Dragonfighter11 - ... heh.
AngelFallenDemon - Don't worry about Tenko :v It's all been a calculated risk, it's just that he is pretty bad at math.
TheGreatBubbaJ - Kamino certainly is like an ogre. It has a lot of layers.
The Archivist of Nyx - I'm literally writing (well, just two chapters, waiting to finish something else to continue) a fic with a basic summary of 'Aiko is pissed off'. Trust me, it's scary. Even if Izuku is the source of most of scary. Still, Aiko deciding to go villain is probably the true Armageddon Scenario.
SmokyGhoul - You might be on the right trail about Aiko's quirk, let's just say that transformation quirks like Muscular's are a horrifyingly bad match-up against her. Then again, emitters are only narrowly better. And don't worry about Midoriya, he is probably already playing 5D chess or smth.
Trixuny - That would certainly be a 5D chess game. Don't worry, traitor is revealed quite soon :P
Detrametal - He was just infected with the chaos gremlinization virus, and probably before the story even started. You'll see how things happened in a few chapters, in this chapter you'll see what things happened :V
DeathPaladin - ... heh.
Armedemort - An interesting idea, but no. You'll find out in chapter 34 or 35, where we finally get the question of 'why did Izuku react like that' answered. His hair was full of secrets for too long and it'll spill out soon.
ShadowBladeSabre - This is actually a perfectly valid theory, one of those that I actually intended people to have. One of them is certainly true, but which one? Who knows :P You'll find out soon.
(***)
YES I KNOW THAT IT'S THURSDAY EVENING BUT I HAVE A MORNING SHIFT TOMORROW SO I'M POSTING IT SLIGHTLY AHEAD OF SCHEDULE BECAUSE I WANT TO SLEEP LONG AND NICELY. Don't hate me for that.
Also I'm like 90% sure that there is at least a part of the world where it's Friday now, soo...
(***)
Kirishima attempted to ask Yaoyorozu about the location where the tracker was leading to in the hospital when they were all going through a check-up. Or, to be exact, Momo was going to stay there for a few days, due to getting a nasty blow to the head from a noumu.
He was flanked by Bakugou and, oddly enough, Iida. Momo certainly didn't expect her co-vice president to misbehave like that. The Gran Torino internships really had to be an interesting and life-changing experience.
She, gently but without a sliver of doubt in her voice, told them no. They would understand her reasoning eventually.
She could only hope that it was all going to be over soon. And that not only they wouldn't lose any more students, but also they would get those they already lost back.
(***)
PLF's plan was rather simplistic - although 'simplistic' in this situation meant 'mostly accident-proof'. Entropy was a thing, something that true first league masterminds - like Nedzu, Sir Nighteye, Re-Destro or All for One - understood and took into account while making their brilliant master plans.
The difference between good and genius plans tended to lie in contingencies and failsafes. And probably in the quality of their information gathering network.
Step one - stir the hornet nest. Antagonize the heroes, drawing the attention to the Paranormal Liberation Front's name. Strike against notable heroes (All Might during the USJ, Endeavor in Hosu), while damaging the police's ability to respond by stealing their confidential data - and drawing more supervillains to their cause.
Step two - attack UA, kidnap some students. Honestly, the existence of the Villain Rehab Course and willing betrayal of the UA by Tomura Shigaraki has only made it easier and more impactful.
So not only they obtained the necessary bait for further steps of the plan, but they also caused a lot of damage to the Nedzu and UA's public reputation, while further inflaming their covert war against the HPSC.
Step three - show the heroes where to attack, while using their spy (that much was optional, really, they were going to be cautious enough to not be surprised) to learn when the attack was going to occur. And prepare accordingly.
Step four - massacre the heroic top rooster, eliminating the majority of top heroes in one fell-swoop while also weakening the image of heroics as a whole in the eyes of the public massively.
Step four's execution was going to be mainly threefold. Although that alone was a failsafe/contingency in its earnest, as each of the three sub-parts of this was enough to give the heroes a fight of their life. Two were guaranteed to change the attack into a massacre. Three were simply speaking an overkill.
Point one - the PLF amassed many notable supervillains and villains, while keeping most of them completely hidden from the world. Their existence in their headquarters was going to be a massive surprise for the heroes, who would be forced to fight forces at least twice larger than they expected.
Point two - the PLF amassed a LOT of noumus at the location, including the majority of Garaki's High Ends - and, in case of All Might being there, something similar yet special. With each of the High Ends capable of going toe to toe with Top 15 Heroes (oh, they would probably lose - not without exhausting their enemy - but it didn't matter for the greater scope of things), that was a lot of firepower.
Point three - Overhaul produced a lot of quirk-suppressing gas. It was gathered within the facility, ready to be unleashed at his order. And, in order to fool the attackers into thinking that this wasn't a thing, no one was wearing gas masks.
Instead, they all received an inoculation of sorts (Overhaul was a master when it came to quirk-oriented pharmacology) that would make them immune to the effects. If heroes started winning (somehow), Overhaul would simply detonate his quirk-suppressing bomb.
It was powerful enough to deactivate every quirk within several kilometers radius. Which should be enough to let the villains freely massacre the heroes.
The Paranormal Liberation Front prepared for every eventuality. Unfortunately, there was something they missed.
(***)
The first of the supervillains to realize that something was wrong was, oddly enough, Doctor Garaki. He was never the sharpest tool in a shed for things outside of his mad science, which is probably why it took him too long to realize.
He was having a blast, really. Tomura Shigaraki - the boy that his old master planned to change into his heir - was there. With them. Despite all the brainwashing that the heroes subjected him into, he didn't hesitate for a millisecond to betray them.
Almost turning the newest One for All holder into dust - newest One for All holder that, according to Tomura, was also All Might's son - was just an added benefit. If that explosive kid didn't interrupt that…
Next time.
In the meantime, Garaki was giving Tomura a tour through the facilities (through a secure internet connection, of course). Tomura wanted to know what they had. Garaki was happy to oblige, despite Overhaul apparently having some doubts about the wisdom of that.
Garaki disliked Overhaul. Wonderful quirk, but his vision of a quirkless world was an idiocy. Probably better than the Quirk Singularity, but still. And it was such a pain to deal with him. Sometimes Garaki hoped to copy his quirk and install it into a noumu.
Ugh.
"Nice." Tomura announced when Garaki showed him Recall. One of his precious specialist noumus, the one who received a strengthened copy of Johny's Warping quirk. It's a bigger, human-sized noumu. Kept in one of the central rooms of the complex. "That's your respawn machine."
"Yes, Tomura." Doctor replies through the speakers. "Core element of our plan for the hero attack." Which should occur tomorrow, at least according to their spy. They, naturally, have some people keep watch outside. "With Overhaul next to it, we can immediately patch up any wounded supervillain and send them back into the fray!"
"Cool." Tomura comments. His face remains expressionless. "Feels like cheating, but… villains, right?"
"That's right, Tomura Shigaraki!" Doctor Garaki beams at his master's ward. "One more thing that will, eventually, belong to you. Together with All for One's quirk." They made preparations in case something happened to Sensei.
"There's only one problem with that, Doctor." Tomura replies.
(***)
This isn't the time for half-measures. It is war. And the heroes are planning to win in one fell-swoop.
All Might is there. Together with Endeavor, Gran Torino, Crust, Miruko, Edgeshot, Best Jeanist, Gang Orca, almost the entire UA faculty, a small army of Killer Whale Hero's sidekicks and a lot of policemen.
All according to the PLF's plan, save for one crucial detail. They were expected twenty-four hours later. And somehow none of the sentries and early warning systems the PLF deployed noticed their arrival.
To say that the Paranormal Liberation Front wasn't prepared for it would be an understatement of a century.
(***)
Their cell door opened soon after the ground shook for the first time. A lizardman was standing on the other side of it, with a katana on his back.
They expected a lot of things. But not the villain (Spinner, he was the one who caught Himiko) giving them antidotes to the quirk suppressing drugs, undoing their bindings, and telling them where to go to run into heroes as soon as possible.
"Wait, why the hell are you doing this?!" Hitoshi asks, while staring at the lizardman with an utterly stupefied expression.
"I'm betraying the Paranormal Liberation Front." Spinner replies and somehow the stares he gets grow in intensity. "You really gotta go, folks."
"But, Maki isn't here!" Himiko shouts. Purity took him out something like twenty minutes ago.
"All according to plan." Spinner shoots her down. He delivered him the antidote earlier. "Now move, damnit."
He really isn't paid enough for this shit.
(***)
Overhaul understands that everything's going to shit when Muscular flies into the room. Through the wall. With very, very furious All Might stepping inside after him.
The fight isn't over. Muscular inflates his muscles and powers up for another slug match. But All Might shouldn't be fucking here, not yet! What the f…
Shit. Their spy defected back to the heroes. This was all a set-up. But their sentries, how the f…
Not the time.
He tries to remotely release the gas, but the network dies on him. He curses (and tries not to die while two muscular juggernauts are fighting it out in the room), before leaping towards the place where the bomb is stored.
(***)
Yoshihiro Maki endures Purity's endless prattling and her pathetic attempts to reintroduce him to the Let's Commit Genocide as a Family gang. Until the earth starts to quake. And one of the monitors in the room they are in displays a message.
Message addressed directly to him.
Then he promptly goes into Gear Three, tears off his cuffs, punches Deathmonger into a wall (he was too busy trying to contact someone to figure out what was happening) and then attacks his quote unquote mother.
Purity, in all her familial delusions, didn't expect that. As if her giving birth to him somehow made him belong to her. And made it mandatory to buy her disgusting parody of religious beliefs used to justify her own hatred.
He had no idea how could she be such a great leader of a terrorist organization despite having the social skills of a peanut when it came to those close to her.
Yoshihiro Maki has a powerful strength-amplification quirk. Purity can boost others - but the only boostable person in the vicinity is Deathmonger, now unconscious. And her opponent is in a close quarters distance.
It's not a fight. She is promptly detained. Her attempts to find an answer for the question of 'why' made him give her a rather colorful monologue about all the reasons why she is a horrible human being and even worse mother.
Her attempts to get warped out before the heroes arrive remain unanswered. Miruko and Crust find them five minutes later.
(***)
"What are you doing?!" Garaki screams in impotent horror as Recall is turning to dust.
"I'm fucking up your plans, obviously." Tenko Shimura replies. Garaki really was an idiot. To need such an obvious question answered by someone else?
They were all idiots for falling for this. Midoriya had a sister who could heal every damage dealt to him, and she was there (okay, maybe they didn't know about that and hoped that he bled out). And considering what sort of self-sacrificial idiot Izuku was, dusting his arm for the greater good was clearly no biggy, right?
"W…why?" Garaki manages to utter. Tenko sniggers derisively at that. Isn't it obvious?
"I know the truth." He replies. "Midoriya and All Might told me everything. If you look well enough, you can still find signs of you surgically removing my additional toe joints. I was born quirkless. It was All for One who made me kill my entire family, and then came to 'save me' from the aftermath. And I don't know what sort of fucked up plan he had for me, but I don't care. I'm done being his puppet. I'm done being anyone's puppet. For the first time in my life, I'm free."
Then he dusts the TV monitor. He really doesn't want to hear Garaki's voice anymore.
Without Recall, the PLF's supervillains were now grounded. Tenko had to get out before the whole place comes down. And before some of the heroes try to arrest him.
Hopefully he would run into someone who would at least give him time to explain before beating him up for being a traitor.
(***)
Overhaul almost made it to the bomb when he saw Dabi walk towards him from the end of the corridor.
Reinforcements. Fucking finally. Muscular seemed to have been taken down, but All Might lost contact with Overhaul and was currently busy trouncing through whatever cannon fodder
populated the base.
The ground was still shaking regularly. And guessing from the pillar of fire that he saw through the window a minute ago - pillar of fire centered on what was the main noumu storage facility - Endeavor was here as well.
Network was barely operational. Mechanist was too busy using his combat form to battle (or, more like, hold back and narrowly so) Best Jeanist to repair it. Liberator and Glassmaker were god knows where, Purity was supposedly taken down, and…
Fuck. Beast wasn't here, and neither were his few S-Ranks. Re-Destro didn't send anyone, because he was supposed to do this right before the battle. Purity only had Deathmonger with her, because Purge, Long Step and Infection were, similarly, only supposed to be sent in right before the attack. They were needed elsewhere.
Heroes attacking 24h before the schedule was a nightmare scenario.
At least Dabi was there.
"Dabi, come with me!" Overhaul yells. "We need to release the gas, now!"
"Bad news, Overhaul." Dabi replies. "Someone's already destroyed it."
What? HOW? WHEN?!
"Who?" Overhaul pauses his frantic run. Apparently, he has nowhere else to run to. "Who did this?!"
"I did." Dabi replies. Overhaul has just enough time to realize that Dabi betrayed them all before the fire comes.
(***)
Doctor Garaki goes beyond the conventional meaning of the word 'furious'. Tomura Shigaraki betrayed him! He betrayed All for One! And now the Paranormal Liberation Front's perfect trap for the heroes turned into a perfect trap for the villains.
He can't even deploy the noumus there. Recall was supposed to warp them in. And those who were already present inside are inoperable because someone/something was murdering the computer system of the base computer by computer. And the Mechanist was too busy fighting for his synthetic life to even try to repair it.
With Overhaul's chemical bomb and Recall out, and the heroes attacking before the supervillains were amassed in the base, all three secret weapons prepared for the battle were taken out of the picture.
Re-Destro was taken aback by it as well. Garaki decided to try to salvage as much as he could.
He got Kurogiri warp Revenant - his greatest creation - to the very edge of the warp coordinate scramblers that the heroes deployed around the PLF's base.
Revenant had a simple mission.
Slaughter All Might and as many pro heroes as he can.
He had all the power needed for that.
(***)
Tenko Shimura ran into a small child who looked sad, terrified and cornered - and was begging for help. A relatively normal outcome during a villain versus hero battle, and that's what was happening around them.
However, Tenko Shimura recognized that particular small child. So he promptly kicked it in the face.
"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Liberator yells while trying to stand up. His broken nose is bleeding. A knife appears out of nowhere in his hand.
He doesn't look remotely as surprised by Tenko suddenly kicking him into a wall as Tenko expected. Did Garaki manage to put out a warning about his betrayal?
Liberator is, in the end, an ambush predator. This time he has no bomb planted around, no tricks prepared. There was a reason why he was pretending to be a run-away victim, his standard way of avoiding police and hero manhunts. He only manages to slash Tenko badly in the chest (but it's only a surface wound) before he is promptly detained.
That's when Gran Torino storms into the hallway.
"TENKO!" He yells, clearly beyond himself in righteous fury. "How could you?!"
Tenko suddenly realizes that he is currently towering over a beaten up child, with all but a single finger on his head. And Gran Torino clearly didn't get the memo about Tenko's betrayal being a false one.
Well, fuck. He is going to need a Nat 20 on a persuasion roll to fix this mess.
"IT'S NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE!" Tenko yells back. "I can explain!" He adds after a second, because honestly, he couldn't decide what line to use. Both are rather staple bits of dialogue in a situation like this.
Gran Torino freezes. For several seconds. He must be thinking rather intensely about something.
Finally he arrives at the conclusion.
"It was all a ploy?" He asks. Someone connected the dots about Eri being there.
"Yes." Tenko replies. "And that kid is Liberator." He is happy that he ran into that villain, because he is acutely aware that he needs to boost his Fame stat after that whole betrayal stunt.
Gran Torino suddenly deflates. It's as if his entire anger evaporated from him.
"I'm going to kill him." Gran Torino replies. Tenko is almost certain that it isn't about him, nor about Liberator. "Now, come. We need to get out of here."
(***)
Mechanist flares up the machine gun once again. He could as well not bother at all. One of Best Jeanist's fibers grabs the mechanical arm upon which the gun rests and pulls it sideways. Then, to avoid ricochets, he tears it off entirely.
Mechanist's entire mechanical body is restrained. Jeanist must have upgraded his arsenal with some carbon nanofibres, because according to the cyborg's calculations, he should be able to free himself easily.
"Are you going to surrender?" Best Jeanist asks.
"No/Denial." Mechanist replies and begins to power up this remotely-controlled body's self-destruct sequence. He also promptly severs the connection.
Resulting explosion wounds Best Jeanist badly, and knocks him out of the fight. Small success for the PLF.
More like pyrrhic victory, really. Without Mechanist around, it can forget about retaking control over their internal communication network.
(***)
Overhaul versus Dabi is a nasty and brutal fight, but eventually Kai Chisaki manages to disengage. He rewrites the burns back into their healthy state.
There were a lot of burns to heal. Dabi was a pain in the ass. And a very good match-up against him, quirkwise.
The base is either burning, or collapsing or disgustingly hero-filled. There is nothing more to salvage from it.
Overhaul decides that it's time to retreat. Thankfully, most of the Quirkless Liberation Front assets weren't here either. Mostly because the PLF leadership thought that the quirkless runts were going to be useless in their little battle of quirked juggernauts.
Idiots. All of them.
He uses his quirk to dig a tunnel out of the area. He manages to escape, with heroes none the wiser.
(***)
Glassmaker - leader of the House of Glass, one of Japan's biggest remaining criminal syndicates - battles Edgeshot for exactly seven minutes. Her quirk - manipulation of glass - has a lot of fuel around her and acts as an easy counter to Edgeshot's irritating instant knock-out attack.
All she has to do is cover herself in hermetic glass armor. It doesn't have to be very thick, Edgeshot really isn't the most directly powerful of heroes. And she has enough skills to periodically open a small hole to breathe some for fresh air, the opening too small and brief for Edgeshot to take advantage of it.
Frankly, she is beating him up. Which is probably the one and only thing that's going according to plan today.
Then even this is thrown out of the window because she gets to see someone looking like All Might being punched through a nearby building.
Glassmaker survived the Great Crime Purges of All Might (in the aftermath of All for One's demise) mostly by knowing when to fold. All Might being nearby (even if he is getting beaten up by someone - perhaps especially so) is a sign that it's time to leave.
She takes advantage of Edgeshot being too beaten up to try to stop her and promptly vanishes from the battlefield.
(***)
All Might stands up. He is still slightly dazed, but he recovers quickly (One for All is more than just power amplification - endurance and to a degree healing is boosted as well).
He has no idea what hit him. One second he was dispatching some thugs with ease, another one he was suddenly flying through a building.
Or, buildings. He flew through at least two.
What the hell?
"Still standing. Huh." He hears a voice. Something in it is familiar. Disgustingly so. "Guess you still have some strength left."
He looks up to see a figure floating there. But that's impossible. He killed him. He broke his head in his bare hands.
"All for One?!" He can feel the fury overtaking him. He has no idea how his archnemesis survived their battle, but he knows that he is going to end it this time.
Probably. He sees no wounds on him. Was he healed back to his full strength? If so, then… things were looking pretty grim. And that's probably an understatement.
"Didn't expect to see me again, Toshinori?" He says with a mocking smirk on his face. "Air Cannon, Springlike Limbs, Power-Up times four, Strength Enhancement times four."
The resulting attack throws All Might through several more buildings that collapse in the process. He thinks that he is now out of the evacuated area of the Ward.
This is going to get really ugly.
(***)
I might make an earlier upload on Monday because honestly I'm already feeling death stares over the cliffhanger. Also I'm going to say that while you may think you have noticed a certain someone's fingers in the general chaos that the villain's plan devolved into, Izuku took Aizawa's words about no rescue missions to heart. Oh and just so we're clear, on AO3 there was a Tenko Shimura Isn't a Villain tag along. And there is also a Dead Sensei tag along. Good luck trying to figure out what the heck just happened in the light of that discovery.
For now, just sit down and enjoy the messy gambit pile-up. It's not until chapter 36 that most of the chaos will be sufficiently explained. You're in for a wild ride, let me tell you that much.
I'D ALSO LIKE TO ANNOUNCE TWO THINGS.
THING NUMBER ONE: I HAVE DONE A ONE-SHOT. FEEL FREE TO GIVE IT A READ.
THING NUMBER TWO: I have found a BNHA discord server that isn't making me feel like I'm on the verge of being banned due to being unawarily rude to people. Not very big, and a big chaotic at times, but I got a channel for my works and that's nice. So if you want to discover that your favourite author is lowkey a di... I mean, learned his human interaction skills from the characters from the If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device series, feel free to drop by. Invite code is gbfkJFc9GK
Actually f_k math, THING THREE: THERE ARE TWO MORE FICS IN THE SERIES, CURE TO EVIL IS SUPER COOL AND DEAD ON ARRIVAL IS APPARENTLY A BIT OF A VICTIM OF SO-SO TAGGING ISSUE AND I'VE BEEN TOLD REPEATEDLY THAT IT'S ACTUALLY VERY GOOD, SOME EVEN SAY THE BEST OF MY STUFF. Give it a chance, even if you aren't sure if the idea suits you, k?