Torhaent - Very nice to hear words like those :D Thank you :P
Shahryar - Always.
(***)
"You… absolute… son… of… a… bitch." Lady Murder manages to say, every word interpersed with gasping for air.
"No." Stain replies dryly. "I got my looks from my mother. You don't think that someone was ready to pay to have sex with her, now don't you?"
Rini groans painfully. She feels like she just tried to headbutt a train. And yes, the train was probably a shinkansen and busy going at her with its full speed. She is lying on the floor in the arena, being decisively beaten up, and paralyzed.
The only thing that makes it somewhat palatable is that she can see the Hero Killer lying on the floor three meters away from her, decisively beaten up and paralyzed.
That was one hell of a final exchange of blows. Shame that BOTH OF THEM HAD THE SAME FUCKING FINISHING MOVE. And neither of them were clearly used to having their finishing move being used against them.
Ugh.
"I think…" Rini says. "... that your mother probably had a nose."
"An ugly one." Stain cuts back. "Actually, you might have gotten it from her rather than Miruko."
"Fuck, and I can't stress it enough, you." Rini replies. Before groaning loudly and painfully once again. "What the actual fuck are you made of? I swear, it's like trying to kick through a fucking concrete wall."
"Fanaticism, spite and an awful lot of training." Stain replies dryly. "Mostly fanaticism."
"Right, that checks out." Rini sighs. The concrete floor feels fairly fucking comfortable right now. "And that's you after years of imprisonment?! What the flying fuck?"
"Okay, first of all, language." The Hero Killer says. She wants to show him her tongue so fucking much right now. "And second of all, you might be way faster than me by design, but I used to be much tougher and stronger. Instead, you were also slightly stronger and tougher. But I had you at experience."
"That's fucking bullshit and you know it." Lady Murder cuts back. "I was the head of the ghetto for about the same time as your whole Hero Killer career, so I call bullshit."
"Well, I guess that I'm just fucking better than you." Stain replies. Lady Murder manages to move her hand through sheer fucking anger enough to flip him the bird. She isn't sure if he saw it. "You probably fought mostly against mutants, didn't you?"
Oh.
"Right, you have a fully human body." Rini groans again. "I'm not fucking used to fighting human-shaped enemies, so you had a lot more experience in that, right."
"I'm…" Stain says slowly. "... willing to share it with you."
"Still trying to parent me, old man?" Rini shoot back. "What's in it for you, eh?"
"Have an ideology, fight for it, then see it crumble before your eyes before being imprisoned supposedly for life while being largely forgotten by the world…" Hero Killer replies. "... and then try to tell me that having a child to leave at least something behind when you finally kick the bucket won't be high on your list of priorities."
He really sees no reason to sugarcoat it. Besides, if there is anything he learned about Rini by now is that bullshitting her would just make things worse.
"Ehhh, that's fair." Rini replies. Then she comes to a decision. "You know what, you're good enough for me to not be perpetually ashamed of having any public connection with you… something that I wish I could say about MY FUCKING LIEUTENANTS!"
She isn't sure if they are hearing it but, with their animal senses, they probably are. Despite the arena being big.
"So if someone asks, I'm going to be nice enough to your old fossilized ass to call myself Rini Akaguro." Rini then announces.
"What makes you think that you're good enough for that surname, eh?" The Hero Killer decides to play hard-to-get.
"Say no and I swear to gods I'm going to crawl over to you like a giant murder caterpillar, bite your trachea out and play you a funeral march on it like on some fleshy flute." Lady Murder replies dryly.
"Wow, I really respect your ability to conjure colorful threats on the fly." The Hero Killer replies. He isn't even joking, it was a really good one in his opinion. "You know what, fine. Rini Akaguro it is."
"So, are you done with that or what?" Izuku decides to make himself known. He entered the arena a moment ago, accompanied by Uraraka and Incense, one of Mastermind's lieutenants and the closest thing they had to the head of the PLF's medical corps.
Incense was very happy to walk around and provide field medical help. Apparently it had something to do with her spending several years in Tartarus. It really made you interested in moving around freely.
"Fuck you, Greeny." Rini cuts back.
"Fuck you, Midoriya." Stain cuts back.
Izuku groans loudly while Uraraka lets out a loud pffft.
"See, I knew they would hit it off." Izuku tells Uraraka who quickly nods. "Birds of a feather, really. Except one of them is ugly, and the other is Stain." Uraraka starts laughing openly. Even Incense has a smirk on her face.
"Keep going like that and you won't like the result of my paralysis wearing off." Rini warns him.
"I can scarcely imagine you being hurt by the accusation of being ugly." Izuku replies. "Weak, yes. Ugly, no."
"I don't fucking care about how I look like." Rini replies. "But any reason for a fight is a good reason. Besides, I look fabulous and you know it."
Izuku shakes his head. He'd like to say no, but damn it. He already ended up seeing at least a few Rini-centered villain fics and a lot of drawings on the shadier parts of the internet. Sometimes Izuku Midoriya really questioned if Mankind deserved to exist.
"Incense, patch them up." He then orders. Thankfully none of those two blocks ended up being permanently injured. Nor dead. He had Uraraka bring one of the Overhaul's injections in a small suitcase, but he didn't WANT to use it.
Time to go plan the next raid.
(***)
Momo Yaoyorozu decides to visit him before the official strategy meeting. Or, to be exact, she informs him that she has some news, so he lets her enter his office.
It's… kind of barebones, really. Izuku isn't very interested in decorations, save for his old collection of All Might memorabilia but it's one thing that he isn't showing to anyone. Only Tsuyu and Uraraka know, and while the former tried to at least put some life in their personal quarters, his office is something else.
It's mostly just a desk, a computer, two chairs on both sides of the desk, and a small archive of data, neatly arranged over several bookshelves by one wall. The other one is mostly empty.
He considered trying to make it look like a part of the supervillain's lair, and put a map of Japan with some ominous looking (but meaningless, he didn't need them) pins on it, but… yeah, no.
Mei was supposed to send some technicians to remodel the electrical network and allow him to put a proper TV on that wall without having to run the cables on the floor, but it wasn't a high priority thing, so the installation was slightly delayed.
"Thunderbolt broke." Momo announces as she enters the room. Izuku freezes behind his desk, before smiling faintly.
"Finally." Midoriya smiles. "Almost a week, say what you want, a tough nut to crack."
"I think that it was mostly the time that broke him." Yaoyorozu replies, while sitting on the chair on the opposite side of his desk. "He realized that no help was coming, and that it might as well continue on for weeks. He's ready to tell us whatever we want for as long as it makes the pain stop."
Primitive, as far as interrogation went. But they really had no time, and no interest in cutting deals with Thunderbolt. Especially not with Quicksilver being there.
"I assume that asking you if you confirmed his honesty is pointless." Izuku says. She was an expert villainous mastermind, after all.
"He broke two days ago." Yaomomo replies. Then, when she sees his eyes narrow a little, she hurriedly adds. "I asked him several questions about confidential governmental information and checked if his answers were correct before coming here. He is speaking honestly."
Yeah. She was smart enough to make sure that he wasn't suspecting her of playing her games once more.
Not like there were no games involved. Factions already formed among the PLF' executives. Eclipse was clearly in Mastermind's camp. Clockmaker was working closely with Counterfeit. Rini, probably guided slightly by Red Fang, was telling them both to go fuck themselves.
The game was… subtle. Small decisions over the access to the resources, words said in the passing or in public, and so on.
Mastermind controlled their hospital thanks to the old CRC earning a lot of public support in poorer districts with some charity works. He had a lot of doctors and even several healing quirk users, like Incense, in his camp. Counterfeit controlled their logistical framework.
ISP's position was arguably the weakest, but they made a game out of ignoring all those small insults and jabs, and seemed to be enjoying that.
Trumpet was a staunch pro-Revenant loyalist, uninterested in all those little games. Having MLA and Ascending Path in his corner made Revenant's position comfortably secured, especially as most of the League members were more loyal to him than to Counterfeit, his main potential inside threat.
So he could freely ignore them.
"Did you…" He says, but she interrupts him.
"I got coordinates for three separate facilities of the Paragon Program." Yaomomo replies. "One for 'obedient' candidates in Niigata Mountains, one for those sufficiently disobedient on Nabu island, and one for those that were considered to be of special interest, north of Aichi. Where…"
Oh, God. They were going to get her back. They were going to get them back. Finally, just… finally.
"Niigata Mountains." Izuku says. Not even the slightest part of his internal chaos and relief gets displayed on his face. He is cautious enough, especially with Yaomomo. He'll vent to Tsuyu afterwards. "I taught her well. She'll play nice and friendly to avoid getting sent to a more secured facility, and urge the remaining kids to do the same."
"Are we attacking the facility during the second wave?" She asks. And… shit, that's a good question, that's a VERY good question.
Izuku thinks it over for several seconds. Finally, he arrives at the destination.
"We'll do it during the third wave." He decides. "We need to investigate the facility properly before the attack. Rushing an assault on a secured fortress filled with children can backfire spectacularly."
And he refuses to fuck it up to the point when he'll have to face Eri and tell her that one of her friends died, because Izuku wanted to save her too much to think rationally about it. She would be absolutely pissed off, to begin with. And that's without mentioning the risk of Tsuyu stabbing him at night.
No. He's getting them all out. Safely.
"Awesome, what am I supposed to do with Thunderbolt?" Momo asks a question.
"Get all the intel you can from him and send it to me." He has a very good spy, but if they had unrestricted access to everything, Izuku wouldn't need to kidnap Thunderbolt to begin with. "As for Thunderbolt himself, do whatever you want with him for as long as it doesn't make Quicksilver attempt to murder you."
"So we're not letting him go, sure." Yaoyorozu replies. "Kyo seemed interested in finding out if she can make him go completely insane and if yes, how long it'll take."
Izuku decides that he'd probably feel better if she didn't tell him that. Murder is one thing, he's completely alright with it in a lot of circumstances, but this?
"Approved." He replies. Oh, the things he's ready to do to make his underlings happy and loyal to him. "Remind Hatsume that I need updates on HI's new factory in Okinawa. You know, the Mechanist's new little playground."
"Sure thing, Grand Commander." She stands up and salutes. The L-sign is sloppy, but it was probably intentional.
Izuku was ninety-nine percent sure she was going to cause serious problems for him at some point. But he needed her and Frostfire for his terror campaign to work, so he had to tolerate it.
(***)
Locating Midoriya was, at this point, basically a fool's errand. Oh, Neito Monoma knew where Revenant was. It wasn't THAT hard to figure it out. There were already tales circulating in the underworld about some mythical 'Overlook', an ancient (well, just a few years old but it really felt cooler when referred to that way) fortress of All for One.
Except, Neito had no fucking clue where Overlook was. Neither had Intelli. Not captives to interrogate, at least for now. And Neito Monoma was ready to bet one of his balls that Midoriya made sure that his own lackeys didn't know where the Overlook was (benefits of warp quirks), meaning that they would have to capture one of the PLF' executives or Cloud to find out.
And Neito was ready to bet at least a finger that Midoriya has probably found some loyalty enforcing quirk user and had the executives and the warper put under them.
He still remembers how long it took the HPSC to locate the High Cathedral, the old CRC stronghold used by the PLF post-Deika as secondary headquarters (before they decentralized fully). Mostly due to every captive dying of spontaneous brain aneurysm when they were about to tell the interrogators its location.
And no. They didn't find the guy responsible for that to this day. They suspected him or her to be part of the Meta-Liberation Army, due to its members somehow managing to stay hidden for decades, a feat impossible unless such quirks were involved. But any MLA member that was persuaded to speak about it, died of spontaneous brain aneurysm.
Now, the people responsible for all of that were attempting to overthrow the government and destroy the pro-heroes once and for all, and judging from their first two attacks, it was going to be just as ugly as Neito Monoma feared.
Just fucking brilliant.
However, Ibara Shiozaki most certainly wasn't as well hidden.
Monoma never found any logical reason to keep track of her. She was one of the many heroes that gave up their licenses after Miruko's coup. She didn't take part in it, but she empathized with its goals and reasoning. So she left.
Honestly, sometimes Monoma wonders why he didn't do the same.
If that was someone that he was genuinely close with, he'd probably keep track of them just in case. He knew what Awase and Fukidashi were doing, for example.
Awase, crippled by a noumu during the Training Camp Massacre, was working on an oil rig overseas. Fukidashi decided that active heroics weren't for him (not in their current state), but he still had a hero license so he was pretty much using his quirk to be a performer, except mostly for children.
They were both in contact with their old class, to this day. So was Tsunotori, who decided to do a Snipe and left for the US, where she remained an active pro-hero.
Shiozaki, though… their personalities just didn't mesh very well.
Back then, Monoma had an inferiority complex caused by years of being looked down on due to his quirk. A massive one. And his response to it was to be as outwardly haughty and prideful as humanly possible. To the point where he was regularly acting like a total asshole (and yes, he realized that by now).
One can easily imagine what was Shiozaki's (with her religious-fueled drive for humility) reaction to that. That woman didn't even have any hero merch and always clicked her tongue in irritation when she saw some Top Hero in an TV advert.
If the Hero Killer kept his no-killing policy past Hosu, she'd probably end up joining his followers.
She apologized for the cold treatment after Kendou finally knocked some sense into him and made him attend therapy for his issues, yes. Apparently it was a bad thing to look down on him for a behavior that was caused by psychological problems, not by his own bad character. It was actually rather nice of her, but the bad blood stayed.
So when she left heroics, Neito didn't keep track of her. Kendou, to a degree, did. Like she did with all their classmates that survived the Paranormal Liberation War (minus Kuroiro, Kodai and Kamakiri, for completely different reasons). But some time later, Ibara vanished off the grid entirely.
Neito put a lot of assets into changing that, now that he realized that Ibara was his main lead on Midoriya. And, surprisingly enough, he managed to succeed. Although, by all honesty, it was a fluke more than anything else.
That and, well. Ibara wasn't anywhere near the top of their class. She was smart enough to get to the UA, but never close to intellectual brilliance. Add the fact that she was never interested in underground heroics, and you had this.
She learned how to cover her tracks decently enough to avoid the scrutiny of heroes and police, despite doing whatever it was that she was doing nowadays (probably under Midoriya's instructions), but… Neito was playing in a different league.
She was accidentally caught on some street camera, and with some slight bribery he managed to get a certain police precinct to run a search for someone resembling her through the nation-wide surveillance database. Yay for the police state.
He located her current home. A house in the Tokyo suburbs, with a small garden that she was tending to with some of the kids. He decided against storming in - battling a powerhouse like Shiozaki with kids around could prove… problematic.
He instead settled up for a good old stake-out, changing his looks a little and borrowing a car from a nearby rental. The rest was just observation and noting down the people showing up at the location.
The only interesting person he saw on the first day was some light blue-haired man in a dark hoodie and artist gloves. He showed up, and seemed to have a longer chat with Ibara, before leaving.
Something in his moves felt vaguely threatening, Monoma sometimes got similar vibes from S-Rank villains. Unfortunately, he hasn't heard of anyone like that guy before.
Then again, Ibara Shiozaki being a villain was a surprise to him as well, Midoriya was good enough to make the heroes remain absolutely unaware of the existence of his Support Network.
Having some additional heavy-hitters that were utterly unknown to the heroes and that weren't involved in the Revival Celebration made sense. If anything, they might have been more of the former SN members among the new and previously unknown members of the League of Villains.
Quicksilver's backstory (bad father, and so on) sounded like prime SN member material, to begin with.
In the meantime, Neito opened a bag of chips while eyeing the building in question through the car window. Stake-outs were goddamn boring.
(***)
Mindscape was still busy trying to sort out the aftermath of the first raid (while trying to figure out what MIGHT be the target of the second - the chances of her predicting it correctly were small, but…), when one of her sidekicks told her that she had a guest.
If she was slightly excited when she heard that Mirio Toogata decided to visit her agency, then the word 'slightly' flew out of the window when she saw that he was wearing baggy trousers and a T-Shirt. Which certainly counted as 'comfortable clothes'.
"Don't overthink it." Lemillion must have noticed something in her gaze. "That's my normal clothes when I'm off-work."
They sure are.
"I see." Saiko manages not to stare at him lustfully. "I assume that you're here because you want to avoid being left on the sideroad when our war against the Paranormal Liberation Front is involved. And for no other reason."
"Yes, absolutely no other reason." Mirio's face is perfectly neutral. Too perfectly. Oh, looks like this day might end up nicely, after all.
Was he lonely after the unfortunate end of his relationship with Nejire Hadou? Well, Saiko would truly enjoy… cheering him up a little. Especially if he'd still make it rather clear that he is so angry at her for their little… differences.
It made things spicy. It made things interesting. It made things incredibly stupid. What was there not to love?
"Tea?" Saiko asks, while pointing at the couch. She's going to join him in a moment. "I have some rare brews available, and our fervent talk about the war might take us a while."
"I'm more of an energy drink person." Mirio replies. Yeah, she could imagine that. "No need to waste a good tea on me." Oh, well, no one's perfect.
That's when her phone starts ringing. Oh, goddamnit, and she was just getting into the mood. She even told her sidekicks to not interrupt her or…
Of course, it's the Prime Minister.
She adapts a face so perfectly neutral and unmoving that it says absolutely everything about her opinion on the person in question. Then she picks it up.
"Yes, Ma'am Prime Minister." Saiko says, with a face of a corpse. Lemillion freezes and gives her a rather angry stare. Although the anger seems to have an underline of confusion at her facial expression. "How can I help yo…"
What?
(***)
If there was one thing that Izuku has managed to discover about Tsuyu when sex was involved, was that she was … well, perhaps not a sub, but she certainly preferred to have her partner take the lead. A fact that Izuku enjoyed taking full advantage of.
Right now she was lying on her back, her hands above her head where they are pinned to the bed with his left hand, while his other hand is… exploring. Judging from the redness of her face and the occasional sounds she was making, she was clearly and truly enjoying it.
So was Izuku. And they barely started! It was still just hands on his side. And it was going to get much, much better in a moment.
Somehow, hearing her 'I want it, I want it right now' ribbit never got boring.
Except, that's when Izuku hears someone loudly banging on his door. His bedroom door. And that's a problem, because the only person that's allowed to enter his (well, theirs) quarters is Uraraka. And he explicitly told her to not interrupt him.
"We're busy." He says loudly. "Please come back later." Tsuyu is rather clearly happy about him choosing that option. Well, he is very interested in continuing their current little game, and as such…
Uraraka decides to deny all expectations. The door to their bedroom imploded under her quirk.
"Wh…" Izuku has maybe half a second to react (it had to be EXTREMELY important if she was ready to act against his orders to what she perceived as his own good), Tsuyu quickly covering herself to the best of her ability, before Uraraka speaks.
The look on her face was probably going to haunt Izuku forever.
"Armageddon." She says, her eyes wide and locked on Midoriya with an expression of horror on the rest of her face. "Someone just activated Armageddon."
"Oh." Izuku blinks at her a few times. That was… no that was just…
For a solid five seconds, Izuku Midoriya just bluescreened. It was something beyond his ability to comprehend. Something completely out of left field, akin to All for One suddenly returning to the world of the living and wanting revenge. Or All Might returning to the world of the living and wanting answers.
Once the five seconds pass, Midoriya snaps back to life.
"Everyone to the command center." He orders while jumping off the bed. Uraraka nods, but doesn't move. "NOW!"
The Second Paranormal Liberation War just got a whole lot more complicated.
(***)
... say goodbye to the State of Emergency Arc. Starting next week, the End of Days Arc. Let's just say that we're about to see disastrous civilian casualties and Midoriya's plans getting SIGNIFICANTLY derailed.
No one said that the Second Paranormal Liberation War was going to go perfectly according to the plan?