Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia
Chapter 97:
Hatto
"We're running out of space on the palace," Arma said, walking side by side with the large supreme leader of Saudi Arabia.
"Set them on the walls around the palace then," Mongoloid bellowed. He laughed while the woman at his side turned and motioned with her head away for the group of five villains back behind them.
One of the villains started forward though as the others headed away. "WhyFight?" Arma asked, as it seemed like the man had something to say.
Mongoloid turned back from the huge mural on the wall several of Hatto's citizens were in the process of painting for him and his wife. "What is it?" Mongoloid questioned.
WhyFight lowered his head a bit in respect for the country's leader and his wife, Arma, the leader of the Seven Demons. "The man I tracked down who was sending messages out of the country-" Mongoloid's eyes narrowed with a darker look in them. "Which I am very sorry for, again," WhyFight said quickly in an apologetic tone while bowing his head deeper. "It is just, he was in contact with a certain group who I tried to ascertain the origin of."
"'Tried?'" Arma questioned in a harsh tone, her voice a hiss that made shivers go down WhyFight's spine. "So you failed to determine who it is that knows of this nation's true predicament?"
"Well," WhyFight began. "I failed at tracking them. I did as best I could, but the accounts our recently-deceased hacker was in contact with pinged me all around the world. I tried following one of the trails, and it bounced me from an I.P. address in Berlin to one in Moscow, to one in the middle of the Atlantic. They could have been anywhere in the entire world, but," WhyFight paused and rose his head a bit. "When I told them their contact had been arrested for insubordination against the government, I asked them who they were while trying to figure it out myself. And I received a response."
"And what was it?" Mongoloid asked, a slight look of confusion coming to his face at his subordinate's expression.
WhyFight hesitated, and then he responded softly, "'Your worst nightmare.'"
"Sir!" a voice shouted behind WhyFight at the other end of the hall.
Mongoloid looked over WhyFight's head and glared towards a man running through his palace towards him. "You're supposed to be getting in contact with our forces in Gorran," Mongoloid growled at the sight of one of his Demons not where he should be.
"We have a big problem!"
99 Miles Inside Saudi Arabia's Eastern Border
"You sent a response?" Zach asked.
"Hell yeah, told them we were their worst nightmare-"
"You told them we're coming?" Zach snapped in a pissed-off voice.
Across the helicopter from the seat Zach was on, a brown-haired girl shouted, "Why would you do that?!"
"I didn't say you were coming or nothing. Just tryin' to intimidate whoever capped Anon 5."
Zach lowered his head a bit and glared at the floor through his dark visor. "That was stupid, Rebel," Zach said.
"Hundred miles in from the border!" The pilot called back towards Zach, having been told earlier to let him know when they reached that point.
Zach nodded and started ignoring Rebel's response while lifting a hand to his helmet and tapping a button on the side of it. "Mark, it's time. Break off and head south to Jabba. Push straight west from there as fast as you can to hit the next tower as we're going to lose contact with you for a bit." Zach turned to the left and looked out the window of the helicopter to the one next to his. His was the one with the heavy weaponry on front and on the sides, and he watched as one of the solely transport choppers on his left pulled away. Down below it, one of the sand-colored jeeps turned and started driving the same direction.
"Anon 2, break off and stay patched into their comms," Rebel started. "Make sure they're all locked in together and give tac' support. Touch base with me every 5."
"Understood."
Zach shook his head and then let out a small sigh as Rebel helped him out without needing to be asked. "Tac' support?" Zach asked after switching his comms back to just his helicopter and Rebel. "For, attack?"
"Tactical," Rebel replied, and Zach started nodding as he realized that made more sense. "You looking for another lesson in English right now dawg? I don't really think it's the time, but if you're insisting I'll-"
"Stay off the comms for unimportant things," Zach said. "And stop using slang. Not everyone here speaks English well."
"It ain't slang, you just don't get how to speak my language good."
"Well," Darling corrected across from Zach. The boy sitting across the helicopter from her grinned as did the native-English speaking pilot in the front and the French woman sitting next to him who was working the helicopter's weapon controls. "You don't speak 'good,' Rebel."
"Yeah yeah, whatever lil' girly."
"Focus Rebel," Zach said, before Darling could snap angrily at him as he knew she was about to. "You're coordinating everyone. People's lives are relying on you right now. Ours included. Can you just make sure when you speak, we all know what it is you're telling us?"
There was a brief pause, a little longer than the usual pauses as their communications had to travel a far distance despite Rebel circumventing WhyFight's Quirk. "Yeah, you got it boss. You're still sixty-some'… sixty-five minutes out from Hatto. Cee's team should be reaching Rotta in ten. We've got thirty-six points of WiFi and radio signal blockings across the country, that is including the one behind you guys so I guess 35 left…"
Two and a Half Months Ago.
Hawaii
"M look out!" Zach called over towards the edge of the volcano. Two men in hazmat suits with jetpacks on their backs were flying up from inside the volcano, and the brown-haired man on the edge leapt backwards while whipping his arms out in front of him. Water jugs he had strapped to his waist on either side popped open and water whips flew through the air at the villains who shot more flames out of their jetpacks to rise higher before firing down at the twenty-four year old who dove for cover.
"Gentle!" Darling called over from down the slope that Zach was sprinting up surrounded in a pitch black aura.
"Who are you people?!"
Gentle shot in front of M and swung an arm to create a shield of Elasticity to bounce back bullets that almost hit their comrade. "The base is inside the wall of the volcano!" La Brava called out, her voice echoing in the headsets of the five people fighting around the mountain's open peak.
"Take them out!"
"Behind us!"
"Cee, Darling, on me," Zach called behind him in a dark, scratchy voice. He snapped his head back forward and glared with red eyes farther up the slope to the inner edge of the volcano. Three more men had risen in red hazmat suits that looked stuffy to be inside but apparently made it possible for them to move around inside the volcano just above the hot magma. They had jetpacks on their backs too and were hovering above the inner edge, and then all three of their jetpacks suddenly started sparking and the villains inside them started swerving around in the air.
One of them started to fall, and Zach's eyes opened wide while he focused Death to below his feet. He shot forward, pulling a grappling hook out of the darkness around him and pointing it as he reached the inside slope of the volcano. He fired, and he fired out from his other one while Darling ran forward and pointed her arms down at his sides at the last of the three who started falling down there. "Thought y'all could use some help," a deep English voice spoke smugly over the earpieces in six people's ears.
"Who is that?" La Brava snapped in confusion from back inside the truck parked down the slope of the volcano.
"Everyone, shut off comms. Someone's broken in-"
"So I don't speak Japanese, but I've got this translator on my computer. Don't turn off your earpieces just yet. Unless you want those heroes and cops heading up the volcano to catch you guys."
The group near the top of the volcano on the main island of Hawaii spun their heads and looked down the slope. "They've got the sirens off to better sneak up on y'all, but y'all mother fuckers about to get swarmed unless you get out of there. I even gave you some time with the-"
"You almost killed them," Zach said. He spoke English, knew some from his classes at school and learned a lot more while with the villains. He was not great, but he knew how to say simple sentences like those, and he was fairly used to the cursing as well. What is going on? Who is this? Can we trust him? It might be one of the villains trying to stall us to give them time to escape. But why would he try killing them? He was the one who made their jetpacks malfunction. "Who are you?"
"You can call me Rebel, Zach Sazaki," the voice over their headsets started.
"Guys, he's right," La Brava spoke fast while typing into the laptop on the dashboard of the truck she sat in the driver's seat of. "Over the police radio they're talking about the fight at the top of the volcano. Someone saw and they're heading up the, south side."
"Could have told you that already," Rebel said in a smug tone. "You want some help getting out of there or what? I just want to help you. Didn't know you'd be so against me throwing those guys in the volcano. Thought with how you handled Kurogiri and those League of Villains, you were cool with shit like that."
"No," Zach responded. "But yes, to help," he added. "Get us a route out of here."
"I can do that-" La Brava began.
"Why should we trust you?" M said from next to Gentle who was helping him stand after a stray bullet had grazed his right leg. M spoke better English than the others around him, though he had been speaking Japanese before perfectly with the rest too.
"Trust me? Weird thing coming from a CIA agent. Mark Smith-"
"Ex-CIA," Mark said fast, while everyone around the top of the volcano spun to the man who had only gone by 'M' so far. "And saying my name doesn't-"
"Mark," Zach called over. The brown-haired man looked over towards the dark figure, a bead of sweat on the side of his face and a hesitant look too like he thought he was about to have to explain himself. "Can you rise the lava?" Zach asked in his deep voice, motioning towards the volcano. Darling was running from Zach as he had spoken to her while covering his earpiece, and Cee was already picking up one of the unconscious villains who Zach had knocked out while Darling ran to grab another. "Force out the villains. We can't stay here, but we're not just going to leave and let them go make a new base. We'll lose them."
"Yeah, I can do it," Mark replied over to Zach, losing his surprised look and then running over to the edge. The older man grinned too that despite his secrets coming out, Zach was still just thinking of a way to get the villains while at the same time distracting the heroes coming for them.
"Give us that escape route Rebel, and La Brava come meet us on it to get us out of here." Zach spoke in Japanese, but he understood about what Rebel said with his computer translating what he said.
"Alright! You got it-" Rebel started calling out.
"You know all our names though, apparently. So tell us who you are first, Rebel. If you want me to trust you."
There was a bit longer of a pause this time. "Respect. I can do that. The name's Mica, Mica Freeman."
Present
Saudi Arabia
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep…
"What's going on?" Darling called to the front of the helicopter that started beeping loudly.
"I don't- two bogeys heading straight towards us from the direction of Hatto!" The man in the pilot's chair shouted.
"You get that Rebel?" Zach asked while standing and moving up between the two front chairs of the attack helicopter.
"Fighter jets, ISR-13's," Rebel called back.
"Get me Gentle," Zach snapped as fast as he could, knowing with the short delay that this was not an immediate action.
Instead of responding, Rebel just did what Zach said. A man in the passenger seat of a black humvee driving across the desert below the helicopter and blowing up a low of sand behind the tires spoke into his headset, "What's going on?"
"Two fighter jets coming straight for us. Need you up there. Take Hummingbird."
"Should I fire our rockets?" Le-Q asked, turning her head left from the seat in front of Zach on his right.
"No, hold off-"
"What are you saying?"
"Not you Gentle, you go. Now! No time!"
Gentle threw open the door of his black vehicle while Akhmed continued driving full speed across the desert. "Hummingbird hit the sky!" Gentle called out, before jumping out of the moving vehicle and swinging a hand below him to bounce himself high into the air. The girl in the turret seat in the middle of the vehicle flapped her wings behind her while rising out of the moving vehicle, and she flew up after Gentle towards the helicopter high above.
"Try not to hurt the pilots," Zach ordered. "We don't know if they're soldiers of the country or Mongoloid's men."
"Taking over a country without hurting anyone has to be one of the stupidest things you have suggested," Gentle replied.
"We'll do our best," Hummingbird called out after the man near her who started a downwards arc only to bounce off the air again only this time forward in front of the helicopter, moving a lot faster than it itself was.
"Just got word from Anon 3 that Cee has met little to no resistance in Rotta. The people were a ticking time-bomb," Rebel started. "Second they heard what was really going on, none of them questioned a thing. They were ready to rise up with- Anon 2 hit back now. Resistance in a village outside of Jabba. Two of the Demons are there. Mark's fighting them."
"Mongoloid definitely knows we're coming!"
"I see the jets!"
"Any way we could hide this car so we don't get blown up before even reaching the city?"
"I can't cloak a moving vehicle!"
"Thirty minutes out…"
"Two more of WhyFight's towers are down…"
"What about those Demons?"
"Here we go…"
"Everyone get ready, and keep the comms clear!" Zach shouted, while leaning forward and glaring out through the windshield of his helicopter. "Hatto has over 6 million people in it. We think Mongoloid's main force is there. We take the city, we win. We stop Mongoloid, we win. Leave the rest up to our comrades. Trust them, and trust me. We're going to win!"
Jabba
"Keep going!" Mark called out, yelling it into his helmet right before reaching up and ripping the damaged thing off. The man with brown hair falling down to his shoulders and curling up at the back of his neck tossed his helmet to the side and panted while staring ahead at a dozen enemies before him. That's another tower down. I could keep in contact with the team for a little longer at least.
"Sir! Ma'am! Their vehicles are getting farther away!"
"Send half our forces after them and bring the rest of-"
"EVERYONE LISTEN TO ME!" Mark roared at the top of his lungs in perfect Arabic. The Caucasian man of twenty-four years screamed in the middle of a main street of a village outside the large town of Jabba. "Mongoloid is a dictator! His army has infiltrated your country, and taken over by force! Massacring all of your heroes in the process! Their bodies line the walls of his palace in Hatto!"
Mark glared furiously up ahead at the two figures on the street who started spinning their heads and looking around to the sides of the street where citizens were gathering. On the roofs of nearby buildings, on the ends of the road behind Mongoloid's forces and back behind Mark and the two soldiers in all black who stood behind him. It was blazing hot out there in the streets of Jabba, and the three soldiers in all black costumes were sweating profusely. Mark sweat badly but he stomped forward and rose his arms at his sides, and black bottles of water strapped all over his body opened up with thin streams of water pulling out and swirling around in midair. Long whips of water, over a dozen of them, lifted up and sharpened into points and then swirled in masses, then formed shuriken and other sharp weapons in the humid air.
Behind Mark on his right, Blackstar lifted up his right arm and it transformed into a swirling silver mass that curved into one long blade that he held out to his right side. On Blackstar's left a few feet away, Skater slammed his legs together and created a board under the soles of his feet with six wheels on it. The wheels had spikes that started spinning around in the sand street and dragging a cloud of sand up behind him. He rose up a pair of pistols and put one pointed forward and the other aimed up at his left side. Mark continued shouting, "Mongoloid, and his Demons, like the two in front of you now! They have conquered your country and led you to believe they are the true rulers!"
"That's why your phones don't work!" Skater yelled to his left at the roofs of buildings where citizens were looking down at him, though he yelled it in English so not many people understood. "He's trying to keep anyone from figuring out what's happening here!"
"You are an American," one of the Demons, the woman in front of the figures in black costumes, started in English. Skater spun back, but the woman was looking straight at Mark as she spoke. "What are you doing here?"
"Stopping you from recruiting the people of these towns and villages into your army of evil," Mark replied in Arabic, loudly.
The woman glared harder at him, and then she held up her right palm for the men behind her to stop as they were almost about to run off and follow her original orders. "Before we head after the rest of them. We'll take these three down."
"Yes! Madame Worldbreaker!" A few of the soldiers shouted behind her in Japanese and English.
"Surrender," Mark said. He glared at the woman whose eyebrows lifted up right before the corners of her lips. She stomped her right foot forward, and the entire village on the outskirts of Jabba around them shook, and the tremors shook the larger town too so hundreds of thousands could feel it. Mark's eyes bulged as did his comrades' inside their visors, and most of the villagers started running away. Mark's wide eyes narrowed after a second though and he rose his arms higher, making more water fly out of his extra water bottles and create more bladed weapons in the air.
The man on Worldbreaker's side covered in a dark purple aura. It was translucent, but his eyes glowed dark purple and then flashed black which caused shaking buildings on the sides of the street to start breaking apart. The soldiers behind two of Mongoloid's Seven Demons backed up, though they rose up their weapons or started using their weaker Quirks at the same times.
"Holy shit," Skater muttered, and his wheels started spinning backwards as the breaking buildings on the sides of the road lifted up telekinetically in the air. Cracks started breaking in the sandy road, fissures splitting through the town as Skater and Blackstar backed up.
Mark started sprinting forward though, and he swung his arms forward making all his bladed water weapons fly through the air much faster than he was running. They flew forward as fast as bullets. A purple aura blasted around one of the Demons, while the woman turned her body to the side yet still got slashed through her robe across her right side. Most of the weapons flew past the demons though, slashing up the arms and legs of the men and women behind them.
The citizens who all started running or backing away on the roofs of their buildings stared into the road in shock as Mark ran forward. He kept his right arm up with his fingers twitching and making his water weapons reform in the air, slashing back and forth along the guns the injured enemies started raising. Blades and weapons sliced into pieces, and then Mark dove to his right side and dodged a chunk of wall from a house on his left that came flying at him in a purple aura. Mark lifted his left arm that he had brought down to his side, and he started firing at the man surrounded in a purple aura who had to bring both arms up in front of him and stop half a dozen bullets all aimed at his knees and elbows. The Demon's eyes actually stopped glowing for a second while opening wider and darting around to the bullets all aimed perfectly at his extremities.
Who the hell is this guy?!
Mark stood up in the middle of the road while parts of buildings fell around him, while fissures opened up all over the street, and while blood splashed up from all of his enemies other than Mongoloid's two Demons in front of him. Even Worldbreaker grabbed down at her side in pain as the slash of water that cut through her robe did make a shallow wound in her stomach. Mark's comrades stopped backing up behind him while staring towards their comrade with their eyes huge just like the Demons' and all the citizens who had not ran too far away yet. Mark pressed a button on the side of his gun, dropped the magazine while slamming his gun down to his waist and reloading with a single hand. He rose it back up in his left hand, aimed down the street, and flicked his right hand up with all his fingers pointed above him. The movement with his right hand made all of the water ahead of him down the street rise up in two huge spikes.
The Demons of Mongoloid's army froze and all the hair on the back of their necks stood on end. They lifted their eyes up, to see two huge water arrows hovering above their bodies. Each one was as big as their bodies were, with huge sharp points aimed straight down at them. Mark glared at the two of them, and the fingers on his right hand steadied while he said in a commanding voice, "Surrender, villains. This country is not yours to do with as you please."
Eight Years Ago.
Long Island, NY
"The second bout of the semifinals coming at you with a big splash!" The announcer of a fight tournament between rival hero schools called out to the big crowds in the high school stadium. There were over two thousand people in the audience who had come to watch the young prospects from different schools duke it out in the arena. "Unlike the first round of the semis, where a student from S.U. High School defeated one from Harbortown Academy, these students are both from Harbortown. This bout will determine who goes to the finals to face Driscoll and his Obsidian!"
"You ready to give these people a show, Marcus?" Casey called over to his classmate.
"No way you beat me Case'," Marcus called back with a grin on his face. The sixteen year old with short brown hair faced off against his darker-skinned classmate who rose up his hands in a fighting stance with his fists opened up in curled forward palms. He had holes on the ends of his arms in the centers of his palms and all along his forearms. Water started dripping out of them while the countdown to the start of the round began, and while everyone in the stands started chanting along with it.
Mark's parents called down encouragement to him. Casey's did too from not too far away. The announcer shouted while everyone cheered, "Casey Brown with his Waterworks Quirk, and Marcus Johansen with his Water Control! As you've seen from previous fights, Marcus has been allowed his own supply of water for the match as he cannot create his own, unlike Casey. We'll see how these sophomores from the same class fare against each other in the second to last fight today!"
"TWO! ONE!"
"Let the match begin!"
The fight started, and Marcus was immediately on the defensive as the amount of water he threw at his classmate was nowhere near as much as Casey blasted back at him. Marcus was nimble though, dodging to the sides and keeping a distance on the stage. Marcus started waving his arms too when he could not dodge fast enough, redirecting the ends of Casey's attacks away from him. "I can go all day!" Casey shouted, lifting both arms up above his head and then slamming his wrists together in front of his body with water splashing out of every hole on his arms.
Marcus's eyes opened wide as the water accumulating there bubbled and grew so he knew the blast about to push out was going to be huge. Marcus rose up both of his hands and held out his palms right as the jet of water blasted at him. The blast Casey fired was fast, but Marcus had his hands up and stopped the end of the wave right before it hit his palms. Everyone in the arena stared down leaning out of their seats as the two boys pushed their arms farther towards each other. Casey pushed more into the attack, so the end of it was pressed into Marcus's palms, but the water started moving different directions on different sides of the blast.
Reverse the flow. Reverse the flow! REVERSE THE FLOW! Marcus closed his eyes and pushed harder and harder, and then he heard the most earsplitting scream of his entire life. He opened his eyes, and he stared towards the middle of his stage and his classmate, his friend. He stared towards a splash of red, all pushing the same direction he was trying to force the water, and no sign of his classmate anywhere.
Present
Jabba, Saudi Arabia
"Dooku!"
A flash of dark purple surrounded one of the Demons, and the two arrows of water exploded above them right as a fissure shot out from in front of the feet of the woman who screamed that. The fissure split so fast towards Mark that he only had time to look down with wide eyes before he was falling. He reached to his side and grabbed the edge of the street pulling away from him, and he let out a gasp as his body jolted its whole weight down but managed not to break the edge of the fissure.
"Mark!" Skater shouted, and he started speeding forward and in and out of debris from the houses broken on the sides of the road by Dooku's first attack.
Blackstar sprinted forward and straight up a huge chunk of wall that he leapt off while raising up both arms and creating huge morphing scythes of silver with his arms. Their bodies covered in purple, and then a chunk of debris on the road lifted and flew straight up into them and slammed them back.
Madame Worldbreaker stomped her left foot forward, and the wall of a building near where the two enemies just dropped down covered in cracks. The two of them scrambled away while getting back up, coughing up blood in their helmets and limping. They dove for cover from the collapsing wall that blasted sand up around them.
"Hey!"
"Stop them!"
Citizens on the sides of the road started running forward. They screamed at Mongoloid's forces who they had been afraid of the entire time, but could not stand against after seeing their trained, experienced powers.
"Take care of the masses," Worldbreaker said while looking behind her. The woman with a gash on her side started snarling as she saw the men behind her all still lying around on the ground grabbing at their flesh wounds. "I'll drop any of you who don't stand in five seconds to oblivion. Five!"
The soldiers of Mongoloid's army opened their eyes wide and started rolling over onto bloody arms and legs. They started pushing themselves up, while Mark pulled himself up on the edge of the fissure. A piece of the fissure his right hand was grabbing broke off and his whole body swung to the left, and he let out a yell as he almost started falling to that "oblivion" that Worldbreaker just mentioned in the seemingly bottomless dark cavern below him.
"Mark," Blackstar called over, down on his hands and knees and pushing himself back on the street.
Mark reached his right hand up and grabbed the side of the fissure again. I need to get up! He pulled his head up the smallest bit. He looked over to the right while raising his chin over the surface of the street. He saw Dooku walking forward with half of the debris on the road lifted up, his eyes focused straight on an injured Blackstar and Skater. He saw Worldbreaker laughing while her soldiers rose and picked up weapons, and the citizens of Jabba all running onto the street. No. No! I- I can't! He focused on where his water arrows had exploded, where they had absorbed into the sand so he no longer had his weapons.
Mark clenched his eyes shut so hard. "Your name from now on will be Mark Smith. Welcome to the CIA."
"…In any country of the world. Protecting the United States' interests…"
"He knows. We know he knows. We need him to tell us. There are innocent lives at stake."
"Do your thing, bloodbender."
"Don't let him escape!"
I can't! I won't! I promised! Mark's eyes clenched shut, and he started hearing screams in his head. Then he started hearing screams around him, and his eyes snapped open wide. Mark rose up his right hand over the edge of the fissure, curled his fingers in, and Worldbreaker and Dooku exploded. Everyone on the street and surrounding area froze where they were. They stared towards where the two Demons of Mongoloid's army had just been. They gawked at the spots where floating masses of blood hovered. And then as Dooku's floating rubble dropped down to the road harmlessly, as the rest of Mongoloid's soldiers lowered their weapons, Mark climbed out of the fissure with tears falling from his eyes.
How can this be the right thing? If I had to break it? The reason, I left in the first place? Mark stared forward through blurry eyes as he got up to his feet. He kept his right hand risen up, with swirling masses of blood in front of him held hovering in midair through his Quirk: Liquid Control. He looked to his right, and one look at the villains made the last of them drop their weapons and raise their hands up in terror. Skater and Blackstar slowly got up to their feet while staring over at Mark nervously, like all the citizens around them who had been more scared a few seconds ago of Mongoloid's forces.
An old man in front of a crowd of people who had been moving into the road looked towards Mark. He stared at the man's face uncovered by a helmet unlike his comrades' and the tears spilling down it. "Thank you," the old man said, and he started clapping his hands. "Thank you!"
"Th-They freed us!"
Mark stared towards the citizens in shock. He lowered his right hand, while the citizens ran up towards the villains who had their hands in the air. "Arrest them!" Blackstar shouted. "Ack- gah- kah," he started coughing, and he reached up to his helmet and pulled it off. He wiped an arm across his mouth while taking a step forward, and he looked ahead with blood dripping down to his chin from his mouth. "We're arresting them," he said, speaking English to a crowd looking over at the black man with wide eyes at how damaged he looked from Dooku tossing him around and smashing him with rubble.
Mark turned from his comrade and to the citizens of Jabba. "He's right," Mark said in Arabic. He rose up his right arm and wiped his eyes, as his strongest enemies' blood dropped down into the sand. This isn't the time. I- I had to do it. To save my comrades, and these people. "Take anyone in Mongoloid's regime into custody. Whether they started with him or joined with him afterwards." The young man started walking forward while looking towards the old man who was the first to call to him. "Gather your people, but do not deal mob justice to these people. That is not why we came here." Some of the people frowned towards Mark hesitantly, but the old man nodded in acceptance.
The soldiers of Mongoloid's forces had the urge to pick up their weapons, or use their Quirks as the regular people of the town they had been governing ran up and started pushing them down and arresting them. They looked towards the man in the black costume who glared down at them all though, and they thought about how their powerful leaders blew apart in a single instant. The fight left them at the dark look in Mark's eyes. Mark rose up his right hand to his head, and he tapped on an earpiece that was still in his ear despite his helmet having been damaged on that side. "Anon 2, two of Mongoloid's Demons are dead. Report in, I couldn't- just let them know. I'm moving west. Leaving injured Skater and Blackstar here."
"I can keep going," Skater said, stepping up towards Mark's back while lifting Blackstar by his left arm, throwing it over his shoulders. "We'll get someone here to watch over-"
"You need to stay and make sure these prisoners don't try anything," Mark said, looking Skater in the eyes. "Keep a gun trained on them until you're sure the citizens here have them locked up tight."
"Are you, okay?" Blackstar asked, lifting his eyes up and asking despite blood trickling down from both corners of his lips.
"Shut up, and get some rest," Mark said. "If you die, we'll have the Commander bring you back. But you can't die now. Not in the middle of this. So stay as still as possible, don't make anything worse, and help watch over these people." Mark turned and looked back at the old man coordinating efforts of capturing Mongoloid's men, yelling to an apparent Resistance that Mark was just learning about out the corners of his ears. "Do you have a vehicle?" Mark called to the old village leader. "I need to get west to regroup with my forces. And can you take care of these two?" Mark asked the last part without looking back at the two who did not speak Arabic and would not be able to tell he just asked for them to be taken care of.
The old man nodded and then turned to call over to one of the men tying up the villains who invaded their country. Mark nodded thanks back at the old man, then he reached up and grabbed the earpiece in his right ear and nodded a few times to what Rebel started telling him too. The team missed a WhyFight point. I'll have to sweep by it first-
"We were doing this country a favor," a man growled in Russian over with the group getting tied up. He snarled it around at the people tying him up, though he darted a nervous look over at Mark when the enemy in all black looked towards him. "You fucking American. This place was a hellhole without us. Chaos everywhere. The villains of this country either joined Mongoloid or died. He did not lie when he said he ended crime here." Mark started walking towards the man who shrugged away the citizens trying to hold him still. Even tied up he was still too strong for them, and they stumbled away while the man on his knees shimmied towards the terrifying figure in a black costume who destroyed his superiors and cut him up. "You don't understand what you're doing here. If we didn't come in, someone else would have. Someone worse. We saved this country! Rid it of all crime!"
"That's because the government can't commit crimes," Mark said. He stared down at the Russian man while speaking Russian to him. He glared into the man's eyes that shook in fear. The white man with a shaved head stared nervously back at his captor at Mark's perfect accent not only in Russian, but the villain's home region in Russia. "Governments create their own law codes, and if all the criminals in the country are working for the government, then of course there's no crime. That doesn't make you right. That doesn't mean you were helping these people. The government itself can't technically commit crime," Mark saw a truck driving up towards them, and he spotted the citizen the old man called to help him motioning his way. Mark started walking forward, and he held up his right hand for a second making the Russian man's face cover in sweat, and then all of that sweat slid down his face fast and wrapped around his neck in the shape of a hand that had everyone around him staring at the villain in terror. "But you are villains. What you have been doing to this country, is villainous. I know a country can do wrong. A government, is not always right."
The sweat hand dropped from the Russian villain's throat. Mark walked towards the pickup truck that a man climbed out of the driver's seat of. "We're going to destroy the towers cutting off all your phone lines and wifi!" Mark shouted in Arabic at the top of his lungs. "Watch your tv's! Stay online! And hold yourselves back from killing those villains in the heat of the moment, as much as you might want to."
Ten Miles East of Hatto
"L is not going to be happy about that," Darling said while looking back at the crashed helicopter behind their group.
"Hank, is Le-Q alright?" Zach asked the pilot who sported a bloody nose but no other external injuries from their crash. The former EMT wrapping up the younger French woman's right leg turned and gave Zach a quick nod before getting back to it. Le-Q was unconscious but that nod made Zach think she was going to be fine, and he was glad the four of them all made it out of that alive.
"Spent as much on that as we did on all these costumes," Darling said while running up to Zach's side and speaking quickly at him. "And I mean, we really could have used the eye in the sky here for taking the city."
"L will understand," Zach said. He turned towards the black humvee and sand-colored jeep that were parked alongside their wreckage. A group of unconscious villains lay between their functioning vehicles, including the woman who shot down their helicopter. "I'm betting one of them was a Demon after all," Zach added, looking around at the others with him and giving them serious looks through his visor. "Two were down south with Mark, two are for sure still inside Hatto, one being Mongoloid's wife Arma. If one of the others is here, there are only a couple unaccounted for."
"Let's move in," Akhmed said, looking over from the open driver's side door of the black humvee he was still sitting in. "I'm cloaking us right now, but they know we're out here and the smoke is rising too high to block. And we can't give Mongoloid or WhyFight time to call back more of the Demons. Having them all scattered around the country is our best shot."
"You good Gentle?" Zach asked the man panting but standing next to the group of unconscious villains.
"Just had to, save those pilots," Gentle muttered sarcastically but in frustration. He was tired, and he turned to look towards Hatto that they had not even reached yet. "This is war, Z- Commander." He said, seething the word out in a frustrated tone while looking back to Zach through their dark visors.
"I know. And I thank you for following your orders," Zach replied in a way that made the taller man turn to him in surprise while also setting the tone with everyone else around them. "Now we're moving into the city," Zach said, turning towards Hatto himself and glaring at the huts on the far outskirts the villains were waiting for them at. "Hummingbird, Cluster, guard Le-Q and Hank and watch over the prisoners. Be ready to move in though if I call." Zach started jogging for the black humvee where there would be an empty seat now. Cluster dropped off of the other jeep, and he slammed his hands into the ground to start building up barriers, combining all the loose particles of sand into walls to rise and protect them.
Darling frowned and looked towards Zach longingly, but he motioned towards the jeep with an empty seat in it that the girl in a black helmet turned to after a second. She ran towards that vehicle and climbed in, and Gentle jogged around the black humvee and got inside it too back in the passenger seat. Zach climbed up in the vehicle and moved into Hummingbird's original spot, climbing through the middle of the vehicle and sticking the top half of his body out to grab the turret. Why do turrets that work with rubber bullets cost most than ones that kill people? I wish I knew. It was worth it though. It all was. L, we're making the best of it.
Two Months Ago.
Las Vegas, Nevada
"Let me come with you," Leslie said.
Zach turned his head from Gentle and Mark he was speaking with in hushed voices. They were inside a huge sitting room in a mansion on the edge of a valley with a great view back towards the city of Vegas a few miles away. The eighteen year old girl standing there had tear streaks down her face, but an intense and angry look in her eyes as she repeated, "Please, let me come with you."
Mark turned away and back to Zach. He spoke Japanese that the girl next to them did not understand, "Don't. She knew what her dad was doing."
"I can't, handle this," the girl next to them started again in such frustration. "My dad's associates, they all knew the things he was doing to those little boys. Casino owners, even government officials who showed up here. I, I couldn't do a thing. For years. And yet you, in one day!" The girl shook her head and her blonde hair waved behind her, a few strands falling wildly in front of her face that she had to push away to show off how much angrier she looked. "I want to help you. Stop people like him."
"Have you, ever fighted before?" Zach asked. He asked her in English that was a bit broken, but the girl in front of him understood what he was asking.
Darling looked over from across the living room where she was looking through drawers and picking up antique items scattered about. There was broken glass around the floor, blood splashed on the carpet, and Leslie's father was dead in the center of the room with a knife plunged into his chest and his hands tied behind his back. The finishing blow dealt by his daughter after he was already tied up was an act of passion, and the people around her had continued wrapping up what they were doing while mainly ignoring the young woman in the middle of the room. Darling kept ignoring her for another few seconds even as she started making a scene again, but then she froze and lifted her eyes up with them growing wide.
"Do you know how to use your Quirk, even?" Zach asked.
"Say it like, 'Do you even know how to use your Quirk. Sounds smoother bro."
Zach noted that in his head for next time as he heard Rebel's voice in his ear. He glanced at Mark while doing it, and he saw Mark give him a quick nod to show he could listen to Rebel this time. Zach's eyes quickly shifted back to the girl who opened her mouth but then clenched her teeth frustratedly as she had never once fought with her Quirk before. "There's nothing she can do for us then," La Brava's voice came in over the comms. "She should be in prison just for knowing about the kind of shit that went down here."
"She cannot help us," Mark agreed in a quiet Japanese voice.
Zach looked deeper into the eyes of the tall blonde girl in front of him, and he frowned but nodded in agreement with what his comrades were saying. He opened his mouth to respond, but Darling spoke up first loudly from behind her, "Hey!" She called it out in English, and Zach looked behind the blonde woman and over to the shorter and younger girl who started walking right up to Leslie. The taller girl eased back and stepped away as Darling walked towards her, stepping a big step over Leslie's father's body without even looking down. "You really want to help?" Darling asked.
"What are you doing?" La Brava asked over their comms.
"Hold on," Rebel said, and the chubby dark skinned man behind his computer a few thousand miles away started grinning big. "I think I know what you're doing young blood. And damn that's fire. You know what I could do with funds like those?"
"Tell me how to ask: 'Are you the one set to inherit your dad's fortune?'" Darling said, talking to Rebel who figured out what she was thinking.
Mark, Gentle, and Zach looked around at each other and then back to the girls as Darling stepped right up to Leslie and looked her up in her blue eyes. Darling's green eyes glowed and she got a dark and serious look on her face while asking in a rough-edged way if Leslie would be keeping her dad's money now that he'd 'kicked the bucket.' "…If we make it look like it wasn't you, that someone broke in here and killed him instead." Darling continued to the girl in front of her whose eyes opened wide. "You could help us a lot more, funding our little group, than you ever could fighting with us."
"I- I don't know how- I don't understand managing this… My dad never taught me. He just, used me. To help with his business, to make deals with, business partners." Leslie bit down on her bottom lip, and Rebel translated in a slow way what the girl was talking about in her quiet, un-explicit way what her dad had been using her for.
Zach and Darling's eyes widened a bit, and Gentle frowned deeper though started looking at the young woman with pity in his eyes. Mark's expression got a lot darker, and he thought about what Leslie had said about the officials knowing what her dad had been doing. "I can help you," Darling said, a phrase she knew how to use in English as it was one of the first she and Zach decided to practice saying in their softest and most convincing tones. Leslie stared at the shorter, younger girl with her eyes opening wide. "Investing. Stocks. I can help you, run your father's business. Rebel, am I saying this stuff right?" Darling switched to Japanese for a second.
"You know how to do shit like that?" Rebel asked in surprise instead of responding to the girl.
Zach smiled a bit while looking towards the girl with long brown hair who started responding to their support guy. He lost his smile a bit though while shifting his gaze to Leslie. "I don't know if we can trust her," Zach began softly and in Japanese. Rebel could see the translation on his computer screen, and everyone else in the building understood what he was saying except for Leslie. "She doesn't seem trustworthy to me. As much as she appears, truly regretful. I don't know if-"
"We do need the money," Rebel started.
"For once," Gentle began too. "I must agree with him."
"No way! You serious Mr. Chivalrous?"
Gentle ground his teeth for a second at the sarcastic tone Rebel started using. "I do not enjoy, agreeing with that unrefined rapscallion. But we have been moving slowly, having trouble avoiding authorities, and we could avoid many of our problems with more money."
"I can really help her make more," Darling said over towards Zach. He looked her way, and her eyes opened wide before she continued, "But I'll tell her off right now if you want me to!"
"I don't know what Gentle just called me," Rebel started in English, as 'unrefined rapscallion' did not translate well over his computer. "So I'll just assume it means 'Awesome mother fucker.' We're right though Zach. You've been moving in a straight line. Enough money and y'all can buy or bribe your way anywhere on Earth. You'll be able to reach a lot more people." Rebel said the last part ending on a higher pitch like he was dangling the option out for Zach to take, which made Zach frown deeper even though he was considering it.
"Oh- hold on. Cee needs some help back downtown," Rebel said, referring to one of their other members who just started talking to him over her comms connection.
Rebel left their link, and Gentle sighed in annoyance before turning to Zach. "That man is insufferable."
"He's rough around the edges," Zach muttered. He sighed himself before looking up at Gentle and continuing, "But he's recruited a lot better than we ever did alone. He's got us more missions without breaks of time where nothing's happening, where all we're doing is running. And he's teaching me English too."
"You shouldn't trust the English that Rebel teaches," Gentle said with a shake of his head.
"I'm being careful of what to retain," Zach replied, glancing over towards Mark who had started looking Leslie up and down again. Zach turned back to the blonde girl himself who was nervously awaiting their decision on her. Zach stepped towards her and he hesitated, then his eyes shifted around the mansion they were in and how rich everything looked. He glanced over towards the body of the girl's father who he no longer felt upset at her for killing after what Rebel explained she was saying. His eyes shifted back to the daughter of the man they came after, and he said in a low English voice, "Can I trust you?" Everything I'm doing. Everything I'm creating. It's all built on trust. I can't trust anyone. I don't believe it. That's how I know I'm being careful though. I know that trusting the wrong people could mean death for people close to me. I know how important trust is. And I want to see it in your eyes.
"I swear," Leslie started in a choked-off whisper. "I, I want to help. The people my dad hurt. I, never called the police on him. I thought they wouldn't do a thing. I- let him get away with… for so long, what he did to mom." Leslie clenched her eyes shut, then she snapped them open with tears in the corners but a righteous fury in them. "You stopped him. And I, will be the one inheriting his fortune. I'll be the one put in charge of his business, though I'll have to take the power from his business partners. I don't really understand what I'll have to do, but I'll do it. To help you. Because, I know you." The girl in front of Zach looked closer at his face. She stared at his scars, and into his hazel eyes with her blue ones that shook as he looked back at her. "I know who you are. And I trust you," she finished.
She already trusts me, more than I trust her. That's not difficult I guess with how hard it is for me to trust… but still. The look in her eyes, is genuine. I believe it is. And Darling, Rebel, Gentle, they're all right. "I will accept your help-"
"Back again, use 'I'll' when you're saying 'I will' out loud. The contractions sound more fluent. Oh- Cee's back on," Rebel's voice that cut in cut right back off again.
Zach darted his eyes over to Mark, but Mark had a surprised look in his eyes and actually nodded at Zach again. Gentle groaned though as he saw that exchange between the two of them. He is going to believe that buffoon more now, and it will come back to bite him.
Present
Hatto
Zach climbed up on top of the black humvee driving through the main street of Hatto. He called down into the vehicle below him, "Akhmed! Let everyone know!"
The man in the driver's seat of the big military vehicle below Zach shook his head but reached forward and grabbed the receiver off the dashboard. He brought it up to his mouth while the doors of the humvee all opened up, and the jeep behind them pulled off down another street. The receiver connected to speakers attached on top of their humvee while also locked in to ones on the sand-colored jeep driving a different way through the city now. "People of Hatto!" Akhmed's voice shouted in Arabic. "I'm sure you already know, considering you live here, but Mongoloid is not your just ruler!"
Zach glared down the road and towards a palace up ahead of them they were driving fast straight towards. There was a group of soldiers in the street up ahead of him, and Zach brought his right hand up to the chest of his costume and pressed it flat against his heart with his fingers sliding out the fabric of his glove. A black aura flashed around Zach's body, right as Akhmed yelled in a voice that echoed through their side of the city, "We have come to rid this place of Mongoloid and his Demons and all their followers! This is not our fight, but we came anyway! This is your city! These are your homes! Those are your heroes impaled on Mongoloid's palace! They died for all of you and you're just going to give up?! What did they even die for then?!"
Zach kicked off the roof of the humvee below him and he shot down the road wrapped in a thick black aura that darted to the right as he swung an arm to the left to redirect himself. A volley of bullets flew through the air where Zach was just flying, and the humvee behind Zach spun to the side with the bullets slamming into the bulletproof side just next to Akhmed and making him pull away from a window covering in cracks but not breaking through. Akhmed was sweating, but he brought the receiver to his mouth and shouted louder than ever, "MONGOLOID! We are here for you!"
Zach took in a few deep breaths while creating a Death Grenade on his right palm. He tossed it out onto the street from the alley he dove into.
"Fire!" one of the soldiers leading the group of Mongoloid's men and a few others recruited from the Saudi Arabians they conquered shouted. They fired into the dark explosion where the scary figure that had been fully black from head to toe might be hiding inside. Bullets ripped through the black smoke over and over as the men unloaded their entire magazines. One of them rose up a rocket launcher and fired, and another lifted his arms and fired a beam of orange down the road right in the spot the rocket slammed into.
Explosions ripped apart the last of the black smoke. All of the villains stared towards the explosion, and then one of them started lifting his gaze as he saw a shadow pass over the street just in front of him. The man started lifting his head and saw a shadow dropping from the sky with two large black spheres on his hands. Zach dropped down into the middle of the group and yelled in English, "DEATH BOMB!" His spheres of Death he slammed into the ground flattened beneath his palms and then exploded out to the sides along with all the sand beneath him. The ground looked to rise up in a rippling wave around his slammed down hands, blasting black and sand out to his sides, knocking away and knocking out his enemies.
Zach rose his head and glared down the street towards the palace that stood out a lot in the center of Saudi's capital city. He let out a dark breath that hung over his face, while people on the sides of the road came out of their houses or stood on their roofs and looked down at him. People moved to their windows and stared out with wide eyes as all of Mongoloid's men lay unmoving on the road around the figure covered in black wisps. Zach's visor was made of bone, and not even a red glow escaped it so he just stood there as a silhouette of pure darkness in the street. He glared out towards the palace, at its outer walls where he saw more bodies than were there when their source from Hatto had gotten a picture out to them. One of those people, is probably the brave guy or girl who told us… DAMN IT! "MONGOLOID!" Zach roared, his legs wrapping in much thicker flames of Death. He started running forward, black wisps pulling behind his body as he stomped harder and harder and left footprints full of Death down the street. "I'm coming for you!"
A/N Thanks for reading! Hope y'all enjoyed the start of the war and a deeper introduction into the characters with Zach now. We've got Rebel, Mark, L (Leslie), Skater and Blackstar, Cee, Akhmed, Hummingbird, Hank, Le-Q... Def having a lot of fun introducing these new characters, new Quirks, and new enemies too. Let me know what you guys think of the new characters, predictions for the ongoing war, or just comments/questions in general in a review below!
Eedura chapter 96 . 18h ago
Zach help overthrow Coup Leader
Declared ally of nation
Profit?
$$$ XD $$$? Lol loved the review actually made me laugh.
TheOneWhoSaysMeep chapter 96 . 21h ago
Very interesting. Zach is going to invade a country now, huh? I shudder to think what the international response to that will be.
No more rules. Zach's doing what he wants, and we'll see how people react... Thanks for the review!
An Average Jo chapter 96 . 13h ago
I love reading characters becoming leaders in a war. It makes them seem more mature and badass. I can't wait to see Class A's reactions to Zach leading a crusade against a country.
Awesome! Glad you're into it. Was wondering if the sudden shift in a few chapters from school life to straight up war was too much, but I think it's working out. We'll see about Class A sometime... later. XD Thanks for reviewing!
Guest chapter 96 . 21h ago
Oh fuck, Zack went from murderer to terrori-Oh I'm sorry, 'FREEDOM FIGHTER' in one chapter.
Lol all a matter of perspective I suppose. Thanks for the reviews everyone!