POACHED TALENT

Shie Hassaikai HQ, Tokyo…

While Gentle Criminal finished pulverizing Shin Nemoto into unconsciousness and Inversion aided Carmilla in personally introducing Deidoro Sakaki to her very sharp knives, Prometheus found himself in a much more difficult situation thanks to Mimic's attack. Bodily hurled upwards into what looked to be a ceremonial dining and meeting room, the teenager had just enough time to regain his bearings before being forced to leap out of the flight path of an aerial sofa.

Cursing slightly, Midoriya continued to dodge the flying furniture, finally finding refuge behind an overturned dining table. After a few moments, the furniture bombardment ceased, and the teen could finally safely see his attackers.

Two men stood side-by-side at the far end of the room, facing towards him. The man on the left was an enormous redhead wearing a black bird mask, brown cargo pants and a white tank top with metal gauntlets on his fists. Meanwhile, the man on the right was a much shorter blond, wearing a plain black yukata and a brown plague mask while keeping his eyes closed.

"God dammit, Tengai, he dodged!" the larger man said as he retrieved an oversized porcelain vase, before chucking it towards Prometheus's position. "And I didn't hit him that time either!"

"Rappa, you imbecile, that's because he's hiding behind the table!" the now-named Tengai responded, facepalming. "And why did you throw that vase? I am fairly certain that it belonged to the Hassaikai's old boss, and Master Overhaul will not be pleased that you broke it."

"Shut up, Tengai! I don't care about Overhole!" Rappa bellowed, throwing a right at his companion. A translucent barrier shimmered into existence and blocked the blow, though it was clear from Tengai's expression that blocking it was somewhat demanding for his Quirk.

Prometheus used the duo's bickering as an opportunity to move to a better hiding spot. Unfortunately for him, Tengai noticed. "We will address your lack of respect for authority within this organization later. Our quarry is attempting to escape" the man said, pointing towards the teenager.

"Dammit!" Rappa shouted, turning his attention from his partner to the interloper. "Get back here, asshole!" Moving with surprising speed, the man quickly traversed the room and tossed aside the maplewood desk Midoriya had hid behind with his left hand, while lining up a devastating hit with his right fist. The teenager barely had time to dodge before Rappa's punch crashed where he had stood moments before, pulverizing the room's concrete floor.

"If I take even one hit I'm dead, training be damned" the teen thought, knowing that his Quirklessness put him at a big disadvantage. Human evolution hadn't benefited just the Quirked - Quirkless people born in the 22nd century like himself enjoyed higher bone density and better physical strength, reaction time and disease resistance as teenagers than all but the strongest pre-Quirk athletes - but relative to those with Quirks, they simply couldn't measure up.

Now that his cover was gone, Prometheus was left with no choice but to run, dodge and pray. "Kami-sama, I need a serious miracle right now" he thought, turning and throwing a smoke grenade at Rappa. The irate redhead deflected the projectile with a casual backhand while continuing to charge at his foe.

To his surprise, however, Prometheus watched the grenade bounce at Tengai's feet, detonating in a cloud of white smoke that blinded the man and obscured him from view. "This might just be my chance!" the teen thought, remembering the information Toga had gleaned on the Eight Bullets from Overhaul's computers. Skidding to a stop, Midoriya held one hand out in front of him towards the charging man. "Kendo Rappa…you're hired!"

"Huh?!" the man shouted, himself skidding to a stop just before he could run into his opponent.

"Don't *wheeze* listen *cough* to him!" the voice of Tengai sounded from within the smoke, muffled by his coughing.

"Our team is in need of a genuine brawler and heavy-hitter who wants to fight strong opponents for the sake of villainy and/or justice, depending on the operation" Midoriya continued, now in full-on recruiter mode. "If you agree, you'd start immediately."

"What's in it for me?" the man asked, one of the eyeholes on his mask twisting in suspicion.

"I'm glad you asked!" Prometheus said. "The League of Villains offers decent company housing, stock options in several major companies that we may or may not at least partially control, and a complete benefits package that includes health insurance, dental, visual and a retirement plan. Also, here's your salary." Holding his phone forward, the villainous mastermind showed off the amount that Rappa would be paid to the man himself.

The red-haired yakuza's eyes almost bugged out. "Kami, that's a lot of zeroes" he breathed in a reverent tone.

Under his mask, Midoriya grinned. "That's monthly." As the eyes on Rappa's mask widened further, the teen thought to himself "Jackpot!".

"When do I start, boss?" the man asked.

"Right now" Prometheus replied. "We could use the extra help in rescuing the small child named Eri that Overhaul has been abusing."

"He's been WHAT?!" Rappa roared, rounding in fury on Tengai as the smoke cloud around the other man cleared. "Tengai, did you know about this?!"

"Master Overhaul's work will save humanity" Tengai responded, although his eyes bugged out in fear - he knew Rappa had a fondness for the child, even if he was kept in the dark about why she lived in the compound. "I do not care whether or not he has to sacrifice the wellbeing of one child for that future."

"I see…" growled Rappa as he stalked towards his former partner. "You're just as guilty then."

"What-?" Tengai began before a fist impacted his barrier, rocking it hard enough to force him down on one knee.

"If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people who hurt kids" the redhead began, winding up another punch. "And if you're gonna just go along with what Overhole is doing to her…that makes you just as guilty to me! RAPPER'S…MACHINE GUN!"

With that, Kendo Rappa unleashed a furious barrage of blows with his Strong Shoulder Quirk directly at his former handler. Tengai's barrier lasted nine full seconds under the rain of fists before breaking. One second later, his jaw broke in much the same way his barrier did. By the time fifteen seconds in total had passed, the man was unconscious and bloodied.

As he left the room behind with his new subordinate, Izuku Midoriya's expression betrayed nothing. Internally, however, he was both giddy and jittery. "I cannot believe that actually worked, but I'm glad it did" he thought, an image of himself as battered and bloodied as Tengai briefly flashing in his head.

"Come along, Rappa-san" he addressed his new companion. "We have a girl to rescue."

"Please, boss" the redhead responded, discarding the bird mask to reveal a chiseled face with a large scar traversing it vertically across his mouth from just below his left eye to the top of his jaw. "Call me 'Rapper'."

Elsewhere in the compound, Tenko Shimura was ejected into a small room, flying head over heels until landing on a pile of empty cardboard boxes. Looking around, the elder teenager realized he was in some kind of storeroom; shelves filled with various items lined the walls of the room. On either side of a big shelf in the middle, two patches of suspiciously smooth concrete betrayed where Mimic had blocked the doorways to contain him.

Hunting around the room, Decay found a few packages of decent-looking instant ramen which he snatched up for future use, some snack bars which he promptly ate, and an enormous medical kit that he placed a small warp beacon on for Kurogiri to retrieve later. Pushing aside a few of the empty boxes he had landed on, the young man's face widened in an amused grin as he produced several six-packs of energy drinks with some generic anime women on them - all labeled with a sticky note denoting them as "Property of Kurono H."

Five minutes and three of those energy drinks later, Shimura started to die of boredom upon realizing he'd forgotten to bring his Switch and wasn't in the mood to play any of the mobile games he had downloaded on his phone. "Hey, asshole" he addressed the concrete wall. "Where's the exit? I need to use the bathroom." Mimic did not respond, much to Decay's annoyance. "Alright, keep your secrets. It'll be your funeral though" he continued, placing all five fingers on one of the newer sections of the wall.

Over the years since he'd first met his cousin/adoptive brother, Tenko had learned a lot about himself and his Quirk. His control over his powers had massively improved and grown with a proper education, parental affection and therapy (from a medical student and past-time psychologist who happened to be their underground doctor of choice, Medic). In a recent test, the League had discovered that his Quirk had developed a new facet as his strength skyrocketed and his control improved.

The moment his fingers made contact with the wall, Decay's secondary ability activated - a touch-based telemetry power that allowed him to sense the internal structure of what he was about to decay and what was touching it. Given how Mimic had spread himself throughout the compound, Tenko's Quirk registered all the concrete in the compound as a single object, allowing him to locate his allies and his enemies on a mental map of the facility and map exactly what he wanted to decay in the compound. "Checkmate. Precision Decay"

A second later, cracks began to spiderweb up the walls as his Quirk took hold of the building's concrete. Feeling the structure of the facility in his mind again, Tenko controlled the decay's spread to avoid his allies until it reached a point where it could spread out, at which point he let go and turned around as the wall crumbled. "And now…Infectious Decay."

Joi Irinaka initially felt a slight itch as the decay slowly took hold of the concrete he possessed, but this quickly became an unbearable burning pain. Feeling the phantom pain of the decay crawling through his flesh, Mimic used his Quirk to escape as quickly as possible to the roof of the compound, breathing heavily as he ejected himself atop the structure. Just as he thought he was safe, however, a crumbling roof tile below caused him to realize he was in mortal danger.

A moment later, the entire roof crumbled below him while the decay infected his body. Joi Irinaka died screaming twenty seconds after Tenko Shimura unleashed his Quirk, a loud rumble waking up the entire neighborhood as Infectious Decay carved a perfectly circular hole six stories into the ground. As he waltzed up to the edge of the pit, the villain named Decay took a look at his handiwork and whistled, before placing a hand on the floor and precisely applying his Quirk again to smoothly descend three floors to the basement.

From a hallway on the opposite side, Gentle Criminal leapt into the void, a deep fuschia aura surrounding him. "Gently…REBOUND!" the man shouted, creating an air trampoline halfway down to slow his descent. Danjuro Tobita landed a moment later with enough force to crack the concrete ground floor. Decay and Gentle nodded to each other, appraising their surroundings.

Just below where Decay had been, Inversion and Carmilla floated into midair, slowly descending towards ground level. When they were just above the floor, the brown-haired thief touched her fingers together. "Release." The duo dropped to the ground, looking around the cavern that was decayed into the building.

"Um, guys? A little help here?" a voice called out to them from above. Looking up to one of the topmost stories, the group of four saw their boss with an unfamiliar man standing behind him. "We need to get down from here, but neither of us have Quirks that make it possible."

"I suppose it will be our duty to retrieve you then, sir" Gentle said. "Miss Inversion…Fastball Special?"

"I'd be delighted" the masked teenager replied. A second later, Inversion leapt onto Gentle's hand, whereupon the man threw her with all his might. Having been empowered by Lover Mode, his throw was on par with a high-level Strength Quirk user's, and the teenaged thief was gracefully landing next to her temporary boss within moments. Tapping both Prometheus and Rapper on the shoulders, the trio gently floated to the ground below before she released her Quirk.

"I found a new recruit" the group's leader announced. "This is Rapper; he was working for the Hassaikai but now he's our brawler and enforcer. He used to be a legend in underground tournaments before Overhaul recruited him."

"I look forward to working with you!" Rapper shouted, bowing at a perfect 90-degree angle.

"Well, you definitely get style points for that intro. Guess you're our newest party member now; we'll get you leveled up yet" Decay said, turning towards one of the corridors. "This must be the Violet Clearance floor." Carmilla nodded in affirmation, having gathered that intel in the first place.

Eri woke up to the sound of footsteps outside her door again. Despite her best efforts, the girl couldn't help but whimper - the only people who ever visited her were Chisaki, Mimic or Kurono. Their presence almost always meant another session with Overhaul, and all the pain that came with.

To her surprise, however, the door opened not to reveal any of the above, but rather an unfamiliar girl with blonde hair, and the same boy with green hair she had seen a few weeks earlier. This time, however, he wore a tuxedo and an odd mask that covered the lower half of his face.

"Eri?" the teen asked. "Is that you?"

The small child crawled out from her bed's thin sheets, stumbling towards him. "You came back for me. But why…?" Suddenly, a realization hit her. "You have to run! If Chisaki sees you, he'll-!"

At that point, the blonde girl carefully pulled her into a hug, patting her on the back. "It'll be alright. Chisaki isn't here right now, and we'll have you out of here by the time he comes back." Midoriya joined Toga in her embrace of Eri, and soon the child fell into a peaceful slumber - perhaps the first time in over a year that she had slept well.

Activating a warp beacon, Midoriya stood up again as Kurogiri opened a portal to their location. "Himiko, take her back home and look after her. The rest of us will finish the raid and set the trap." Carmilla nodded as she picked the child up and walked through the portal, returning to Oboro's tavern.

"Yo, little brother" Decay said, sticking his head into the room. "We found some things you might be interested in. One of them appears to be the Hassaikai's old boss."

"Show me" Prometheus replied, turning to follow his cousin towards the recent finds.

A few moments later, the duo arrived at an ornate wooden door with the Hassaikai's crest emblazoned on it; opening the door, Tenko revealed the inside to his adoptive brother and boss. An absolutely spotless room in traditional Japanese decor greeted them, though elaborate medical devices covered one entire wall. In the middle, an elderly man reclined on a hospital bed, the devices beside him beeping slightly as his vitals were displayed on them.

"Is he…dead?" Inversion asked as she entered the room.

"No…just in a deep sleep, or more accurately, a coma" Midoriya responded. "Fan out and search the room; we need some indication as to why he's like this."

"I think I might know" Rapper said, sticking his head around the corner. "I heard some rumors when I first joined from some of the original members. Apparently the oyabun didn't like the way Chisaki was running things and the 'research' he was doing after being promoted to wakagashira, and confronted him on it. They had a big argument, and shortly afterwards the Boss ended up in a coma."

"I see…an ideological power struggle" Prometheus muttered.

"The rumors I heard said that Overhole put him in a coma with his Quirk and isn't planning on letting him out until his 'research' is done, whatever that is" Rappa said. "Incidentally, those guys I heard it from? They disappeared pretty soon afterward, right while he and his top guys were bringing in a bunch of new guys."

"Makes sense; he removed the entire old guard and replaced the clan membership with people loyal only to him" the greenette said. "Do you know what research he was doing?"

"That's why I came down here to get you. Gentle-san and I just found his lab" Inversion said.

"What the hell is this?" Prometheus wondered aloud, looking around the room he had just entered. The entire room was white and outfitted with all sorts of unfamiliar medical devices, computer terminals and large refrigerators. In the center sat a bright pink medical chair, its color a disturbing contrast to the restraints covering it and the large needles and phlebotomy apparatus on its back.

"This must be where Overhaul tortured her…" Decay trailed off, his fingers twitching slightly. Noticing this, Prometheus stepped forward and patted him on the back, helping to ground him - as Tenko was himself a former victim of child abuse, the greenette was able to instantly tell that the room could potentially trigger Decay's trauma.

"Tenko, why don't you, Rappa and Gentle go inspect the loading dock and take inventory of anything useful there. Quirk Boosters, weapons, anything of the sort. Inversion and I will find answers here" Midoriya said, addressing his adoptive brother. Tenko nodded silently and left the room, the other two men following behind him.

Reaching one of the terminals, Prometheus tried to activate it, but found that it was password-locked. "I should have known…" the teen muttered to himself, tapping his earpiece. "Kurogiri, could you please warp Manami-san to my location? I require her aid."

"Understood, young master" the warper responded. Less than a minute later, La Brava's program had finished cracking Overhaul's password and unlocked the knowledge therein for Midoriya to behold; the pint-sized woman then returned to the safety of the bar. In the meantime, the villain boss had begun browsing through Overhaul's files while downloading all his proprietary research to a set of hard drives he brought with him. What he found…sickened him.

The young man's eyes widened in horror as he watched recordings of Kai Chisaki's experiments. How he strapped the child to the chair in the room's center, drained her of blood until she died of hypovolemic shock, and then used his Quirk to Overhaul her back to life. His mission statement about the creation of a Quirk-Destroying Drug in the hopes of eliminating Quirks and bringing the yakuza back to prominence. His plan to pull the boss out of a coma and de-age him with Eri's Quirk once the Hassaikai ruled the underworld once more, regardless of the consequences for the rest of mankind…

"I think I'm going to be sick" he finally muttered, while Inversion's face had turned pale from horror. Finding the nearest trashcan, Midoriya emptied his stomach into the receptacle, then turned to his companion as he affixed his mask to his face once more. "Inversion, please go assist the other three in liberating the loading dock of its contents. I will join you momentarily."

Three minutes later, after sending the prototypes of the Quirk-Destroying Drug and all of Overhaul's research data to his father's hideout via one of Kurogiri's warpgates, Prometheus calmly lit a Bunsen burner, opened the top of several pure oxygen tanks, and shut the door behind him. A few minutes after that, the room exploded, as did everything inside of it.

Ninety minutes later…

The squeal of tires on pavement and screech of brakes heralded the arrival of an incredibly angry man; the black sedan pulling up to the curb as Overhaul exploded the door to the car and hurled himself out to the walkway. Looking up at the compound he called home, the man's eyes widened in horror, and hives slowly began to break out on his skin as he comprehended the disaster facing him.

In front of him, the compound was in ruins. A gargantuan hole dominated the center of the building, looking as if some ancient god of Shinto mythology had found his existence personally offensive and had summoned a natural disaster to destroy his house. From the bottom of the hole, a deep red glow signified that a fire was burning deep in the underground levels, destroying his life's work.

And in front of the hole, standing on the roofline, the perpetrators made themselves known. From Overhaul's left, he spied a tall man wearing dress clothes and carrying a cane, a seemingly teenaged girl wearing similar clothing, another individual in a business suit, a man who seemed to be wearing severed hands, and…the most uncontrollable of his Eight Bullets, Kendo Rappa.

As the yakuza boss's eye twitched at the betrayal of his subordinate, the one in the middle took his mask off and stepped into the glow of the fires downstairs, revealing the face of the same child that Eri had briefly escaped into the arms of almost a month prior. At that point, Kai Chisaki already understood the goal of the attack, even if he didn't fully comprehend it.

"Overhaul, I presume?" Izuku Midoriya addressed the man, a cheeky grin on his face. "I hope you don't mind that we let ourselves in, but you see, you had something just irresistible to us. I'd say she was sad to go, but, well…" the grin turned from cheeky to mockingly malicious. "We both know she wasn't. And guess what?"

"You'll never see her again."

At this point, Overhaul couldn't handle it anymore. With a scream of inarticulate rage, the man slammed his hand on the ground, creating a spike of concrete that carried him towards the roof, where he swore he'd murder that child with his bare hands. The only response he received as he got closer was a widening of that infuriating grin.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Notes:

Remember when I said the next update would be September 18th? Well, almost three goddamn weeks later, I finally got it done. You guys have gone without a chapter for a month, and that's just shameful on my part. The first two paragraphs of this chapter took from late August until today to write, and the rest took like two hours overall. I'm sorry.

Anyway, the raid is almost over, and to recap…

The Rapper is the newest member of the League of Villains, acting as an enforcer and heavy hitter in close combat. Midoriya's recruiting pitch and appeal to his sense of honor has officially brought him into the fold as the only Hassaikai member to join them.

Overhaul's history in charge and experiments have been explained, the compound has been ransacked, and almost everything of value has been shipped via Kurogiri to one of AFO's warehouses.

Mimic is dead, having fallen victim to Tenko's incredible strength and Quirk control. RIP bozo; thou shalt not be missed.

And now, Overhaul has arrived, and is furious beyond rational thought. This can't possibly backfire on him, right?

No promises, but I'm gonna try to have the next chapter up by October 16th at latest - ideally by the 9th.

Peace,

~DVD181