Shie Hassaikai HQ, Tokyo…
"I'm in" Manami Aiba said, her fingers flying across her laptop's keyboard as her computer finished connecting to the backdoor that Tenko and Himiko had previously established. Normally, hacking jobs she and Gentle were hired for involved her finding a way past the target's security systems before they could proceed any further, so finding a client that already had an established backdoor into the target's systems was a rare occasion. "I'm looping the security footage at the warp point now; the coast is clear and you are free to proceed in."
"Understood" came Shimura's voice from the other side of the earpiece. "Proceeding with the mission as planned."
A few seconds later, black clouds erupted in a corridor on the first underground level of the Hassaikai's headquarters. Out ran the five members of the actual strike team, dashing down the hallway towards their objective.
"Everyone knows the plan, right?" Prometheus asked, making sure one final time that all players knew their part of the raid's overall goals. Midoriya was dressed in a dark suit with a bulletproof vest and dark green clip-on tie underneath; a metal mask with green LED accents on it covered his face.
Gentle Criminal nodded. "I will proceed to the warehouse on the second underground level to dispatch any resistance there and begin inventorying their products" the silver-haired man said, readying his trusty cane for battle.
Decay concurred. "I'll traverse the facility planting the bombs our supplier sent us" Tenko said, referring to their online contact "Spyglass" and the "patented High-Yield Explosive Babies" she had sent them; a set of disc-shaped remotely-detonated explosives that each yielded as much as a kilogram of C4. He wore little more than a plain black jumpsuit with the severed hands of his birth family gripping various parts of his body.
"And that means Inversion and I are with you, looking for the girl" Carmilla added, reaching for her belt to make sure her knives were all still there; she wore an oversized tan cardigan with a ballistic vest underneath, a skirt with knives clipped to it, knee pads and a mask with a tooth pattern on it connected to a special backpack. The masked girl with brown hair running beside her signaled her agreement with a quick thumbs-up.
"That covers it well" the villain leader agreed, as they approached a corner.
"Heads-up, team, there's a pair of thugs around that corner" La Brava's voice crackled in their earpieces. "They haven't noticed you yet, so you have the element of surprise." The group nodded in agreement, before rounding the corner into battle.
The two underlings in bird masks - one with webbed fingers and light blue hair, the other with fur and claws resembling a badger mutation - were startled when five people raced around the corner. The badger man didn't even have time to shout out a warning before Prometheus dodged around his wild swing and grabbed his arm, gracefully drop-kicking him in the face at the same time that Carmilla sunk a knife into his stomach. He dropped like a sack of bricks instantly.
The other man shouted a wordless cry of rage as liquid started to drip from his finger webs, but Gentle clubbed him over the head with his cane at the same time that Inversion delivered a brutal jab directly to his solar plexus. As he wobbled on his feet, Decay casually walked past and swept the man's legs out from under him, causing him to faceplant directly onto the concrete floor.
"Great work, team! That second guy's loud voice is going to be an issue though - his shout there alerted some other yakuza to your presence; T-minus fifteen seconds before five more men get here" La Brava updated the team, working to loop camera footage before Mimic could notice.
"No plan ever survives contact with the enemy" Prometheus hummed to himself, picking up a baton from the smaller thug's belt. Underneath his mask, the teen grinned. "Last one to beat ten men is a rotten egg!" he said as the sound of footsteps grew louder.
Joi Irinaka, General Manager of the Shie Hassaikai and Overhaul's left-hand man, was generally considered a very calm and rational man. He had a bit of a sharp tongue, to be sure, and there was a reason nobody let him do any of the gang's negotiating, but when it came to managing the clan's day-to-day operations and ensuring that nothing was amiss, he was top-notch. Which is why he was panicking right now, as something was in fact HORRIBLY amiss.
Two and a half hours after Overhaul, Chronostasis and half the Bullets had left for Naruhata, Mimic noticed an odd phenomenon with some of the cameras - they seemed to blip slightly in their coverage at certain points. Normally, he'd have dismissed this as just a sign that a camera was dying, but the man quickly realized there was a pattern - all of them were following a certain path down the hallways in the compound. When he saw a shadow far up in the corner one of the cameras appear and then disappear three times, he realized what was happening.
"We've been hacked!" the man growled, slamming one fist down on his desk. Running a diagnostic check of the Hassaikai's computer system, Irinaka's eyes widened as he watched the last of the Hassaikai's monetary funds drain from their secret accounts at several major national banks under assumed identities and out of their system entirely via a backdoor in the junk mail folder of one of their fourth-year members.
Vowing bloody murder on Akaza, Mimic wrestled back control of the cameras from their hacker with…ease (on a nearby rooftop, La Brava smirked as she gave control of the compound's cameras back to Irinaka) and shuddered with fury at the sight of hoodlums in odd costumes going to town on his clan's members.
Dialing as fast as he could, Mimic called Overhaul, hoping to warn his boss of the attack before it was too late…
Naruhata, Tokyo…
To say that Kai Chisaki was in a bad mood would be an understatement. It was supposed to be another easy pest control operation - find the hoodlums that had been attacking their Trigger shipments, eliminate them, and wash the blood into Tokyo Bay. Then he could get back to the compound and return to his "sessions" with Eri - Overhaul was already mad that these diseased wretches had forced him to cancel today's in order to deal with them.
Instead of it being an easy extermination operation, however, these random goons had proven unexpectedly competent - in fact, the one made of sludge had gotten a lucky hit in and knocked Tabe out, while the one with the strength Quirk and the pig mutant had incapacitated Katsukame by luring him under a crane and dropping a cargo container on him. Now the Hassaikai's clean-up crew was down a third of its men, and to make matters worse, all of the hoodlums had managed to escape onto a truck and were now forcing Chisaki and his remaining men to pursue them in a car chase.
So when his phone began furiously ringing with a call from Mimic, the man's stress levels rapidly neared a boiling point. "What is it?!" Overhaul growled at his lieutenant, only to be cut off by Mimic's panicked yell.
"You need to get back here, now! It's all a diversion - someone's attacking the compound right now, and someone else hacked our accounts and drained us dry of every single yen!"
"WHAT?!" Chisaki roared in fury. "Irinaka, these scum had better be dead before we get back, or you'll be-!" he began, before Setsuno cut him off.
"Watch out!" the blond man shouted, turning the wheel of the limousine as hard as he could to avoid a high-pressure blast of seltzer water, which punched a hole through the windshield comparable to a bullet hole.
The leader of Cider House shouted in mock anguish over missing his target. "Dammit, I almost got him! Sludge, you're up!"
"On it!" the foul-smelling liquid man warbled, leaping off the back of the truck into the path of the speeding black limo. Neither Setsuno not Overhaul had time to react before their car slammed into Mr. Sludge, who instantly wormed his way into the car's engine and crushed all the components into scrap metal while absorbing the oil, gasoline, antifreeze and coolant in the engine into himself.
"Thanks for the meal!" Dorome shouted as he reformed behind the wrecked limo, then jumped into a nearby manhole down into the sewers of Naruhata.
Overhaul roared in incoherent fury and exploded the door to his vehicle, leaping out just as Chronostasis performed a u-turn in the other limo and skidded to a stop next to him. Throwing the door to the intact vehicle open, Chisaki yanked Hojo out of the passenger's seat and slammed the door shut. "Get us back to the compound as fast as possible; we're under attack!" he shouted. Chrono's eyes widened, but the loyal right hand of Overhaul required no further elaboration, speeding off into the distance while leaving the wrecked car behind.
"...Why the hell do we still work for him?" Yu Hojo wondered aloud as he helped Setsuno haul the two incapacitated Bullets out from inside the vehicle.
"I don't know about you, but I don't work for him anymore" Setsuno replied as he finally extracted Tabe from the burning wreck.
"Me neither" rumbled Katsukame, slowly coming back to consciousness against the side of the vehicle.
"Food" Tabe added incoherently.
"...You said it, buddy" Hojo concurred, looking the other way to watch as Cider House and Reservoir Dogs cheered in the distance, their truck getting smaller and smaller before turning a corner and disappearing entirely.
"And that's ten!" Prometheus shouted as he headbutted a skinny yakuza thug in the nose, then laid the man low with a kick to the head. Looking around, the villain leader took a second to pout. "Are you serious? I'm the last one to reach ten?"
Decay shook the dust off of his hands from a thug he'd just killed. "In your defense, boss, you don't have a Quirk that instantly destroys whatever it touches like I do" he said, reassuring the group's leader.
"A fair point, since I don't have one at all. Sound off; how many people have you each taken out?" the villain leader called out.
"Twelve!" Carmilla shouted, pulling one of her knives out of a thug's lower back.
"Fourteen" Inversion added, pressing her fingertips together as three floating men behind her fell to the floor in an unconscious heap. "Oops, make that seventeen."
"Twenty-two" Decay said, looking at the heaps of dust scattered down the corridor.
"...Fifteen" said Gentle bashfully, wincing slightly when the teenagers in the hall gave him the side-eye. "What? I generally avoid combat in favor of daring escapes; I prefer to be gentle with my escapades." The other four groaned at his pun, but stopped when the floor shook.
"You bastards!" the building's corridors themselves seemed to shake in fury as a voice echoed all around them. "How dare you burst into our home and hurt our family? You scum…should know your place!"
As the concrete walls and floors of the corridors began to warp, Prometheus realized their foe. "Irinaka! He's using his Mimicry Quirk to possess the building's underground structure and reshape it at will!" he shouted, before remembering one of the details of his Quirk analysis of the man. "Hold on…he's only supposed to be able to possess objects the size of a fridge. How is he doing this?"
"Drugs" Decay supplied. "The Hassaikai are known for an ultra-refined Trigger formulation known as 'Black Gold'; some call it 'the Caviar of Quirk Boosters'. I'd wager Overhaul uses his Quirk to break down normal Trigger and remove the hazardous parts in order to create a formulation that is significantly stronger than average Trigger and doesn't have negative drawbacks on the user's mentality."
"Knowing that won't help you!" Mimic roared, as the hallways contorted further. "Now be scattered to your deaths!" Carmilla and Inversion screamed in surprise as a sinkhole opened up and dragged them down a floor, while pillars shot out of opposite walls and carried Gentle and Decay in opposite directions. Several tendrils of liquid cement ensnared Prometheus's arms, dragging him upwards through a hole in the ceiling, leaving the corridor barren and empty.
Danjuro Tobita was flung into the small room forcefully by Mimic's concrete tendril, but a gentleman like him wouldn't have anything less than a graceful, gentlemanly entrance, now would he?
"Gently Rebound!" the man called, using his Quirk to create an aerial trampoline in the middle of the room for himself, bouncing off of it and spinning in midair to land gracefully on his feet. Bowing slightly, Gentle Criminal looked around the room and noticed that he wasn't alone. Another man stood on one side of the space, wearing a black cloak that concealed his entire body, a fully black bird mask that covered his entire head, and a wide-brimmed hat atop his head.
"Pardon my intrusion" Gentle said. "Do you know which way the exit is-?"
The mystery man cut him off. "What is your purpose in being here?"
To his surprise, Gentle found himself involuntarily answering the man. "We are here in search of a child held captive by your clan." His eyes widened in surprise, having just given away the objective of their mission.
The other man tapped an earpiece. "They're here looking for Eri" he said simply, turning back to Gentle. "Who is your leader?"
"As a member of Peerless Legacy, I consider Mister Compress my leader, but I was hired for this job by Prometheus of the League of Villains" the silver-haired man replied again, an irritated look crossing his face. "A truth Quirk…you must be Shin Nemoto of the Eight Bullets then. I've been informed that your Quirk is a non-combative one, which means that I have an edge over you in close combat then!"
"Correct" Nemoto confirmed for his opponent. "Unfortunately for you, I have no intention of fighting you in close combat." With that, the man withdrew a handgun and opened fire at Gentle.
Tobita smiled slightly. "One small issue with that…Gently Rebound!" The volley of bullets fired by Nemoto rebounded off of an invisible air wall and immediately ricocheted back towards him; one of the projectiles shattered the gun in his hand, knocking it away and rendering it useless.
Nemoto looked solemnly towards his now gun-free hand. "Unfortunate. One final question: Is it true that you are legitimately in love with La Brava?"
"Oh crap!" Gentle thought, just before his mouth began to move on its own again, exposing his most embarrassing secret. "Yes, I am."
A high-pitched squeal from his earpiece caused the man to wince slightly. "You mean it, Gentle?" La Brava asked, a hopeful tinge to her voice.
"I…I do" Tobita admitted bashfully. "I do love you, Manami."
"That's what I've always wanted to hear, Danjuro!" the short woman on the other end of the communications line shouted. "From the bottom of my heart, Gentle, I love you too!"
The man grinned as a deep pink aura surrounded him, his muscles straining against his fancy suit as La Brava's Quirk, Love, took effect on him. "This was an unexpected possibility" Nemoto said in a neutral voice, even as he began to back up.
"Quite" Tobita responded, turning towards his foe. "Now where were we? Oh yes! Gently…CATAPULT!" WIth that, the silver-haired gentleman picked the masked yakuza up by the collar of his coat, spun a few times, and then threw the man through the nearest wall, opening up a hole into the corridor from whence he'd come. "Back to the mission!"
With that, the artist known as Gentle Criminal proceeded once more towards his goal, running down the hallway for a ways before stomping one foot on the floor, opening up a hole to the next level down as he proceeded towards the underground warehouse. Behind him, the yakuza named Shin Nemoto lay on the floor of the hallway in an unconscious daze, his mask and hat having fallen off somewhere on his way through the concrete wall. Lover Mode was a terrifying force indeed.
"Oof!" shouted Himiko Toga as she hit the floor, having just fallen through a hole in the ceiling of this lower corridor. A few moments later, her masked partner landed beside her softly, touching her fingers together to deactivate her Quirk. "A floatation Quirk? Unfair…" Carmilla groaned.
"Hey, turning into other people by drinking their blood is pretty cool too!" Inversion chirped, looking around them. Toga decided that maybe the other girl wasn't so bad after all, finding her cheerfulness somewhat infectious. The two of them were trapped in an impromptu room, with walls created by Mimic's Quirk capping either end of the hallway to trap them in. "Now how are we going to get out of this…?"
The sound of dripping liquid grabbed the attention of both teenagers, the noise seeming to come from all around them. "What is that-?" Inversion began, before suddenly collapsing to her knees. "Tha' whole world'ss spinnin'" she slurred, her voice slipping slightly into a Kansai accent.
Carmilla's eyes shot to the ceiling, where she was greeted by the sight of a skinny man wearing a fur coat and brown slacks crawling upside down along the pipes snaking down the top of the hallway. The stench of alcohol wafted off of him in an almost tangible wave, prompting the blonde to wave her hand in front of her face in a futile effort to get rid of the smell.
"*hic* Well, what've we got 'ere?" the man burbled, pouring a bottle of alcohol into his mouth to the point where it overflowed and drained out of a pair of special drain tubes next to the eyes on his mask. "A coupl'a little girls, far from 'ome?"
"Oh great, we got Deidoro Sakaki" the vampiric girl said, rolling her eyes slightly. "Perhaps not the most difficult opponent we could have had this evening, but certainly the most annoying."
"Thaaaat's my name; don' wear it out!" Sakaki slurred, suddenly dropping to the floor and landing on his feet with deceptive grace. Studying the brown-haired girl clutching her stomach behind Toga, the man's eyebrow quirked. "One lil' missy's already fall'n to my Sloshed?" he wondered aloud, referring to his alcohol-fueled disorientation Quirk. "I 'aven't even drunk much t'day."
"Are you okay?" Carmilla asked her partner, slowly drawing a knife in preparation for a fight.
Inversion nodded slightly. "I've got issues with motion sickness from my Quirk" she groaned, placing one hand over her mouth for a moment and swallowing. "If you can keep him busy for a minute, I'll be back in the fight."
The drunkard laughed incoherently, pulling several throwing knives out of his fur coat. "'Ahd like to see 'er try!" he said, before throwing one towards the immobilized teen. Toga's eyes widened as she reacted just in time to knock the knife off course with one of her own thrown knives, before lunging at the man.
"Oops!" Sakaki said, taking another swig of alcohol. "Looks like I need'ta drink some more to slow you down, lil' blondy!" Himiko winced and stumbled as a wave of nausea hit her, but she did not relent.
"Something like this…is nothing compared to how it felt to be starved of blood!" Carmilla thought, swinging upwards with the knife in her right hand and clashing against Sakaki's own knives. The man briefly faltered in surprise at the force behind her swing, but tittered drunkenly and resumed his attack. The blonde girl gritted her teeth through the nausea and did her best to dodge the man's drunken and unpredictable swings, but found herself slowing due to his Quirk.
Trying a different approach, Carmilla got behind her opponent while slowing her breathing and clearing her mind, disappearing from the perception of the people around her. She had first figured out how to do this while hiding from the police after her…incident…and, since it wasn't a Quirk-based ability, Midoriya had almost gone crazy trying to figure out how it worked. Eventually the green-haired teen had thrown his hands up in defeat, simply said "This is bullshit", and gone back to plotting the Hassaikai's downfall.
"Huh?" Sakaki wondered aloud as he turned around to…nothing. "That's funny…could'a sworn she was right 'ere." Shrugging his shoulders, the man turned back towards Inversion. "Guess it's jus' you 'n me now, lil' lady" he laughed, brandishing his knives as he stalked towards her. "Less see how lon' you can last!"
A sudden pain blooming on the man's side halted him for a moment. "Wha'?" he wondered, looking down to see a cut on his right just below his ribs. "Where is she?!" More cuts slowly appeared on him as he grew increasingly agitated. Looking towards the still-down Inversion, a cruel idea crossed his mind. "Lil' missy, if ya wanna be such a 'ero…save yer friend!" he laughed, throwing another knife at the prone girl.
Toga faded back into view, swinging one of her knives to deflect Sakaki's thrown one. "Damn! He baited me into exposing myself and now I'm open!" the blonde thought as she watched the drunkard wind up to throw several more knives, only for a blur to suddenly move past her towards Sakaki and around him.
The alcoholic slowly lifted off the ground, his agitation increasing. "Wha'? Why am I floatin'?!" he slurred, spinning in midair to see Inversion turn towards him, a look of triumph in her eyes. "You! I thought ya were down?!"
The brown-haired thief chuckled. "Anti-nausea medication. I keep it one me because of my Quirk, but it takes a minute to take effect" she explained. "I knew that if I kept acting like I was immobilized by your Quirk, you'd drop your guard and focus on Carmilla. Thanks to that, I was able to trap you in midair." Grinning under her mask, Inversion turned to her partner. "Would you like to do the honors?"
"With pleasure" the vampiric girl chuckled, leaping through midair onto the floating Sakaki's chest while brandishing a pair of knives.
"No! No! Wait, can't we jus' talk this out?!" the man stammered, trying to swing his own knives, but the blonde girl just laughed, a sadistic glint in her eyes.
"Oh please…like we'd give you that kind of dignity!"
Inversion turned away and winced as Sakaki screamed, the sound of knives repeatedly puncturing him echoing through the cramped space. After a minute, the screams stopped, and she sighed in relief, touching her fingertips together. "Release" the brunette said, Sakaki's body hitting the floor with a slightly wet thud as her Quirk deactivated.
Toga walked past him, a spring in her step. "Don't worry, I didn't stab him anywhere vital, but the blood loss will probably get him by the time we finish up" she said cheerfully. Inversion shuddered as she followed the other girl to the end of the hallway, where a featureless gray wall met them.
"...Now how the heck do we get out of here?"
Notes:
The raid has officially begun now, and the League isn't taking any prisoners. To recap…
- Despite Mimic's best efforts, two of the four Bullets left at the Hasssaikai's compound are down, and the four Overhaul took with them all quit because Chisaki is too incoherently angry to think right now.
- The yakuza have literally no money anymore because the League and Peerless Legacy took it all. It's all gone. Their accounts are drained. Nobody gets paid anymore. All because "Akaza" clicked on the "Find Hot Singles in Your Area" link sent by "DustyMcGee .jp". Unbelievable.
- Sakaki has been defeated and left for dead by Himiko Toga/Carmilla and the mysterious thief Inversion (I wonder who that could be?), while Gentle has laid waste to Shin Nemoto. I guess maybe Mister Veritas shouldn't have teased Danjuro about his waifu, hm?
Next chapter, we'll see Midoriya's encounter with the remaining two Bullets, Mimic's untimely end, Eri's rescue and the arrival of a truly incensed Kai Chisaki on scene. Thanks for reading!
~DVD181
Next update: September 18 (RIP my backlog; guess I need to go crazy writing chapters until I can do weekly updates for y'all)