Alright, so a quick word of caution. This fic can be considered to be a rather grimdark 'post-canon' story based on my other fic, Ties that Bind. Reading it is TECHNICALLY not required, but you might be blindsided by certain OCs and other minor elements. It's a very good fic AND it's published on this page, so if you came here through this fic, please look through my other stuff :P You (probably) won't regret it.
(***)
Sometimes the disasters are predictable. The ground shakes a few times before the earthquake; the sea recedes before returning as a tsunami; alerts blink on the screen before a nuclear reactor malfunctions. There is time to react.
But sometimes, there is nothing. And sometimes, the warning signs are so minor that no one notices them until it's too late. Foresight, after all, it's an art much harder to master than hindsight.
That disaster was years in the making. Unlike a hundred others, it was avoidable… but only until that fateful day in Sendai. Once started, the chain of events continued almost on its own. Crushing the lives of millions.
(***)
"Is that confirmed?" Midoriya Izuku asks, looking through the window at the ruined building on the other side of the plaza.
Years have passed since he attended UA, but his choice of attire remained almost the same. T-shirt, baggy trousers, red sneakers, an old and worn down All Might hoodie. He was… nondescript. Easy to miss in the crowd of people. The only alteration he made was the fact that there was no longer any writing on the T-shirt.
It made him a bit too memorable. And being easy to remember is potentially lethal to a supervillain.
He doesn't turn his head towards his companions. He isn't ready to face them. In the meantime, he calmly ascertains the recent battlefield in front of him, focusing on that instead of what he felt.
Several buildings were damaged, entire segments of the plaza were practically melted down and the signs of struggle were visible everywhere. Crushed lampposts, ruined benches, burned-out bushes.
Crucible was a tough nut to crack. Despite the number of enemies he had to face and the fact that he was alone, he almost held out long enough for the help to arrive. His death was one worthy of a hero. A true one. Not one of those that killed him.
"Yes." He hears from his side. Sunako Oboro is back. The black business suit and a messy blackness for a face are almost painfully familiar. It's less mist and more a twisting cloud, the origin of her villain name. "It was the HPSC collection unit."
"Because, of course, it was them." Midoriya replies before sighing painfully. "Who else murders people and kidnaps children in broad daylight nowadays?"
"I think I could throw out a few names." Cloud replies. "But none who's ready to do it so openly." She… sometimes fails to grasp sarcasm. Unfortunate, but understandable. Especially with her childhood.
"I brought one of the cameras." Cloud adds. "It captured the faces of the attackers well. If you want to get them, it…"
Midoriya congratulates himself on the idea of putting some secret surveillance cameras around the perimeter. Even Crucible didn't know about them. When shit hit the fan, he just had to ask Cloud to pick the recordings up to know what happened.
Midoriya finally turns his head towards his companions. He stared at the graveyard long enough. Cloud is holding the camera in question in her hands.
"We're going to find them all and make an example out of them." Midoriya replies, interrupting his warper. His gaze is distant. He learned to put up a mask when needed. "But for now, rescuing the children gets the priority. And those quote-unquote heroes don't know where the Commission took them, so their punishment might wait. What happened to the kids?"
"Taken. Including Eri." Cloud replies. "Herded into some cars. I don't think we can follow them. The Commission is… cautious."
Izuku allowed Eri to occasionally visit that group. She had a friend in it. They made sure that her arrival and departure do not threaten the security of Crucible's safehouse. Midoriya was going to review the system, but he was almost certain that it was just rotten luck.
It was enough for the third person in the group. A slight slip in concentration and the handheld console turned to dust. Tenko Shimura - known to some under the villain name of Decay - curses before looking towards Midoriya.
"What's the plan?" His adopted brother and second-in-command asks. He doesn't even ask if they are going to do something, or if there is a plan. He knows Midoriya well enough. They worked together for years.
Midoriya has a plan. More than one. But he needs a moment. A moment to collect himself. A moment to decide if he feels like pretending that he didn't break. Because while his face appears calm, what's underneath it is anything but calm.
"For now, we're going back home." Midoriya replies. "There is nothing of value left here either way."
The chain started. From then on, the disaster was an inevitability.
(***)
Midoriya's home is a two-story building, standing freely on the outskirts of a small town somewhere in western Japan. It doubles as the headquarters of his Support Network because Midoriya certainly doesn't require this much space for himself.
The neighbours think he is a writer who enjoys living with little human contact. Once a week, he pushes an envelope with some money through the space under the door, rewarding some local kids for cutting down his lawn. Once a week he goes to do his groceries in the nearby convenience store, always wearing a hoodie and a face mask. That's all that they know about him.
They don't even know that he was living with an adoptive daughter. He enrolled Eri in a school further away. Like the Support Network members, she comes and goes through Cloud's warpgates.
The Network uses the first floor. The second one is where Midoriya Izuku (Akatani Mikumo to his neighbours and the government) lives with his daughter, Midoriya Eri.
Once the warp ends, he leaves his co-workers and walks upstairs. Finds his own office, and sits in the chair in front of the computer. Inhales. Tries not to scream - and succeeds. Exhales. Inhales. Tries not to scream - and succeeds. Exhales.
Then, at the ripe age of 26 years, Midoriya Izuku breaks. It's the quiet type of breaking, one almost impossible to notice unless you knew the person for years. If Tenko was there, he would notice. Most people wouldn't.
He doesn't scream - it's not like that could change anything. He doesn't cry - he ran out of tears long ago. He doesn't destroy anything - he keeps his living space scarce. If he ruined something, it would certainly be something valuable. Instead, he breaks in a different, much worse way.
There are several options for rescuing Eri. Of rescuing the remaining fifteen children, all of them with powerful quirks, all of them kidnapped to be changed into Paragons. To be 'trained' (more like brainwashed) into loyal tools of the government. Into even more walking violations of what pro-heroes were supposed to be.
But Midoriya Izuku had enough. He had enough of failing to save people - or saving them, only for something to happen to them earlier. He knows that even he can't rescue those kids - and Eri, the sole remaining light in his life - without alerting the government to his existence.
That once he does that, his Network will be done for. That all the remaining children he was helping, he was going to help, would be endangered. That Eri would remain in danger (he doesn't care about himself, stopped doing so years ago).
There is a way, however.
It might be old-fashioned, but there is a stationary phone on his desk. It carried… some improvements, most of them very illegal.
Midoriya dials a number.
"Yeah?" He hears. Tenko probably went to play some video games. Everyone coped with murderous fury differently.
"Gather the Cleaners." He replies. "I need them all here in… in three hours." He needs to do some preparations first.
"Quicksilver's busy with an errand." Decay replies immediately. It took him a while to get there, but he is a rather decent second-in-command nowadays. "She'll need at least five hours to finish it."
Two hours won't change a lot. It's not like he is going to waste them by not doing anything either way.
"Gather them all in five hours, then." He replies. "Call me in… ten minutes before. I might be too busy to keep track of time."
"Sure thing." Tenko says back. He's probably looking forward to whatever Midoriya's brain cooks up this time. He's going to have some very mixed feelings about it.
Midoriya opens his desk drawer. Pulls out a key-chain decorated with a small All Might figurine. There are only two sets of keys on it… or so it seems until he rips the plushy figurine to shreds. There is another key inside.
He finds the symbolism of what he just did morbidly hilarious. He can count people who would understand the joke on the fingers of one hand.
Izuku stands up from behind his desk. Approaches the door at the corner of his office. Opens them with one set of keys. Inside is his personal archive. A small labyrinth of shelves covered in stacks of documents. Quirk analyses, some blackmail material, some painful memories, some paperwork.
There is also a safe. The size of a wardrobe, so a big one. The second set of keys on the key chain is booby-trapped - it seems like they were supposed to open it, but instead, it would trigger some explosives. The true key to the safe was hidden in the figurine.
Midoriya Izuku might be a supervillain. But he still had his oddities. Something that his co-workers learned to ignore by now.
The contents of the safe are, honestly, much more explosive than the actual explosives in the room. It's something he buried there two years ago.
Oh, it was his fifth All Might figurine - he opened the safe once every six months to make sure that the objects inside weren't damaged or stolen. Paranoia was a second nature to him by now.
He opens the safe. Stacks of documents, some CDs, several external hard drives - all of that is still there, looking just like he remembered it. All that he inherited from his past life as a member of the triumvirate in command of the Paranormal Liberation Front.
The worst and most dangerous villain organization in the history of Japan. The group that started the most recent Quirk War in the world's history. The one and only to happen in what was considered a First World during the last fifty years. The group responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and hundreds of heroes.
The safe contained everything that Izuku Midoriya needed to start the second Paranormal Liberation War. After all, the government and the heroes can't endanger Eri and the others again if there are no government and heroes left.
Midoriya Izuku is still sane enough to realize the madness of this logic. Alas, he no longer cared.
For now, he had to reread the documents and update the plan. Two years have passed since he put those things here. Some revisions were needed. Some improvements he could add.
He puts the first stack of documents on his desk, sits down, pulls out a ballpen and starts reading. This is going to be a long day.
(***)
Ten minutes after Tenko called him, Midoriya Izuku comes downstairs to meet the Cleaners. His personal villain unit that's tasked with solving problems encountered by the Network. Sometimes, it means intimidating someone. Sometimes, it means changing an entire building into a slaughterhouse.
They were well-trained. The plans were always extremely cautious. There are many police investigations, but no solid leads. No names. No faces. A few blurry pictures of people in outfits concealing their identities. A handful of fingerprints leading nowhere, as none of the people in front of him have civilian identities.
Decay. Cloud. Quicksilver. Hypothermia. Singularity.
Decay's the head of it, his quirk allowing him to decay everything and everyone to dust. Perfect for leaving no tangible evidence of murder. Perfect for making sure that there's nothing left for the police to investigate. Occasionally, Midoriya had him dust entire buildings formerly used by the Network, just to be sure.
They couldn't hide THAT, obviously. The police knew that there was a villain with a 'turn to dust' quirk. But the Network made sure to not leave a lot of human dust behind. The police kept Shimura dangerously under-ranked and had the investigation graced with a much too low priority to get anywhere.
Now the man was standing in the room, his back to the wall. Wearing some messy excuse of a shirt and trousers. Angry, but in a restrained way.
Cloud was there as well, sitting on the couch. Her emotions are unreadable… unless you know her enough. Then you realize from the twists of the cloud covering her face that Sunako Oboro, sort-of daughter of Kurogiri (the amount of mad science involved in her conception was almost amazing), was livid.
She looked scary, but like her dad, she had a soft spot for kids. She was also the only person in the room that didn't have an impressive kill count. The worst she did was teleport some corpses and evidence into a volcano.
(they weren't going to leave everything to Decay, even if someone caught up with either of them, they wouldn't immediately connect all the dots and thus would severely underestimate the number of the corpses disposed of by the organization during its few years of operation).
Quicksilver was a short and rather tomboyish brunette, three years younger than Midoriya. She kept tapping on the floor with her leg, an involuntary side-effect of her quirk. She was wearing a business suit with a black tie over a crimson red shirt.
She was also known as Mika Toyoda. The only child of Haru Toyoda, the former Number Three (and shortly Number Two) Hero Thunderbolt. Very few people knew her under that name. The world thought she was dead. She preferred it that way.
She liked children. She was alright with killing people if it wasn't done for the sake of killing, but for a reason. Her quirk let her move fast - with a speed of sound, actually - although it had few irritating limitations. Such as the fact that she could barely manoeuvre at high speeds, and that she needed solid ground to move.
Like a more limited but much faster Tenya Iida. The biggest problem was making sure that no one realized who she was. The quirk itself was famous. Quicksilver continued to train it, but also put an awful lot of effort into learning how to kill without it.
Hypothermia looked like her exact opposite. Long blonde hair, feminine to an extreme and a voluptuous figure, although one mostly hidden under her parka that she wore even indoors. Her real name was Soma Michiko. Very few people knew that name. Even less knew who her brother was.
Geten, for all his power, didn't get famous during the first Paranormal Liberation War.
She wasn't the smartest tool in a shed. Lacked any practical skills aside from her quirk - the strength of which made her into a walking weapon of mass destruction. Someone capable of levelling a small town with a flick of her finger.
Barely useful for a clandestine organization. She spent most of her time as Midoriya's personal assistant slash tea brewer. He needed to give her at least something to do to not get bored to death.
Knowing that he had someone who could battle one of the Top Heroes from the position of advantage if push came to shove was reassuring.
Singularity was, for most of the time, Midoriya's bodyguard. Bodyguard slash maid slash nanny. Being a single father was straining, especially as Izuku's experience with girls was lacking even after all those years.
Despite all of that, and despite the constant smile on her face (maybe especially because of it), he still felt pangs of guilt whenever he saw her. Whenever his eyes landed on those brown bangs, permanent blush on her cheeks, the little finger pads (partially obscured by artist gloves) that carried her quirk.
The world thought that Uraraka Ochaco was dead. Considering what happened to her during the war… Midoriya sometimes wished that it was the truth.
She was wearing a T-shirt, a pair of shorts and sandals. As always, she looked cheerful. As always, it made him feel faintly nauseous.
The atmosphere in the room, other than her smile (one that didn't reach her eyes), was sombre. The news already spread. Everyone realized it was an emergency meeting. When Midoriya entered the room, all the eyes were suddenly on him.
He felt studied. Everyone, aside from Uraraka, probably wonders what's going to happen. What decision did he come to? Tenko might be the second-in-command and everyone is free to voice their opinions, but in the end, he is the Network's leader. His voice is the law. When he came upon the decision, it rarely changes.
It's clear to them he did. They just don't know what decision it was.
"I'll be honest with you." He says to the room full of highly experienced murderers, each of them capable of killing him at their leisure. "Today… today was the last straw. I'm tired of hiding. I'm tired of losing people. I'm tired of being the world's punching bag. I'm tired of living in permanent fear that the government is going to take Eri from me to brainwash her into more of their puppets. I'm tired of knowing that our bitch of a prime minister is simply going to outlast me."
A combination of shock and horror blooms on Tenko's face. Uraraka's face freezes lightly. Those two know about the safe, know about the contents of it, know how many horrors it contained. The former because he was his brother in all but blood. The latter because she couldn't betray him.
And they just realized that he opened it. And what it meant. Others are observant enough to notice that something weird was happening. You can't be a villain of such a track record without being perceptive. But they lacked context to realize what was happening.
"Ten years ago, Entropy gathered a handful of prospective villains… and created the League of Villains." Midoriya starts. Tenko says nothing at the mention of his sister. Hana was dead for years now. Any pain that might have been there was long gone by now.
"Under All for One's guidance, she changed it into a villainous superpower." Midoriya continues. The eyes are on him. "One that, after a merger with the Meta-Liberation Army, Quirkless Liberation Front, Creature Rejection Clan and the Inhuman Supremacy Party, created the Paranormal Liberation Front."
They still didn't figure it out. Well, at least aside from Tenko and Ochaco. The former is more expressive. There is a mixture of horror, excitement, and emotional pain on his face. Midoriya knows the reason for it.
"A group strong enough to challenge the entire hero system." He continues his small speech. "To challenge Japan as a whole. To wage an open war against it. Turn cities into ruin, and push the heroes to the brink of defeat. But eventually, they lost. Today, they are only a half-forgotten memory that no one's afraid of anymore."
Exhale. Inhale. Adopt a serious look on your face. He was trained on how to appear in front of people. He doesn't like it, but he can act pretty well.
"I think…" He says, almost… relieved to have reached the conclusion. "... that we can do it better this time."
They take a second to realize what he meant. He can see it on their faces. By now, he can read from them all as if they were open books.
Hypothermia's face twists from confusion to bloodlust, a look on a predator that just spotted a prey, a villain that realized that it's time to spill blood. She loves using her quirk. A battle junkie to an extreme that was just offered an occasion to stop hiding - and start fighting.
Quicksilver is much more reserved, but there is a slight predatorial glint in her eyes as well. She hates her father. She could never act on her hatred - because, for as much as she hated him, she refused to endanger the Network's wards for revenge. If only because she wanted to truly believe that she was a better person than he was.
She probably expected that killing him was a part of a plan. She was wrong, but not entirely. Thunderbolt was in for something nastier than that. Whether the death was going to follow depended on the circumstances.
Cloud's cloudface swirls. Confusion, interest, slight fear. Cloud was, after all, the least bloodthirsty out of them all.
"You're going to have to decide now." Midoriya continues once he realizes the message reached everyone in the room. "Once you agree to join the new League of Villains, there'll be no going back. I might, no, I will tell you to do horrible things, and I'll accept no refusal. We all might end up dying. The only thing I can promise is that we're going to save those kids… and that we're going to make the government bleed more than it did in years."
"Izuku…" Tenko tries to cut in. Midoriya doesn't let him.
"You're excluded from that, Tenchan." He says. Tenko freezes, the look on his face a mixture of relief and worry. "Unlike the rest of us, you have a wife and kids. And I need someone to make sure that the Network is dismantled in a way that doesn't endanger anyone within it. I need you to get everyone out of the country while I focus on the war."
"And I'm probably supposed to go out of the country as well." It's clear that he has some mixed feelings about it. "Fuck. I hate it, but…" He sighs painfully, clearly fighting against himself. Midoriya decides to give him a little push.
"Join Suto in the United States, Tenchan." He says, letting a wry smile pop on his face. "Too much time on her own on another continent. What if she finds someone better looking than you? We both know that it's easy."
Some laughter erupts in the room. Tenko gives him an almost insulted stare. He sent his wife to safety while staying behind when the society's approach to complex mutants began to worsen. Considering how blindingly in love they were with each other (they video called each other for at least two hours a day), that option simply wasn't on the table.
"Fuck you, Zuchan." He shoots back. Before sighing and scratching his head. "But I guess you have a point." He isn't happy about that. He more or less expects what's going to be the endgame of Midoriya's plan.
Midoriya is kicking him out of the country to make sure that he won't get killed. Because most of the people in this room will probably not live until the endgame.
For now, he looks toward the remaining people. Uraraka's agreement wasn't a question, but the rest…
"So?" He asks.
"I'm in." Hypothermia speaks first. "I was fucking waiting for this for years, boss. Time to stretch my limbs a little. And kill some heroes.".
There was some truth in the theory that quirks wanted to be used, and if so… Well. She WAS a walking natural disaster. Walking or flying, if she wanted to. Geten spent years trying to catch up to his sister in terms of firepower. And he never quite got there.
"Quicksilver?" Midoriya asks.
Mika can't speak. She never could. But she gives him a thumbs-up gesture. Looks like she is looking forward to dealing with Thunderbolt.
Then again, so does Midoriya. It's time to finish the job he started years ago.
"Cloud?" The most important one. He believes they can persevere without a single walking nuke (he knows where to find at least one more), and Quicksilver is an A/S-Ranker in combat. Powerful, but… replaceable.
They need the warper.
"Let's save those kids, chief." Cloud announces after a few more seconds of intense cloud twirling. "I'm ready to do whatever you tell me to do. What's the plan?"
Just as he hoped. He has them all. The first step of the plan ended with a success. He has a lot more to make before getting to the endgame.
"League of Villains needs more members." He replies. They are all looking at him with an almost unsettling intensity. Announcing that they were starting a war against the government pumped them up a lot. "We need to have a core of the new PLF ready before we'll try to bring the four satellite organizations back into the fold. And I think I know where to look for them."
It's time to start the long-awaited reunion of the UA's Cursed Class. Twenty students from the only class to be ever taught by the Symbol of Peace. The group that personified an old saying.
Eleven died as heroes. Nine lived long enough to become villains. Two put an additional twist on the saying and died as villains. Of the remaining seven, two were already part of the League.
He had to find the remaining five. And he knew where to look.