FrozenLion12 - Unfortunately, there'll be quite a lot of deaths in this fic :v

Shahryar - :v

Old Herobrine - Maybe no heroes, maybe they need a solid vibe check to start doing their job. Time will tell.

(***)

Itsuka Kendou - known also as an S-Rank Hero, Battle Fist - puts the phone away with an expression of relief on her face. She is sitting behind her desk at the top floor of the agency, with a cup of coffee in front of her.

The last one of the agency sidekicks called back. Nothing happened to Shemage. Her relief is palpable.

"Komori just overslept." She says. Neito Monoma briefly gives her a very odd stare from his position on the couch by the wall. "What?"

"Nothing." He replies. In Neito Monoma's opinion, 'overslept' is a very good codename for being too invested with your sexual relationship with a known villain to pick up your goddamn phone during a national emergency. And there is also the whole 'leaking classified hero intel to said villain' bit to be considered.

Kinoko doesn't know that Monoma knows. She also doesn't know that she is going to die in an unfortunate accident the second she leaks an intel about their own agency. For as long as she is fucking-up the agencies that are bootlicking the government, he couldn't care less.

Fortunately for herself, Shemage doesn't shit into her own nest. Naturally, Monoma keeps her loyalty issues hidden from Kendou. He is fully-willing to be this agency's knife in the dark if needed. Sometimes it's best if Itsuka doesn't know about the things he's doing.

"So, you saw the recording from the attack." Kendou decides that she gave him enough time for the analysis. "What's your opinion?"

"Honestly?" Monoma replies with a question. He reads the answer from Itsuka's face. "We're fucked six ways to Sunday."

"Neito…" Itsuka is pure enough to dislike swearing. For as much as he enjoys her pureness and old-school heroic nature, she is sometimes a handful to deal with.

"It's a fact, Itsuka." Neito replies. What happened just threw the world of established facts upside down - but this one thing remains obvious to him. "One of the great masterminds of the past era just resurfaced, and he is pissed off. There is no one in current Japan that can try to fight him like an equal. And that's a fact."

"Weren't you studying under Nedzu with him for a moment?" Itsuka asks. Neito gets a faint feeling that out there, someone's probably asking Spyglass the same question. Intelli probably gets a variant of it, some version of 'but you're a genius!'.

Yes, he did study along with Midoriya. But this didn't make him his equal. The situation was a bit more complicated than that.

"Nedzu, Sir Nighteye, Re-Destro and All for One were a league on their own, Itsuka." He replies. "If what Midoriya said about his past is to be believed, he joined it. Today all that we have left are the second league strategists, investigators and planners. So me, Intelli, Nakahara, Yaoyorozu and Yoshihiro. Two of those are in the Paranormal Liberation Front, Intelli is good but she would kill herself by jumping from the level she thinks she's on to the one she's actually on, and Nakahara… well, you know what." It still hurts. They were friends before that happened. Friends, but Monoma truly thought that they could be more than that. "How do you think it is going to end up?"

He is almost cheerful with his replies. Gallows' humor, honestly. Things are going to get very ugly. Probably incredibly ugly.

"Look, I'm not trying to sound like an ass here…" Itsuka replies. Monoma knows immediately what she's going to speak about. "... but he is quirkless. Every single person from the list, safe for Re-Destro, has some powerful mental quirk, don't you think that…"

Fair. It's not about discrimination, it's about superhuman actions typically requiring superhuman abilities. And what Midoriya just pulled felt pretty much superhuman. Re-Destro was a genius that was groomed into the role for decades, so he was understandable as an exception to the rule.

Midoriya is less than half his age and had at best a fraction of his support and training. So her concerns are warranted. Except, they are entirely incorrect.

"I don't think that Midoriya is quirkless. Or ever was." Monoma replies. Itsuka gives him a shocked stare. "Call it a hunch. I tried to copy his quirk once, before I heard that he was quirkless. I could copy two quirks at once back then, and I swear that for the next five minutes I felt like the other one I had on me was… stronger? More attuned with me? Like I could understand it better?"

"Wait, so…"

"I think he has a powerful… I have no idea how to refer to it, to be honest." Monoma continues. "A meta-quirk, maybe? Something impossible to be detected normally. Something useless on its own. But quirks often have various secondary adaptations, and I think that his is in the ability to learn things. Master skills. If it's just a growth rate improvement, it's probably an equivalent of Class Three quirks. If it actually raises the ceiling… it might as well be a Class-Five intelligence quirk in disguise."

Well, he is the closest that this agency has to an on-site quirk counselor/analyst. That much is the least that he can do. His ability to experience hundreds of quirks during his lifetime made him naturally gifted in that field.

"Raises the ceiling?" Itsuka asks for clarification. Yeah, he probably should have offered more details without even being prompted. She is one of the smartest people he ever met (if you exclude the straight-up geniuses that populated Nedzu's special class back then), but… it's just not her specialty.

"You can learn only so many things." Neito replies. "If you train your memory, it'll get better, but eventually you'll hit the ceiling and further gains will be negligible. Same with your muscles - eventually, you'll no longer be able to improve further. But if his quirks have some self-adaptive mechanism involved, there is a chance that his brain, muscles or whatnot will slowly change their internal structure to raise the ceiling. If so…"

"That would make him incredibly overpowered." Itsuka cuts in. She looks… scared at the concept. He isn't surprised. She should be. "Quirks don't…"

"I think that his quirk works exactly like that." Monoma retorts with the same. "Don't get me wrong, the process is probably slow as hell and has an upper limit. He can't measure to Mastermind's or Nedzu's cognitive speed, he can't suddenly start punching like All Might did by training himself hard enough. People with dedicated intelligence or strength quirk WILL outperform him in their respective fields. But he's much more all-rounded, and… well."

He shrugs. Itsuka is staring at him from the other side of the desk in silence.

"He spent almost ten years being a villainous mastermind in hiding." Monoma continues. "His quirk slowly improving those abilities and skills that he used the most. And he used those most useful in being a villainous mastermind. And this, Itsuka, is why we're all, to be honest, boned."

Worst of all, if he was around All for One, he probably had that theory confirmed. Monoma did mention it back then, but Midoriya clearly didn't believe it. But if he actually knew, if he actually guided his own development all those years… yeah, boned. Screwed. Ruined. Fucked.

Midoriya might not have half the mental processing power of Nedzu, but he probably matches All for One in understanding human emotions and fears. Terrifying combination. Especially on a villain.

The worst part? He doesn't know what Midoriya does. He can't even start to try to crack his master plan without knowing the government' secrets that Revenant clearly has access to. And considering his position as a politically incorrect B-Rank Hero, he can forget about the government telling him anything.

Even Intelli doesn't know everything. She is a glory hound with shades of a functional sociopathy, no way that the prime minister is ready to trust someone like her with too much knowledge. She would show up in her office one day to find Intelli sitting in her seat.

Worst of all, Mindscape only has 'shades' of functional sociopathy. She still has some moral concerns left, at least in Monoma's opinion. Though they manifested on weirdest of occasions.

This makes her absolutely unpredictable in certain situations. And the Prime Minister probably wasn't willing to tell too much to an unpredictable person.

"So what, should we just lie down and wait for death?" See, this is why Monoma respects Itsuka. Yes, the world hates her. Yes, she should be a lower SS-Rank strength wise but is only an S-Rank (and even that barely) because she refuses to bootlick the regime. But she is still trying to do her job. Save people. Be a hero like All Might once was.

Of course, if the current government was going to get destroyed, she wouldn't cry after it. But if organizations like the CRC were going to be the ones to do it… then the answer was no.

"Not really, no." Monoma replies. He is happy to be her shadow and advisor. When she asks for advice, he'll offer it. "I noticed a few things from the recording. First of all, Midoriya's desperate."

"You call that massacre an act of desperation?" Itsuka was a smart one, but her strengths were combat tactics and empathy, not this. He's going to have to correct certain misconceptions.

"Itsuka, think about this." He leans forward on the couch. A clear sign that things got serious. "If the bit about the 'Shinigami Record' is to be believed, his mole must be at least near-minister level. He could attack any place he wanted with that sort of intel source. So why not the National Diet? Why not more villain prisons? Why not blow up a few dozen major hero agencies while at it?"

She realizes it immediately. Yes, she is a smart one, she just sometimes needs some grease to get going.

"USJ was a brand promotion to motivate currently active villains or people with villainous inclinations to consider joining the PLF." She says while he nods. "And Tartarus was so that he could obtain some higher-ranked villains to establish a proper command hierarchy, reinforce the brand AND probably get some friendly non-aligned supervillains to throw around to sow chaos."

Monoma cocks out some fingerguns at that.

"Precisely!" He says cheerfully. Once again, gallows' humour. He actually has an incredibly bad mood right now. "He also destroyed the Fast Response Unit and murdered Long Jump in front of the cameras, because if the FRU existed, his advantage of mobility would be rendered moot. If any of the three main elements of the plan failed, PLF would be done for. Oh, they would kick around for a few months at best, but they wouldn't be an actual threat to the government."

"... I see." Itsuka sighs. "That DOES sound like desperation. But they did manage to tilt the board in the end."

"True, true." Neito nods. "Although it was less tilting the board and more returning to it. It used to be a two-sided game between the NVA and the government, but now it's suddenly a three-sided game. Hence, chaos. He could achieve more, but he didn't attack any other place because he didn't have more men, nor ways of obtaining them. Hell, they probably didn't have money for equipment, Hatsume Industries could loan only so much money, so I'm almost certain that a large chunk of what they used was produced by Counterfeit. But… Why would Midoriya risk everything like that? Why didn't he try to talk more organizations into the attack before losing the element of surprise?"

That's what Monoma would do. In a completely hypothetical situation when he would be doing what Midoriya was doing now. Government has way too many assets to enter a slugfest with it. Decapitation strike out of nowhere to exploit the resulting chaos was probably the most likely idea to work.

She looks at him questioningly. Then motions to hurry up. Yes, his showman tendencies are still there. He's doing his best to change that, but old habits die hard.

"I think that something happened." Monoma says. "Two to three months ago. Something that made him rush the preparations. So rather than slowly build-up his foundation from shadows, he decided to go flashy from the start. And I'm VERY interested in finding out what exactly it was."

This might be one and only serious lead they'll get on him. Because it's the one and only thing that he probably wasn't in a position to bury under a mountain of misinformation. Something that made him act in a hurry. Something that made him commit mistakes.

She knows what he wants.

"So, let me guess… you want to go underground to investigate?" She asks and Neito Monoma nods. He is honestly pretty much an underground hero, except those no longer officially exist because the government was a sore ass after most of them tried to overthrow it.

"You truly know me well, Itsuka my dear!" He smiles widely. She gives him a tired look. "Look, honey, if you can't deal with me when I'm like that, you should have said no when I proposed to you."

They kept it secret, both because Kendou had enough issues with the government without that AND because he didn't want their other classmates that joined the agency to joke that he fell for someone who regularly karate chopped him in school.

He had standards. And he isn't a masochist.

Even their surnames are officially as they used to be. Monoma is good at information security, and Kendou isn't half-bad at it either.

"Just get out of my sight, please." Itsuka sighs. "And be careful, alright? I don't think that we have had a threat of this level in Japan since Eraserhead and Miss Joke." She doesn't say how much she regrets not knowing about their plans earlier. Then again, it did fail in the end. Joining it would only make them all fugitives.

Neito jumps off the couch. He decides not to correct her by saying that they haven't had a threat of this magnitude since All for One. Oh, well. Midoriya's going to prove that to the world soon enough. And the part of Neito Monoma that detests the current government is really looking forward to the fireworks.

For now, he has some investigations to do. He thinks that he knows where to start.

(***)

Saiko Intelli graduated from the Seiai Academy many years ago. Despite that, one might have easily taken her for one of its students. After all, she reused its student uniform as her hero uniform. She was a backseat strategist. She needed style, not support items.

The only two things that changed since her graduation was the fact that she threw the large pink bow out of the metaphorical window… and grew older. By seven years, chronologically. By thirty years, on the inside. And by at least fifteen on the outside.

Being an SS-Rank hero in modern times was mentally and emotionally taxing. Spyglass - her equivalent on the NVA side - wasn't making things any easier for her. They were mostly holding each other in check. Mindscape was winning in the long-term, but considering the disproportion in available assets, it was a given.

She felt… underperforming. She didn't like that.

And now her ancient rival - Yaoyorozu - returned. The same woman that outmaneuvered her during the provisional license exams. Oh, and she apparently teamed-up with Mastermind - whom Mindscape genuinely feared due to his quirk, but considered largely irrelevant. Due to his lack of assets.

He now had a lot of assets.

And they both teamed-up with yet another villainous mastermind. That she knew exactly zero about. And he was clearly the leader of the team-up. What were the chances of Counterfeit and Mastermind working for someone dumber than them?

Needless to say, the Probability Hero was having one of the worst days in her life. And then, when she heard her phone ringing in the background, it got even worse.

She is in her hero agency in Tokyo. Her sidekicks know better than to interrupt her. Of course, the person on the other side of the phone call doesn't care. Considering the name displaying itself proudly on her smartphone, they wouldn't care even if they knew that they aren't exactly welcome right now.

Saiko picks up the phone. At least partially against herself.

"Mindscape here." She replies, as emotionlessly as she can without making it feel like she was disrespecting the caller.

"Did you see it?" The Prime Minister's voice is shaking with anger.

"I don't think…" Mindscape replies. "... that more than a few thousand people nationwide would answer 'no'." USJ anniversary wasn't THAT popular, but the attack lasted long enough for people to switch the channel to it.

"Your opinion?" Someone's out for blood, it seems.

Now, how to answer it? Saiko never got to join the famed Nedzu's special class. Considering the fact that out of four of its members three defected, it was probably for the best.

She can only speculate on the issue.

"It's going to hurt." Mindscape replies. She doesn't need to activate her quirk to know that. Not enough of an answer, judging from the loud BAM coming from the other side of the phone.

Did she slam her hand into her desk? Huh.

"It. Already. Fucking. Hurts." The Prime Minister says, drawing the words. "I expected something more constructive from an SS-Rank hero."

Is this a veiled threat of demotion? Pffft. As if she cares. She'll be back at the top in a few weeks tops. The Prime Minister needs her there. But… perhaps it might be wise to not escalate.

Too much.

"We had that talk already." Intelli replies. "My quirks let me CALCULATE things. Not predict them. The fact that I generally lack intel about finer details of villainous operations already makes it hard for me to predict things perfectly. Not knowing things about OUR side makes it simply impossible. Why wasn't I informed about the existence of the Shinigami Record?"

"There was no such thing as…" The Prime Minister retorts automatically, before remembering who she was talking to. "There was no need for you to know about it."

"Of course there wasn't any need to know about it." Intelli snarls. "I mean, how exactly my war against Nakahara could benefit from having people like Usagiyama and Fukukado to interrogate. It's not like a solid half of the NVA members came from the organizations that those two led."

"Their intel…" The Prime Minister says slowly. "... was outdated."

"Who told you that?" Intelli shoots back. "The sycophants you surround yourself with? If you bothered to ask me about it, I'd tell you that even after the years, that intel was still valid. Fukukado might not know where Yo Shindo's holed up in, but she could tell me a lot about him as a person, his relations with other heroes and so on. What if we missed some friend of his that's an active hero today? That's feeding intel to his old acquaintance? That's…"

"Mindscape." The Prime Minister's voice makes it clear that this is as far as Mindscape can go. "I understand your anger and that some mistakes were made. But there is no need to make a scene out of it."

"Right." Mindscape would very much like to make a scene. But enough is enough. "The problem is, things are going to get worse. I was playing and winning a chess game with Nakahara, and now Midoriya showed up and threw a grenade onto the chessboard. I literally can't predict what happens next. Except for the fact that it's going to be bad."

What are the chances of Nakahara and Midoriya teaming-up? She doesn't even mention it aloud, but it's literally the worst case scenario. It's extremely unlikely considering the stated goals of both organizations and the fact that Midoriya admitted to being responsible for Endeavor's death together with Todoroki.

If Firestorm goes genocidal and burns some town to the ground, they'll at least know for sure that someone in the NVA leadership suggested such a thing.

Unless Nakahara kills Moe Kamiji quietly and disposes of her corpse properly. Then they won't find out about it until it'll be too late. Brilliant.

"I suggest focusing most of our assets on the Paranormal Liberation Front." Intelli says. "NVA is going to gain some ground, but this is unavoidable. If we manage to suppress the PLF, we should be able to recover what we lost. I'm currently much more worried about the Front, seeing as we critically lack intel about them."

"Logical." The Prime Minister replies. "Anything else?"

"I need access to Sir Nighteye's archives." Intelli replies. She can hear her interlocutor drawing breath. "Yes, I know that Lemillion's going to be a pain in the ass. But nothing we can do will make him like us, so we can as well force the issue. Because we, no, I need the information from it to have even the tiniest shot at figuring out Midoriya's plan. And exactly how bad it's going to be."

"I'm…" The Prime Minister replies after a few seconds of pregnant pause. "... not exactly worried about Toogata's reaction to the issue."

"What?" Intelli's eyes narrow. Oh no. "Please tell me that reading through it won't make me discover any massive governmental secrets that I wasn't privy to knowing before."

The Prime Minister's silence tells her everything that she needs to know about it. Goddamnit.

"Brilliant." Intelli tries not to accidentally add any venom to her words. The Prime Minister is clearly pissed off, and making things worse… Well, it's not exactly smart. Even if you're basically irreplaceable. "So…"

"I'll see what I can do." The most important woman in the country says. Which probably means that she'll get what she needs. Unless Lemillion 'accidentally' blows up the whole building out of spite or something. "Anything else?"

"Neito Monoma." Intelli replies and she can hear a groan from the other side.

"I refuse to involve him in that investigation." The Prime Minister shoots back quickly. "We can't be sure of his loyalty. Letting him actually know anything substantial about our operations is actively suicidal."

"I'd like to point out that we already have a leak." Intelli replies. "Someone is selling us out. NVA has a spy that's almost certainly one of our SS-Rank Heroes or someone very close to one of them, and for some reason I doubt that we're lucky enough for the spy to be among the heroes that the PLF just massacred. Now we also know that PLF has someone that might be HIGHER than that. I fail to see how involving Monoma will make it worse."

"Neito Monoma remains a hero only because we're yet to find evidence that he organized the death of the sidekick that we've arranged Kendou to hire." The Prime Minister replies. "He is a villain-in-disguise that we've given ample reasons to dislike us. We're not letting someone like him anywhere close to an active investigation that's a national priority. One Midoriya is bad enough. Request denied."

Brilliant. There goes the chance of having a long and heartfelt (if filled with malice and wordshivs) talks about what sort of person Midoriya used to be. Whom else is going to help Mindscape understand who she was fighting against?

It's not like she can invite Yaoyorozu to a tea party, now can she? Who else out there might actually know a lot about Revenant? Unless Sir Nighteye's archives mention anything, she's at loss.

His classmates? Dead or defected. His fellow masterminds from Nedzu's special program? All but Monoma defected, and she was just refused the option of talking with the only one left. What was left of 1-B had only tangential contact with Midoriya before he was expelled.

The teachers? Almost all of them were dead at this point. She knew where to find two, but Snipe made it rather clear that if he runs into any hero associated with the Japanese government, he's pulling a bullet between their eyes and pissing on their corpse.

Considering what sort of press said government had on American soil, and the fact that Star and Stripe would pay for the best lawyers in the country out of spite towards said government (Intelli has no idea why she hates them so much to be honest), Mindscape prefers not to test if Snipe truly meant that.

There was the other one left, but she didn't have a lot of hopes on that field. Something to try later.

"At least try to monitor him for the time being." Intelli surrenders. "I know that he'll probably notice whoever is tailing him, even if you send the best people you have, but… if he defects as well, we probably won't like the results. We need to at least try."

"That's doable." The Prime Minister admits. "Any idea what the PLF is planning to do next?"

"I have no idea." She replies honestly. "They're probably figuring out the next step of their war as we speak. Unless the whole 'Liberation Festival' bit actually isn't a sham made to incite their followers and they actually planned that far head."

She finds it unlikely, but…

(***)

"You were right, ribbit." Tsuyu admits, the paper plate (with a smear of mayonnaise and ketchup on it) still in her hands. "Those sausages are delicious."

Midoriya looks around. Assesses the potential risks involved. Decides that doing it with his tongue would probably be too… exhibitionist, given the number of people in the forest clearing. Then uses the handkerchief to wipe the ketchup off her nose.

"Ribbit?" She looks at him in confusion. He shrugs. It's really not that important.

"Take a carrot and put it up your…" Mastermind - manning the barbeque stand, because of course they had him to do that - reacts badly to Rini demanding a sausage from him. Midoriya sighs loudly and stands up from the plastic chair.

Just in time to see the ISP warlord drawing a sword. Who the hell takes a sword to a celebratory barbeque? ISP folks, right.

"I'll be right back." He says to Tsuyu before walking forward. He is going to have to intervene. And Rini's yet to meet her parents (they are going through medical check-ups first). It's only to get worse from here on, isn't it?