Jpx0999 - He is plenty overpowered at his present power level :V And yes, final confrontation between Defiant and Overhaul is going to happen soon.
Shahryar - Imo Overhaul would win against Kuroiro, but mostly thanks to him being the ultimate healer. And the fight would still leave SH crippled as an organization.
raw666 - Doing my best :P
(***)
In Izuku's opinion, missing Hari Kurono was a disaster for Overhaul. To a lesser degree, the same could be said about losing Purity and most of his praetorians. Because unlike Kai Chisaki, they were significantly more… grounded? Tactically minded?
Comfortable enough with their worth and skills to point his mistakes out? That was probably the best way of summarizing it.
Overhaul was an extraordinary strategist, who was also skilled enough to plan an operation, for as long as he had competent people to lead his forces in the field. He also knew how to lead an organization.
In Izuku's opinion he was better at that than Kuroiro, the defeats in Shizuoka only caused by the fact that Overhaul feared leaving himself exposed to the heroes and the police in Musutafu. If he got to focus on Shizuoka, the League of Villains would have a much harder time.
Before Gunga Mountain, well, Kuroiro wouldn't survive a month if Overhaul got to focus on him back then.
Overhaul wasn't without flaws, though, even if you excluded his malice and general lack of common decency (those were moral flaws, not his flaws as a commander). He was way too ambitious, always needing someone like Hari Kurono to tell him that he's going too far.
Izuku sometimes wondered how the hell did Overhaul persuaded him to support the Gunga Mountain Raid intervention. Then again, it was a calculated move on Chisaki's side that only turned into a disaster because of Rabbit.
And when it came to Overhaul as a tactician…well.
He was good. But not very good. Purity and Kurono beat him on both fields, even if the former didn't have a lot of occasion to show it in the field. Hell, Mustard had a potential to get there, especially if the trap he prepared for Tornado was his idea (and it probably was).
The fun fact was that even on a strategic level, his preparations for the battle of Esuha Bridge, to be honest, sucked. One more thing that Kurono would have pointed out, if Sorahiko Torino didn't end his career so abruptly.
Waiting there for several hours, giving his opponents the time necessary for proper reconnaissance before arriving on the battlefield? Horrible idea, no matter how you looked into that.
It made sense as a boast, and defeating Defiant after such a handicap would make Chisaki appear even more powerful, but… it was probably Overhaul finally going too far with his ambitions and self-love, in Izuku's opinion.
The fact that Overhaul was lagging behind on several fields didn't help his case.
The more Izuku thought about it, the more laughable it became.
Shie Hassaikai had some powerful fighters, capable of going toe-to-toe with the strongest of the local superheroes. Dabi and Carnage were incredibly dangerous, and they proved it multiple times. Kurogiri too, before the brain damage. Three of the new villains - including - Volcano - were already listed as S-Ranks.
What Overhaul severely lacked were the more 'tricky' villains, the ones whose powers didn't make them into powerhouses - but made them a powerful support force for said powerhouses.
Force multipliers, in short.
It might have been caused by many things. For example, having a powerful quirk (especially the first gen one) made you more likely to score some brutal crimes, and then be recruited by one of the most brutal criminal organizations in the country.
In the end, though, Izuku thinks that Overhaul simply habituated himself into responding to any problem by grabbing an even bigger stick. It was entirely in character for him.
He had some mostly support villains, but to be honest that was mostly just Inquisitor, Kurogiri, and maybe Dictator. Two of those, however, could use their quirks on the battlefield, making them be more of a dual support/combatant villain.
That left the Inquisitor. Who, with his ability to root our traitors with a single question, should have made Overhaul realize the power of non-combat quirks.
Thankfully, he didn't. Resulting in Overhaul continuing to search for powerful combat quirks, including the one of Bakugou Katsuki. While mostly ignoring the support quirks, that either didn't fall to villainy or were somehow overlooked (or, perhaps, grabbed by the Meta-Liberation Army).
In that one field, the Metahuman Network organization proved itself vastly superior to the Shie Hassaikai. Its involvement with rescue services meant that it was more likely to recruit people whose quirks weren't directly useful in combat.
People that were receiving proper combat training, of course, but mostly for self-defense. Because sending them onto the battlefield to fight people like Carnage would be tantamount to sending the crew of the army's division field hospital to charge enemy machine guns.
A pointless waste of lives that could be employed much more successfully otherwise.
What was going to be Overhaul's downfall was, in the end, the support heroes. Especially Earworm, Quicksand and Chancellor, at least in that particular stage of the battle (the fact that the last one was classified as a superhero was mostly about soothing his ego, although he could also be extremely mean in combat).
They had at least two hours to confirm the Rabbit's group findings. It was a rather leisurely paced yet thorough reconnaissance.
Quicksand's quirk allowed him to swim underground, his new hero uniform (made by Hatsume Industries, of course) doubling as a miniaturized scuba diver suit that didn't limit his movement on the ground so far.
Obtaining additional if more standard scuba diver equipment wasn't hard. In fact, Earworm already trained with using it for the purpose of that particular combo move with Quicksand, one more brainchild of Midoriya's quirk expertise.
The result was Quicksand and Earworm swimming under the Shie Hassaikai goons, deeply enough to minimize the risk of detection (in case the vigilantes missed some new recruit with detection quirk). Earworm regularly connecting her earphone jacks with the solid material at the verge of the liquidized 'tunnel' made by Quicksand.
She wasn't able to pierce it, not with the 'water' she was in limiting her earphone jack's speed. But she had Quicksand to solidify the area around them when she put them by the edge of the area afflicted by his quirk. And then liquify it again to let her pull it out.
Jirou's mastery of her own quirk reached a level when she could freely project her voice, even underwater, by carefully tailoring vibration output - after all, sounds were vibrations. This allowed them to report their findings to Chancellor whenever they got close enough to the surface, in places comfortably distant from the SH goons.
She could actually overhear what they were talking about, and in some cases they ended up being extremely helpful by referring to each other with their villain names. And even if they didn't, Chancellor then compared the received data (such as size and body-built) to their list of known villains.
He had more data to go by - another part that Overhaul clearly didn't think about was the fact that the JSDF was literally quite there, and was no longer entirely in the dark when meta-abilities were involved.
Death Arms was clearly seething about it, but Yagi was right next to him to push him in the right direction. And while they didn't risk sending anyone too close to the Esuha Bridge, it didn't mean a lot when the Chancellor was given access to pictures taken from military satellites.
Even some high-altitude reconnaissance planes were quickly scrambled, Governor Yagi clearly calling in some old debts from the army to make it happen in less than two hours. Not to mention forwarding the pictures to Chancellor.
In short, less than two hours after the declaration of war, Chancellor provided Izuku Midoriya with a computer map of the enemy deployment, including positions of people like Dabi and Carnage. Some - typically new villains and the praetorians that weren't leaving the now-abandoned buildings - had a percentage next to them, showing how certain the identification was in Chancellor's opinion.
It tended to be a quite high percentage.
"So that's what he's planning, huh." Midoriya says, staring at the map. "I shouldn't be surprised, but… Chisaki playing dirty is nothing new."
He is presently accompanied by Paladin, Chancellor, Eclipse, Amplitude, Rabbit and Blackwing. Basically speaking, all superheroes currently present in Musutafu Prefecture, minus Split who was recently promoted officially but not quite yet in the combat readiness due to her injuries.
There is also Aizawa and Hawks, no way they are letting the heroes fight it out with Overhaul without their oversight. Arsenal is there too, although mostly as Midoriya's assistant plus the walking logistical miracle that she was.
Who knew how long the fight was going to be.
"What do you mean?" Aizawa says, only to immediately curse himself in his mind. What's the point of being here for oversight when the problem teenager appears smarter than you? Even the Chancellor gives him a slightly smug look. Arsenal clearly knew it as well.
"You talk about Dabi's positioning?" Hawks decide to save the police's honor. Since Midoriya nodded in answer, it seems that the honor has been saved. "Good eye as always, Defiant, but I think that you gotta describe it to everyone here."
"Right, my bad." Midoriya sighs. A moment later, a print-out of the map of the area was lying on the table between the people gathered at the Takoba city hero agency. Its infrastructure was used quite regularly, although rarely for bigger operations.
It was… something new.
"Overhaul, Dictator and Kurogiri are waiting for us on the Esuha Bridge, right here." Izuku points at the bridge on the map. He isn't quite sure why Overhaul picked such a theoretically disadvantageous position for his final fight with Midoriya, so he expected another foul play. "He has one or two of his new villains on him, together with what we presume to be his command staff."
Overhaul missed out on support villains, but he certainly caught up in terms of technology. There were some drones airborne in the area, for threat detection AND recording purposes. They expected the feed from being fed to the internet, and…
… well, none of them expected a lot of TV stations (that were still having a meltdown over Overhaul's announcement) to say no to such a morsel. Even if they were probably going to transmit with some delay, to make sure that murders weren't going to be shown to the public.
Without a warning that is.
Overhaul needed someone on him to make sure that he was aware of any detected enemy movements. Hence, command staff.
"Most of his forces are located here, on the eastern bank of the river." Midoriya continues, pointing at the area. "So, in the direction of Nabu Mountains, almost at the verge of Hosu. We've picked Carnage, among a lot of villains. Dabi, however, is here." He adds while pointing to the area on the other side of the Esuha bridge.
The fact that the area on the verge of the city was so thoroughly abandoned was a good summary of how bad Hosu was doing. That area was badly destroyed during the war, and too low on the list of priorities to get rebuilt.
Who would live where there was no running water, no electricity, and most buildings were devastated during the war? Who would rebuild the buildings when resources were scarce, Hosu was a hotspot of crime and the local industry was either destroyed or evacuated? It would, eventually, be restored, but…
"And… why is he there?" Paladin decides to ask.
"Because the evacuated area on that side of the bridge… is semi-circular." Midoriya replies. "From his current position, Dabi is capable of firing a Prominence Burn reaching still inhabited parts of Hosu… in almost every direction."
Now, yeah, now Aizawa understands it. Fucking Overhaul.
"So Dabi's his plan C." Aizawa comments. "If Overhaul realizes he's losing and Kurogiri won't be able to warp him out for some reason, he'll use Dabi and the threat of massive civilian casualties to blackmail us into letting him escape."
While also being in perfect position to fire Prominence Burn at any group attempting to stop Overhaul from escaping. Because if Overhaul would try to escape on foot, he would do that in the western direction, to disappear in Hosu. Exactly where Dabi was.
"Yeah, that's my opinion." Izuku says before sighing loudly. "The fact that Dabi appears to be alone only strengthens it. Overhaul is clearly expecting him to fire Prominence Burn today, and not in the direction of the bridge. There is a small group of people around… here." He says pointing to the place between Dabi and the bridge. "I assume them to be the reserve force in case Dabi gets endangered, or to pick him up and run back to Overhaul for post-Prominence Burn healing, once again, if Kurogiri won't be in a position to help them."
He can only wonder if Overhaul knows about warpgate lock. Probably not, but he might be cautious due to suspecting the Network of having a warpgate quirk of their own. So, he expects to have to use Kurogiri to redirect people in order to respond to more asymmetric attacks.
From that point of view, being allowed to delegate at least some foot-work to someone that wasn't Kurogiri made sense. Especially as they were also there to make sure that no one got to the bridge from that side without overhaul knowing.
"I assume, then…" Amplitude decides to say. "... that we're going to have to take him down first."
Yeah, Shoto has some rather personal stakes in the game. Izuku is acutely aware that in normal police operations it would be enough to make him not participate. But here? Here he is one of the very few people that can face Prominence Burn and survive.
Besides, Izuku suspects that he would have a mutiny on board if he tried to stop that confrontation.
If Overhaul was his private nemesis from day one of their meeting, then Dabi was Amplitude's private nemesis from the day when they realized that he was, in fact, Touya Todoroki.
"That's the plan, Amplitude." Izuku admits. "And I think you're the best person to do that. Just… you know what might happen? You might even end up unmasked, and…"
"... I'm fine with that." Shoto Todoroki replies, trying to ignore Momo's worried look.
(***)
Fifty Minutes Later
Esuha Bridge is mostly empty.
There are some cars and trucks left abandoned, Overhaul kindly telling their drivers to fuck off and killing those that didn't move fast enough. Their presence there is, honestly, a part of the plan - he expects Midoriya to try to use them against him as projectiles.
In the middle of it, Kai Chisaki is waiting. Sitting on a chair that he 'borrowed' from the TV station. Around him, a few of his thugs, sitting on more chairs in front of a table he had Kurogiri warp in.
Most of them from the more computer savvy part of the Shie Hassaikai, watching the feed from the drones.
They were extremely exposed.
Almost an invitation for an attack.
Except, it wouldn't work. Because one of the new recruits from the Gunga Mountain had a quirk that allowed him to see the near future in front of him, the man now tucked behind the abandoned in a position that allowed him to see the entirety of the command post without being exposed himself.
Good luck trying to snipe him. Foresight will warn him fifteen seconds before death. Enough to react.
Frankly, Overhaul is feeling bored with inaction.
Then, things begin to happen.
"They are here, boss." One of his staff members announces. "Amplitude is approaching Dabi's position from the west."
That… was both fascinating and less good than Overhaul hoped for. How did they know he was there? What form of reconnaissance did they perform? How much did Defiant know exactly?
Then again, it was Dabi.
It was entirely possible that he betrayed his position through doing something completely stupid.
Again.
The real reason for 'fascinating' was Overhaul's surprise at Amplitude deciding to approach Esuha Bridge from Hosu's direction. That was… a dangerous choice, in his opinion.
"Warn the eastern group that we have a company and they should be on high alert." Overhaul replies. It was entirely possible that the heroes were trying for a pincer attack and Amplitude was simply spotted earlier than the rest. "Then tell Dabi that he should start doing his thing. In the meantime, cameras on me."
One of his thugs (thugs, but, well, a competent one, he has some smart people working for him) turns the camera in his direction.
He came prepared.
"Well, ladies and gentlemen from across Japan." Overhaul announces. "It appears that the local superheroes have responded to my call. This means that you're going to get quite a few nice shots of them getting violently murdered."
Oh, he is really looking forward to this.
"In the meantime, though, I think that a certain someone has something to tell you all." Overhaul continues. "And I promised them the occasion to do it when recruiting them. So, we might as well do it right now, am I right?"
A moment later, a camera shifts elsewhere.
(***)
"If Toshinori thinks that I don't know that he survived and pulled the old 'oops, I lost my phone' trick on me…" Nana Shimura says dryly, observing the events on the screen, Overhaul having just announced that the superheroes showed up. "... he is in for a rude awakening."
This is, honestly, not the first time. Yagi Toshinori was notoriously… individualistic. A military maverick, even. Yes, he pulled similar stuff on his higher-ups during the war, pretending to not be able to receive the orders he suspected were going to be stupid, just to be able to do his own thing.
Only the fact that he kept winning (until his near-fatal injury, and even that day was a victory) stopped him from getting kicked out of the army.
"Shouldn't we cut the feed?" Her minister of the interior asks. He was in her office, trying to figure out the way to approach the Overhaul's 'announcement' when, well, this happened.
"At this point, it's probably too late, either way." Nana sighs. "We can only hope that Yagi Toshinori's semi-divine maverick instinct didn't fail him this t… ugh, that's one ugly ass face." She says as the image on the screen changes.
(***)
"Hello there, people!" Dabi waves at the camera, standing in front of the building where he was hiding first. Oh, he is going to enjoy it sooo fucking much. "You probably wonder who I am, so let's have that out first. I go by Dabi, the Arch-Arsonist of Musutafu. Marukane Ward fire, yep, that's me. Big part of the Shizuoka Massacre - me! I've killed hundreds of people by now."
He needs to establish that to make another part of this talk be just perfect.
"Honestly, I never expected to be in front of the cameras." Dabi chuckles loudly. "People typically do something like 'hi dad, it's me!', so I guess I have to do it as well! Enji, my dear dad! It's me, Touya! Aren't you happy to see me again?!"
(somewhere else in Japan, a man stares at the screen in shock, his family arriving at the dreadful realization one after another)
"My real name is Touya Todoroki!" Dabi shouts, enjoying every second of it. "Oldest son of Enji Todoroki, the head of one of the four zaibatsu conglomerates that practically run the Japanese economy! And an absolute shitty father, that has greatly contributed to…"
"He has four children." Amplitude announces dryly, cutting in. Dabi saw him approach from the side, ready to act if the superhero tried to attack. "Since only one of them turned into a homicidal half-burned piece of steak, have you ever considered the option that you were the problem all along?"
Dabi is pissed off at the interruption. The cameras shift a little to catch the superhero. Who slid all the way on his ice, now looking down on Dabi from a miniature glacier ten meters away.
"Well, well, well, if it ain't the ice cunt." Dabi replies. Paraphrasing classics, why the fuck not? "Amplitude, trying to catch me again? You don't have an awful good record on that field."
"Thankfully I learned a lot from seeing you do your utmost to escape from me back to your little yakuza overlord sugar daddy." Shoto replies flatly. He is, on a deeper level, enjoying it well. It's what's going to happen later that makes his mood sour. "Such as 'how to make sure you don't escape me again'."
Dabi is pissed off even more, there are even some small bursts of fire here and there, but he is still controlling himself.
"Well, looks like killing you is going to be an extremely enjoyable part of me finally ruining my shitty father, my shitty mother and my shitty sibling." Dabi announces, his teeth clenched. Then he blinked in surprise. "Wait, why are you taking off your helmet?"
"Because I'm hurt." Shoto replies. His hood is off, then, with the last move, he pulls off the face mask, Dabi's eyes going wide. "That's all you can do, Touya-niichan? A 'shitty sibling'? I make better insults in my sleep."
"Sho…Shoto?!" Dabi recoils back, shocked almost speechless. Elsewhere, Fuyumi's hands cover her mouth, the rest of her family too shocked to even try to say something. Fuyumi and Natsuo knew that Shoto was trying to be a superhero, but…
"Sorry to ruin your melodramatic 'my dad was mean to me so I'll murder people randomly' moment…" Shoto replies dryly. "... with my only narrowly less melodramatic confrontation with my psychotic older sibling. This can end in two ways. Option one, you surrender. You get a lifetime in prison but also therapy, some family visits and you'll probably occasionally be allowed to visit your girlfriend in her own cell."
Dabi is still too shocked to speak. Yeah. That's not how he expected his big moment to look like.
"I'd personally prefer you to pick that option." Shoto continues. "Because the alternative has me become a kinslayer. With so many civilians in your range and your tendency to go for maximum destruction, you'll simply leave me no choice. Choose quickly."
He doesn't think that starting his official hero career with fratricide is going to make him popular. He is thus trying to lessen the impact if Dabi ends up picking that option. Because, even after all that happened, he still hopes that there is something to be saved in Touya.
"You goddamn pest." Touya decides to prove him wrong, the anger erupting on his face. "So much time preparing for this one moment, and you come and fucking ruin it?! That's it. I only planned to kill my father, but since the rest of my fucking family is so intent on making everything more complicated, I guess I'm going to have them follow Enji into hell."
Thank you, brother, for making it less painful for my career, the one that will be composed entirely of stopping people like you. And for making me realize that it has to be done.
"Flashfreeze..." Shoto says, raising his hand toward his brother. In his earpiece, Rabbit's voice says the word Explosionproof.
Things around him change, the inevitable side-effects of Shoto powering up his strongest attack. Dabi realizes that things are serious.
"PROMINENCE…!" The blue flames dancing around his flames. They interfere with what Shoto's preparing, but not enough to change the outcome.
"... Heatwave."
Rest in peace, brother.
(***)
The explosion on the horizon is titanic. The shockwave is enough to throw a cap off from one of his villains nearby, a small mushroom cloud rising at the horizon.
The debris from the explosion is falling from the skies even now, a big part of the abandoned district erased from existence.
"Dabi's lifesigns flatlined!" One of his staff members shouts a few seconds later, getting over the initial shock (even Overhaul was still staring at the cloud in shock). "The localizing beacon is destroyed, we don't have the coordinates and…"
No way of recovering the body with Kurogiri. No way of resurrecting him. Overhaul didn't expect Dabi to vanish from the Shie Hassaikai's ranks so quickly after receiving what he wanted, but well, here they are.
"It looks like the heroes got the first blood." Overhaul cuts in dryly. "Amplitude is most likely out of the fight, but unless he was suicidal, he is still alive. Tell Junker and his men that attempting to recover Dabi's body is pointless. Stay on guard for a potential attack from the west."
Moments later he gets a report that the heroes have been spotted approaching from the east.
Carnage was finally going to have his chance to shine.