Death

by tmb1112

Death is a Quirk that can only kill. A perfect Quirk for a villain, but what if the boy who manifested that power just wanted to be a hero? Enrolling in U.A. might not be enough when all your Quirk can do is kill people. Follow Zach Sazaki from his first day in Class A on a story that spans years, as he learns to be a hero, finds out more about his Quirk, and too much to summarize!

184. Chapter 184

Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia

Chapter 184:

Jirou Kyoka and the pro hero she interned with snuck through a train station as inconspicuously as they could. They had just arrived at the station closest to the Narita International Airport where their target had gone straight to after landing. He only had his backpack that was his carry-on for the flight and no checked baggage so he was in and out of the airport quickly. The two women had not slowed down once since they started trailing him, but Ms. Clue held out her arm and grabbed Jirou by the right wrist when Jirou was about to step past and out onto platform 16.

"Wait until the shinkansen arrives," Ms. Clue told the girl who turned to her and then gasped in surprise and reached down for her purse.

"He's pretty far up on the platform," Jirou said.

"It'll be a long ride before the first station. We can move up there during it, but we'll watch from back here until the moment the doors close on the first cars. The doors close one by one moving back down the trains, so the fact that he's up there means we can make sure he's actually getting on and not just trying to trick us."

"And the first couple of cars in case he gets on and starts walking back," Jirou added, nodding her head in agreement while handing off the ticket she just fetched out of her purse to her traveling companion. They could have been mother and daughter, sisters, or just friends. Ms. Clue did not look very old, and the female hero in her early thirties was disguised as an even younger woman anyway while Jirou was dressed and made-up to look somewhat older than she was. The two of them had to keep their sunglasses off as it was too cloudy out with dark gray nimbus clouds that it would draw more attention to them by wearing them. They each had on wigs to cover up their normally shorter hair, Jirou's a light shade of blue and Ms. Clue's a dark brown. Jirou's hair covered up her long earphone-jack earlobes while Ms. Clue just had on a pair of regular glasses that worked well at distorting the appearance of her small hollow circular red irises.

Ms. Clue kept watching Jirou who faced her and spoke about nothing of actual substance, and Ms. Clue mentioned to the girl in front of her, "He's pulling out his phone. I hear him swiping…"

"Is he starting a call?" Jirou asked, leaning to her right casually and getting ready to plug an earphone jack into the wall through some of her hair up against it.

Jirou wore a professional skirt and shirt that many Japanese businesswomen wore on daily bases, and she and Ms. Clue looked like they were on their way to work or off on break together. The two of them were smiling and talking to each other, and the two could hear well enough that anyone they heard actually enter earshot of them only heard what the two wanted those people to hear. Jirou groaned and tilted her head back, "What's he saying?"

"He's just, talking to that woman," Ms. Clue mentioned. Jirou could see the man out her peripheral vision around a support pillar on the platform that held up the thin but high-up steel verandas on the second floor of the station. The subways were down below while the shinkansen tracks were on ground level or even elevated for a lot of the country. "He mentioned the weather, said he heard it's going to rain, the woman is correcting him that he means it looks like it's going to rain. I think he did mean that too," Ms. Clue mentioned, as the two phrases were easy to mess up for foreigners and the dark-skinned man thanked the woman next to him in a grateful way as she did not just let him go on using the wrong grammar.

The man looked genuinely grateful to the woman next to him that she actually responded to him, instead of ignoring him or looking away as most Japanese people had since he arrived at the airport. The woman had a mutant-type Quirk herself though with her gold-furred skin spotted in white spots, and she had small pointed ears on top of her head sticking out of her shaggy white hair. The woman who looked a bit like a cheetah but with a more human-like face nodded and smiled back at the man, and she questioned where he was from. Ms. Clue repeated that out to her sidekick, but Jirou plugged in an earphone jack anyway while turning her body to lean her back up against the wall.

"Don't relax. Train's arriving," Ms. Clue said. Her tone was intense and serious, though her expression made it appear like she had just said that in a way to her friend to hurry up and come with her.

The bullet train's arrival shook the platform, and everyone waiting for the train to arrive started moving up to get ready to board it. "Search for your ticket you misplaced again while I get on. I'll get off if he does to see what's taking you, and you'll have lost your ticket. If he doesn't get off, find your ticket and get on before the doors close. Don't miss it." Ms. Clue started walking ahead of her friend, looking like she did not notice that her friend was falling behind her. Jirou was patting down her pockets though, and she looked down with a hesitant look and her expression gaining some nervousness though she smiled like she had to have just misplaced what she was looking for.

She looked into her purse, then back where she had just been leaning against the wall. This is it. The platform will be much emptier if he gets off. He'll notice that we didn't get on the train too unless we can blend in with the people who just got off. He's going to take this train though. I know he will.

Jirou stopped searching as hard for her ticket. She knew she should keep going for the plan, but it was difficult to do so convincingly when she knew she was not doing it for anyone. When the doors started closing at the front of the train, she got on at the last second with ticket in hand and started towards her "friend" who waved her over and asked if she had her ticket. "Good thing it was there or you would have- He's still in the front car. He stopped talking to that woman, but after she took his seat he only took a few more steps before sitting himself. He's quiet now, but he's on the train." Ms. Clue's focus on the man was starting to dim, red filling the white hole inside her circular irises, and she mentioned to her intern, "Let's move up a few cars."

"Yeah, this one's too crowded," Jirou agreed, like the two of them had not intentionally picked one of the more crowded middle cars.

12 Hours Ago

"Who's the target?" Jirou asked, sitting across the table from her pro hero she had been interning with for almost a year now.

"This man," Ms. Clue started. The two of them sat in a small room at Ms. Clue's agency she shared with several other heroes, though none of those heroes were privy to their investigation she had been tasked with from people higher up than her intern knew. "Rodney Black." Ms. Clue opened up the file on the table in front of her and took out a blown-up photograph of a man in uniform. The uniform was olive green, though it had darker and lighter spots on it in a camouflage pattern. The fatigues were tight on his body, and on the right side of his chest over one of the pockets was the word 'BLACK' while on the other side the words 'SPECIAL FORCES' were embroidered in black over the top of the pocket.

"Special Forces?" Jirou asked, her eyebrows raising up and her eyes lifting from the picture to her pro hero.

Ms. Clue nodded her head and then hummed at Jirou's surprised look at her nod there. "I'm a little surprised you haven't heard of them. Not too surprised though," Ms. Clue added, not wanting her intern to feel uninformed because of her confusion here. "They are a defense force in the United States. A branch of their 'military,' even though the U.S. do not have a formal armed forces."

"Most countries don't," Jirou said, looking confused and then shifting her eyes back down to the picture of the man she looked at more closely this time. He looked like he was in his early twenties, a man with dark brown skin and a straight expression on his face, with his hands put together behind his back so his elbows were out at his sides. He was muscular which could be seen through his uniform, and he had on a tight gray shirt underneath the outer layer which Jirou could see because of his collar that was opened down to the top of his chest. "What's his Quirk?" Jirou wondered, turning the photo back around and pushing it over the table towards the pro.

"Irrelevant for now," Ms. Clue responded. "We do not wish to come in contact with this target. Our mission is primarily to observe and conduct surveillance while he is in Japan."

"He's coming here?"

"Just got on a flight," Ms. Clue replied, and Jirou's eyes widened for a second before narrowing in a more serious way. Jirou had thought he would be someone in the country already, but when she heard what Ms. Clue started talking about she got lost as to what their mission would be. She also thought it was likely not a mission they were dealing with so immediately. "Heading to Tokyo. He'll arrive tomorrow morning. We'll meet up here at 5 a.m. and prepare disguises to track him in."

"And why is he coming here? Or, why are we following him?" Jirou wondered. "Do we think he's- has he committed crimes in the past?" The way Ms. Clue had described the man so far did not make her think the man was a villain. "Is it because he's in that Special Forces group? I figure we're pretty against America doing that," Jirou added, an annoyed tone in her own voice agreeing against the existence of something like that.

Ms. Clue shook her head at the teenage girl's questions. "In most countries across the world, heroes handle everything that militaries used to before the emergence of Quirks," Ms. Clue started. "It took a while for some, but heroes have become this world's primary source of defense for the public in every single country. However, there are countries that did not completely follow that trend. The countries that do have armed forces keep them small and they're mainly used for protection of the elite political classes in smaller and less politically free countries where the governments do not want heroes as the only powerful force in the nation." Jirou nodded with a darker look on her face as that description sounded to her like what she'd think of at the sound of modern armed forces. "However, America's is a little different. Their Special Forces were practically a defunct branch of the military, at least until a couple of years ago."

Ms. Clue pulled out a packet of papers from the file in front of her. She handed the packet over the top of the table and Jirou held it in front of her to read. Ms. Clue started while Jirou read the pages of information she just handed off, "Over the past three years, villain rates rose and fell at much higher rates than they had in decades before. These came to be known as the Rise, Age, and Fall of Villains in many countries. They came at different times for different countries, though most considered this time last year, a little later actually, as the Fall."

"Highest arrest rates in history, lowest villain incidents in decades," Jirou said, listing off some of the statistics she remembered hearing just about a year ago now. She kept reading the papers while nodding at what Ms. Clue was saying, multitasking to get through this packet of information on the restored U.S.S.F. "What does that have to do with these guys?" She wondered with a glance up over the top of the packet.

"Well, unlike in most of the rest of the world, things never got that bad in the United States. Villain rates in America never got as high as in most countries including our own, some say because villains were less cocky in the U.S.A." Ms. Clue paused and Jirou lowered the packet to look up at her hero who was getting to the point here. "They weren't free to do whatever they wanted, because if things got too rough for heroes, the Special Forces would be called in. Unlike heroes, they had no restrictions on what to do against enemies and would kill them without repercussions." Jirou's expression narrowed and Ms. Clue looked similarly affected after what she just said.

"It had received a lot of flak in the past from the international community," Ms. Clue continued. "Other countries decried them for being inhumane when the provision was used," Jirou nodded as she had just read about that provision on the front page of the info packet. "But even back then it was used so rarely it was never an issue. The force was so small that it was nearly impossible to get them mobilized to actually help out even in the worst villain incidents. Things changed though and more people were recruited as things started to get worse, but even as crime rates rose across all 50 states and villain attacks became more frequent all over the nation, the force was rarely used to settle disputes."

Ms. Clue paused for a moment and then slid her chair in and stared into Jirou's eyes in a more serious way. She continued to her intern, "I don't like the idea of it. It doesn't sit right with me, for all the same reasons that other countries, the UN, and the U.S.'s own America Group are all against it… However, others accredit the Special Forces as the reason for why the U.S.A.'s villain incidents never rose to the heights most of the world did. The Special Forces were rarely ever used because of the international disagreement with those methods, but the U.S. never buckled to the pressure and kept up the branch. They have no accountability, and when the new president came in two years ago, right after All Might's fall and the start of the worldwide Rise of Villains, they started getting missions again after years of near complete inactivity."

"Still, last year guess how many times they were used," Ms. Clue said to her intern.

"How many?" Jirou wondered back, having no idea to even give an educated guess on the matter.

"17," Ms. Clue replied. "And the year before that only 8 times. 25 times in all the last two years, and none this year so far." Jirou looked back down at the packet and she furled her lips. She had been frustrated by the provision she had not known about which seemed to give far too much freedom to this group that could be called on at the discretion of governors, upper executive officials, or the president themself. The idea that despite this autonomy and ability to act without consequence they still had not been used often confused as much as frustrated her even more. It did not make sense during a time she knew villain rates were up in the U.S., and if they were not used more often she also knew there was little chance the force would actually get shut down like she already hoped it would just from this introduction to them.

"If they're used so rarely," Jirou began in a low tone. "Why don't they just get rid of it altogether?"

"A fair point. One many people argue, even in their own country. However it's not that popular an opinion over in the U.S. Even though they've already started to lose focus again," Ms. Clue added with a look back down at a paper in front of her with graphs and numbers on it. "Not a single use so far this year. In the last four months of last year, they were only called on once too."

Get why I've never heard of these guys, Jirou thought, as they sounded like they really weren't doing all that much.

"After President Javier took office, the United States revitalized the program and began training new soldiers while resupplying the ones who had already existed in bases scattered around the country." Ms. Clue pulled out another blown-up picture and she slid it and two others across the table for Jirou to spread out. Jirou grimaced at the bloody mess shown to her on the pictures but did not look away. Ms. Clue explained to the girl examining those photos, "The first of the 25 incidents I mentioned was not a good start for the Special Forces' revival."

"What happened?" Jirou asked in a low, dark voice. She looked at the bodies littered around the steps of a large bank that had explosion damage all over the pillars and walls, an arm sticking out from below a piece of rubble, shattered glass everywhere and ambulances and cop cars around the building. There were some cop cars turned over too, and they were blackened carcasses of vehicles that could never work again.

"Heroes were called to a bank robbery in Indiana. More were brought in when it became a hostage situation, but when the escape vehicles were brought by negotiators only for heroes to try and use that moment to catch the villains off guard, they miscalculated the villains' brutality." Ms. Clue had the report in front of her and continued to the girl feeling sick by what her hero started saying, "The villains injected some of the hostages with unstable Trigger, making for a more difficult situation for the heroes. They started killing other hostages while some ran wild, they killed heroes fighting the civilians causing chaos, and there was a Special Forces base close-by that got called in. The team that arrived caused the death of 5 villains, but ultimately it was more hero reinforcements who stopped the villains' leaders and saved the remaining hostages."

Ms. Clue paused and flipped a page in the report she was paraphrasing to her sidekick. "The PR blast they received afterwards for the unnecessary killing was bad, and on top of the kills they had caused millions more in collateral damage, blamed on the inexperience of those 'special' Special Forces, people called them. It wasn't a great first show of what they could do. So, for a couple months they weren't used again." Ms. Clue continued. "Then in the summer they got called on a couple more times, leading up to September two Septembers back," Ms. Clue sounded like she was getting back to their initial point. She pulled out another sheet from her file, this one with six pictures on it with Rodney Black's in the top right corner rectangle that was of equal size to the other five boxes on the page. She put the page down in front of Jirou and slid it forward for Jirou to look at all six of those uniformed soldiers keeping the same straight expressions and poses as Black had.

"What happened in September?" Jirou wondered, raising her gaze from the page to her hero who was staring at her in a much more intense way now.

Present

"He'll notice if we go right up to the front car while we're still moving. I don't even want to go one more back in case he's moved back now or in case he decides to check if we moved there. Until the next stop I won't be able to get a good look at him to restore Lock-On's time limit." Ms. Clue had her phone out and leaned to the side to show Jirou while the two of them were standing and holding onto poles near the doors three cars back from the front of the train. "Try to listen in right now, see if you can pinpoint his location."

"I'll try," Jirou replied, smiling at the phone like her friend had just shown her a cute picture or something. As she smiled like that, her left earphone jack curved up below her wig and slid into the collar of her shirt and underneath her costume below it. She slid her jack down the side of her body and under her waistband that had small protrusions on either side for her earphone jacks to move down easier and in a stealthy way. Her left earphone jack slid down her pant leg quickly and then planted into the ground right next to her shoe. Jirou closed her eyes, and she faded out the loud roaring of the wheels over the tracks. Next she drowned everyone out behind her, and the ones on her train car, and the ones close enough to her up ahead that she knew they could not be in the first car.

More and more sound drowned out from the initial blasting in Jirou's ears. She tried to focus on multiple things at once too, smiling at her friend and acting like she was not using her Quirk. She pretended to be listening in to Ms. Clue's story when she had already drowned her and everything else around her out. He's quiet.

Two train cars down from the disguised heroes, a man who just had a very long plane flight that he did not get much sleep on leaned back farther on the comfortable chair in his empty booth. He let out a heavy breath, his breathing calm and tired, and his eyelids fluttered a little even while closed. His lips curled down more, and the man who had fallen asleep on his seat drifted away into his dreams.

"…Are you ready?!"

Rodney spun his head and nodded at the short girl on his right who just yelled that at him. "Right above us, right?" The short girl with long brown hair asked the child at her side. They were in an almost pitch-black tunnel that ended just ahead of them, though there was a man slamming his palms into the end of it and then breaking apart the end of the tunnel by curling his fingers in and pulling to the sides. He stomped forward and then pulled up and down, sliding the next end of the tunnel up and down where it hardened into the ceiling and floor to make a sturdy foundation of their tunnel.

"I hear a lot of English voices! Definitely American, wait- there are Canadians- the Inuit Incinerator someone just mentioned seeing in the group next to them. And, Cryo-Force, someone is from Minnesota-"

"You're doing great! Just keep it up!"

"Hey, get ready to start moving as soon as you're up there. If you stay in place after popping up-"

"I know," Black told the woman next to him who was bloody and burnt but still looked concerned for him. I heard the same spiel the last twenty times. He had on a black vest with the sleeves ripped off so there was shredded frayed fabric at his shoulders before his muscular dark arms extended out to the assault rifle he was holding. "Just send me up. I'm good."

"Sending him up."

"Keep going farther!"

"A.J. you're next!"

"Move move move!"

Rodney Black started sprinting forward as his feet touched down on the surface. His hands gripped the black assault rifle in his hands and his expression was dark and menacing as he sprinted towards a huge smoking vehicle crashed into the barren yellowish rocky landscape. There was no vegetation in any direction, and the sky was darkening with the black smoke from more than just the largest of the crashed flying vehicles up ahead of him. There were other planes and helicopters crashed and burning on the ground in all directions of him, and some people were still being helped out of them or trying to put them out to save others who had been inside and unable to get out in time.

"They fucking fried everything!"

"Attack their ship!"

"Hit them now! Before they can spread out!"

"Ah hah, ah hah, ahh, hahh," Black breathed heavily, his heart pounding hard and fast in his chest as he sprinted across the ground. Others were jogging near him, some were getting louder and yelling while running forward themselves.

"You see that?!"

A voice screamed it in English on Black left, and he spun with the others looking just like any of the people around him. He stared off in shock at the flying black form that just shot over a huge swath of people and then dove down into what turned into a giant explosion a second later. Darkness plumed out of that explosion and fully surrounded it, then fifty spikes of darkness shot out from the blast and rained down around it. People started to get nervous and backed away from the sight, only for a huge wall of ice to rise up on one side, and five other explosions to blow up around that billowing darkness, and then a huge spike of earth rose up a hundred feet in the air out of that explosion in the next second sending some black form flying off the top of it.

"HA, haha! Look at that!"

"Only a few of them made it out of there, and even Death can't take all those attacks!"

Rodney lowered his head and he breathed heavier and more nervously. Fear filled him, and he closed his eyes, Only for a second. The second passed and so did the fear. He ran forward and leaned in towards another dark-skinned man whose accent was not unlike his own, "Hey."

"Huh? Who are-"

Black held a finger up in front of his mouth. His eyes darted to his left and back behind him, and the man looking at the side of his face got an uneasy look on it at the way this guy was acting, but he also did not speak up based on how intense his fellow villain looked. "Just heard Inuit Incinerator's guys talking. Death looks like he's already done for. That crazy fucker doesn't see the need to keep this charade up any longer, and his guys are hiding it well. They're up to something, and we need to know that Rayflex is ready to back up the rest of us Americans when those fucking Canucks turn on us."

The man Black was talking to turned his head, and Black turned the other way at the same time, "I'm getting others on board. Be ready for it," he whispered back, and he ran before he could be questioned. Even the man he had just talked to did not get freaked out by the way he so quickly slipped out of there, sprinting in and out of people without them noticing how he looked to be moving in a strange way.

It could just be I don't want the Canadians to see me. I got one. Turn the North American army against itself. I don't speak any other language well enough to turn the regions against each other, but-

"Hey! Those fucking Gravitous freaks are attacking the Rippermen!"

"Fucking idiots! Can't they wait for Death to go down first?!"

"I knew allying with either of them was going to start trouble as long as the-"

BANG!

Black ducked and spun his head. Shit! Already?!

"Who did-"

"It's Cryo-Force!"

"The Metahumans are trying to take down-"

Ka-BOOOM!

"We didn't do tha-"

"Kill them!"

"Of fuck me," Black spun and he started running faster, getting away as explosions got closer and closer to his back. He was panting now without trying to hide it, and he crossed his arms while turning his back to the right side where a massive flamethrower just went past him and hit three guys screaming at the guy attacking them to 'Wait!' This is getting out of… control. Rodney Black froze and stared ahead towards the burning ship that suddenly got hit by a dozen huge explosions. The sky shook above it, and a swirling black cloud cracked with thunder and sparked with lightning as it descended over the ship. Rain started to fall from what everyone had just thought was smoke above, and Black snapped his head back down and started sprinting forward again only lifting his rifle up now as he did.

"What the hell is happening?!"

"I can't get in contact with the command! I don't know what we're supposed to be doing here!"

"We have to focus on taking that ship! The Army of Death are almost finished!"

"There are thousands of people trying to do that same thing right now," Rodney hissed to a man on his right side who paused and turned to him with his eyes widening. "You really want to be one of the ones who goes in there first?"

"Who are you?"

"Forget about me, and think about this," Black countered with a sly grin. His face had a scar over the left cheek and two going down his right cheek over his chin to halfway down his neck. There were burn scars on his right arm, and a sealed slash scar on his chest under the collar of his vest. The American man with a villainous appearance smirked and nodded towards the ship up ahead, "The Asians are busy taking on Death-"

"Their Champion can handle him on his own they said," the larger man next to Black said.

"It doesn't look like that's happening though," Black countered.

"Really? Because I haven't seen any sign of Death for a few minutes now," another man next to the bigger one started. "And who the fuck are you?"

"One of Rayflex's-" Black snapped up his assault rifle at the looks on the two men's faces. He unloaded into them while jumping backwards, screaming, "FUCKING PSYCHOS! WE'RE ON THE SAME SIDE!"

They knew! FUCK! Rodney dropped his rifle and rose up his arms that turned to silver and gained a gooey appearance for a second as they transformed. His arms hardened though in the moment before the fast man charging at him slashed down with his katana. Black's arms were harder, and the blade broke with the top half flipping up in the air and the villain who swung it lifting his eyes in shock and fury at the sight of his blade breaking. Black's hardened arms sharpened and he slashed them down while yelling, "Fucking Cadavre freaks! We're all on the same side here!"

The man Black slashed hit the ground with two long slashes going down from near his shoulders towards his waist.

"What the hell is going on here?!"

"That guy's not-"

BOOOM!

Gotta run gotta run! Black sped off using the sudden panic from the nearby explosion. He swerved between people who were angry at each other, shouting, raising weapons and firing off Quirks while still trying to figure out what was happening.

A spear flew over Black's right shoulder from his back. He ignored it and focused on the fact that it hit a woman in the back up ahead of him. "They're trying to take advantage of the chaos!" Black called out, still running away while people were chasing after him. Those people were suddenly attacked by two dozen people in the gang of the woman who was just hit in the back as Black had run into their group and shouted that. He heard gunfire and screaming behind him as he kept running, leaving everyone else behind while panting heavier and darting his shaking eyes every direction around him.

The ground shook, and Black spun his head to the left and looked towards a plateau that started to break apart in the earthquake after a fissure had run through the entire thing. When he looked over at that plateau though, he saw one even farther away that took his breath away and made him freeze in place. There were dozens of people on top of the plateau with one man standing at the front, such an ominous aura coming from that way that he could not quell his fear. "Is that-"

"Eziano Mozcaccio," a voice whispered behind him, the accent Latino. Black turned his head to the right and looked at the shorter man with light brown skin who gulped in a nervous way before turning the other direction where he had last seen Death. A bright white beam shot out of a glow in the sky over there, only for that beam to go away as it was sucked up into the sky and something that Black and the man next to him both stared at in fear.

A black hole ripped open in the sky, and a dark orange core burned in the center of it while light was sucked in from all around. The tint of the air in that part of the sky darkened and turned orange, only for Black and the man next to him to glance at each other and see the other's face also tinted in the same dark orange glow. Rain started to fall on them, heavy and blowing into their sides with sudden gusts of wind that came out of nowhere. Rodney Black looked at the man next to him who did not appear any older than he was himself, and he opened his mouth to say something but froze with it open like that. Seeing that man's fear that looked so similar to his own, he found it too difficult to mention how the others behind him were starting to fight each other in order to be the last ones standing here. "Good luck," Black just said, his expression darkening and his eyes going cold which had the Dominican villain in front of him gulping and leaning backwards.

Rodney turned back forward and started sprinting, and a few seconds later when he heard an explosion not far behind him he struggled to keep his face forward and not look back. "Oh shit!" A voice screamed on Black's left, and he looked over and spotted men and women running to the sides and diving off of a huge invisible platform rising into the sky. Others were fighting on that platform, and then his head spun around and he saw lots of other platforms and sections of earth rising up without anything below them.

He spun and looked towards the biggest explosion he had seen so far, coming directly on top of the wreckage of The Cloak. His eyes opened wide, but he grit his teeth and then started running towards the ship himself. His arms formed the shape of long curved blades silver in color but much harder than steel. His eyes darted around in a focused way at all the people around him, and he spotted two groups of people who looked different but were still standing near each other and not looking very against each other. Everyone else is still pushing them against each other! I need to- One of the darker-skinned men in the group he was running towards stepped back, then turned and rose up a pistol he pointed at the back of the other group's leader's head.

Did someone already get to them?! Or were these fuckers already ready for it?! Black turned and darted the other direction fast, especially as a few dozen people over there started pulling out needles that they injected into their necks. Farther. Farther FARTHER!

"RRAAOOOOOAAAARRR!"

Something black came flying through the sky up above Black's head and made him snap his eyes up and then to the left as it kept flying far too fast for him to follow. He looked towards a rocky rise in elevation off over a mile that just exploded with hundreds of tons of rocks blowing up into the air and in all directions. Then, a massive arm of darkness reached up from the hole where all that rubble exploded from. Something came flying through the air letting out another huge scream at that dark figure, only for it to be slammed back the way it came by a twenty ton slate of ground that blew apart upon slamming into the bulked-up beast flying through the sky.

That massive black arm then swung around with the open hand over a hundred feet wide curling up into a fist as it released the last of the debris it was holding. The arm swung and extended out, and the huge fist slammed into a plateau near him that blew apart with men on top of it jumping or flying away, or getting blown away by how hard their plateau was just smashed into.

"RUN!"

"Look out!"

Black spun to his right and then he turned the same way everyone else was running. Smoke was coming off the ground to his back a hundred meters or so, and the area to that side of him was glowing brighter and brighter red each second as more people started sprinting his direction from over there.

"IT'S A WHOLE FUCKING OCEAN OF LAVA!"

"Is it them?!"

"WHAT'S HAPPENING!?"

This is chaos! Black's eyes were as wide as saucers as he ran, his panic rising as much as all the villains around him. His head spun back and forth, looking at the men running on either side of him who were clearly from other villain groups and who both gave him looks of similar fear and panic. Then they started nodding at each other, a silent agreement that they all made in that moment while running from a burning ocean together. They were allied now, no matter who they were with or fighting for, they were going to survive together.

"Over here!" A villain yelled out from their right side, and all three of them along with a few dozen others looked over to see a big swirling white portal opened up above a piece of rubble more and more villains were running up and leaping through.

"Let's go!"

"Everyone get out of here!"

"GO GO GO!"

No idea where this is going to take me! Black thought, but he did turn and yell at the two next to him to "COME ON!" They all ran for the portal, but when he turned to the right to run that way, he realized just how close that ocean of red was rolling in towards him. "FUCK!" Black sprinted even faster, and he jumped up onto a chunk of rubble before making another jump to the slanted surface up to the white portal people were diving and sprinting into while screaming. He landed on that final piece and spun back, leaning to the side to let one of the two he allied with to dive in, while reaching an arm out that turned back to normal instead of a silver blade.

What am I doing? Black thought, as he grabbed onto the hand of the man diving towards him over the end of the rolling lava. He yanked the man backwards on top of himself as they toppled into the portal, two others leaping in behind them, and the top half of one last guy making it through before the portal closed and bisected him. That guy managed out half a scream before his head fell flat on the ground and his organs all leaked out of where his body was split horizontally.

"Gracias!"

Black turned his head from the left where he was staring at that man's upper corpse, to the guy he had pulled on top of him through that portal. "Yeah, don't mention it," Black rolled the guy off him and then looked around the purple pocket dimension around him.

"We have to figure out what's going on!"

"Asura ino xia na…"

"Potete mi dire dove…"

"Who's pocket dimension is this?! Bring us where the leaders of the North American force are. We need them to regain communication with the other forces. Death is still alive, though the Champion is keeping him busy…"

I can't let them get back any control. Black's expression darkened but his focus cleared in the calm he had for a moment.

Unfortunately, they could not stay long in there as the guy who created the place kept trying to tell them all in Swahili, which none of them spoke well. Black knew enough to realize it earlier than the others around him, not that he told anyone with him what that villain was trying to say. He just waited for the dimension's purple barriers to start to dim, showing what was actually around them that was moving by as the man controlling the place ran while seeing all that was really around him. The barriers thinned more and more until other villains fighting around them were able to see this huge moving force of nearly two hundred people about to come to life.

I'm sorry, Black thought without looking back to the man who thanked him a moment ago. His left hand slid into the back of his waistband to the pistol tucked in there.

"Where did you guys come from-"

Bang!

Black fired at one of the guys in the villain gang their whole group just appeared inside of, and that villain gang immediately started attacking the group they were already suspicious of before anyone else in that group could try to explain.

"WAIT!"

"Use Trigger!"

"BASTARDS!"

"Watchakacha!"

"EAT LEAD!"

"TRIGGER!"

"RIOT!"

Black sprinted forward as the ground below him started to break apart. Cracks split through and branched off so many times that the solid ground was looking more like gravel each second. He was running uphill a few seconds earlier, but all of a sudden he was on a downhill slant. One chunk of rock was not dipping like the rest of the ground though, and he ran and jumped for that rocky surface. Two others jumped for that spot though, and they turned to him not looking ready to talk about anything.

Rodney pointed his pistol at the man on the left first who rose his arms up faster. That guy who rose his arms though activated his Quirk which yanked Black's pistol right out of his hand. The pistol flew into his outstretched hands, and Black twisted his body in midair to dodge the long bumpy brown tongue that shot out of the other man's mouth as he landed on the tilted rock surface. That surface was not as sturdy as they all thought though, especially with the ground below it still shaking and breaking apart more. The slanted rock dipped down in the back as it started to slide, and the man who crouched after landing with his thick tongue outstretched was not able to redirect it in the way he initially wanted when the darker-skinned man dodged him.

Black fell onto the edge of the rock the two Caucasian men were trying to balance on, and his arms turned into straight swords. He sprinted forward while slashing to either side. The rock below them cracked in the middle and made everyone's balance even more off, but Black slashed through the thick tongue retracting into one villain's mouth, while ducking below the shots of the other man and slashing across the right side of his stomach. Blood splashed out into Black's face as he ran by, but he did not stop to finish the job as he saw what this rock was sliding down towards now and stopped short instantly.

Rodney jumped backwards, and then he pulled to the side but still felt the pain of the bullet in his right side where the villain falling backwards off the breaking rock had shot him. The man was holding his side together with one hand and shot Black with the other, only to fall off the front of the rock that was sliding faster down the gravel towards the huge sinkhole. That man did not need to worry about falling into the sinkhole as his old partner was now panicking about though, as the rock slid over on top of him and crushed him into the dirt.

Black landed and ran up the slant with the ground below him breaking apart after each climbing step. He did not dare look back though as he heard all the shouts of panic and terror as people fell into the hole, and he turned his arms into more curved-scythes at the end that he started using to dig into the floor while doing mountain-climbers up it. Black was on all fours and sprinted to finally another piece of solid ground, then he stumbled forward and pulled his right hand down to his side with his arm reappearing and then his middle, ring, and pinky fingers all turning into a thin silver blade.

This is gonna hurt! He dug his sharp fingers into his side where he had been shot. No fucking armor. In the worst place to have no armor- "FAAUUUCCK-" Black dug the bullet out of himself with his fingers turning back to normal to grip and toss the bullet aside. No med kid. No extra weapons. Just my Quirk, and no support! Black had to start running as he heard the screaming get louder behind him. He darted a look back to see giant flaming tentacles coming out of the sinkhole, a sight that made him suck in a huge breath and spin back forward as fast as he could.

On his right side something was coming rolling in out of a thick fog and he turned the other way to dodge it, only to freeze as a wave of red just splashed up in the air. Please be Mark, Black thought, though he still backed up as a pinkish-purple gas erupted around where that blood wave had been. The gas cloud expanded in his direction, and he reached down and pulled the collar of his shirt up while running forwards again towards a group a mile away that he spotted not fighting like everyone else. If I can reach- His eyes darted to the right where that thing finally came rolling out of the fog. As far as he could see to the right and the left of that fog cloud, enormous roots were spreading out over the ground and curving up, down, into the ground, and back out of it to destroy the earth around them.

An entire forest emerged and came towards him, and then a dark figure in a purple cape flew over the tops of those roots and into the fog. The roots kept coming for a few seconds though before they would be stopped, and Black was within those few seconds along with another few dozen people around him who all yelled out and tried dodging the spreading forest. The farther back on the roots, the more there were huge branches and even full tree trunks sticking out of them up in the air with green foliage on top. At the ground level though it was mainly enormous roots that just snapped on both sides of Black and broke apart the ground he was running on.

He dove over a root slowing down but still growing thicker in front of him. Has to be Trigger. Black hit the ground and rolled, then he ducked down as a huge pillar of flames erupted not far from him. The heat wind from the force of the blast withered the green leaves around Black and seared the left side of his face and his arm. He shook off the pain from the heat though and snapped his head up, his left eye squinting from the pain in it. He darted forward, and then he heard a voice up ahead of him, "I smell one of them!"

They can smell me?! Black backed up-

"Right there! He's in the roots with us!"

"I see him!"

There was no time to think of where to run or hide. Black started sprinting forward at where those voices came from. They're close. Closer than they think.

"He's coming right at us!"

"OH SHIT!"

Black's enemies second-guessed whether or not they were the ones actually attacking the Army of Death here.

"It's just one of them!"

Black saw parts of people through the trees, but he looked over his shoulder in panic when he was about to come within sight of them. "Holy shit! He's right behind me-" Black yelled out, swinging his sharpened scythe arms in front of him as he spun back forward in terror. He slashed through thin branches and leapt over roots, and then he slashed his right arm across the chest of the man closest to him feeling the most confident and running forward too to meet this Army of Death soldier head-on.

That man with the most powerful Quirk of his comrades was taken down by the guy they all thought was just running away, and then Black's eyes narrowed and darted to the one who opened his mouth and yelled, "That's-" Black recognized the voice as the one who shouted how he could smell him, and that guy immediately saw on this Army of Death's face that he recognized his voice too. "OH SHIT!" The man with a giant nose covering half his face stumbled backwards and tripped over a root at the look in Black's eyes that unnerved all of his enemies.

"They don't have their armor on, but they're here among us!"

"Those bastards!"

"You're going to pay for all this."

Black ran forward, but his enemies could see his Quirk, and they tried to forget about the way he just looked at them there or how he took down one of their stronger friends. Green sludge shot at him faster than the shuriken were thrown. Black dropped to the ground in a barrel-roll under a root on his left, but two of his enemies predicted that would be how he dodged and were already jumping over to that spot. One of them fired thin black spikes out of his feet, three from each one. Black got hit by two black spikes in his right shoulder as he was standing up as fast as he could, and he gasped but still slashed his left arm up and blocked the giant rock-hard fists coming down at him from the other man diving straight for him.

The guy he blocked was too strong though and made Black's knees buckle. As soon as he felt them buckling though, he allowed his whole body to go limp for a moment and dropped fully to the ground while parrying to the side. He redirected the man's fists pushing down on his blade arm to slam into the root next to them as he was falling to the floor off the punch. The blow hurt his left arm and both legs, along with his abs and ribs, but he spun while on the ground and transformed both legs into sharp silver blades that hardened in the instant his hard-fisted enemy touched his feet to the ground. That man who just landed did not have the time to jump back up, and Black's sharp shins cut the man across his Achilles' tendons.

"RAAAA!" the villain screamed in agony while falling forward and grabbing onto the thick root.

Black's left hand had turned back to normal and he used it to rip one of the black rods out of his right shoulder, then he threw it at the man who had attacked him with them in the first place and just kicked his right leg up to fire more. That man pulled his head to the side and smirked at Black's attempt, only for Black's right arm to pierce through his heart as he had risen it quickly right there and extended it much farther out from his body than his usual attacks were reaching. His legs had turned back to normal and his right arm was the only thing he was using his Quirk on which allowed him to extend that reach over ten feet, and Black ripped his arm out of the man's chest and swung the bloody silver blade to the right side causing two others running on top of a root towards him to jump away.

Even making those two back off though, gunfire blared out in the next second and hit the roots around him. Black had to dive to his right and roll behind a thicker trunk coming out of a root that dug straight across the surface. The bullets firing at him riddled the back of the tree he hid behind, and Black heard the voices over the sound of the gunfire.

"There's an Army of Death member over here!"

"We have him cornered!"

A loud thud hit higher up on the tree and the whole thing cracked. Bullets were still hitting the other side and shredding up the wood, feeling like they were getting closer and closer to his back each second. The top half of the tree was breaking and his eyes darted up to the trunk in hope. I need this! To do, something! He did not know how the top half of the tree falling was going to save him, but he knew he could not stay there as he saw other people cornering him and all aiming at the spot he was in. I'll run along the other side of the tree as the shooter, get close enough to others that they yell at him to stop- The falling tree stopped falling, and it flew up into the sky at a hundred miles per hour for some reason Black did not know.

"No cover for you!"

"HAHAHAHA!"

"KILL HIM!"

"That's one of the Army of Death?!"

"Probably the last one left alive!"

"EEeheheheHEEE! Don't kill him right away!"

"RIP HIM TO PIECES!"

Black was breathing heavier and heavier, his heart pounding in his head and all the pain inside him fading away. "AaaaaAAAAHHH RRAAAAAAA" His elbows curled in and his arms started morphing, his voice getting louder and louder. His teeth bared and his eyes were huge and full of terror but also rage that bubbled over in his expression. His head snapped back and he glared straight towards one enemy in particular up ahead of him and to the left. "HAAAAA!" He charged out from behind the tree.

"Blackstar!"

He spun his head to the left, and he spotted the villain with twin miniguns attached to his shoulders falling backwards unconscious. Other villains were trying to flee, and darts stuck into their necks and backs taking them all down. Blackstar spun his head back to the right, and the man who he had glared at in the end there was backing up terrified as all the villains with him "cornering" the AoD member were just taken down in seconds. Then a bullet flew between all the roots though and slammed him in the right shoulder so hard he flew off the ground and smashed into the tree behind him head-first.

"Get over here," a voice called over to him, making it through despite the pounding in his eardrums.

The adrenaline still pumped through Blackstar's veins, but he started to feel the pain again as he turned and ran towards the four people he recognized who had all come in to save their comrade they had heard was cornered. This is so absurd, Blackstar thought, as an orange and green swirl of sky just rippled through the darkness covering most of the atmosphere above. Pillars of black smoke rose up all over the place, and screams echoed through the forest that Blackstar and the other four started running through together to get away from the area people might know they were in.

Blackstar had seen the guy with the big nose unconscious on the floor back there so he felt a little more safe, which also attributed to him feeling even more pain too. His eyes darted to the right and left in the most anxious way, lingering on the shortest of the group of five he felt his heart ache at the sight of. "Here," Darling said, stopping for a second and leaning back on a root that made Snow get off her back and kneel there for a few seconds, panting like the rest of them and looking around in fear.

We're so screwed. Can't let anyone see me look like that though.

The world is breaking apart! Heroes have to show up here, right? They're going to save us! They have to.

Spiral shook his head around and kept gasping for a couple seconds before grinding his teeth as he glanced up at the others. "I saw Sagitus, soon as he got to the surface they knew," Spiral stopped and ground his teeth even harder. "Bullet right through the head."

"Fuck," Blackstar just whispered, and he lowered his right hand from his side he was grabbing like the pain was too much. "What are you doing, out of the tunnels?" Blackstar whispered to the girls he looked at on his left.

"Don't focus on that right now," Darling said. Her voice snapped the others out of their exhaustion. Her expression was intense again and she had stopped panting. Snow looked at the back of Darling's head with her shaking and terrified eyes growing wide, and then all four of them just stared at the seventeen year old girl who went on quickly, "The Cloak is under too much pressure. Maelstrom is still alive by the looks of things, but the infirmary will be broken into and overrun if they fall. I need to get Snow and the injured out of there."

"We have no idea if anyone else is still even alive," Fabrica whispered, looking to her right at the shorter girl at her side. She had a terrified look on her face that she did not feel ashamed for at all even while saying that to a girl ten years younger. "What if we're, all that's left-"

"Death won't die," Darling said. There was no hesitation in her voice. Her tone was reassuring, confident, and she just continued to the wide-eyed woman in front of her, "Comms should come back soon, though we were in the center of the Temp Emp so the villains might be ahead of us to get them back. That's why we need to destroy all hope of them regaining trust and a working relationship before they get comms online. When our comms are back on, Fabrica, wait for the order and then revert all the disguises you've made."

"What-"

"Trust me. We'll gather in force and they won't be able to see our conditions under our full armor. When they realize that we've been playing them they'll run, and we might need them to run away." Darling paused and then said after gritting her teeth for a second, "This isn't Wampajawa. Let's survive this, even if it means we let some of them escape. Heroes will catch the ones who run. Right now, we just need to survive."

"And to survive," Spiral said while nodding his head at the girl only a couple years younger than him but who was acting braver than him right now. "We need to win," he said it and then grinned at the smaller girl on the root behind Darling who stared at him and then around at all four of them with the most amazed and shocked look on her little face. "Alright. Let's do it."

"Scatter. Win," Darling's orders were not specific. There was no direction for any of them to go in or follow. Blackstar and Spiral were both bleeding pretty badly, but nobody even mentioned it.

Blackstar turned from the others and ran off. His breathing had calmed down a little, and he was reassured of some things he had began doubting while hiding behind that tree in what he thought were his final moments. Everyone is still out there. Sagitus- but we will win! WE'LL WIN! Blackstar ran faster, and he saw the end of the roots up ahead of him and the widest expanse of landscape past it. There were not many people around the area, more small scattered groups with people on the edges of them shouting to other groups to try and figure out what was going on.

Blackstar heard an engine roar, and a vehicle sped between groups ahead of him with a man on the top of it calling into a megaphone in an Asian language he did not understand. He slowed down to a stop at the edge of the roots, and he reached down and picked up a strange weapon that was discarded on the floor but he noticed started glowing brighter blue as he walked towards it. They got rid of their high-tech weapons when Whiteout rendered them useless. A lot of them must not have realized power would come back on. That guy on the truck up there is probably informing everyone, showing off they've got a vehicle going already. Their communications' lines might come back on soon. If it's been this long though, come on Rebel. This is where you're needed! Right here-

Black's eyes snapped up and he sprinted out of the roots in the next second. Villains turned their heads and they yelled out, pointing and raising weapons to the sky where a fleet of drones just flew in. "Blackstar!" Virus' voice called down from above him.

"Just do it Cody!" Blackstar yelled back without slowing down, and he rose the glowing blue weapon and leapt up in the air before firing and dragging the barrel across the front of his body.

Blue pulses fired from the gun as he held the trigger down. One huge pulse first, then smaller ones that fired out rapid-fire across the enemies who were firing up at the drones that had arrived before Blackstar. The drones on a strafing run dropped gas canisters full of knockout gas, though several of the drones were shot down on the first run. The special drone that was tinted blue that Blackstar had seen spin around to him had turned back forward though and was swerving better than all the other drones. One drone lagged behind the others after Cody had spun and called out his name, and as Blackstar tossed the empty high-tech gun to the side as it stopped firing anything, a thin cylinder dropped from the drone right in front of him.

The black cylinder three feet tall slammed into the ground and planted there, then the sides of it popped open and rose with steam coming out of them. Blackstar ran past the left side of the ordinance drop Rebel landed for him, reaching his right arm out to the gear and grabbing the machine gun it held out for him. A timer with '30' on it started counting down on a panel below the other ordinance in the package, and Blackstar kept sprinting forward and rose up the rifle he unloaded at the villains who did not run and were not aiming at the sky. He fired at the ones who were his biggest threats first, then he stepped to his right before darting to the left, faking out the man lifting up a dozen huge rocks covered in a blue aura.

Those rocks flew past Blackstar's right side, and he fired more shots towards the man who had attacked him right there. He hit the man twice in his chest and once in his right shoulder, making him spin out and fall to the ground while also causing a lot more people around him to turn their heads and yell while targeting him. Blackstar dove forward and while horizontal to the ground, pointed his rifle out in front of him and unloaded more of it into these groups. A truck that had swerved to one side came off the tires on its left, and it hit the ground on its side and started rolling with villains flying out of it. One man flew through the windshield and glass shards hit other villains trying to dodge, and two drones fell out of the air and one crashed into a woman aiming a pistol right at Blackstar's head as he rolled to his feet.

He spun his head to her as he had been dodging someone else in the second she was about to shoot at him, but the crashing drone exploded upon hitting her in a fireball that caught two others near her on fire and made them scream while dropping to roll on the floor. The ground below Blackstar's feet got soft and his feet slipped into it, and he could not run from that spot even though there was a rocket flying towards him. Cody's drone spun around and fired towards the rocket propelled grenade, blowing it up early but not far enough from himself or Blackstar that they were not hit by shrapnel. Blackstar got a few pieces in the left side of his face he turned into the blast while raising his arms, and though he screamed out in pain first, he switched the yell, "AAAH-GET OUT OF HERE CODY!"

The drone came down and crashed a second later, and Blackstar had no idea if the kid was dead or alive. The ground under him started to push him up after the crash though, and Blackstar's eyes darted down before going the direction Virus' drone crashed. I'm out of sight of the caster, or-

Two hands reached out of the ground and grabbed Blackstar by the ankles. It felt like those hands were going to drag him down, but before they could, or the other people about to attack from just in front of him could, an explosion ripped apart the ground only ten meters from Blackstar on his left. He started turning that way, bringing up his arms to attempt to block the flames. The ground had blown apart and debris slammed into him as fast as the heat, ripping through his chest and thighs and one pebble through the left side of his neck. The flames hit next as he screamed while pulling his head away, and his clothes burned off while his left arm got blown off below the elbow and melted higher up like the left side of his face and left ear.

"This stop is Hosu City."

Black lifted his head up and he sucked in a sharp breath. His hands slid up his body and he patted himself down all over the place. The man with burn scars all over the left side of his face shook his head around and chuckled as he noticed someone looking towards him. His darker skin made it less noticeable, but his skin was discolored all over the left side of his face, around his neck, over to his nose that had a scar across the bridge of it to his right eyelid. He had scars more like cuts going down over his chin on the right side of his face too, and those scars continued under his clothes as well. Hosu City? Didn't make it very far yet, he thought to himself, tilting his head back on the soft chair again. His eyes did not close again this time though.

That was, the last time I saw Spiral. That armor we found in Germany could have been his. Fucking corrupt assholes. Those experiments, even if the guy was going along with it as a volunteer… "It's Zombieman! That Champion they're all going on about, it's fucking Zombieman!" "They could have experimented on him in a thousand different ways and he would never die. And Death can't kill him now either, they turned him into a fucking monster, man…" Blackstar shook his head and pushed those thoughts from it, and he turned to the right and looked out into the city with a soft smile returning to his face.

"Does he seem like he's getting off here?" Ms. Clue wondered to her intern next to her still two train cars back from their target.

"He's not going to get off," Jirou replied. It sounded like she was answering the question while also saying that she knew the man was not getting off here beforehand anyway. Jirou frowned after Ms. Clue gave her a stern look, but Jirou said with no lack of confidence, "He's going to get off at Yutapu Station."

12 Hours Ago.

"…The PR blast they received afterwards for the unnecessary killing was bad, and on top of the kills they had caused millions more in collateral damage, blamed on the inexperience of those 'special' Special Forces, people called them. It wasn't a great first show of what they could do. So, for a couple months they weren't used again." Ms. Clue continued. "Then in the summer they got called on a couple more times, leading up to September two Septembers back," Ms. Clue sounded like she was getting back to their initial point. She pulled out another sheet from her file, this one with six pictures on it with Rodney Black's in the top right corner rectangle that was of equal size to the other five boxes on the page. She put the page down in front of Jirou and slid it forward for Jirou to look at all six of those uniformed soldiers keeping the same straight expressions and poses as Black had.

"What happened in September?" Jirou wondered, raising her gaze from the page to her hero who was staring at her in a much more intense way now.

"They disappeared." Ms. Clue pulled out a tablet that she opened up, and she pulled up the same 6-box image as the piece of paper Jirou was looking at. Then Ms. Clue slid a finger on the tablet and swung over to the wall on her right and Jirou's left to make the image appear on the screen that was installed there and turned on as she needed its use. The faces went horizontally in two rows of three across the screen, and Jirou looked closely at the Special Forces team Ms. Clue put up with their Rodney Black as one of them. "All six of them vanished off the face of the Earth."

Jirou looked back to her pro hero wondering if that was really how she was describing this, but Ms. Clue just looked intensely back at her and nodded in a way that unnerved Jirou. No one's seen them since? Heard anything? Why is this man… An uneasy feeling stirred in Jirou's stomach that made her heart start racing, and made a darker feeling swell in her chest at the same time.

Ms. Clue continued to the girl before her again, "Despite the revitalization, most of the Special Forces bases had never been called on to help out. And yet around the world some people were giving them credit for why the U.S. crime rates were lower than everywhere else. They were a deterrent, per se, and they were working." She paused for a moment and looked back at the screen herself and continued in a sympathetic voice, "But for the inactive soldiers of that force, seeing every month the crime rates in their own country going higher and higher, to receive praise from other nations and even people in their own including the president that they were helping, it must have felt demeaning."

"I have the case files for each of these soldiers, and all of them enlisted with the goals of helping people only outside of being heroes. They chose this path, as all six of those people did not pass hero qualifications."

"They tried to be heroes?" Jirou wondered, somewhat surprised considering what she thought of the people in this force already. She had felt like Ms. Clue was giving them too much credit here, but she looked back at the six soldiers closer this time.

"Two took hero license exams despite not getting into their high schools' hero programs." Ms. Clue made two of the pictures enlarge to cover the screen and show some other information in boxes below those images. "Grant Edwards. Quirk- Pincers. Katherine Ableton. Quirk- Hummingbird." Ms. Clue and Jirou stared at the lean woman with short blonde hair, and the bald man with a pair of spiky pincers sticking up almost two feet over the top of his head to make him closer to eight feet tall than six. "Edwards was the team's Captain, and their mechanic. He failed the licensing exam right out of high school, and he switched career paths to the Special Forces earlier than the others on his squad."

"The other four all failed at joining their schools' hero programs as well. None of them took hero licensing exams, as it is rare that someone without hero training would ever be able to pass one. However, they did not just give up either. These two," Ms. Clue enlarged two different photos this time, one of them being their target's. "Black and Smith, grew up in the same hometown. They each failed five entrance exams at five different hero programs before entering high school. The thing about each of these soldiers, is their Quirks were really not very powerful. Smith's Quirk- Skateboard, could create a board at the bottom of his legs if he put his feet together that had six wheels underneath. Black's Quirk, Alloy, allows him to transform parts of his body for a short time into a metallic alloy that is harder than steel at its hardest. He cannot keep them that way for very long, nor is Black able to transform his arms or legs very quickly into any shape he so desires, and there is a limit as to how much Alloy he can use at once or how many times he can use it in the same period. The team leader's, Edward's, Quirk was just the control of those two pincers over his head, being able to open and close them at will."

Jirou looked back at the team whose photos all returned to the same size for her to look at. "And the others?" She wondered quietly. None of those sound very powerful. Black's could have become stronger though, if he worked out some of those weaknesses… "Target," Jirou read off the name of the Quirk as Altama's face enlarged on the screen. "The ability to track up to ten people indefinitely. Requires activation while the targets are in eyesight. Only works on humans. Cadrace, Quirk, Fire Fists? That sounds, decent."

"His body is not impervious to heat. Neither are his fists, though they are somewhat resistant," Ms. Clue countered before Jirou had read off the rest of the information on Cadrace's Quirk. "The point I am trying to make though, is that these people were not joining the Special Forces so that they could have licenses to kill. It was not so they could go murder villains as some who take the same view as I have on the Special Forces, would claim all those soldiers joined for. This team was made up of people who wanted to be heroes, who despite failing at being heroes continued to train with the rigorous training program of the Special Forces, and they did it even though public view of their group was not great at the time they joined, nor was pay for the soldiers high. And even though they were not getting the same experience heroes were getting actually fighting villains, their intense training focused a lot more on weapons' training and hand-to-hand combat, battle tactics, military skills, meant more for olden-time soldiers of America than the heroes of today."

"Then one day, those people who were receiving the credit while doing nothing, finally got a call to go stop an incident where heroes were overrun after trying to raid a villain base. In early September," Ms. Clue paused and she grabbed another file out from the folder on the table she slid to Jirou this time. Jirou's expression focused and her eyes narrowed down on the pages in an intense way, though there was a sense of dread growing inside her that she was attempting to ignore.

"The team was sent in," Ms. Clue said while Jirou read the reports and saw the pictures taken from that case. "And the next heroes who arrived found all the villains defeated. They found the heroes too who had fought them first and called for help while they were quote, 'being massacred,' was what the hero who called in for reinforcements shouted at the time. They found all of those heroes, alive and uninjured. Those six soldiers though were missing and declared AWOL."

"Why don't we just arrest Black right away then if he's AWOL?" Jirou questioned.

Ms. Clue shook her head and Jirou got more nervous by the look that formed on Ms. Clue's face while staring at her closer. Jirou already felt her heart racing after the description Ms. Clue just gave of the incident, but she froze as Ms. Clue continued, "Soon after they went missing, letters of resignation were sent in to their superiors along with all their missing equipment. They resigned, and they apparently made video calls too to confirm that it was really them resigning. And then they just, vanished."

Jirou glared back down at the pages and then looked to her left at the screen and the six people on it again. I think I'm beginning, to understand this.

"Those heroes who were all alive," Jirou started. "They were killed that day?"

Ms. Clue's expression was dark but she nodded at the intern in front of her. There was no need for clarification, but she did respond, "The disappearance of those six soldiers coincides with a line of revivals going across the United States from west coast to east coast through August and September. It could be Sazaki's path at the time."

"I'm sure it was," Jirou replied. "This Black guy, he's Army of Death."

"It's a possibility," Ms. Clue said, not denying that what Jirou said was likely though giving some room there that Jirou did not. "But right now he's just a civilian who doesn't have any warrants out. We can be suspicious of him and what he's doing here, but we cannot just arrest him without him doing anything." Ms. Clue paused, then she lifted the tablet and tapped a button that made a new image appear on the screen taken from a security camera at the last airport Black was at. Jirou froze and her eyes shot open huge, as the zoomed-in image showed a very different picture of Black than the one in his Special Forces fatigues. He had short black hair that had a couple lines of baldness on the left side of his head and around his left ear that looked messed up like much of his face.

As Jirou was staring at his new appearance in shock, Ms. Clue said in a low voice, "The x-ray at the airport picked up on multiple prosthetics too. His right foot and his left arm from just above his elbow." She paused and then said in a low voice, "It's a very different appearance from the picture of him taken 3 years ago. The official who tasked me with this mission suspects that Black joined the Army of Death which is where he received those injuries. I do not know if I would make that assumption so quickly, especially since the Army of Death did not yet exist when Black and his team vanished."

"Or it did," Jirou countered. "And they just hadn't revealed themselves yet."

"Also possible," Ms. Clue replied with a nod. "But we cannot jump to conclusions without evidence. We cannot accost or arrest this man just because he has scars and because we do not know what he has been doing for the last year and a half. Nor can we allow him to see us, and prevent him from revealing his true intentions on coming to Japan. After such a long time in hiding, he should not suspect anyone is following him or even knows who he is. He is a highly-trained and unknown target though, so tracking him will be done with the utmost care. Every moment from the second we start following him, we will need to take every precaution and act perfectly to be able to trick someone like him. Wherever he goes tomorrow, we will follow. And I want you to be ready too. If we follow him and something happens, be ready for a fight at a moment's notice."

Present

Ms. Clue and Jirou sprinted up the stairs of a four-story apartment building in Yutapu. Ms. Clue kept her target Locked-On despite having lost sight of him, and she said in a soft voice, "He's moving at the same pace. Not talking to anyone or saying anything."

The woman got to the roof and ran across it. Jirou gulped but forced herself not to hesitate and just leapt across the gap between buildings like Ms. Clue did. They took off their wigs, and Ms. Clue pulled out a green hood from under her clothes that she threw on top of her short pink hair. On top of the hood was a single word, one heroes shared and switched up each week privately without the public's knowledge. Flying heroes who flew overhead normally and spotted people on roofs where they shouldn't be would usually stop to say something or arrest them. Any hero to pass overhead now would take one look at the kanji symbol on the top of the green hood and then ignore the hero below clearly staying hidden intentionally.

Jirou's dark hair was tied into a ponytail behind her that did not fall as long as the wig she had taken off and stowed by tucking it into her belt under her skirt's loose waistband. She walked forward on top of a roof far enough from the edge that she could not be caught in eyesight of the man they were tracking. Her earphone jacks plugged into the ground after each few of her steps though, and she followed the sounds alone of the man's unique footsteps and breathing that were different from the noises the people around him made. "We don't even need to track him really," Jirou muttered while she and her pro continued slowly across another roof.

"And why not?" Ms. Clue wondered.

"I'm sure the government knows exactly where Zach is, right? He had to tell someone where he's staying-"

"We cannot be sure that this man's destination…" Jirou looked to her side and frowned at the more experienced pro starting to say something like that.

"We weren't sure he was coming to Yutapu either," Jirou said in a low voice. "But what are the odds he came here for anything else, other than Zach?" She turned back forward and checked his location again for a second before pulling her jack out of the roof. "Either because they're working together, or maybe because he's one of the people hunting Zach down. Whatever it is, he's- he's whistling." Jirou stopped for a moment as she caught the man's voice as he started whistling on his way down the sidewalk.

Whistling drew some attention from people around him, but they quickly looked away from the man who was coming to notice that most people could not look directly at him for long. Been so long since I've been around regular people. My face isn't the best for undercover assignments, and I have to wear all that foundation when I don't have my helmet on. Probably would have been better to have it here too, though without the scars they might recognize me from those other times. Haven't been arrested yet though, so I should be good.

Rodney Black walked in a route he did not need to check his phone for. He did not head straight to his destination though, but walked for over an hour around Yutapu before getting some lunch at a ramen shop. He spoke to the waitress in Japanese at first but switched to English since she understood it well and Black could not read any of the kanji on the Japanese menu. Afterwards he headed to a corner store a couple blocks down, then he walked through a few alleys before stopping and looking both ways after checking a street sign above him. He turned to the right and headed to the end of the block, turned the corner, then turned to the apartment complex there and started for the stairs to the second floor of it.

The two heroes following this man patiently crept forward on the roof of a building across the street that Black had just gotten off of. They were not directly across the street from the apartment complex therefore but still on a roof with a view of the outer hall between the railing and all the second floor doorways that Black started walking past. He headed down the hall until three doors from the end, apartment number 13, and the man checked the number with a nod then knocked on the door. "Is that it?" Ms. Clue whispered, watching from behind an air conditioning system on the roof of a building six stories taller than the one Black had arrived at.

"I don't… know," Jirou whispered, and her pro glanced to the side at her but did not say anything before looking back towards their target. The two of them kept almost completely hidden, and they were both listening as the door in front of Rodney Black opened up.

The eighteen year old who opened the door stepped into the doorway and stared at the man outside it with a look of surprise stuck on his face. It lasted another two seconds, then he questioned softly, "Blackstar? What are you, doing here? You shouldn't be here."

The man in front of Zach Sazaki took what he said lightly, shrugging his shoulders and stepping forward into Zach's doorway that the teen moved aside in. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Zach turned his head to the side and watched the man walk in with his lips lowering into a bit of a frown. He closed the door and let out a sigh, a sigh the two women following also heard even though they were now on the move again. They rushed to their right side and jumped to a building two stories lower than their own, and both women had to roll on the landing in a way not to hurt themselves. Jirou rushed towards the edge and crouched down behind a slight raise in the wall above the roof that made for good cover for her. Ms. Clue crouched down in front of her and the two faced each other while listening to a conversation still within their range.

"…Your Japanese is pretty good."

"LB told me it was perfect," Black replied, though his voice had an American accent in it and Zach rose his eyebrows wondering if what the man just said was true. "Good enough, perfect, same thing. Coming from her."

Zach grimaced but tilted his head to the side in acceptance there. It is good, and there's no reason to cast doubt since the strict La Brava would not have held back on hurling insults at him.

"LB?" Jirou muttered under her breath. "La Brava," she said, looking into her pro's eyes and nodding with an assured look on her face that it had to be her.

Ms. Clue hesitated for a moment but nodded her head back at the younger girl. When Jirou looked back at the wall she had her earphone jacks plugged into though, Ms. Clue stared at the side of the girl's face with increased apprehension on her own. This is bad. We're actually in the position to expose Lifebringer right here. I thought you would be more hesitant about this, but you look like you wanted this. If we find proof though, I'm to report it to Lemillion immediately. That means today, it could all- Ms. Clue looked back to her right and felt her nerves shake as music started to play inside Lifebringer's apartment.

"…New song from…"

"I listened to… on the plane…"

Jirou shook her head around and focused more, while Ms. Clue mentioned next to her, "Their voices are being drowned out by the music. I can't-"

"I'm separating them," Jirou countered, the music getting quieter even as she focused near the edge of her range. I couldn't have done it from the last roof. Right here though! "I've got-"

"Did anyone follow you?" Zach asked it and Jirou held her breath.

Ms. Clue had her eyes closed and tried to focus as much as she could. She could see the inside of Zach Sazaki's apartment, and she could hear that music, and she saw her target looking at Sazaki's face. And she read Zach's lips and froze just like her sidekick. Then the two of them opened up their eyes huge, as Black replied, "Yeah, a couple heroes. Didn't see anyone else though."

A calm look formed on Ms. Clue's face quicker than on Jirou's. Her intern steadied her expression after a moment and refocused herself, as she lost her ability to listen in when she got surprised by Black's response. He knew?! He didn't show any sign that whole time that he saw us. Alright, even if he knew, even if he knew! He doesn't know who we are. If he knew he wouldn't be speaking so freely. They must still-

"Switch to Arabic," Zach said in Arabic to the man in front of him. They could be listening in right now. Nothing we've said to each other should be evidence of anything. We're just acquaintances for all they know.

Zach walked over and rose the volume of the music playing on his laptop. Blackstar asked as he did, "How are you, Zach?"

"Good. What are you doing here?" Zach responded, the both of them speaking Arabic while standing next to his kitchen counter that his laptop was on playing loud music.

Jirou shook her head around in frustration as a headache was starting to come on and she was getting nothing. She looked to Ms. Clue in shock and anger and asked, "Do they know we're listening in?"

Ms. Clue clenched her eyes shut but was not getting an image of inside anymore, just hearing the two of them faintly under the music. She shook her head at the question, "It's unlikely they know we're listening, but I can't make out their voices. Even if I could, I can't tell what they were saying anyway." She frowned darker as she mentioned it, "I know six languages: Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and Javanese. What they're speaking is not one of those."

Jirou grimaced deeper as she knew Ms. Clue spoke a lot of languages and was hoping that one was one of them. Ms. Clue narrowed her eyes and furled her lip, It doesn't sound like French either, which is the one I'm currently working on.

"Sounds Arabic to me," Jirou said, and Ms. Clue looked at her in some surprise that she was not only able to separate the noises well enough to hear them clearly but that she was also able to identify the language. She paused at Ms. Clue's surprised but also hesitant look as she wanted to make sure Jirou was not just guessing. "I've watched the video of the Army of Death in Hatto more times than I can count. The translator shouting all that stuff after each time in English, it sounds like what he was yelling about, same as the rest of the people in that video."

"Hmm," Ms. Clue hummed and she stood up, revealing herself if someone were to look from the door outside Sazaki's apartment. Jirou stood up too after a moment as there was no point in hiding apparently, as the man they had been tracking knew they were there.

"Why are they doing that then, if they don't know we're listening?" Jirou wondered angrily.

"They're just being cautious," Ms. Clue replied. "In case of a wire tap or microphone in there they have the music louder than their voices. And in case Quirks were being used that could separate the sounds better and specify one of them," Ms. Clue looked to the girl next to her. "They speak a different language than one most Japanese heroes would know. And I agree, it does sound Arabic."

"Well, right after they left America they went to Saudi Arabia," Jirou responded in annoyance. "So I'm not surprised they picked some up."

Ms. Clue wanted to tell her not to make assumptions again, but she just frowned instead and said, "That may be true." She shook her head after a moment though and said, "But we don't have the proof of it."

"He went straight to Zach's!" Jirou exclaimed, then she hushed her voice as people may have heard that in the building below them or down on the street. "He even mentioned one of his accomplices from the Lifebringer Incident. It's so obvious!"

"Except, he did not act suspicious at all doing it," Ms. Clue countered. Jirou's eyes bulged that she would say that in his defense, but Ms. Clue continued, "He already had yen on him so he did not have to wait at the airport to exchange currency. He knew the route already, but despite Sazaki's apparent surprise to see him that could have been for our sake, which means Sazaki could have sent him his address himself to invite an acquaintance of his over. His passport was legal and had not expired when he came back out of the shadows, and for some reason the American government accepted those resignations and took their gear back without any further investigation as to what happened to Black's team." Jirou froze and she got a much more hesitant look on her face as Ms. Clue had not brought this up before.

"What, are you talking about?"

"What I'm saying is that it is likely the heroes there that day already told their superiors what really happened. The case file we received was likely missing a lot of details the heroes decided to leave out." Jirou's eyes grew wider, and Ms. Clue continued to the girl right in front of her as they stood at almost the same height, "The reason it has been nearly impossible for the ADTF to capture a single member of the Army of Death is because of how much cooperation their members have received from the authorities over the past two years. Even we are working with the deck stacked against us, because we don't know everything about how Black and his team resigned or why it was the American government allowed it so easily. Perhaps they did not want to make a bigger deal of it by declaring them as missing or AWOL in an already controversial program, and the resignations were their way out of accountability for those soldiers. Or maybe those soldiers understood the predicament their government was in and sent in the resignations afterwards to help out with that. Or maybe it's some other conspiracy, but Black did not admit to any illegal activity while we were surveilling him. He did not implicate Sazaki in any crime, let alone being a terrorist on the world's most-wanted list."

"But, but he was missing, and no one knows where he was. How did he show up in Turkey to get on that international flight? Couldn't we, figure out if he was in that country illegally? If he had not come in with proper means-"

"Then he could be arrested, and questioned," Ms. Clue admitted, and she spoke slower there which made Jirou's eyes open much wider that her idea was something people might not have thought about beforehand. "Though, it is likely they planned for us to think of this as well," Ms. Clue continued. "Likely, that they either had him enter Turkey through legal means, or they forged him papers-"

"If they forged papers though-"

"However," Ms. Clue continued sharply, cutting off the girl who got a flustered look on her face at the stern one Ms. Clue gave back to her. "Even if they planned on forging the papers, I figure they more than likely got those papers from a legitimate border entrance. Even if he should have been stopped or prevented from entering the country, I would bet that the person who forged the papers is legally allowed to give the papers out to people. In that case it may not have even been forged, just at the discretion of that border security agent."

"Wait. Wait, I don't, get what you're saying here."

"Authorities do not interfere with the Army of Death," Ms. Clue said, looking intensely into Jirou's eyes in a way that had the girl pulling away from her pro. "We would face a wall of red tape investigating this in any direction outside of this country. All I could hope for was the chance that Black had checked a bag, because we could have put a tap on that before he got it out of baggage claim, but he had a single piece of baggage on him and never let it out of his sight. He showed up inside a country and paid for an international plane ticket despite not having worked in 18 months. He knew we were following him despite all our countermeasures to prevent him from finding out. This isn't just the training he received for Special Forces. I believe he is Army of Death."

Ms. Clue stepped away from the ledge of the building, and she walked back to an air conditioner farther towards the middle of this roof. She leaned forward and put her hands down on it, and she closed her eyes for a second taking a deep breath in as she had too strong a feeling to ignore it just because of the lack of proof. That kid is really, Death. She was right. Ms. Clue turned her head and then leaned back and sat on the vent with a dark look on her face. "But we are heroes. We are not the Army of Death, and do you know what that means?" Jirou stepped towards the pro who looked so serious while saying this and yet frustrated at the same time. "That means we have to go through the proper procedures. It means that we don't get to just go down there and attack because we're almost certain of who they are. That's not how our justice works, that's how theirs works."

"What they do isn't justice," Jirou countered, stepping closer and looking down into her pro's eyes more now because of the way Ms. Clue was leaning back. "It's murder."

Ms. Clue's expression darkened more and she lost the frustrated expression on her face. "You're right. You are absolutely right. But what do you suggest? I want a mature response, not that we go down there and arrest them just because the two know each other."

Jirou hesitated, feeling slighted by that 'mature response' request like Jirou would have given an immature one otherwise. "He didn't avoid authorities," Ms. Clue continued to the girl who was taking too long to come up with anything. "He just went straight to Sazaki's place, because he knows it's legal for him to do so. He knows we have nothing on him."

"We could try to find-"

"That man is a ghost," Ms. Clue countered strongly. Jirou's eyes widened more though, because of the tone of resignation in Ms. Clue's voice. "Black disappeared and did not resurface once in over a year. Maybe he was AoD. Maybe, he just joined up with Sazaki and they acted as vigilantes somewhere else. Whatever they did together though, the two of us have no proof of Sazaki and Black doing anything illegal together, and we won't find any proof illegally spying on their conversation." Ms. Clue grimaced more at what she called what they were doing, while Jirou got an uneasy look on her face wondering what that meant. Being asked to do something like this, even from as high up an official as that… "Trailing a foreign national with no just cause is not inside our job description. There is no law to back up what we're doing-"

"It's just an investigation," Jirou started to counter.

"And when we investigate, we have rules," Ms. Clue replied with a shake of her head. "You know how difficult it is to get a warrant for a phone tap? A search warrant?"

"I know-"

"Then you know how difficult just looking for proof of crimes is, and that's what we're doing here. We are just looking for that proof to give us the first step at looking for what they've done. Without that first step we don't have the right to do anything more. If we went to Turkey's officials, and if we asked them to get us in contact with whoever signed the papers or stamped Black's passport when he entered Turkey, they would ask us why we needed it." Ms. Clue paused and added, "We have deals and treaties with other countries that make it so our law enforcement agencies share as much information as possible, but for us to ask for it without having even a shred of proof to back up why we're doing it? Just that the guy knows Zach Sazaki?"

"That's, enough," Jirou said, her voice firm at the belief in that.

"Not for anyone else," Ms. Clue countered back, standing before her intern again and shaking her head at the girl. "And if I used that as my proof, their response would be an even faster 'no' than if I gave them no evidence at all."

"What do you-"

"I've gone down this road before, Earphone Jack. Tried to investigate a gang early last year that had international ties. Those international ties were all arrested during my investigation though, hindering my attempts at catching the affiliated gang here." Ms. Clue shook her head and said in a darker voice, "When I tried to find out more information about what had happened though, it quickly came to my attention that the foreign heroes who arrested them did not know how they had located the gangs and captured all their members. And when I asked they did not deny it, but they got angry with me, each and every time, when I made my accusations and tried to convince them that they needed to give me something on the ones who had captured them. When I told them how they needed to expose what the AoD had done, when I told them that they needed to catch the AoD, they cut off communications with me rather than take my side."

Ms. Clue stared intensely into Jirou's shocked eyes, "And those were heroes. Not even the regular police, or border security, or regular people who all over the world don't say it but secretly love the Army of Death rather than just 'tolerate' them as we're all led to believe. Too many people have been saved by them. Too many people were brought back to life when Death visited their countries."

"But, they're terrorists-"

"Terrorists who don't leave any trace. And any trace they do leave behind? Everyone else either covers it up or ignores it, pushes it to the side where it remains and is waiting for someone who cares enough to take it."

"Like us," Jirou started.

"Yes," Ms. Clue replied. "But in order for us to get that proof that some of our contacts might have, they have to decide to go back on their original perspective that told them to just ignore it. The ones who covered it up will have to change their minds about what justice really is, and you and I can't change their minds without a genuine reason. The Army of Death is disappearing. Their incident numbers have gone down so much, and most people think that the majority of them are dead already. We have nothing. We will get nothing from anyone outside of Japan. We have some people who could help here, and we'll continue to track Black, but I can already see the result of this investigation based on what we've seen already. Because I've seen villains who use codes and hand signals, ones who cover up how they're committing crimes in a hundred different ways, and the way the two of them have us with our hands tied is better than any of the others before them. They could even be in there right now, talking about illegal activities they committed as Death, and it's like they're shoving it in our face how little we can do about it while constrained by the law."

Jirou's jaw dropped and she turned back around, staring off towards Zach's apartment wondering if that was really what they were doing. Ms. Clue spoke behind her, "Even if we could try and catch some of what they're saying over the music, and we could go get it translated afterwards correctly enough to maybe implicate Sazaki in a crime, he could deny all of it. And once our methods were questioned, what could we say? That we heard some language we didn't understand, translated it, and he said something about once being Death? I'm sure they've even prepared for if one of us speaks Arabic, and they'll probably keep from saying anything particularly damning. They might switch up what language they're speaking after a little, and I might be able to pick up on some of it then, but if they do that then they're definitely being cautious enough not to mention anything of value to us."

"We are more sure that Sazaki is Death now," Ms. Clue said, and Jirou turned her head to look back at the pro with pained but wide eyes.

She shook her head back at Ms. Clue with her fists curling at her sides so tightly her nails dug into her palms, "I already knew Zach was Death from the day he stood on those palace walls in Hatto. What use is knowing?" Jirou asked it in anger, and she brought her fists up with her arms shaking and her eyes glaring down at them. "There's really nothing- RAa!" she swung her arms down with her fists opening up, her bared teeth parting and letting out that held breath of anger.

Inside Zach's apartment, Zach and Blackstar sat on stools in front of each other at the counter of Zach's kitchen but on the living room side of it. Blackstar had put the bag down he carried over from the corner store, and while he pulled out a six pack for himself he also got a cold hazelnut-flavored coffee box for Zach that the teenager took a sip out of and smiled at the taste of. "So," Blackstar continued in Arabic after putting down the first beer he popped open.

"You know, I think I know what it was," Zach started. "With your Japanese, you spoke in a pretty thick Kansai accent."

"Did I? I learned more from computer programs than from you Japanese guys. Y'all rarely spoke in Japanese anyway." Blackstar said while speaking Japanese again, but Zach grinned and nodded his head in confirmation at the sound of the accent again. "Huh, well I'm not great at any of this language learning stuff. Everyone trying to be so fluent like you, but I just need the minimum. Run. Jump. Get away." Blackstar changed languages with each phrase he said after saying that in Arabic which he switched back to for the base language of their conversation. "Arabic's my second best-"

"Which is why I picked it," Zach said, having already known that and smiling that at least that much had not changed. "I learned a lot of English from you and the guys while I was in America. Learning other languages once you have Chinese and English down, it's almost easy."

"Damn it, they're back to Arabic again," Jirou muttered under her breath after the English stopped which she could understand most of. Her and her pro continued to listen in to the two as they kept on with their investigation, though there was a darker mood over them right now as they knew that without a major slip-up they were not going to get anything by staying there.

"They may have started speaking different languages for a moment, especially with that talk of studies in foreign languages, just to give an excuse for why they are speaking Arabic other than to try and hide what they are talking about. Or maybe that is why they're speaking Arabic in the first place," Ms. Clue offered, though she sounded convinced otherwise and Jirou just grunted at the idea of it. Oh he knows exactly what he's doing.

"You should work on your foreign language skills," Ms. Clue added. Jirou looked back and Ms. Clue turned to her, "Since your Quirk is very good for these kinds of operations, it is important to always understand your targets when they switch up their languages to keep you from listening in. I find myself regretting that I do not know more in this very moment…"

"…Dagon died a couple days after you left. Even though it was his second time already, D slowed us down a lot after that. We take a lot more precaution for most things we do now than we used to, but with EM, it just wasn't enough." Blackstar saw Zach nod, and he lowered his eyes down and grabbed his beer for a quick sip that Zach lifted his eyes up and frowned at the sight of. Blackstar knew Zach was already informed of Mark's death, but he continued darkly while looking down, "Drac's missing."

"Since when?"

"A while back. Mid-summer. He just disappeared, no warning or anything, he just vanished one day during a mission." Blackstar looked into Zach's eyes with a look full of dread on his face. Zach's worried expression flinched as he saw Blackstar already thinking the same thing, and Blackstar wondered in a low voice, "The same thing happened to Zombieman before Wampajawa, didn't it?" Zach nodded his head slowly, remembering that Blackstar had still been out for his foot injury at the time. Blackstar paused and muttered under his breath, "What happened to him could be…"

"Yeah," Zach said in just as dark and low a voice. "But, then again," he lifted his gaze and offered up a smile. "It could be Drac just went his own way, as I thought Zombieman did back then… Drac was much stronger than Zombieman though. He wouldn't have been captured very easily."

"That's what D said to everyone. Felt like he was just trying to put us at ease though," Blackstar said, and he leaned back on the stool and let out a sigh. "The corruption going on all over the world is as bad as it's ever been."

"Really?" Zach asked skeptically.

"About different things, less intensity I guess, but it's just rough out there. It never stops. In Mexico just the other day-"

"I heard about the lab on the water, and the stuff going on in Europe," Zach started, cutting Blackstar off. "And I appreciate that you came out here to tell me all this, but I didn't need this information. Any of that stuff." Blackstar frowned and he leaned back forward on the stool. Zach frowned deeper at the look that Blackstar had right there, and he continued, "I didn't need you to come, and I want you not to come back after this. None of the others either. No contact. I made it very clear that I was not returning, and that I have a new mission now."

"Darling's missing you know?" Blackstar mentioned. He looked into Zach's eyes and wondered, "Have you seen-"

Zach smiled much brighter and he nodded his head. "She's out now too," Zach said. Blackstar's eyes widened and Zach continued in a more upbeat way than a moment ago, "I saw her recently. And she's doing good, really good. Actually, she's better than she's ever been, and could you tell them that too? Tell D, that I did it." Zach smiled softer and said in a quieter voice, "He'll understand."

"Come back and tell him yourself," Blackstar replied.

Zach shook his head with his lips falling flat. Blackstar was surprised and happy to hear about Darling, and though also pretty confused he believed what Zach was saying. "I can't," Zach replied. "Now that I'm back there is no leaving again. I couldn't do that. I can't."

"Are you, really sure about that?" Blackstar wondered. "We all, wanted to know what you were planning when you left. We still want to know, and, we're all willing to help you if you ask for it."

Zach shook his head again and frowned in a more stern way at Blackstar, "I don't need your help. In fact, I need you not to help me." Zach paused and he rose a hand to his forehead and rubbed it over it feeling tired but not wanting to get frustrated here. He explained as he lowered his hand out in front of him, "I created the organization, I left it in a state where I believe it will sustain itself in its best form, but there are things I can do now only as Lifebringer."

"It's not in its best form, not without you," Blackstar countered softly, but not giving up on his side of the argument that easily.

"Really?" Zach wondered. "Because this is what I remember from my last mission. Amaterasu? Mark found her, and I rushed in alone and got caught. G created a good plan and got our whole force to surround her, after finding her only two days after she had gone back into hiding." Blackstar opened his mouth to counter, but Zach continued faster, "I let my guard down and got sent into the Void for almost 3 months, while Darling's the one who took her down. I didn't do anything to stop her."

"You're being too hard on yourself," Blackstar said, his voice low and stern back at the younger man who just said all that.

Zach shook his head back at the American though. He looked down for a second and said, "I had already decided in the Void to be done, but when I came out I was made certain of that decision. I saw that even without me the others could handle everything."

Blackstar's expression darkened more and though he hesitated, he said it in a low voice, "And what about Mark? It was, it was still his first life. And things might have been different… I'm sorry." Blackstar apologized because of the sad and hurt look over Zach's face, but his own expression lowered down and he reached for his drink only to stop as Zach's hand reached out first.

Zach grabbed the beer and slid it away from Blackstar's hand, "Don't do that. Not… Not in grief."

Blackstar lowered his hand down and he nodded at the kid whose eyes were lowered down as he said that to him. "Alright," Blackstar replied. Not in front of you, at least. "I just, I can't get used to it. I haven't stopped in so long that D finally told me to take a break."

"That's good," Zach replied, lifting his lips into a smile and raising his head with a laugh. "And this is what you decided to do with your break? Try to come recruit me? Talk about a working vacation."

Blackstar laughed, and he laughed some more as Zach chuckled along with him. I don't remember him making a joke in the months leading up to him leaving. Any that he made were so dry too, and dark. Blackstar started smiling a little more genuinely and let out a long sigh as he gave up on his initial plan. "Well, this wasn't my first stop. I headed to LC first. Visited- oh! Yeah forgot that was after you left too."

"What was?" Zach wondered.

"Not long after you were gone, Icefall told everyone she was retiring. Turns out she got pregnant. Decided to spend her retirement in LC since there was nothing waiting for her back home. Then, Michael quit too to help her raise their kid." Zach grinned and he let out a laugh, and Blackstar smirked too and added, "She told him he didn't have to, but he wasn't having any of it and followed her out. I think she was actually glad he chose to stay with her."

I'm glad he got out, Zach thought, imagining a face in his mind that made his smile lower down in an instant. Michael's face in front of him, when that man asked him to be done, appeared so vividly in his mind. Right after the Battle of the 6 Armies, before they knew what the state of the world was, Or before we capitalized on the battle, to create the new state of the world. Do I really believe that? I couldn't have done that in a couple months- I did so much more, in less time-

"She just had the kids too, they were a little early," Blackstar explained as Zach's eyes widened at the sound of that. "But that was to be expected, considering they had twins. It's usually a bit early-"

"Twins?" Zach asked in amazement, his lips curling back up in a happy way again. "That's… that's awesome."

Blackstar nodded and his own smile lowered down though as he saw Zach's face here. "Things are different now," he said in a low voice. Blackstar and Zach locked eyes, and the older man said in a soft tone, "I don't know if you needed time, or if you've gotten it now… There's a place for you with us though."

"And there's… a life here for me, that I'm trying to make work," Zach countered with a soft shake of his head. "Most people we knew," he started to Blackstar. "They came to me with nothing, or I came to them when they had nothing. Their families were dead and they were at the ends of their ropes so they chose me to follow. But, as much as the others think the same was for me, I did have a lot I left behind. And I somehow survived long enough that I was able to go back and try and right the wrongs I committed to the people I left here."

Blackstar frowned and he shifted his eyes to the side in an upset way. "Well I'm going to keep fighting," he said indignantly, though his expression darkened as he thought about a couple of the people he may have left behind in America. No way I could face Skater's family. Tama's…

Zach nodded at Blackstar after he said that though. He could see why Blackstar felt defensive there as what he had just been saying made it sound like he was telling him he did not need to stay. "Thank you for doing that," Zach whispered. "Because I couldn't," he said it and his voice nearly cracked, and Blackstar looked back sadly for what he had just said in that tone and also just hearing that voice coming from the man in front of him who was the strongest person he knew. Zach's face did not look all that strong now though, and he said softly, "The Void changed me. I wasn't the same man who went in when I came out, and I couldn't lead you anymore. I- couldn't be the one you needed anymore, but I could be something else."

Blackstar kept staring into Zach's eyes for several seconds after Zach stopped, and then he gave the kid a small and relieved grin. "Huh," Blackstar sat up and he let out a sigh that lasted a few seconds. I always wanted an explanation. For more than 7 months I've needed this so much. How you could just leave us like that… I get it. I get why, you didn't just tell us all back then too. Because we left you in there for three months by not getting to you sooner. That was on us, and so I've got nothing to say about you coming back. I can't say anything. "I get it," Blackstar said aloud. "I really, get it. I'll let them all know that you're out now for good." Zach smiled, and Blackstar continued to him with more a smile on his own face too, "We all have that option, thanks to you. Because that's the way you made us."

Zach sighed and he nodded, I never thought I'd be using that provision myself. Never even considered it, when I decided anyone could leave at any time.

"So how have things been here recently?" Blackstar wondered, reaching for his beer which Zach smiled and slid back to him across the counter. Blackstar grinned and he drank more but in a better mood as Zach started telling him how things had been going for him. "People know?" Blackstar asked, nearly spitting out his beer and having to reach up and wipe his lips as some did spill out there.

"7 people know now," Zach replied. "But I'm dealing with it. Walking the line between them trying to toss me back in prison, and them understanding what I was trying to do and why they can't do that. My biggest issue is with Deku, my friend who caught Hyper that one time," Zach specified and made Blackstar crack a small smile at the thought of the guy he had not known well but liked from their time together. "We're working things out though. It'll take me a while, and I don't really know how things will go but…"

Blackstar cracked another beer and started laughing before getting serious again, then he laughed some more as Zach recounted some of his last weeks to his old friend. "Sounds like the licensing exam was pretty tough- ha, haha, bet Best Jeanist wasn't expecting to be shut out like that."

"I did have a good fight though while I was there. This team of U.A. students really made me sweat."

"Really?"

"More than anyone else at least." Zach retracted part of his last statement with that provision that made Blackstar laugh again. "Wasn't as good a fight as the Subspace Devils though, I'll tell you that. Actually strained myself a bit there."

"I could tell," Blackstar replied. "Kept saying we should come help you, but D and E were convinced you'd be fine."

"I had it under control the whole time," Zach replied, losing his smile a little at the 'I could tell' response. "It all just depended on how much I wanted to show everyone. I don't want everyone to know how strong I am, and I don't want them to think of me as powerful as I am. The smiling persona I've got in public has made people start looking past the scars, but it's hard to keep people believing that look after they've seen you as a dark demon taking on hundreds of villains at once."

Blackstar nodded like he got what Zach was saying, but after a couple seconds he just stopped and admitted, "That's pretty rough. Being a hero sounds hard," he told the teen who was surprised at Blackstar's response to what he said. "Keeping all those secrets, smiling constantly in public, fighting villains, media sightings-"

"Not to mention hunting down the League," Zach added. "Which I have been working on, quietly. And school! I need to graduate, and write this report I've been working on for a while now." Blackstar nodded his head but rolled his eyes with a sarcastic smirk as he felt like Zach must have been saying it sarcastically too. "Oh yeah, and I got sick last weekend. Totally wiped me out. I'm out in the open getting attacked by Eziano every other week. Don't know every time I buy food at a store or restaurant if it'll be poisoned. Can't tell if the people around me are going to get targeted because I'm here as much as I imagine they're safe. My friends don't believe a thing I say to them, and most of the ones who did know I was lying to them too now so that's a step in a right direction." He said the last part actually sarcastically this time, though Blackstar was no longer smirking back at the younger man in front of him.

He had been serious about it a minute ago when he said it sounded hard. He's doing, more? No way. Except, Blackstar turned his head and grabbed the bottle next to him while letting out an exhausted sigh like he was sympathizing with Zach who nodded and asked, "Right?" Blackstar did not want Zach to see how serious he was about that sympathy towards him though, Even though he left, he's doing more than he ever did. At least before, he had all of us to split up the work, but now he's trying to do everything on his own.

"You're, I think you're taking on too much at once," Blackstar started. Not that if someone could handle something like this, it wouldn't be you… Blackstar shook that thought off and continued to the boy shaking his head like it was not that bad. "I don't know how you have enough time in the day for all of that. You moved around fast before, but you had all of us to help you. Going at this alone… You won't be able to keep it up."

"Nah, I've… I've got a handle on it," Zach said, though he grabbed his coffee and took a slow sip with his eyes looking down at it in an oddly calm way he questioned himself. I don't sleep too much so time shouldn't be a problem. Sleeping a little more again though, after I got sick. "I have the time, it's just I've been working through some stuff lately that's been keeping me more occupied than usual. The rest of that stuff always packed my schedule, but now adding all this thinking and self-reflection on as well? Geez-"

"Self-reflecting?"

"Like that stuff about the Void, why I left, how you guys are fine without me," Zach explained with a wave of his hand. "Stuff I just worked through, that I hadn't really thought about beforehand. It takes up a lot of time."

"But you're doing alright?" Blackstar asked again, as it was starting to sound more to him like he wasn't.

"Better, every day," Zach replied with a small smile back that put his old friend at ease. "You know who else came to visit me not too long ago?" He asked, changing the subject and grinning bigger as Blackstar looked to him and shook his head as he did not know. "Dover. He came here while I had friends from Class A over."

"They believe that he was a person-"

"They did, until we gave it away," Zach admitted with a scratch of the back of his head. "But I was wondering if you heard anything about him actually? He said he was going on a trip to travel the world, discover himself, and I just hope he's still going for it- Ah, and when you were in LC, did you see-"

"Oh yeah. Should have been more careful. Mentioned I was coming to see you when I saw Michael and Icefall, and I swear she must have heard me across the city she came running so fast to beg to come along…"

---

A/N Thanks for reading! This chapter we get a lot of background for some of Zach's first AoD comrades, a team of six I never really got into too much on what their backgrounds were. Blackstar, Skater, Tama, Grabble, Hummingbird, and Aces were all Army of Death members in this story. In case you forgot, Aces and Hummingbird were killed back in the mission that Gentle led back when Zach and Darling were on their own in America, leading to Zach deciding not to let anyone fight anymore without him there. Anyway, we also get a flashback through Blackstar's dream to what the Battle of the 6 Armies was like for one of the AoD on the ground that day. Blackstar died during that battle (and lost a lot of his left arm too), but he also helped win the day for the AoD. Jirou and Ms. Clue track Blackstar down under orders from a higher up Japanese hero official, but Blackstar notices them and he and Zach speak in Arabic with music blasting over them (much to the annoyance of Jirou). And Blackstar tries to convince Zach to come back, but Zach's dug in on his position of not leaving, and he's sticking with it... I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! Leave a review below telling me what you think, comments, predictions, or questions for the story ahead!

grimXblade chapter 183 . Sep 28

The clouds darkened and the sun disappeared. Yes the coming storm will bring chaos and madness...I better not miss a damn thing.
XXXX
I don't know why I wrote that, but I really didn't know how to explain the chills and hype PULSING inside of me right now.
This famficton is in my Third favorite piece of modern literature. THANK YOU!

XD This comment might have been more ominous than what happened last chapter itself, but it actually kind of works with the flashback this chapter too! Glad I've got you hyped, and wonder what those 2 fav pieces of modern literature are? Thanks for the review and hope you enjoyed the new chapter!

alexanderjuarez499 chapter 183 . Sep 28

Who was the woman who was with Dabi, was she a geten? Since she has white hair, other than that the liberation army joined Shigaraki as in the manga? since I would like to see Re-destro in this bone story they had an army of 100,000 soldiers.

No spoilers for who that woman was, but I will saw I don't really know about the Liberation Army right now. Would like to see some feedback from you guys and what you think I should do about them. I had the end of Death planned out for a while, and though I am able and trying to incorporate as much from ongoing manga chapters as I can, the whole Liberation Army arc kind of started and ended after I already set up for the final few dozen chapters. I added in Gigantomachia last chapter, as well as Daruma Ujiko a bunch of chapters back when Midoriya went to visit the doctor in Tartaros. I was hoping to include Dabi's real backstory in this too in the chapters of Zach and Todoroki working things out, but that arc came to an end without them going into Dabi's background like they did everyone else's :( So I wound up just keeping it vague and having Zach explain it to Todoroki at the end of the chapter trailing off so we know Zach's told Todoroki, but we haven't heard it ourselves. I've made some assumptions as to the backstory that I hope do work out, but I won't be backtracking on them if I turn out wrong, it'll just be AU around that. As for Liberation Army though, their whole 100,000 villains getting wrecked even though they all trained their Quirks apparently seemed so weird to me (I mean, Twice and Shigaraki had nice hack power-ups to help them out), but that "Army" got messed up really easily. What I think ultimately, is that at the end of the day things have already started changing in the Death timeline of the BNHA world towards the use of Quirks more freely with the Lifebringer Law and changed happening in other countries, that it would be unlikely for the Liberation Army to get as strong as it did or maybe a lot of its members realized that they did not need to do anything big for things to change. Some of its top members could show up as they might still want to change things even more radically, but as Shigaraki said last chapter "...And now we are ten thousand strong..." so as that shows there aren't 100,000 Liberation Army members in their ranks. Maybe the Liberation Army got weaker and Re-Destro was approached by Shigaraki/Raijin to join them in their plan which he agreed with because he saw the trend of how so many people were leaving his army and just going along with Lifebringer's Law and society's plan? Or maybe the League of Villains made them submit? Or maybe there needs to be an arc showing what happened with them completely? I kind of rambled here a bit, but if you guys all read this response let me know which of those options sounds best to you. I still haven't really decided so I don't think of this spitballing as a spoiler or anything, but yeah, let me know what you think! Thanks for the review Alex!

Incarnus chapter 183 . Sep 28

If the hero side really doesn't have any preparations against the coming LoV strike AGAIN, I'll be pretty disappointed. That would be "Dany kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet" levels of stupid. At least Zack remembers. Hope he actually does something to counter them also.

Well the heroes are all staying vigilant against the villains of the country, though Zach does seem more focused on the League than other heroes are (which we see this chapter that he tells Blackstar he has been investigating them). Though we've also seen the U.A. students treating the LoV as more of a threat than everyone else too, so it's not just Zach preparing to face them. Thanks for reviewing, and hope you enjoyed the new chapter!

Aar0nC0le chapter 183 . Sep 28

Ohhh fuck. Shits about to go down. This kinda gave me chills tbh, just thinking about how wild shit is about to get. Also? I appreciate how quickly you update dude. Love that and love this fic and everything about it. ;) -Aaron

Glad I got you guys so hyped on that last chapter! And I love posting this fast too, so I'm glad you guys like all the rapid updates! Another 22k chapter in after another 2 days, so keeping up a good streak here! Thanks again everyone for the reviews, and hope you all enjoyed the chapter!