They soared through the night sky, Dark Shadow supporting all their weight and gliding through the night sky in utter silence. Izuku was the front of the sentient quirk, looking forward towards their destination. The other teams would be moving into position as well, the op set to start in a few minutes. Everyone involved in the op had synchronized their watches, there would be no delays.
As Izuku checked his watch again, he finally saw it. The compound sprawled out below them, lights shining brightly. Dark Shadow started to circle downwards, and everyone lowered themselves closer to Dark Shadow. When they were still 60 meters above the roof of their assigned building, Dark Shadow suddenly folded upwards like some kind of flower that had yet to bloom. The quirk held them tight as they suddenly went into controlled dive, they fell for a few seconds, then the G's hit as they started slowing down. They landed on the roof with barely a whisper, Dark Shadow unfolded from around them and coalesced itself around Tsukuyomi.
Izuku and his team immediately moved the door and Kiyori touched the doorknob. There was a small click as his quirk unlocked the door and then they moved to the edge of the building. They pulled out rappelling gear and affixed them to the roof. Then they waited as the last two minutes ticked by until lights out.
Izuku held up a hand, counting down from five, then when he hit zero they all started to repel down from the roof to their chosen windows. Halfway down all the lights suddenly went out, and their helmets automatically switched to night vision. They rappelled down to their windows and they opened easily, the villains not thinking to lock the windows so far up from the ground. A common mistake, and one easily exploited. Even if they had remembered, Kiyori's unlock quirk would have rendered it moot anyway.
They clambered into the room, an old unused apartment. They detached their lines then went to the door. When they were in position, Izuku cracked open the door. Pistol in one hand he held the door steady with the other as he scanned what portion of the hallway he could see before opening it farther and scanning the hallway properly. When he saw nothing but the darkness he moved out into it, the rest of his squad fanning out behind him. They quickly checked the doors, all were locked and empty making for quick work. They planted a chaff bomb in the hallway then moved down the stairs.
As Izuku moved into the corridor he saw two figures halfway down it, walking calmly and complaining about the power. The squad swept up behind them like phantoms, and in one quick motion, they'd grabbed them from behind. Hands clasped over their mouths and knives to throats.
"Six seconds to tell me where your prisoners are located," whispered Seiya, then started counting down as he removed the hand from his captive's mouth.
"Fuck you, you'll never get out of here ali-" his remark was cut short by Seiya quickly slitting his throat and passing him back to someone behind him to hide the body. The other captive, having seen his companion summarily killed started breathing rapidly through his nose.
"Same deal," whispered Izuku to his captive. He released his hold on his mouth and started counting down.
"Four floors down, but I don't know which room," he said quickly, shaking all over.
Izuku put his hand over his mouth and again and gestured to Seiya with a jerk of his head. Seiya came over with an injector and after a quick application to the captive's neck, the sedative rendered him unconscious shortly thereafter. It was strong but short-lasting, he'd be awake in about a half-hour at best. So they hog-tied him and placed him in a room with the door open. He'd get picked up after it was all over.
They swept the rest of the floor and rooms in short order, the two seemed to be the only guards this high up. They placed another bomb and went down the next floor. By this time Izuku expected that the backup generators would be coming online shortly. when they got to the door leading into the next corridor he gestured for the group to pause.
They waited for about a minute and a half before the light over their door turned on. Izuku gestured for Daichi to come up, then moved out of the way. Daichi went up to the door, pulled out what looked like a cross between an oversized smoke grenade and a molotov cocktail. He snapped off the extended portion at the top, opened the door, and threw it down the hallway.
They heard several people talking, then silence. There was a pause then a snap-hiss as the grenade discharged its payload of free-floating reflective particles, then a few seconds later there was a beep and the lights in the corridor went out. There were cries of alarm from inside the corridor, then Izuku and his squad fanned out into the hallway.
The confused guards turned in shock but before any of them could react six whisper-quiet gunshots filled the air and six bodies hit the ground. Clean headshots through all of them. Izuku was impressed despite himself, he knew they were good, but Ahmya must have put way more work into them than Izuku expected. He fully understood now why Ahmya's squad had the reputation it did.
The group surged down the hallway as several doors opened up and curious onlookers looked out into the corridor. The nearest doors were stormed by individual squad members, knives in hand. Izuku and Seiya sniped down four of the onlookers with their pistols, while Tsukuyomi surged down the hallway with frightening speed. His black form swept past open doors, both his attached claws and Dark Shadows cutting down anyone nearby and leaving large gashes in the wall as they went. The sounds of close combat filled the hallway as the members in the rooms dealt with the inhabitants one by one. After about five minutes the hallway was cleared, the surveillance permanently neutralized and they were heading down to the next floor. Halfway down the staircase, however, they heard sirens go off across the compound. Another squad had been discovered, and their cover was blown.
"Time to go loud!" shouted Izuku, holstering his pistol and knife he pulled out his MRAD M33. His chosen weapon was already slotted for 5.56 rounds, but he could hot-swap it for 50 BMG if he needed sniper or armor penetration capability.
All around him squad members holstered weapons and knives and pulled out their own preferred weapons as well. After a quick ready check, Izuku went to the door. He cracked it open and saw a large group of people milling about in the hallway most of them confused but sporting weapons. A few didn't have any weapons and Izuku marked those out as people confident enough with their quirks to feel they didn't need one. Izuku gestured for Daichi again, and he came up hefting his compact grenade launcher. Izuku opened the door, Daichi poked out, fired a round then leaned back in. There was a small explosion followed by a flash of light and sound.
After the flashbang, the squad surged out of the staircase. Izuku quickly gunned down those he had marked earlier while the rest of his squad's gunfire tore into the milling group of people. A few dove back into rooms, others tried to return fire but were quickly gunned down, and a lone figure created a shield made of reinforced porcelain. With the obvious targets neutralized, The squad ran at the survivors, with Tsukuyomi outstripping them.
The hero's quirk tore through the barrier, shattering it and crushing the surprised figure behind it. Some of the villains that dove into the rooms looked out from their rooms and a few brought AK's to bear against them. Suppressing fire erupted from Izuku and his squad while Tsukuyomi moved down the hallway. His quirk would attack one group in one room, while the hero himself fought another in an adjacent room, a black line connecting them stretching across the hallway.
Izuku and his squad ducked behind doorways of their own, exchanging fire with the few individuals who had either ranged weaponry or equivalent quirks. Eventually, Tsukuyomi would clear out the rooms with his quirk that bullets and most quirks did nothing against but that would take time. They didn't have that kind of time, so Izuku detached the upper receiver of his MRAD and quickly slammed the sniper attachment in its place, changed out the ammo, and in seven seconds he was done.
He poked out of his cover a tiny bit, ignoring the plaster that peppered his suit from the enemy fire hitting the walls around him, and took aim at the nearest door frame that had a single enemy behind it. He fired a single round at the spot where he guessed the man's upper torso would be positioned. The round punched through the wall, the man's body, and embedded itself into the opposite wall. The man tumbled out cover screaming, which was quickly silenced by well-placed shots from others of his squad. Izuku repeated the action several more times, either outright killing his target or incapacitating them.
They were down to the last two enemies when more people poured out of the elevator further down the hallway. They were immediately caught in the crossfire and out of the eight that had been on it, only two survived long enough to get the doors closed and go back down. Then the last two opponents they faced further down the hallway were thrown out of their room by Dark Shadow. It quickly tore them to pieces and the fight was over.
Again, time was not on their side and they proceeded to the next staircase, storming down it at breakneck pace with Tsukuyomi flying down and out of the door before Izuku and his squad were even halfway down. When they got into the hallway the fight was almost over already. Tsukuyomi had cut down a dozen people and was in the process of cutting down a dozen more. These guards seemed to have been mostly melee oriented, as most used melee weapons or quirks suited for the purpose. Then the staircase door at the opposite end of the hallway burst open and a dozen more stormed into the hallway.
These guards were different than the rabble they had been fighting previously. They were armored in black combat gear, and sported deadly-looking weapons, both melee at their sides and ranged ones already being leveled at Tsukuyomi. Izuku assumed these people to be some of Zeus's personal mercenary core, the same people he had been leading out of the middle east before coming to Japan. They were his elite troops, and Izuku knew that they were close to at least one of the captives if they had shown up.
Then there was a flash of light and a crack like lightning and something punched clean through Tsukuyomi's body, down the hallway, and through the wall. Izuku glanced behind him towards the shot and saw an indistinct explosion as the projectile collided with the adjacent building.
"They have a dammed railgun!?" he thought with horror. He didn't know how that was possible, but they couldn't stand and fight against that sort of firepower.
"Cover!" he screamed out, already diving into a nearby room.
His squad didn't need the order, after that attack they had all dived for cover as well. Bolts of blue energy flew down the hallway a half-second later, clipping Daichi in the shoulder and leaving a burning hole. It didn't seem very dangerous though as he barreled through the injury and got into cover. Izuku went to try and take a shot but had to pull his head back in hastily as more bolts of blue energy left small burning craters in the doorframe and door.
The stream of fire seemed endless, and Izuku knew he'd never be able to take a shot like this. He reached to his waist and detached a grenade. He pulled the pin, cooked it for a second then threw it at an angle at the wall across from his door. There was an explosion a second later but the fire didn't stop. The grenade either missed its mark, doing nothing, or blocked. He looked around the room for inspiration and saw a window. He hit his radio relayed his orders to his squad, there was a chorus of acknowledgments, and moved into action. Izuku opened the window in the room and climbed out onto a thin ledge.
"If there is one thing that can always be relied on, its architects putting ledges that connect one parallel window to another," he thought with satisfaction.
He noticed Seiya and Kiyori coming from the window just behind him and they nodded to him as they all started to shimmy across the ledge. They were all too focused on current events to register that they were several stories up and falling from here would almost certainly result in their deaths. They did notice however that the entire compound had become a battleground. All around them they could hear the telltale sound of combat and quirks firing off both below and above them.
They went down, all the way to the end before Izuku opened the window from the outside and clambered through. They could still hear the fire from the blue bolts of energy but as they got to the door it fell silent. They moved slowly and quietly to the door, Izuku listening for anything.
He could hear footsteps and two low voices conversing, then silence. He queued for a ready check on his radio and he heard five affirmative clicks in his ear.
"To my right, on the countdown," he whispered into his radio.
There were five more affirmative clicks, and then Izuku queued his com to go to a three-second countdown.
A series of beeps started, and when it hit zero they swung open the doors and swung right looking down the hallway from the very spot their assailants had been moments earlier. All the way to the opposite end of the hallway Zeus mercenaries had their weapons trained at the doors they had been at earlier, just about to open the door and discover that they weren't there anymore. Izuku put an armor-penetrating round through the back of the head of the individual with the railgun. The impact caused his body to lurch forward, just as the rest of his comrades were riddled from behind with bullets. Even after the bodies hit the ground they kept firing until they hit empty, wanting to be sure they were dead.
"Kiyori, grab Tsukuyomi and head back up. He needs medical attention ASAP." Said Izuku, moving towards the staircase.
"Got it," he said, heading to the hero who was bleeding all over the hallway, unconscious. He pulled out a trauma kit and got to work stemming the blood flow as best as possible.
The rest of the squad started down the stairs. When they got to the bottom, Izuku peeked out into the hallway and saw a ground of people in the middle of the hallway perched behind barricades, clearly ready for trouble.
"Daichi, we got an entrenchment, got anything that can punch through that?" he asked.
"Oh yeah, they won't know what hit em," he said, and Izuku could hear the amusement in his voice.
Daichi pulled out his grenade launcher, exchanged two normal rounds for two specialty rounds, and got into position. After he was situated, he nodded to Izuku who immediately pulled the door open and let Daichi sidestep out. There were two quick shunts followed a half-second later by a cataclysmic explosion that rocked several floors.
"And done." Said Daichi brightly. They looked down the hallway and saw that it wasn't just the barricades that the rounds had destroyed. They'd blown apart the entire damn floor. They could actually see where the explosion had traveled forwards and outward. It had blown apart the barricades, the people behind them, then the walls, the floor, and the ceiling past that. They could see into the interior of the building, and bits of insulation and wood were falling down from the ceiling into the explosive gash.
"All right, you all secure the staircase. I'll check and see if one of the captives is here." Said Izuku, making his way to one of the doors that was located behind the barricade.
All the likely doors had been damaged by the explosion, so he was easily able to slam his weight into the door and have it burst inward. He looked around but didn't see anyone or any signs to indicate it was inhabited by anyone other than the guards. He stepped out of the room and went to the next one, only just noticing one of the doors having a keypad dangling from the wall next to it. He rolled his eyes and slammed into the door with a run, as the door burst inward he let himself fall forward and tucked into a roll as he did. As he came out of it, he leveled his rifle, ready for trouble. The only thing he saw though was a woman's head poking out from around a corner that lead into a bedroom.
Izuku stood up and lowered the point of the rifle down a few notches but was still ready for action if the need arose.
"Mrs. Kato?" he asked, scanning the room.
The woman hesitated before coming out from the room and showing herself to look much more like a foreigner than Ahmya did.
"Were here to extract you and you're family to safety. If you have belongings you need to grab, I'll give you ten seconds then we are getting you out of here." Said Izuku, assuming the husband and child to be at the other complex."
"My husband and child are-" she started to say but Izuku cut her off.
"We have teams already in that building, it's likely that they are secured as we speak. Now please get a move on." He said, turning and exiting out of the room.
Once out he nodded at Seiya who was looking at him from down the hall by the staircase. He nodded back and started issuing orders to the others. As the group extracted themselves from the area, Daichi planted a block of C4 in the hallway by the staircase entrance.
By the time they had all gotten back to Izuku and formed into a circle formation, Mrs. Kato had taken up her position in the center, a bag on one shoulder. Her expression was a mixture of relief and terror. Then as one, they started making their way back the way they had come.
