story."

"I have time." Yagi replies. Technically he has a meeting scheduled in thirty minutes but it's rather obvious that this is more important. "Go on."

"Basically, a few years before the war they got a prime minister elected that was actually some sort of early metahuman." Cathleen replies. "He immediately started a program that was supposed to look for others like him and research the issue. For some reason he later retracted the order, but here things got funky."

"How so?" Yagi asks.

"The whole program was started with a thought that if we found someone with a superpower, then big countries like the United States and, god forbid, Russia must have a similar but ten times bigger program." Cathleen replies. "Whatever soldiers and scientists were running the program basically assumed that the prime minister was mind controlled into this by those pesky Russians."

Oh god, she barely started this and it's already shaping up to be hilarious.

"So, they basically kept running the program without telling the government about it." Bates continues. "The thing is, they actually managed to develop pharmacological quirk suppressants."

Yagi's eyes lit up.

"Not even nearly as cool as you seem to hope, though." Bates replies. Yagi groans. Yeah, of course, expecting rescue was too much. "Basically speaking they are a form of sedatives that causes an awful lot of negative side-effects but also appear to be impairing the metahumans' ability to use their power. It doesn't keep their powers offline, just makes them significantly weaker depending on the dosage and damages their control over their powers to a much smaller degree.."

"That still sounds rather helpful." Yagi points out.

"An awful lot of negative side-effects, Toshinori.." Cathleen replies. "It's like being under partial anesthesia the whole time. And you need to be dosed regularly. The Poles basically said that it won't work as a way of keeping the villain powerless during their stays in prison, and you can't just spray people with it to deal with a prison riot, but it works well enough as an equivalent of solitary imprisonment."

Yeah, that sounds like a big 'but'. Shit.

"So, a punishment for the disobedient that they can't really escape from." Yagi replies. Then he realizes something. "... or something to keep them imprisoned until court date and during their trial."

"Yep." Cathleen nods. "Basically we now have a way of keeping even more violent or dangerous villains imprisoned temporarily, before they receive a proper trial. So we can avoid damaging the foundation of the legal system too much by trialing people before they are arrested and without letting them be in any reasonable way represented during their trials. It will still require proper medical care to avoid them dying out on you and some wardens or even heroes around them to make sure they don't escape with their much weaker but still available quirks, but…"

"... it's certainly an improvement." Yagi comments and Cathleen nods.

They will have to keep a lot of heroes as villain prison garrisons, together with a clear 'if you try to escape, heroes will fight to kill' clause. Because if they can't keep them under a quirk suppressor permanently, they'll need to use fear to keep them in line.

He doesn't envy the politicians that will have to sign themselves under such a law. It doesn't have a lot to do with what a democratic country should be doing, even to its criminals. Alas, they don't have an awful lot of choice on that field.

"The negative side-effect is that they also discovered a way of going the other way, and making people more heated while empowering their meta-abilities to a noticeable degree." Cathleen sighs. "Officially they didn't mass produce it, but Skyline suspects that they lied about it and that they actually have a stockpile of that drug in case of a Russian invasion. And he might be correct. I don't expect them to start selling the drug anywhere, but if they managed to develop it, then it's only a matter of time before someone else does that as well."

"Please tell me it's not addictive." Yagi asks dryly. Cathleen stays quiet. "Well, great." The fact that they already know it's addictive tells a lot about the Polish meta-ability weaponization program.

"The second good news with a large 'but' we get from this is that they happened to recruit twins with very similar warp quirks." Cathleen continues. "Meaning that they had several years of a headstart and, apparently, the idea of an army of Russian warpers teleporting bombs and soldiers through their territory was, like, a recurrent nightmare of the soldiers involved in the program."

"I'm genuinely torn between facepalming at the paranoia and being happy for the fact that it existed." Yagi replies dryly, drawing a chuckle out of General Bates. "What's the result? Please tell me that it's something good, we need it."

"Well, basically speaking, they managed to replicate the warp quirk suppression mechanism with technological means." Cathleen speaks the words. Yagi absolutely loves the words. "But it's a big 'but' moment."

"Let me guess, you need a lot of infrastructure to suppress teleportation in even a small area?" Yagi asks. "Like some sort of Faraday cage?"

"Not really, no." Bates surprises him. "It's more of an Area of Effect emitter. The problem is that it devours an absolutely sick amount of energy to cover even a small area. We already run the numbers and it turns out that keeping White House, Capitol and Pentagon under separate anti-warp bubbles will basically require putting a small nuclear reactor nearby and overhauling the whole power grid of District Columbia."

"Well, I'll have to ask the prime minister if she has a nuclear reactor to spare." Yagi replies dryly. "But I think that I know how she'll answer that question."

The look he receives is one of pity. Yeah, it's a perfectly understandable reaction considering the state that Japan is in right now. The United States can do it, Japan most likely can't.

"Worst of all, it doesn't seem to impair arriving warps." Cathleen decides to kick him while he is down. "And it can't be kept up constantly because prolonged exposure causes a shitload of side-effects like hallucinations and nausea. It CAN be used to trap attackers after their arrival, but if a foreign country gathers a few warp quirk users with suicidal tendencies and has them warp small nukes to our centers of governance, we can say goodbye to District Colombia and most of the US Government. With or without warp suppressors."

Yagi massages his temples. It's NOT what he expected and it's certainly now what he hoped for.

"It should make it possible to imprison warpers, though." Cathleen decides to cheer him up. "You just need to set one villain prison as a maximum security one and put the warpers there. You can deactivate warp suppressors when they are asleep, to limit negative side-effects."

Makes sense. It's better than nothing, that's for sure.

"I see." Yagi sighs. "Looks like the chances of Japan surviving the next decade improved, even if just slightly. When can we expect to get some of that stuff? We need it here yesterday."

"Well, you're going to have to ask Nana Shimura to give the Poles a call about that." Cathleen replies. "Their government was made aware of the program again during the late stage of the war. It made them… confused."

"I can imagine that." Yagi sighs, wondering where it's going. "Russians didn't really use any superpowers, and then barely managed to take over the Baltic States, a small chunk of northeastern Poland and a part of Eastern Ukraine, before caving in. If they didn't use the superpowers en masse even when NATO began to roll into the Russian Federation territory, then what was the whole secrecy for?"

"Yes, precisely what happened." Cathleen chuckles loudly. "Skyline called their president and that poor guy almost got a heart attack twice during a single call. First time when he was asked about meta-abilities and freaked out that the US knows about their secret project thanks to their superior meta-ability weaponization program and will ask their government to give up everything they managed to make so far. Second time when he realized that Skyline discovered the superpowers exist literally the day before, that the US meta-ability weaponization program is basically David Shield in a small lab with barely enough funding to buy himself coffee and some felt-tips pens to write random stuff on a board, and that somehow his country is like ten years ahead of everyone else on what's shaping up to be a new Project Manhattan."

Yagi Toshinori is acutely aware that the situation is generally horrible, that his country is probably going to collapse and that a lot of people are going to die. But this is genuinely and legitimately one of the funniest things he ever heard about.

So he starts laughing loudly, and ignoring the pangs of pain where his lung used to be. Cathleen joins the laughter a second later.

"Oh my god!" Yagi manages to say. "That guy had to really freak out!"

"Absolutely!" Cathleen says with a wide smile on her face. "Skyline isn't sure but he said it sounded like someone actually dropped something heavy on the other side of the phone when he mentioned that the US Government discovered meta-abilities yesterday, and the Polish president was like '...what'." She manages to portray the look of total shock with her face so well that it makes Yagi break into uncontrollable laughter again.

Damn, he is going to really feel that in the morning. But he really needed some comedy in his life.

"So what are they doing with their advantage?" Yagi finally manages to calm himself down. "I don't think that attempting to conquer Russia would work out, but at this point I really can't write that off."

"Ehh, they apparently checked the numbers, and decided that when everyone else starts pursuing them they'll lose the advantage in a few years top because they just can't measure up to countries like the United States in terms of R&D budget." Cathleen replies. "So they are selling the technology and general meta-ability know-how they obtained to everyone that's interested. Skyline bought it for some additional American investments into rebuilding the wartime damages and, believe it or not, a few nukes, the ultimate deterrent and international peacekeeper."

… Poles with nukes. The world is going from bad to worse.

"I think that they are finalizing the deal with South Korea right now, mostly about some expanded cooperation in terms of military R&D and technological exchange as a whole when military matters are involved." Bates adds. "Several more countries are knocking on their doors, and you should probably give the Prime Minister Shimura a suggestion to call them as well. I don't think they achieved a lot when support items and hero uniforms are involved due to technically working behind the government's back for most of the time, so some proper long-term joint venture with Hatsume Industries and help in establishing their own hero support industry might work as payment. I wouldn't be surprised if David Shield was interested in some cooperation as well."

"I'll call her right after you leave." Yagi sighs loudly. Things seemed to be improving slightly. He has a feeling that this won't last.

(***)

"I don't like it." Stain says when Knuckleduster finishes narrating his most recent findings. They are all sitting around an abandoned warehouse in Hosu that they are using as their temporary headquarters.

"You don't fucking say." Luna retorts, before a rather nasty grin blooms on her face. "But it's really making me anxious. We're expecting some serious fight, don't we?"

Kendo Rappa's face - as ugly as always - develops an almost identical smile to the one on Rumi's face. Akaguro Chizome really begins to question his life choices. Seriously, was the incredible sex with a certain insatiable rabbit woman worth the constant headbutting and the even more constant mutual violence?

Actually, screw that, he loves violence as well, it's just an added benefit.

The only issue he has are the complicated relations with their daughter, but he's leaving dealing with that for a bit later, when that shitheel Overhaul won't be threatening Rini's continuous existence.

"In my opinion, the Network and the local police pushed him too far." Knuckleduster admits, putting his notebook on the table. "Especially losing Kurono. And if what we've managed to learn about his organization, Mustard and Purity were basically the only Shie Hassaikai supervillains with a working brain, aside from Overhaul himself. And I wouldn't consider him to be particularly stable."

"So, you think that he is going to do something incredibly stupid?" Stain replies, ignoring Luna and Rappa hitting the table with their fists rhythmically while chanting FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT. "Oh can't you just shut up for a moment, I'm trying to think here."

Actually, screw ignoring that.

Rumi shows him her tongue while Rappa flips him the bird. But they at the very least do not restart their… activity.

"Yeah, I think that he is going to do something incredibly stupid." Knuckleduster sighs. "I wouldn't be surprised if he was planning an all-out assault on the local police. Frankly, I'm almost certain that this is what he is trying, especially as he is pulling out from Shizuoka."

"He didn't have a lot of alternatives on that field." Stain groans. "Kuroiro got a lot of new recruits and he was pummeling Shie Hassaikai badly."

Yeah, they all heard about the last clash between the Shie Hassaikai and Abegawa Tenchu Kai. It was apparently a smaller fight that escalated when both sides deployed supervillains. The local citizens got a lot of recordings and eyewitnesses of a fucking dragon battling out The Incredibly Violent Hulk.

Reveal Day was almost upon them. Knuckleduster wouldn't be surprised if the part of the society that knew, heard of or suspected the existence of meta-abilities was approaching the majority. It was just a matter of the TV announcing that it was the truth and validating all the conspiracy theories that 'serious' people were rejecting so much.

It was a tie, with no casualties on both sides. But the Shie Hassaikai' business that the fight was over was lost to the ATK in the aftermath.

Things weren't looking good for Overhaul.

"I think he is just hoping that the League of Villains will focus on securing Shizuoka against potential hero encroachment if he pulls out now." Knuckleduster replies. "Kuroiro wants him dead for what happened to previous ATK leadership, but he won't endanger the future of his yakuza clan by acting too rashly. So Overhaul might decide to try to achieve the same position in Musutafu as Kuroiro has in Shizuoka, so a de facto overlord of it with the police unable to do much about him."

Now that sounds incredibly violent.

"Worst of all, he is clearly hiding his new recruits and their quirks from everyone." Knuckleduster continues before sighing loudly. "I'm going to warn Defiant and Senior Commissioner Aizawa that they might be getting guests soon. Maybe ask them to let us borrow an underground hero or two if they have any that are skillful, because if Overhaul just runs through the rest with who knows how many new supervillains, it will be painful. They are going to need that intel as soon as fucking possible to start establishing at least some countermeasures."

(***)

United States is entering a period of a shitstorm that will be kept offscreen because it's not super important, I include one of the newest characters in the manga (because why not, and surprisingly it's NOT A TRAP), and we're back to the murderhobos. They were kept kinda offline for a bit too long, ngl.

Oh, and some author provincialism. Throw Poles a bone once or twice lol.