"Hourglass? Hourglass! Respond!" Porter yelled into his earpiece, with his hand to his head as he looked down. "Weston!"
"Looks like this thing isn't stopping. I thought you said your operative was supposed to be on that?" The flames on Endeavor's suit lit up to a higher intensity. Both Daybreak and Porter followed his gaze… and saw the bullet train approaching them rapidly. What remained of it, at least? The front had been blown off entirely, with the interior of the train clearly visible through the jagged hole of bent and broken metal.
"Gee, I don't know Todoroki, have you seen the front car anywhere?!" Porter spoke with sarcasm, absentmindedly using Endeavor's name out of stress, a habit ingrained in him from working with Daybreak. He honed his focus, running back to his car while pointing in various directions as he gave orders. "Focus on slowing it down! Civilians are inside. Be careful!"
"This isn't my first time stopping a train." Endeavor's flames surged, a jet of fire came from behind him, and he closed the distance rapidly. Pillars of concentrated flames came from his hands, hitting the tracks in the train's front. The metal bars ahead grew red hot, slowly melting into deformed motes of liquid steel. Endeavor continued this as he jetted alongside the train, keeping the tracks in front melted.
The train began slowing down noticeably, even after only a few seconds of Endeavor's work. Porter turned to Daybreak, who was instinctively suiting up, generating plates of fiery armor across her entire body, steadily growing in size. Porter had to yell over the clanking metallic sounds of armor fabrication.
"Daybreak, get Weston out of there! After that, help Endeavor stop the thing! I'll handle the defusal process!"
"Defusing what?!" Asked Daybreak.
"What do you think?! More nukes!" Yelled Porter, rushing towards the car.
Daybreak's eyes narrowed beneath her flaming helmet, steeled by Porter's words. Meanwhile, Endeavor's eyes widened. He started putting more power into his flames, increasing the friction between the train and the tracks.
"Did you just say 'nukes?!'" Yelled Endeavor. Porter flinched from the loud voice in his earpiece, as he dug through the car's trunk for his defusal tools and a black fire blanket.
"Hourglass confirmed that active nuclear armaments are on that train, don't melt anything you don't need to!"
Endeavor looked past the train, watching people jump off, despite now moving over one hundred meters per second, and slowing down at a gradual rate.
"Hmph. Wasn't planning on it!"
Having fully formed her armor, Daybreak triggered an explosion beneath her "boots," launching herself into the air, burning the grass around, and carving through the air, eventually landing on top of the train. Carefully balancing her weight to not throw the train off its tracks. She dug her flaming gauntlets into the sheet metal roof, letting the heat seep through and compromise the structural integrity, before throwing it to the side, and looking inside. Civilians scrambled, now not only trying to jump off, fearing what would happen if they stayed on, but now also looking up and seeing the huge suit of fiery armor. Several screamed, some jumping out the door, while others retreated further into the back part of the train.
Forward from the sears and closer to the shattered front car, Hourglass was unconscious, blood leaking from the wound in his chest.
Daybreak recoiled internally, fearing the life of her partner. The flames around her left arm calmed, to a temperature that would only give someone minor burns to touch, as she gently picked him up and jumped out of the hole she came in.
Unfortunately, as Daybreak landed in the grass surrounding the tracks, she realized she was much further from Porter than she anticipated.
The sound of a car forced her attention to her right, as a vehicle, Porter's rental, jumped over the bank and landed in the grass, driving alongside the train, barely keeping up. Daybreak immediately shed most of her armor, only retaining plating across her legs, as another explosion triggered breath, propelling her in a curve that was heading straight towards the car. Shedding the rest of her armor mid-air, she landed on the roof with a thud, causing a slight change in the direction Porter was driving in. Hourglass still slung across her shoulder, the size difference between them making him awkward to hold. Melting the roof of the car, she embedded her boots into the metal, bending over towards the side. Igniting her arms, she melted the joints of the car door, before forcibly ripping it off completely, and shifting her momentum to send herself, and Hourglass, inside.
Daybreak let out the breath of air she didn't realize she was holding in, looking down at her injured partner, and then back to the train narrowly speeding past them. Endeavor was somewhere near the front, she figured, desperately trying to slow it down.
She laid Hourglass down on one of the seats, and started digging around for something, anything, she could use to help him.
"Daybreak, you need-"
"Hourglass is injured. He needs medical attention!"
"You don't-" Porter cut himself off, glancing back to Porter, seeing the massive, impaled metal shard embedded in his chest, and then back to the long stretch of grass in front of him. "Not again… Daybreak, Remember the process of cauterization? Cut off the pieces of metal outside the wound, but do not pull metal out! Finish by burning the wounded area to stop the bleeding! After we get these nukes defused, Endeavor will get him to a hospital!"
Daybreak had a worried look on her face, following Porter's instructions as she cut off the metal and applied her quirk to the wound. "... Will he make it?"
Porter sighed. "I hope so… Now go!"
Daybreak acrobatically moved back to the top of the car, once again burning a hole in the rough to make a handhold, and flipping on top. The train was slowing down more and more, and Porter's car moving at its max speed could now keep up. As fiery armor generated back onto her body, she looked between the car and the train rapidly, knowing she had to make the jump. Despite the train's decreasing velocity, it was still going faster than she could run, and her explosive jumps required disintegrating armor she didn't have.
Porter seemed to silently read this, maneuvering his car closer to the train, and motioning out the window, probably saying something inaudible in the rushing wind.
"This is the closest I can get!" Right, an earpiece. In the midst of panic, Daybreak forgot she had one in, linked to both of her squad mates. "Endeavor, you said you've stopped a train before, right? Direct Daybreak as you see fit. I have no idea how long until those bombs go off, so we need to do this quickly!"
"Acknowledged. I don't know the exact mechanics of your quirk, but if you still have the strength you fought me with earlier, get to the back of the train and start pulling. Dig your boots into the railing and generate as much force in the opposite direction as you can!"
"On it!" Shouted Daybreak, who with a smaller explosion, projected herself to the roof of the train, landing and stabilizing her momentum by burning into the metal. Decreasing her temperature to not melt it down any further, she ran across the roof, flipping down and hanging onto the side as she reached the end, gauntlets burning holes into the train.
"Alright, starting now-" Daybreak interrupted herself as the reference frame of the ground finally caught up with her. It didn't occur to her until now that the ground was moving away just as fast as the train was moving forward. This was, admittedly, an extremely obvious detail in hindsight, but in the mess of adrenaline and concern for her partner, Daybreak lost her composure upon contacting the ground.
Losing grip of the train with one of her arms, Daybreak slid down, barely gripping on with the other arm, as the flames surged from her gauntlets, melting the metal she grabbed onto. Thinking quickly, and adjusting to her new position, Daybreak materialized a chain of fire with a hook on the end. Pointing her free arm forward, an explosion triggered, sending the chain forward and hooking it into the side of the train, where she used it to generate leverage, pulling herself in and regaining her grip.
Without describing her predicament, she once again let her boots down to slow down the train. The rails below tore apart and were thrown back in red hot clumps as the armor dug into it. The sound was deafening, audible even through the raging flames of Daybreak's helmet.
Combined with Endeavor melting the tracks, the train decelerated faster and faster, until coming to a complete stop only a moment later. Concerned civilians threw open doors, running out… and gaining hope upon seeing Endeavor, not knowing who these two other heroes were, but knowing that if they were working with him, he probably had the situation under control.
Porter's car slid to a stop nearby, and he jumped out, running over to meet with the other two near the demolished control car in the front with a toolbox in hand. He ran past, jumping onto the train. Endeavor took notice, following him, shouting something in Japanese to disperse the crowd of escaping civilians.
"I could get used to having a pro hero around, good for controlling people." Porter said, as he opened the maintenance hatch on the floor and took a look inside.
His eyes widened.
He ran over to another part of the train, Daybreak and Endeavor watching inquisitively as he opened several more maintenance hatches…
With several more warheads inside of them.
All the cylindrical devices bore green plating with complex markings and patterns across them, bearing the distinctive, universal nuclear symbol used for centuries and until this day.
All the cylindrical devices bore green plating with complex markings and patterns across them, bearing the distinctive, universal nuclear symbol used for centuries and up until this day.
All the cylindrical devices bore green plating with complex markings and patterns across them, bearing the distinctive, universal nuclear symbol, used for centuries and up until this day.
"There's so many- there's so many, why is there so many…?" Porter muttered to himself. He turned to the group and sighed. "I- I can't diffuse all of these. They're all welded to the ground. It would take me hours!"
"These are all nukes, right?" asked Endeavor, crossing his arms. "What kind of explosion are we looking at if these go off?"
"If the group hasn't made any advances, these are fifteen megatons of tee-en-tee each. There's around fifty nukes here-"
Endeavor and Daybreak paused at the absurdity of that number, while Porter continued.
"If detonation occurs, we're looking at a casualty count above ten million." Porter put down his toolbox, opened it, picked up a kind of laser, and started cutting a square hole in the nuke. "Blast radius would cover… a non-zero percentage of Japan. Windows in Tokyo are burst, anything burnable, including people, in Odawara catch fire, buildings in Fuji are knocked down, Shizuoka and everyone in it is just… gone, disintegrated in an instant by the fireball…" Porter set down the laser and with huffing, ripped out a piece of mangled wiring, with a display attached. Porter rolled it in his hands, looking it over.
"We've got… four minutes, that's not enough time but-"
Endeavor was noticeably sweating, a feat when the flames from his costume usually evaporated water. In a rare moment, he was actively losing his composure. "I- I need to issue an evacuation order! We can minimize casualties if-!"
Porter shot up, looking towards Endeavor. "Are you out of your fucking mind?! The blast radius is over two-hundred kilometers and you think you can evacuate?! If you yourself put all your energy into moving as fast you could, you might escape the blast radius completely, but anyone else? Me? Fields? The people living in Fuji, Tokyo, Odawara, do you think they can escape?!"
Endeavor didn't respond. Porter looked down, hand on his forehead. "No- no, we need to focus on defusal… if only that incompetent bastard didn't get himself impaled!" He lowered his hand to his eyes. "God damnit Weston…"
Porter's head shot up. He moved his gaze back to Endeavor and spoke rapidly. "Todoroki, how precisely can you control the temperature of your fire, and how high can it get?"
"Within about five centigrade, and up to two-thousand-two-hundred-and-sixty-one. Why?"
"That… that could work-" Porter crouched down again, picking up the laser and maximizing the power on it, burning through the weld and fully exposing the nuke. He motioned Daybreak to come help pick it up, as it slammed down onto the floor of the train. "The people who make these nukes know who we are, and what we're trying to do. They've introduced a mechanism that will cause a detonation if their external temperature reaches a certain degree, just so Daybreak can't burn them." Porter continued combing over the cylindrical warhead, marking various things with his laser. "She can go higher than the temperature I mentioned earlier, but only for periods lasting seconds. What we need is over a minute of exceedingly hot fire, and a *lot* of it." Sheathing the laser, he looked toward Endeavor one last time. "I've seen videos of you fighting. This… 'Prominence Burn,' if Daybreak uses her plating to protect you from your own flames, do you think you could sustain it for a minute straight? That should disintegrate every nuke here. The fissile core of every nuke should be fine, but the detonation mechanisms would burn, disabling them."
Endeavor thought for a moment, taking valuable time, before looking down and sighing. "Looks like we don't have much of a choice, do we? Not enough time to clear out every civilian, not enough time for my hero agency to evacuate the area. Innocent people will be caught in the attack."
"The lives of the few for the lives of the many, Endeavor. You've absolutely dealt with moral decisions like this before. I'm sure you can handle the necessary casualties."
Endeavor solemnly nodded in agreement. Porter nodded back, and they all broke off. Endeavor and Daybreak moved to the back of the train, while Porter shouted evacuation orders in Japanese to anyone nearby, which Endeavor confirmed.
While the crowd disappeared, Daybreak put her hand to Endeavor's side, and started transferring her plating towards him. It had been a while since she used this technique. Anything she wanted to protect with it usually couldn't handle the heat of her armor.
Endeavor started focusing, holding his arms to his side, closing his eyes, and taking a breath in, keeping it in for a second, and breathing out, his breath catching fire as it left his mouth. Stabilizing his emotions, despite the looming threat of nuclear annihilation, Endeavor yelled out, surging a torrent of flames around his newly generated armor.
Hourglass woke up with a start, instinctively activating his quirk, and, once again, being snapped out of it by the immense pain radiating from his chest. He let out a yelp and grasped his bandage. A solid splat of dark crimson blood stained the white cloth, and he laid back down.
Across from him, Porter sat reading a newspaper.
"A newspaper…? Did I wake up in the past…?" Hourglass let out a pained snicker.
Porter sat up, closing the newspaper and staring at Hourglass.
He was angry.
It was rare for Porter to be angry and usually had to be brought on by something huge happening. A mission failure, loss of a high value target, an untracked nuclear bomb, a high threat quirk unaccounted for-
"Before you ask. The mission was a success, no thanks to you." Porter tossed the newspaper down to Hourglass' lap, who picked it up, opened it, and started reading. While most of it was in Japanese, sections were in English, and readable to him.
"Looks like… everything went according to plan? I like the part about vigilantes. I think you'd make a fine one, Porter." Hourglass risked a lot making a joke here. Porter responded by kneading his temples and sighing.
"What the hell is wrong with you? Be honest here. Have you been drinking again? Because that's the only explanation I can come up with for your idiotic plan, that you weren't even able to complete before being impaled by your own incompetence." Porter didn't raise his voice, but he kept up a commanding tone while he chewed out his subordinate.
"..." Hourglass couldn't get a word out.
Porter started pacing around the room. "'Evacuate every civilian off of a bullet train?' What the hell was that?!" Now Porter was yelling. "Do you have any idea how many nuclear bombs were on that train? Any idea whatsoever?!"
"F-fifty three…" Hourglass stuttered out.
"Fifty-fucking-three! That's half of the US nuclear stockpile! That's more nukes than in the entirety of Europe combined! An explosion of this scale wouldn't just obliterate a city, Weston, it would obliterate Japan itself!"
"You've always told us to prioritize secrecy first." Hourglass regained his composure, now actively arguing with his commanding officer.
Porter responded by getting right in his face. "Secrecy goes out the goddamn fucking window when there's an imminent country busting explosion!" He backed off, sighing. "You're extremely lucky that both Samantha and Todoroki could synergize their quirks to melt them all before detonation. Do you want to know how close we were? Forty seconds." Porter stood near the door, holding his arm against it while looking down. "Endeavor will be commanding your next mission, raiding one last factory here in Japan. Meanwhile, I have nearly three metric tons of plutonium to dig through in some black site in the middle of the Atlantic. Maybe I'll find the distributor, maybe I won't. That wouldn't be a maybe if you had just done your fucking job."
Porter turned to leave. "I'll be on call if you need me, 'Hourglass.'"
"Wait!" called out Hourglass. Porter turned back to him, wordlessly acknowledging his command and waiting, angrily, for Hourglass to continue. "I… I had the memory again…"
Porter stared for a few seconds before sighing and turning back around. "The one with your former partner?"
Hourglass nodded.
More seconds passed by. "It's your life. Figure it out, I'm not your goddamned therapist. I've already got one living liability on my team. I don't need two." With that, Porter walked out of sight, a door opening and closing in the distance.
Hourglass sat in silence, the blue blanket of the hospital bed draped over his lower body, contrasting the red stained white bandages across his chest. The slow beep of a heart rate monitor pinged next to him, pulsing with annoying regularity. A minute passed before he sighed, reaching for his phone on the table next to him, dialing in some numbers.
Putting in his password, scrolling past three notifications from Daybreak, one notification from an "Endeavor," and one more notification from… All Might? He tapped the phone icon and dialed in a number, slowly, the sedatives doing what they could to dull the pain from his impalement.
The silence was palpable between every single dial tone. The darkness of the room contrasting the beams of light cast the lamp to his side.
Finally, a voice.
"Hello?"
A woman's voice. Raspy, but still cheery, only distorted by the phone's speaker.
"... Hello? Anyone there?"
Hourglass wasn't sure what to say. How could one even start this conversation, anyway? After so long?
"H-hey Cass." He let out, stuttering his words.
"Daniel? Is that you?" There was surprise in her voice, and silence that followed soon after. Followed by, surprisingly, excitement. "Daniel! How the fuck have you been, dude? Man, it's been ages since we last spoke! Like, two, three years? You kinda went all 'scorched earth' with all your connections after getting that black ops job at the UN but… you know… would have been nice if we… met up for drinks now and then…" Her excitement turned to a tone of slight sadness.
Hourglass was welling up. He kept the tone of his voice steady, not letting his emotions change it.
"I'm sorry."
"Ah, it's ok man. It's not like you were my entire life. You know after I retired from the CIA, I had a brief stint where-"
"I'm… sorry…"
"I just said it was alright." Realization came upon Cassandra, and Hourglass noticed it without even seeing her. "Are you… ok, dude?"
"I never apologized to you… for what I did back then… back in Vermont…" Hourglass couldn't control it. He was choking on his own words.
"Well, I just sort of assumed you- I mean- uh… hey! It's fine! I knew you had your reasons for disappearing. I kept in touch with Henry, you know…"
"No, not about that!" Hourglass raised his voice, sighing as he continued speaking. "I meant the thing with the armored guy, Resh…"
Cassandra waited a few seconds. "Do you blame yourself for that, Daniel?"
Hourglass didn't respond.
"Daniel… you did what you thought was best, and that's what counts. Regardless of if what you did was the right choice, you made it under the impression of protecting me, the mission, and us. We got the data, I survived, and Resh hasn't been spotted in years. It was a complete success! So what if I took a hit or two?"
"Maybe you're right…" Said Hourglass, wiping the tears away. "I… messed up today. I'm not even sure if I can tell you about it-"
"My illustrious career with the CIA means I have some pretty insane clearance around this stuff. You can tell me."
"There were some nukes…"
"... Oh." Cassandra scoffed jokingly. "Well, you've that quirk of yours and probably a reliable team, I'm sure you-"
"Fifty-three of them."
"Wow, alright. I don't think I've ever seen that many at once, and I've been on a US submarine before… But it went well, right? Judging by the fact that I-" Cassandra stopped, fumbling around through the phone for something, before a sound came over the phone, a TV playing the news, in English with an American accent. "... can turn on the news and see that there weren't any countries vaporized today. Good job! Wait, you said you messed up-"
"My partners and I finished the mission, but it was… a bit of a shitshow."
"Tell me about it. Maybe I can offer my excellent wisdom, and tell you how to use your own quirk."
"Heh…" Hourglass let out a small laugh before telling his story. He started at the beginning, ordering coffee, boarding the train, discovering the explosives, and then trying to get everyone off so he could diffuse them. It was, admittedly, a stupid plan in hindsight. Maybe Porter was right, but that man rarely had to deal with adrenaline screwing up his ideas, as he sat most of the actual fight out while he gave orders from the back-line. That's not to say he didn't have experience. Porter hated desk jobs. He loved being as close to the action as humanly possible. He was a soldier, after all. It's the main reason he left the CIA: too much bureaucracy, too much paperwork, too much oversight, and not enough time actually making a difference in the world.
"Yeah, sounds like you fucked up alright-"
"Hey…"
"I mean, c'mon, not checking the front car for explosives? What happened to the professional 'Broken Hourglass' I used to know?" Even through Cassandra's accusatory statements, Hourglass realized that past it, she was bantering, joking, and having fun with a friend. She meant all of it, but in a way Hourglass could take in, a way he could understand.
"Yeah… I suppose I did…"
"But! Job's done, eh? That's what partners are for, to have your back when you need it."
"Partner… have I told you about my latest one?" Asked Hourglass.
"Nah, now's not the time, Hourglass. Because it's your turn to listen to my story! What I've been doing for the last three years!"
Hourglass snickered. "I suppose that's fair." He checked his phone's notifications, putting his phone on speaker and scrolling over to Daybreak's icon.
are you alright
hourglass i'm worried please respond when you can
porter called and said your surgery went fine, send me a text when you're up alright
endeavor and i are planning our next mission
hopefully the stakes in this one aren't as high
He cleared the two notifications from All Might and Endeavor, and set his phone on the table, relaxing as Cassandra told her story.
"A few months after you left, my recovery was going swimmingly, and my physical therapist recommended I try out for Paralympic shooting. After all, I had nothing but free time to hone my aim and keep getting better. So-"
"This seems a bit loud for what I usually do."
"What we did previously was 'a bit loud,' Daybreak." Said Endeavor. "Porter maintains secrecy because he has to. Me? I can just lie, say you're one of my sidekicks, and nobody will ever be the wiser. Hell, I can even add credibility by saying I hired you from your previous work as a vigilante. After all, the Prominence Burn story has almost certainly circulated throughout all of Japan."
The two stood in a large war room. Multiple massive monitors displayed various information, such as crime rates, locations of pro heroes, and social media feeds with certain tags. Between them, a large table with a holographic projection of their current location in Japan. Multiple locations of strategic interest, as well as the locations of his sidekicks, and the factory in question.
*Cutting edge tech, Porter would kill to have something like this back at the UN.*
"You know…" Endeavor placed his hands on the table, leaning forward. His posture sunk into the translucent projection, blocking pieces off and obscuring portions. "I almost bet this thing off in my fight with Hourglass." He looked down and smiled. "Glad I didn't, eh?"
"Let's focus on the mission…" Let out Daybreak.
*Why did he have to mention him… I hope he's okay…*
Endeavor straightened his posture. "Right." Looking down, he started pointing to various locations as the holographic projection repaired itself. "Sidekicks are positioned strategically throughout the city. Once we go in loud, they break the silence and evacuate any civilians. I'm going to enter the warehouse through the front door, make some noise, and cause a distraction. When I give you the signal, you're going to enter through the top of the warehouse… here. They'll be taken off guard and you'll be able to eliminate any resistance easily."
He sighed, preparing to say the next few words in a futile effort.
"If I may make a request, if you're going to work under me, we need to avoid any and all casualties. I can understand if your hands are tied, if someone has a weapon that can hurt you, use equivalent force. But Daybreak, you need to know something extremely important about this mission."
Daybreak crossed her arms.
"Only a few minutes after this mission starts, we're likely going to be on every news station from here to Korea. That means anyone you kill will gain you an *international audience*. You want to remain hidden in the shadows? Killing people on live television without remorse is a great way to completely eliminate any semblance of stealth."
Daybreak raised an eyebrow. Endeavor sighed in response. "If you're not going to do it for me, do it for your CO. The last thing he wants is to clean up your international incident of a mess."
"Anything else?" she asked, still showing barely any emotion in response to his requests.
"After we eliminate the opposition, we call in your backup, recover the nukes and plutonium, and… exit as heroes. You've never had a hero's exit, have you?" Endeavor put on a more snide tone of voice. "It's great, you should try it sometime."
"I don't care about the publicity of being a hero." Daybreak snapped back. "When are we leaving?"
"We can either wait for your partner to recover, or do it as soon as possible. Your choice."
Daybreak reached up and turned on her phone, looking at the notifications. She saw that Hourglass had read her messages, but not responded yet. The call of the void tempted her to send another, but she resisted, clicking the power button and sliding it back into the pockets of her cargo pants. She looked up at Endeavor, his sheer height over her making that literal.
"I'm going to go check on Hourglass, but you should plan to head over soon. Regardless of if he's with me or not, I'll head straight to the rendezvous at the designated time."
"Sounds like a plan, Daybreak." Endeavor put his hand out to shake hers, but in a strange way, like he was a Japanese businessman only used to bowing and now being forced to match the cultures of high-importance American CEOs. "Seems like this partnership will work out after all." He cracked a smile, an obviously faked one.
Daybreak turned to leave, not acknowledging his attempts at social conditioning.