OldHerobrine: *slightly disappointed stare*
Shahryar: Most of it'll be off-screen, I'm afraid.
(***)
What exactly separated very smart people from those brilliant and dangerous enough to be referred to as 'masterminds'? It was hard to say, Monoma found during his short-lived special classes with Principal Nedzu.
Having a high IQ doesn't make you immune to mistakes. If anything, pride often comes before fall. Falling in love with your own intelligence and plans is a surefire way of dying quickly.
Liberator, for example, learned that the hard way. So many repetitions of the same plan, taking advantage of him looking like a kid to avoid suspicion… and when his Brilliant Masterplan Edition 3112 didn't work… he had no contingency plan to fall on.
In Principal Nedzu's opinion, every subsequent generation of Mankind was a bit different. It was always like that, yes. But the inception of quirks accelerated the process. No one knew for sure what was the cause, but Nedzu suspected that quirks accelerated human evolution by making humans accumulate minor quirk adaptations with every subsequent generation.
This included intelligence. Perhaps even the 'gut feeling' and generally understood instincts. This way or another, Nedzu was fairly certain that top level intelligence officers of modernity, if given similar tools and experience length, would be able to intellectually run in circles around those from the Dawn of Quirks.
Despite having a more or less same IQ. Some degree of quirk-assisted generalized Charles Atlas Superpower, perhaps?
Not all of them could do that, yes. Mankind didn't evolve with identical speed and in identical direction. Sometimes the direction of change was reversed for a while. A genius father could have a dumb child and vice versa. It really wasn't an exact science, as very little changed in the DNA.
Maybe Mankind as a whole was slowly ascending into a higher state of existence or something. Whatever it was, it didn't concern Neito Monoma.
The point was, sometimes you got people like Endeavor - who could probably lift a small car despite having a fire emitter quirk - and sometimes you had people like Sir Nighteye. Who could ruin your life in twenty-minutes flat, for as long as he had access to the internet and could easily dissect your entire past and all dirty secrets you ever had. Just, somehow.
The modern world was confusing.
Neito Monoma knew that if the masterminds were graded like villains and heroes did, he would be a solid SS-Rank. Of course, he also knew that the man he was currently pursuing was an equally solid SSS-Rank. But… every man had their limits and specialties.
Midoriya was a tactician and strategist. Yaoyorozu, a tactician. Mastermind, a data analyst. None of them were masterminds with a specialty in organization or investigation. Yes, they were smart enough to lead an underground organization and keep it (mostly) hidden, but that's mostly because Intelli wasn't after them.
Things have now changed. But Midoriya was smart enough to keep majority of his organization hidden somewhere together, because he knew that if he decided to spread them into a network of interconnected cells (like most 'proper' terrorist organizations operated), Intelli would eradicate it in before the Liberation Festival.
He wasn't Ayako Nakahara. He wasn't an expert organizer with an almost preternatural ability to predict threats to the organization, juggle around intel and make sure that every uprooted cell only knew things that were either outdated or misinformation. But, as stated, he knew about it and was covered from that front.
There was also Neito Monoma, however. And Neito Monoma had a clue to follow. This rarely ended well for the criminals.
He spent the first two days being buried in work. He sifted through police reports and the hero databases. He asked around his various contacts (on both sides of the law). He looked for something.
He more or less knew how fast Counterfeit could manufacture gear. He could more or less guess how fast Hatsume Industries could produce things (only guess, Hatsume erased all data, and blew up its headquarters - right after inviting a lot of its workers that presumably knew too much but didn't know about the villainous side of the company into it - right around the time of the Revival Celebration). He knew how many active combatants were deployed by the Paranormal Liberation Front during their first attack.
He also knew that if they had more people equipped, they would probably field them as well. Especially in the Tartarus attack, where having more people would decrease the casualties significantly.
This gave him a baseline.
According to the math, Counterfeit joined the Paranormal Liberation Front anytime between 30 and 50 days prior to the Revival Celebration. That was the estimate of the time she needed to work with her quirk (with a 30% increase in efficiency when compared to what he remembered from the times when they were attending the UA together) to fix the gap between what the Hatsume Industries could produce and what was deployed by the PLF.
He didn't count the Ascending Path into it. Unlike the remaining sub-organizations, the Path wasn't under the pro-heroes scrutiny beforehand, so they probably came with their own equipment. At worst, they had their equipment improved rather than created from scratch.
He couldn't know how much time it took Midoriya to establish contact with Yaoyorozu, as he had no baseline to work on.
Did they stay in contact after leaving the UA? How well was she hidden? The fact that she was an active drug lord in Tokyo was already dug out by government investigators (mostly thanks to her introducing herself to the world as Counterfeit, they knew that name), so they had that much. But Midoriya's past between All Might's death and the Revival Celebration was a black hole. Not enough information.
So he decided to be more on the safe side, and started with three days. So he started checking out odd events starting from 33 days before the Revival Celebration, and then going back in time. If he found nothing between 33 and 53 days, he would go back to the 30-33 time range, and decide that Midoriya and Yaoyorozu stayed in contact beforehand. Before trying for 53-73 radius, suspecting some additional delays.
She was always rather ambitious and independent. Monoma would be wary of her, and probably so was Midoriya. Especially as a jump from a drug lord to political terrorist was a large one. How much did she believe in the cause? Recruiting her last precisely to keep her around for a shorter amount of time (or, perhaps, recruiting her when it became obvious that the Hatsume Industries won't make it in time) made perfect sense.
Wait, she and Hatsume were probably in it together, seeing as they left the UA together. He rethought his calculations. It might have been closer to 35-40 days, it seems.
After fourteen hours of looking through the data (in moments like that he wished that he would have a proper intelligence quirk, like what Intelli or Nedzu had, to speed things up), something grabbed his attention.
A-Rank villain Crucible was killed in combat by an unidentified assailant, somewhere in a bad area in Osaka. 36 days prior to the Revival Celebration. Now, that alone would be a pretty minor thing, much beneath his notice. There were absolutely no ties between Midoriya Izuku and Tamashiro Shigeru. In fact, he almost missed the event on his list of weird events.
When he actually read about it, something clicked almost instantly.
Tamashiro Shigeru was a former member of the first Paranormal Liberation Front. No one important in its ranks, right. He had a rather mean five-finger point quirk that allowed him to instantly raise an object's temperature to its melting point. But he was no Entropy or Singularity, more of a foot-soldier than anything.
PLF connection. And, like Midoriya Izuku, Shigeru's past was a black hole. Except he wasn't talkative like Revenant during the USJ attack, so it was even more of a black hole. And after Neito checked the official reports, he immediately realized that they were fishy.
They were, to be honest, simply too precise. Too clean. No hero to witness the death, everything happening in a district where police preferred not to dwell for too long, and… the report was THIS detailed? Neito calls bullshit. He could smell a governmental cover-up from orbit.
So he decided to do what he does best (and no, it's not annoying Kendou). It was time to make a field trip.
(***)
Saiko Intelli exited her car in front of the high school, to an immediate squeals from some of the students that recognized her.
She hated that. Not the popularity, but leaving the secure governmental district in Tokyo. There, she could actually leave her car without being afraid that she would be sniped from a nearby building or more straightforwardly attacked.
Ayako Nakahara was out there, and Mindscape still didn't know the identity of her spy. Worst of all, Midoriya Izuku was out there as well, and he probably had a spy on his own. Needless to say, she felt vulnerable.
The logistical effort put into a simple act of visiting a high school was astounding. It included several police snipers, an armored car and several pro-heroes placed on standby nearby. Not to mention a standard police escort to said armored car.
She was also rather quick about handing out autographs to the crowd (she had her duties as a pro-hero, after all, and acting like everything was alright in front of the public was among them) before heading into the school.
There were a lot of autographs. But, despite it being in one of the wealthier districts, the number of people that seemed either uninterested in her being there or were giving her cold stares was bigger than she remembered. That… wasn't good.
A few short questions later, she had a face-to-face meeting with her target.
"Nishido Hotaka." She says, the man in question staring at her from behind the desk. They are in the teacher's lounge, and she just asked the remaining teachers to leave the two of them alone for a moment. "Or, should I say, Ectoplasm?"
"I'm retired." The math teacher - and a former pro-hero - replies. His exposed dentures are slightly… unnerving, even to her. "What do you want?"
She doesn't have a lot of hopes for that meeting. But maybe, just maybe.
"You know what I want." She replies. Ectoplasm snorts. With a lot of indignation in that simple act.
"No, I don't know, Ms. Mindscape." He speaks. "Has the government decided that I actually was a part of Aizawa's plot and sent you to arrest me? If so, then I feel honored. Not at all surprised by our beloved regime tying up the loose ends, even a cripple like me who didn't join the plot only because he wasn't told about it." He gives her a truly furious stare. "I have never before hated the fact that I was missing both legs more than after this."
Aizawa probably didn't want to include him due to the injuries. The one and only reason why he wasn't a part of it. Hotaka wasn't even hiding it. That was… significantly more anger than she expected.
It's like he didn't care about his further career in this school. Then again, he probably didn't.
"I want to talk about Midoriya Izuku and his… Revival Celebration." Mindscape decides to be clear about it. "Your students just killed a lot of people, and I expect at least some cooperation from…"
"No." Hotaka cuts in.
"What?" Mindscape stares at him. "You aren't going to…"
"My students…" Ectoplasm cuts in again. "... didn't kill anyone. What killed all those people was the Hero Public Safety Commission and our wonderful Prime Minister. Do us all a favor and write 'consequences of his own fucking actions' as Thunderbolt's cause of death in his file when you find his corpse."
Silence in the room. Eventually Mindscape speaks.
"Is that how you see it?" She asks, staring at the old hero coldly.
"That's how it is, Ms. Intelli." He replies. "This outcome was an inevitability from the day the HPSC expelled Midoriya and blamed him for Kamino. Everyone from this class knew that you destroyed him to slightly improve your PR, Mindscape. Everyone."
He stares at her, utterly undaunted of her position. Of her ability to make him disappear as a threat to the government and society if so she wanted. If anything, he feels relieved that he can finally speak those words.
"The HPSC, nay, the hero system in its contemporary form had no supporters in the Cursed Class from that day onward." He continues. "They only kept trying to become pro-heroes to make a change from the inside… in the name of those they lost, Midoriya among them. When they decided that they could no longer bear what the heroics were becoming, well that's how you got people like Tenya Iida, the Hero Killer. Or Tsuyu Asui, the Butcher of the Marukane Ward."
Silence for a few seconds. Mindscape is about to open her mouth, but that's when Ectoplasm speaks again.
"You created those monsters, Mindscape." He says. Part of her wants to protest about being equated with the HPSC, she wasn't even a pro-hero when all of that happened, but… "And it's in the nature of monsters to destroy their makers."
Once again, silence. Saiko is staring at the old man in front of her, trying to figure out a way to… maybe, just maybe, make him reconsider.
"... and what about all the innocents that'll be caught in the crossfire?" She asks. If she expected him to be shocked at her reminder, she was sorely surprised.
"Do you truly think…" Ectoplasm replies calmly. "... that a nation that destroys its youth for its own convenience deserves to have a future?"
"I see." Mindscape says before sighing loudly. "Looks I won't persuade you. Have a nice day, Ectoplasm."
"It's Nishido Hotaka." He corrects her. "And I'd like to say 'likewise' about the nice day, but I honestly hope that birds end up crapping on your beret on your way back to your car."
Well, at least he's almost refreshingly honest about it.
(***)
She returns to the safe comfort of her care, before opening the window a bit. A police officer leans towards it.
"So?" He asks. "Should we arrest him?"
"No." Mindscape replies. "He doesn't matter anymore. But have a serious talk with the school principal about forcing him to retire. Former pro-hero or not, several of his friends were involved in a coup attempt. And a person that tries to justify the attack on UA and the deaths of several students shouldn't be allowed to teach children."
She knew that a lot of people didn't like the pro-heroes nowadays. She, personally, didn't care about it for as long as they weren't acting on their dislike. But this? This, in her opinion, crossed the line.
"Do you think that they…" He asks, while glancing at the crowd of students. Some of them look irritated at the 'attention'.
"It's possible that the school has ties to the NVA." She replies. "But it's unlikely. Nakahara has nothing to gain from influencing a high school that lacks a Hero Course. But the faculty might be sympathizers. If they try to weasel their way of pushing Ectoplasm into retiring, contact people in the Ministry of Education and have the school properly investigated. And, if they find anything, close it."
"On it." The officer nods. Intelli closes the door, before speaking to her chauffeur.
"We're going to the Might Tower now." She says. She can as well meet Lemillion today and be done with the unpleasantries once and for… hopefully, all.
(***)
Midoriya, Uraraka and Asui approached the arena just in time to see the end of the fight. Bearhead's attempt to evade the blade was a failure, and a second later he found himself dropping to the floor, paralyzed.
"Is that all?" Lady Murder asks, standing over him and Curator (the whale villain similarly immobilized), her sword in her hand. "I expected more from the former chief lieutenants of the Beast, you know?"
"Did she…" Tsuyu sounds actually surprised at this development. Not at Lady Murder's victory, but the way it was achieved.
"Of course she fought both of them at once." Midoriya chuckles. "That's classic Rini." She doesn't look particularly injured. Slightly battered, probably caught in Curator's sonar blow, but otherwise alright.
The arena is on the surface of the Overlook. Trees and some carefully placed camouflage nets make it peaceful enough. It's pretty much a large hole in the ground (at least ten meters per ten meters), its surface of more or less smoothed out concrete.
The whole in question is surrounded by complex mutants. Midoriya recognizes a certain catgirl and a handful of Rini's lieutenants from her ghetto… and a lot of people they rescued from Tartarus.
"You're just a fucking cheater!" Bearhead shouts from the ground. Midoriya clicks his tongue in the background. "You have two quirks, you bitch! And you're just a fucking S-Ranker like us, don't you dare…"
Bad idea.
Very bad idea.
Rini proves it a moment later by stomping on his head. Not strong enough to crack the skull (he is a bear mutant, he is very resistant to blows), but just enough to humiliate him slightly further.
"Is that what sort of people Beast had as his head lieutenants?" Rini asks, before laughing. "That explains why he lost and why I had to rebuilt the ISP from a fucking scratch! You. Were. All. A bunch. Of fucking. Pussies." She says, accentuating every word with pressing Bearhead's head into the floor much stronger, before pulling her leg back a bit… and then doing the whole routing again.
Looks like, Midoriya decides, Rini has it covered. The right woman in the right place, all things considered.
"I have two quirks, yeah." Rini grins, waving her katana around. "So fucking what?! That's why I let you two go at me at once. And what happened? You fucking lost, and in what? Two minutes? And instead of admitting your defeat, you're acting like total losers and you, Bearhead, are still grumbling while having my feet on your fucking head?" He looks down on him, her sword dangerously close to his throat. "The fuck is wrong with you? Is that the sort of behavior that Beast permitted?"
Midoriya has a good view on the events. Some of Rini's older lieutenants moved to the side when they saw him approach (her advisor, gesturing at them to do that, of course). Doing the same among the crowd of older ISP members would probably end up badly.
"You… aren't… him." Bearhead manages to speak.
"Of course I'm not him." Rini grins. "Because I'm alive and a High Warlord. And Beast? He's gone. I'm waging a war that he fucking lost. I slaughtered my way through Tartarus, the one place he never dared to attack. I'm better than him. And I think that it's time to prove it to you all."
"What is she…" This time it's Uraraka. Looking seriously worried about it for once. Midoriya himself isn't sure, portraying herself as Beast's better already made a lot of the Old Guard members give her angry stares.
Rini ignores that. She points her sword at the crowd of people in question.
"Come at me." She says, on her face a murderous grin. "I don't care how many of you come at me at once, you bunch of fucking weaklings. Just be aware that this time…" The grin somehow became even wider. "I'm going to fight to kill. No sandbagging. Whoever enters the ring, dies."
Midoriya glances to the side. Red Fang, Rini's head advisor, is absolutely unmoved by that declaration. It's all part of a plan? It's…
Someone, of course, decides to risk it. Some wolf mutant, maybe a distant relative of Beast. Rini moves her feet off Bearhead's face before jumping with enough strength to crack concrete.
It's unmistakable. Luna Tijeras, Miruko's Ultimate move. Rini didn't even use her blade, instead she mounted his head, gripped it tightly with her legs, and then twisted her body, pulling his head cleanly off. It flew up, hitting the ground a few seconds later.
By the time it landed, Rini killed two more mutants. One with a throwing knife to the eye (impressive precision, Midoriya admits). Another with a vertical upward slash that severed his reptile head in half.
That gives the others a pause.
"Anyone else?!" Rini yells at them. "C'mon, show me that you have balls, or are you all just a bunch of fucking cowards?!" After seeing three of them - all A-Rankers - die almost too fast for their eyes to follow, most of them seem to have seriously reassessed her strength.
Especially as she didn't even use her other quirk.
Midoriya still had no idea why she was classified as an S-Rank rather than a double S-Rank. Was it some governmental plot in hopes of causing a clash between her and Mastermind? Intelli was smart enough to try that.
They are ISP warriors, after all. Some still look like they consider trying to get a jump on her. But they aren't allowed to do that.
"Don't. Move." Bearhead says loudly. He has managed to rise from the floor. Achievement rather impressive, only possible because Rini's Bloodcurdle is a slightly downscaled version of Stain's quirk. Rather than total paralysis, she's just suppressing their physical strength.
He managed to do that. Izuku was impressed. Of course, standing was clearly everything that he could do in his current state.
Rini turns her head towards him.
"Were you…" She says, her voice deceptively calm. "... talking to me?"
"No." Bearhead replies, before looking towards the frozen crowd of old ISP members. "She proved her strength. We'll follow."
Classic ISP mindset, really. Exploited expertly.
"All part of a plan?" Midoriya says towards Red Fang, Rini's chief advisor.
"Y-yes, G-grand Commander." She mumbles out a reply. "We n-needed to m-make sure they knew how s-strong she is. And t-that she t-thinks like t-hem. M-miruko had… has a… r-reputation."
For being strong and ferocious… but also for opposing ISP as a group. Yeah. Rini proved herself to be like them, not like her.
Red Fang was… honestly, she needed a few years of intense development and she'd get to join the same league as Yaoyorozu and Mastermind. Midoriya was increasingly interested in guiding her development.
Having someone to intellectually oppose Mastermind if the High Priest ended up outliving Midoriya might be… beneficial to the country in the long-term.
"I see." Midoriya nods. "Good thinking."
"What about… Chameleon?" Curator ends up asking. The whaleman managed to rise from the ground as well, his eyes locating Asui in the crowd.
Rini glances at the group of outsiders observing the spectacle.
"Tsuyu Asui…" She then shouts. "... is the only person who was smart and strong enough to not be jailed after Beast fell. And guess what, 'ya fucks? When I asked her to join me, she told me… despite being surrounded by me and my lieutenants… that she'd rather suck Mastermind off."
She doesn't look insulted by that at all. Despite all the stares she gets, Asui remains unmoved.
"She has bigger balls than you and Bearhead combined, Curator." Rini then turns her attention back to the whaleman. "She didn't leave the ISP. She survived its downfall. She has the fucking right to do whatever she fucking wants, one that she earned by being the toughest, meaniest and most cunning of all the tough, mean and cunning motherfuckers that populated the old Party. And you better fucking remember that." She says while giving Curator a murderous glare. "Or else."
"S-She has…" Red Fang tried to speak, but Midoriya silenced her with a gesture.
"I know." He then says. The ISP didn't like deserters. This one move just made sure that the new ISP members wouldn't look down on her - or worse. Smart. Whose idea was that? Lady Murder's? Red Fang's? The Inhuman Supremacy Party was returning to the world of the living with a surprising speed.
And it was all arranged. Rini did tell Midoriya to show up with Tsuyu Asui, after all. Smart. Very smart.
"Tell her to get herself back in order and rest." Midoriya then tells Red Fang. "She has a family reunion scheduled for tomorrow."
It's going to be… interesting.
(***)
Please don't kill me for the fact that the Dreaded Meeting only starts in chapter 26. Trust me, the next one is interesting enough. Also, Ectoplasm is based and you can't change my mind. Go tell them, old man. Go tell them.
Also, Rini is being Rini and Monoma in the trail. Things are slowly shaping up to interesting, all while taking advantage of the slight... cool-down in the hostilities. Which won't last for very long, mind you.