Author's note: Hey everyone! Here we go, the first real mission for the group! It's been quite a few thousand words to get to this point, but we're here finally. Today is the last day of band camp, so I will finally be able to dedicate some time to sit down and write more. My back hurts a lot because drums are heavy, and some of my drill sets are insane. But yeah, I'm gonna have some more time to get things done now for a backlog.
Also, if you want to get into a place with other lovers of MHA, and specifically IzuJirou stuff, come on and join this Discord server that I'm on:
/eFtmT8cTbY
We're only kind of crazy, and not at all a cult... except, we also kind of are. Anyway, yeah, join that!
I hope you enjoy this chapter! It's cross-posted on Ao3 as well. Leave a review if you want to. I welcome the feedback! See you next week.
The rest of that day passed quickly. Izuku worked on speeding up his activation time for this new portion of his quirk, managing to reduce the time by half a second on average, which, to him, was huge. The rest of the group took it easy, eager to get to sleep and eager to start their work the next day.
As the sun dawned not only on Japan, but on Societas Requiem, everyone woke up with a feeling of careful optimism. Everyone except for Mei. Mei wasn't careful about her optimism at all.
Izuku woke up to the banging of two pots together in the hallway. Startled, he almost fell out of his bed, but managed to catch himself before he did. Others weren't so lucky, as he heard a dull thud across the hallway coming from Hitoshi's room.
"What the hell, Mei?" Hitoshi yelled from his room.
"You weren't getting up soon enough! It's gonna be a big day."
Izuku checked his phone and groaned. "Mei, it's not even 10 yet."
"Yeah, well, I remembered something that we need to do before anything we do has any impact! Now move your butts!"
Izuku pulled himself out of his bed and got dressed. Soon, he made his way into their makeshift living room to see that he was the last to arrive.
"Well finally, our leader's here!" Kyouka teased.
"Yeah, yeah, give me all the crap you want. I need sleep sometimes." Izuku responded, sticking his tongue out at Kyouka, who in turn responded in kind.
"What's this thing that you remembered?"
"Well, I thought, 'How are people going to know that it's us if we're not leaving something behind?' A 'calling card' per se." Mei explained.
"It would be wise for our deeds to be known to us as a group. I'm not sure of the usefulness of doing things in order to change this dead society if our works aren't getting recognized." Fumikage agreed.
"Exactly." Mei smiled.
"Now, what should our calling card be?" Fumikage asked.
"An actual card would be too on the nose, right?" Kyouka asked.
"We could do a graffiti mark? Paint something on the walls of places we hit?" Hitoshi suggested.
"Are any of us good with graffiti?" Izuku asked. He was met with silence. "Okay, so it looks like graffiti is off the table. Plus, it might take too long anyway in certain situations. Any other ideas?"
"I may have already come up with something while you were all asleep."
"And you elected to not tell us this at the beginning of the conversation why?" Kyouka asked, eyeing the pink haired girl.
"Oh, easy. I wanted to see if you could come up with something that I didn't."
"Ah, so to stroke your own ego, then."
"Listen, out of all the things I want to stroke, my own ego is the least problematic here." Mei laughed.
"MEI!" Kyouka yelled, blushing from secondhand embarrassment. Izuku just coughed awkwardly.
"Regardless, may I present to you: The Egg." Mei produced an egg shaped item from behind her back.
"Seriously, how does she keep doing that?" Izuku thought to himself. He looked at Hitoshi who had a knowing look on his face. "Strange…"
"The Egg is a two-pronged system with two different activation methods." Mei continued. "The first activation method is a time-delayed cycle, whereas the other is a heat-release cycle. The time-delayed cycle is just a timer. You can set it for up to a ten minute delay. And then the heat-release is my favorite. You leave it in a dormant state until it's warmed by some outside force. I'd like to think that someone's body heat will be the trigger most of the time. And then once it senses a controlled heat source, it'll activate."
"So what does this egg do?" Fumikage asked.
"I made it so that it sprays out a special substance that will stick to walls. It then lobs out a sizable glob of acrylic paint of a variety of colors. In every direction. It essentially becomes a pain sprinkler. Now, whenever the acrylic paint makes contact with that substance from earlier, the paint bonds with it, creating a very high tensile strength polymer that keeps the pigment of the paint that made contact with it."
"That sounds needlessly complex. And how are they gonna know if it's us?" Kyouka asked.
"I made this Egg a few years ago to pull a prank on someone that irritated me." Mei continued, ignoring the query directed at her. Izuku saw Hitoshi back up slightly after that comment. "It contains a little chip that I have linked to a private server. Using this server, I can direct what I want the pattern of the final product to be. It can be whatever I want it to be within reason. I need enough of the spray to do what I want, but I can make full sentences with it if I have to." Mei pulled out her phone and opened up a picture to show everyone. It showed a much younger Mei and Hitoshi absolutely covered in paint inside of Hitoshi's old bedroom. Along the wall was a message: 'Get bent, Hitoshi'. The rest of the walls were slowly dripping paint, and Mei stood with two thumbs up and an ecstatic smile on her face. Hitoshi's face was unenthused, although not too much different than normal.
Kyouka immediately burst out laughing, pointing at Hitoshi. "When she said… She pulled a prank on… on someone… that someone was you, wasn't it?" She asked between wheezes of laughter.
"What did you even do to piss her off that much?" Izuku asked. Truth be told, Izuku was curious, but he was also somewhat dreading the answer. Still, it would be good to know what kind of things landed him in that kind of situation.
"I told her that she wouldn't be able to make it. So she did. And then she used it on me in the process." Hitoshi admitted.
"Hitoshi?" Kyouka asked.
"Yeah?"
"You're an idiot." Kyouka replied.
"Oh yeah."
"Okay, well, with that out of the way, we now have our calling card. Let's have our first mission, yeah?" Izuku asked.
"Sure thing, boss. What did you have in mind?"
"We need to go outside of Tokyo."
"Outside of Tokyo? Why?"
"If we're doing this, we need to redirect where they look for us. If we do things in Tokyo, especially in Sangen Jaya or Shibuya, they'll be able to narrow it down to here. Especially if our first mission is there. That's not to say that we can't act here eventually. If we avoid this area, then they'll be able to infer that we're here specifically because we avoid here. All of that is why our first couple of missions will be in a different city. We'll make them think that we're not thinking about this. It'll throw them off our scent."
"That makes sense. I agree that it would be best to not be found so early on in our quest." Fumikage agreed.
"Then we go to Yokohama in five hours. Pack everything up and get ready to move out." Izuku turned around and walked back to his room to start packing.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Kyouka spoke. "Wow…" She stood there stunned. Mei nudged her elbow into Kyouka's arm a few times, raising her eyebrows suggestively. "Oh piss off, Mei. I've just never seen him like that before."
"Oh no, I get it, Kyouka. I get it." Mei walked back to her terminal with a smirk on her face.
Kyouka, shaking her head, just sighed. She went to gather her things for the mission. It was about to get real.
The group managed to pack their costumes up into suitcases, some of them bringing rope or handcuffs in case they needed any, and with some pocket money, buy train tickets to Yokohama, most of them wearing the parts of their costumes that seemed normal for people to wear. Mei stayed back in their base, not having her pieces finished yet, and definitely not wanting to go out in public with guns. That left Izuku, Kyouka, Hitoshi, and Fumikage to ride the train, making small talk with nervous anticipation.
As the four of them got off the train in Yokohama, they were immediately met with an onslaught of civilians both leaving and boarding the trains. Nobody was the wiser for a group of four teenagers with suitcases. And it would stay that way. As they wandered the streets, they soon found an alleyway that was devoid of traffic. Hiding in the shadows, they put their uniforms on in silence. They made their way to Yokohama late in the day, that way they could easily come out at sundown, which, at this time of the year, would be soon enough. The four of them put their masks on, followed by their earpieces to finish putting their uniforms on.
"We need our own form of transportation, Izu." Kyouka said through her mask's voice changer.
"Hey, we don't use real names here, Heartquake. But I do agree." Izuku chided.
"Sorry, Snake Eyes. I'll be on top of that from now on."
"Good. Now, Overwatch. Do you have any targets in mind? Or are we on our own?" Izuku asked over their earpieces.
"I have a few ideas." Mei said over the comms. The four of them could hear typing coming over the comms as well. "Man, this UA database really comes in handy. Turns out that there's this group that one of the teachers there has been following recently. He's a Pro Hero known as Eraserhead. It's a small-ish group of villains that participate in things like drug trafficking. I'm hearing some chatter that they're meeting in some warehouse in Yokohama tonight. Rendezvous point is about twelve blocks East of your current location at about a half hour after sunset. You'll be able to get to that location easily with plenty of time."
"Where the hell are you hearing chatter from?" Kyouka asked.
"You think I only bugged and hacked UA?" Was the only response that needed to be said.
"You scare me sometimes, M-... Overwatch." Kyouka tripped over her words, but managed to catch herself before the slip was too bad.
"Good! Now, move your asses. We're on a deadline."
"We're on it." Izuku confirmed and then headed East. The four of them split up and took to different means of getting to the same destination. Throughout the entire time, Mei was giving them directions.
"NightHawk, take a left here. Mastermind, continue straight across this intersection. Snake Eyes, continue straight for another block, then take a right, and then an immediate left. Heartquake, you're still true. Stay that way." As the sun began to crest below the horizon in, ironically, the land of the rising sun, the four fighters had just passed their eleventh block headed Eastward. Their trip had taken a bit longer than it probably should have, but they made it work.
"Okay, you still have plenty of time. Each of you are one block away from the rendezvous point. I'm going to ask that each of you choose a wall for the infiltration. I don't know how many people are going to be in there. If I were there, this wouldn't be an issue, but we'll see where this goes. Stay hidden until they're all in there. Listen to everything Snake Eyes says. He's the commander of all of us, remember that. I'm just the intelligence operative."
"Right." Kyouka, Hitoshi, and Fumikage say at the same time over comms.
The four of them circle the building, and as the sun sets, they wait. Like clockwork, half an hour after sunset, there was a group of twelve people that filed their way into the building. Not five minutes later, another group of five people, these five wearing a different uniform than the first twelve.
"We're sitting with seventeen people in there." Hitoshi said over the earpiece.
"Heartquake, get up to the building and listen in. See what you can hear." Izuku ordered over the earpiece.
"Right." Kyouka nodded and slowly walked up to the building and inserted her jacks into the side of the wall.
'Alright, we have what you asked for. The special bullets that'll make Heroes think twice about messing with us.' Someone on the inside said. Kyouka relayed their conversation to everyone.
'What are these other crates, then?'
'Oh, those are the guns that are made specifically to fire these bullets.'
'You bastards! We were told that normal guns would work!'
'That's what our supplier thought, too. But here we are. The higher ups on my end aren't too fond of it all, either. But if you want the bullets, you get the guns, too.'
"Heartquake, set up some charges where you're at. I'll head your way." Izuku said. If he were being honest, the reality of the situation was daunting, but he was excited more than anything. Being behind his mask really did help with his confidence. He made his way to the North end of the building where Kyouka was set up and waited for her charges to be set, but not before taking one of his dice bombs out and setting it with the five side pointed up, giving them five minutes before it blew. Kyouka quickly made her way back to Izuku once her speakers were set. "Okay, NightHawk, you'll wait by the South wall. I left a die bomb there, and it should blow in a few minutes. Be ready. Once that goes off, you're in, and then we're in as well. Mastermind, wait by the door on the East side. If anyone leaves, take over."
"Yes sir!" Fumikage said as he made his way to the South side of the building.
"This'll be fun." Hitoshi said with a smirk that couldn't be seen behind his mask.
The air was tense around the four of them as they waited for the die bomb to go off. Nobody had made their way to the door yet, so there was no need to really worry.
"Are you ready for this, Heartquake?" Izuku asked her.
"As long as you're here with me, I'll be ready for anything."
Izuku smiled behind his mask. "That's what I like to hear. Now get ready, it's gonna be go time soon." Izuku switched on his mask's dice LEDs and rolled them all to five. He took a deep breath in, and right as he exhaled, there was an explosion heard from the other side of the warehouse. "That's your cue."
"Right!" Kyouka put each of her jacks into the ports on her shoulders and blasted her heartbeat through them. The two small speakers directly next to the wall vibrated with the force of the sound that had just been blasted through them. The wall collapsed soon afterwards. Izuku and Kyouka immediately began to walk in.
Looking at this from the perspective of one of the grunts, this sight was confusing and kind of terrifying. One side of the building exploded and a bird thing came out of the hole and started beating people up. Not five seconds later, the other wall explodes and only ten lights pierce through the dust and debris. As the smoke cleared, it became clear that there were two people coming from that direction. They just… walked right in through the smoke. Their aura was, in a word, menacing.
Once inside the building, Izuku immediately dashed to one of the grunts that hadn't been knocked off of their feet from the explosion. The guard brought up his fists, and his knuckles grew spikes out of them.
"Damn, you get better brass knuckles without having to pay for them. Call me jealous." Izuku taunted before engaging the grunt directly. Izuku launched a high straight kick towards the grunt's head with his right foot. The grunt managed to see the hit coming and dodge out of the way to the right of Izuku's foot. Izuku smirked. That was what he was waiting for. Sure a square hit to this low leveled grunt's face would have been fine, but what was coming next was so much more satisfying. Izuku pointed his airborne foot's toes and turned on his planted foot. His heel hooked around the back of the grunt's neck, and with a powerful display of force, Izuku brought his right foot to the ground, bringing his opponent with him. Izuku heard a sickening crack as the grunt's face collided with the concrete floor of this bleak warehouse. Whether it was the grunt's face bones making that noise or simply just the concrete breaking, that sound sent chills through the spines of every other villain in that room. Izuku dusted his shoulder off and smiled to himself. He hadn't even activated Luck for that attack. His opponent just made the wrong choice.
He turned to his left to see Kyouka dodge a punch and immediately grab the arm of her assailant. Using their own weight against them, she easily tosses them over her shoulder onto the ground. With a dull thud, they hit the concrete on their back and start gasping for breath. Kyouka's jacks immediately poke their head and send Kyouka's heartbeat into their skull, knocking them out.
"Good work, Heartquake."
"Thanks, Snake Eyes. There's more to the back of the building."
Nodding, Izuku looked to see that Fumikage had already taken out three grunts of his own with help from Dark Shadow. There was enough light that Dark Shadow didn't become uncontrollable, but dark enough that it got a power boost.
"Keep at it, NightHawk. You're doing great." He got a nod in response.
Izuku directed his attention towards the large group of people at the back of the building. Glancing around, he saw five of them in total. He reached into his jacket pocket and grabbed three of his dice bombs. He ran towards the group, and when he was around ten feet away, he tossed the dice at the villains, fanning them out as he let them go.
As soon as he let them go, he focused on each of them and turned their chances of rolling '1's as high as he could before moving onto the next one. This wasn't time for precision. It was time for speed. He barely managed to get to the third one in time. If he was going to do something like that again that required multiple different objects, he was going to have to get faster with his manipulation. The dice hit the ground and rolled right up to the group of five that just seemed to stand there. As the dice landed with their one side up, a second passed before the doce exploded with a rather sizable explosion radius. The five men disappeared into multiple puffs of black smoke.
"Damnit!" Izuku heard Kyouka shout behind him. He turned to see her pinned to the ground by a rather large man, her arm and jacks both in his grasp.
"Heartquake! Hold on!" Izuku said, rushing over to the figure.
"You didn't think that you could take us down that easily, did you?" The man said, bending Kyouka's arm behind her back as he put his entire body weight on the girl. "My Umbra quirk isn't going to make this easy for you. And I'm not even at the top of this whole thing! You're gonna regret messing with us."
"He's gonna take you down, asshole!" Kyouka screamed from below him.
"Good luck with that!" The man said, pushing even more of his weight onto her. Izuku could hear popping coming from Kyouka's arm, and that was the moment that he decided. The moment that he decided that this man was going to pay for hurting his best friend.
Izuku concentrated his quirk on the man, looking for any probabilities that he could exploit.
'Breaks girl's arm: 43%' No, not that one.
'Mask shuffles off in the struggle: 12.7%' That doesn't seem very helpful...
'Loses balance in struggle: 32%' Bingo! Izuku turned that dial up as hard as he could. Unfortunately, it only went up to 73%. That was going to have to be enough for Izuku. He dashed straight for the man, feigning a cross punch, but before it connected, Izuku spun his body around, bringing up his right foot. While spinning, he kept his eyes on the man, and as his foot connected with where the man's chin should have been, the body vanished in a wisp of black smoke. As his body rotated back to standing, he was hit hard square in the back. He toppled forward onto Kyouka. He rolled off of her and to his feet. He helped her up as well. Fumikage stepped up as well.
"I have dispatched the others. They are all unconscious."
"Good work, NightHawk. Now let's get this joker." Izuku said, reaching into his pocket, running his fingers along one of his die bombs. "Mastermind, you there?"
"Yeah, I'm here. Had two try to escape. Knocked 'em out before they could run."
"Good. Get in here."
"You really think that you kids can beat me? My quirk makes me untouchable! I make shadow copies of myself or anyone else, and they feel real up until the point that they're destroyed." The man said. "And if I make them from myself, well, you saw what happened."
"Hey boss, you want some help?" A voice sounded out from behind the large man.
"Yeah, that would be-" As he answered, he froze.
"Mastermind, took you long enough." Izuku said.
"Yeah yeah, I had to deal with idiots, like I said. But I'm here now, just in the knick of time, too. Hurry up, we don't have much time."
"Right. Heartquake, set up some speakers."
"Right!" Kyouka set up five speakers in a circle around the man before returning back to Izuku's side.
"Do we have some kind of oil?" Izuku asked.
"No, I don't think so."
"Damnit. Oh well. NightHawk, get ready with one of those flashbangs. Heartquake, be ready to cover your ears and eyes quickly. You too, Mastermind. When I give the signal, Heartquake, you use your speakers. Once those go off, NightHawk, use the flashbang. And then it'll be over. Alright?"
"Of course." Fumikage nodded.
"Sure thing." Kyouka put her jacks into the ports preemptively.
"3…" Izuku got into his capoeira dance, moving from left to right rhythmically.
"2…" Fumikage grabbed one of the flashbangs from inside of his cloak.
"1…" Kyouka and Hitoshi braced themselves by crouching down, covering their ears, and closing their eyes.
"Go!"
Immediately, Kyouka blasted her heartbeat through the speakers surrounding the man, waking him up from the stun only to be in severe pain from the soundwaves. As he clutched his ears, Izuku began to twist his body. He brought his right foot around his left, planted it, and then spun, lifting his left leg close to his center. As he turned around his own axis, he jumped off of his right foot. During his spin, he glanced behind him to see that Fumikage was midway through dropping the flashbang. He turned his head quickly back to the man, who at this point, was incredibly confused and in pain. As the flashbang hit the ground, Izuku's head was already looking towards the man. The flashbang went off, a slight bang being heard from behind Izuku, which didn't bother him as much as a normal flashbang would, he figured.
The man immediately recoiled, covering his eyes. He then leaned forward, right into Izuku's spinning right foot. As Izuku's foot connected, the man flew off to Izuku's left, falling backwards onto his back on the ground.
As the man laid there on the ground, stunned, Izuku leaned down, looking the man right in the eye. He activated his mask's dice rolling feature and turned the roll to 1s. As the dice stopped rolling, Izuku tilted his head slightly. The red light that came from double 1s bathed the man's face. "Can't activate your quirk if you don't have time to think, can you? Looks like your luck just ran out." Izuku stood up and kicked the man's head, knocking him out almost immediately.
"Snake Eyes… That was… That was so badass!" Kyouka shouted.
"It wasn't that much…" Izuku rubbed the back of his head.
"Honestly, with how much talk he had, it was a little anticlimactic. Let's just hurry and get out of here." Hitoshi said.
"We need to clean up, first." Fumikage said.
The four of them tied up the villains and left them up against the wall. Then, they moved on to the crates that were in the warehouse. As they cracked open one, it was filled with several smaller containers.
"These must be the bullets that they were talking about…" Izuku said to himself. He walked over to one of the unconscious grunts from the group that had brought them and slapped his face a few times to wake him up. "Hey, dumbass. Wake up." The grunt's eyes fluttered open, and then he screamed.
"Ahh! Who are you people?"
"You'll see that here in a second. But first, you're gonna tell us what these bullets do."
"Why would I do that? Why would I tell any of you that?" The grunt asked.
Izuku motioned Hitoshi to come over. "Because if you don't, we're gonna trap you in your own head." Hitoshi spoke.
"And how ar-" The grunt's eyes went blank, and he stopped moving. About twenty seconds went by before Izuku slapped his face again.
"AHH! How did you do that? What was that?" The grunt yelled.
"Well, how about this… We tell you what it was after you tell us what the bullets are. Otherwise, we give you another firsthand experience. How does that sound?" Izuku asked. Whenever the grunt remained silent, Izuku sighed. "Alright, we'll be doing this the hard way, then." Izuku put his hand up. "See this?" He gestured to his hand with his head. "If you take too long, then this happens." Izuku put a finger down. "Once they all join their friend there, you're going back into your head. For longer this time." Izuku put another finger down. The grunt started to look nervous. Izuku put another finger down. He could see sweat lining the grunt's face. He put another finger down.
"Alright! I'll talk! They're bullets that temporarily remove someone's quirk! I don't know much more than that! They make someone's quirk disappear for a few days!"
"Good boy." Izuku patted the grunt's cheek and then punched him square across the jaw. His head fell limp. He was unconscious again.
"NightHawk, use Dark Shadow to get the crate full of these bullets out of here. Each of us gets to take one of the special guns. Grab an extra one for Overwatch as well. I'm taking the money that was going to pay for these."
The other three did as Izuku instructed. As they were leaving, Izuku grabbed an Egg from his coat pocket and set it on the ground, setting it for a ten minute time release. With that, he took one last look at the scene and left. They didn't have a way back just yet. They could easily sleep in a dark alley somewhere and rent a truck the next morning to ship them back to Sangenjaya, though.
"Damnit" Shouta thought to himself. "I hope I'm not late. If I am, Emi is going to be in trouble. Who does she think she is, keeping me late on a work night? My Girlfriend? Oh wait, yeah, she is. Still!"
Shouta lept from building to building in Yokohama, finally coming to the building that his sources said would be the location for some kind of illegal deal between groups. Nothing huge, but decent enough work that his last few days haven't been too boring. And that's when he saw it. Two massive holes in two different sides of the warehouse. Rubble piled on the ground, but he couldn't hear anything inside.
He jumped down to investigate, only to be even more surprised. Every single person that was in the room was tied up and unconscious. He looked further. There were clearly signs of struggle, but it didn't look like the two groups had done it to each other.
"Who did this?" Aizawa asked nobody in particular.
As if to answer his question, there was a small ding about ten feet to his left. He bent over to look at it, which proved to be a bad idea. Almost as soon as he was eye level, the small object, which looked undoubtedly like an egg, opened. It began to spray something on the nearby wall. Before he could question what it was spraying, it stopped, and the spray was replaced by the top portion of the egg spinning. And then came the paint. An array of colors, red, green, blue, and even pink, sprayed from the spinning egg top, splashing on everything in its radius… Including Shouta's face. And the wall. After wiping his eyes, he looked around and saw that the paint had stuck to whatever it was that was sprayed onto the wall.
On it were two words: 'Societas Requiem'
"Damnit, Emi…" Shouta hung his now multicolored head. He was going to have a lot of paperwork to do.
