Kind of didn't feel like updating this fic for a while because of rather bad reception. Then I got a TV Tropes page for it all of a sudden. So... well. Here we go again, even if it's obvious that it won't ever be popular on .
(***)
Kouta Izumi's stare is rather intimidating. That much didn't change since the Training Camp. The only big difference is that this time he doesn't try to kick Izuku in the balls. Which, all things considered, is an improvement.
It didn't work back then, as Midoriya had enough combat training to block it, but… who knows how dangerous Kouta was today.
"... I go by Jetstream nowadays" Kouta replies after a few seconds of awkward silence and moderately hostile stare.
A genuine villain name, huh. Kouta Izumi, it seems, has grown a lot during the past nine years.
"A reference to the water jet cutters?" Midoriya asks. Kouta nods. "Look like you've trained your quirk well, not really a surprise considering your current… company. Trumpet, I believe that we have enough time for a quick dinner."
Ragdoll is going to have a field day over this. And so will Pixie-bob, if she ever finds out.
(***)
The dinner was a high class one. Only four people present - Midoriya, Yaoyorozu, Izumi and Hanabata. The last one, naturally, didn't eat. Probably for medical reasons. Considering Trumpet's half-dead status, it wasn't surprising.
There was some very faint small talk while the food was still there. Only once most of it was eaten, did the serious talk start.
"So, excuse me for starting with this, but I'm just too curious." Midoriya says, a glass of wine in his hand. Kouta seems vaguely angry at only being allowed a glass of juice. "Why are you an MLA member? I think I have a good idea, but I'd like to have it confirmed."
"What's your idea?" Kouta asks back.
"It happened again, didn't it?" Midoriya replies. There is a flinch of anger mixed with pain on Kouta's face for a heartbeat.
"Yes." Kouta replies. "First I lost my parents… and then everyone kept acting as it was okay that they died and left me alone, because they died in the line of duty. Then Mandalay, Tiger and Ragdoll died… and it all happened again. Except this time a bunch of people also started treating me as if I was cursed. Is it really that surprising that I had enough of it?"
Trumpet doesn't comment. It's a teaching tactic. He lets Jetstream talk, lets him vocalize his own beliefs. It makes them sharper. Re-Destro did the same with Midoriya all those years ago.
"Not really, no." Midoriya admits. "Pixie-bob's… situation has also contributed, hasn't it? I must say that I didn't think that she had it in her."
"What happened with the Pussycats changed her." Kouta shrugs. "New Vigilante Alliance are just villains pretending to be heroes, or heroes pretending to be villains. One more proof that the distinction between them is just semantics that people get killed for."
He really grew up, at the very least in vocabulary. He was a prime extremist material back then. Now he was clearly a fully-developed extremist. Still lacking a few years to become a proper menace to society, yes. But it was an inevitability at this point.
"So you decided to end the distinction." Midoriya says, and Kouta nods. "Makes sense, considering the meta-liberation ideology's end-goal." He adds thoughtfully. "I heard that you escaped from the foster home and vanished."
"Unrestricted access to the internet…" Kouta replies. "... sometimes makes angry teenagers encounter political radicals."
Ah, that's how they recruited him. MLA remnants probably fished for potential recruits that way. A perfectly logical strategy, especially for an organization down on its luck.
"Kouta proved himself to be smart and driven." Trumpet comments. "Not to mention having a powerful meta-ability that he honed diligently for years. The rest was… mostly repeating the same words that Re-Destro told you." Midoriya realizes what he refers to almost immediately.
"Those words being…?" Yaoyorozu asks. Thus far she was mostly content observing the talk, clearly thinking things over. Recalculating her plans and personal profiles in light of the new information.
"He told me that revenge is a good motivation, but shouldn't be the goal." Midoriya replies. He isn't exactly happy about sharing them with her. Hopefully it won't change anything further down the line. "That if I merely focused on destroying the hero society, both succeeding and failing would be my undoing. That I needed a solid idea of what I want to replace it with before it comes crashing down." He sighs. "I wish he said the same words to Entropy."
"We both know…" Trumpet replies with a hint of sadness in his voice. "... that she wouldn't listen." He is, unfortunately, correct.
"And your solid idea…" Yaoyorozu's eyes narrow down on Midoriya. "... was the meta-liberation ideology?"
"Is that really so surprising?" Midoriya replies, his brow raised and a glass of wine in his hand. He postponed sipping from it for a moment to voice his reply.
"In your case?" Yaoyorozu replies. "Yes, quite so." Ah, yes. She only just discovered that he might not be quirkless (might - because it could have been a lie to fool the MLA). But he still lived that way for most of his life. That was…
"If I tried to be an extremist like Geten, maybe." Midoriya shrugs. "Those looked down on the quirkless more than a societal average. I'm a staunch moderate. At least in ideology. Means of introducing it to the world are something else entirely."
"I still fail to picture it." Yaoyorozu admits. "After Aldera, after Bakugou, after that pathetic excuse of an entrance exam, you just… go along with it? With some 'might makes right' nietzschean wannabes?"
"It's a common misconception." Trumpet replies. Midoriya decides that drinking from his glass is more important. He is more of a tea person, but he has to admit that Koku Hanabata's choice of wine is as good as ever. Even if he probably can no longer taste it. "Kouta, my boy. Are you willing to correct it?"
Some more ideological training. Perfectly sensible, in Midoriya's opinion. He is ready to sit that out for once. He's genuinely interested in what the modern MLA and its possible future Grand Commander is up to nowadays.
"Claims that the MLA's victory was going to change the country into some quirk-based societal hierarchy, with stronger ruling over weaker, was HPSC's counterpropaganda." Kouta replies. "We seek to abolish quirk laws, not laws forbidding assault and theft. Not property laws."
"The quirk laws…" Yaoyorozu replies, but Kouta doesn't let her finish.
"... are an atrocity." Jetstream cuts in. "It's been more than two centuries since the Dawn of Quirks, but our entire society is built on the foundation of ignoring that fact. It's simply stupid."
In Midoriya's opinion, he should work on the hostile stares. Trying to persuade people while staring at them like that won't work too well in Midoriya's opinion. But he clearly has a spirit, and Revenant (or, to go by his old MLA cryptonym, Notebook) agrees with him on principles.
Trumpet has his work cut out for him. He should also make Jetstream work on his vocabulary a bit more.
"The system has a point." Yaoyorozu seems genuinely distraught by having to defend it. "Wrong people are running it, and it's pretty much a dictatorship nowadays. That's the problem."
"The problem is that the creation of 'villains' is inherent in the system." Kouta shoots back. "Time for a thought experiment. Imagine that you were born in a poor family with issues… and your own current and intellect. You don't make the cut for heroics. Because of said issues, or because you couldn't pay for the tuition. What do you do?"
"I use the intellect to get a normal job." Yaoyorozu replies. Superficially correct, although in Midoriya's opinion she's dodging the right answer.
"Yes, working eight hour shifts every day for the rest of your life." Kouta shoots back. "In a company of people most of which you think to be stupid, knowing well enough that you could earn all the money you wanted with your quirk, without having to leave your house. How long until you break? How long until you start breaking the quirk laws to earn some money? And what if something happens to a person close to you, and you'll suddenly need a lot of money to help them?"
Yaoyorozu opens her mouth to respond. Midoriya decides to intervene, putting the wine glass back for a moment.
"Before you reply, a fun statistic." He says. "Do you remember your childhood? Before All Might fell? The Era of Peace that All for One ended in Kamino? It was peaceful, wasn't it?" She nodded, staring at him questioningly. "The crime stats during that time fell to record low since the Dawn of Quirks. Which was, depending on the crime in question, anywhere from 110 to 346% of the stats from the times before quirks."
Yaoyorozu appears briefly shocked. Yes. The era of quirks habituated people into treating villain attacks with indifference. Midoriya remembers seeing Kamui Woods and Mt Lady battle a gigantified villain, years ago. That one battle caused more crime-related collateral damage than many pre-quirk towns saw in years - and people were just calmly watching it.
You can be habituated into accepting horror with calm indifference. You can also be habituated into treating most of the supervillain activity as entertainment, especially for hero nerds. But the crime was still there.
"Most of that because we're denying people the opportunities they are born with." Kouta takes the lead again, before Yaoyorozu manages to digest what she just heard. It's not common knowledge, after all. "We tell people born with wings to walk to work, instead of making laws regulating the issue of flying within urban areas. We tell people that can manufacture goods for almost no cost to go to work at a cash register their whole life. And then, when they finally snap, we send heroes against them, so that we can glorify them on TV as protectors of the country." He flinched angrily. "And then people die."
That's how he evolved then, Midoriya concludes. From hating the division between villains and heroes - as just two groups of people with quirks, killing each other - to hating the system that created the division. Kouta Izumi grew up. He's going to be a fantastic villain in a few more years.
Solid S-Rank. Perhaps higher. He has the drive, skills and smarts to get there. He trained his quirk diligently since he was six years old, for much longer than most of the people that end up populating the hero schools.
The only question is whether the MLA stays afloat long enough for him to get there.
"My ideal country…" Midoriya decides to add. After all, he knows Kouta's ideology. Kouta's end-goal. It's only right to make him know his own. "... would still have heroes. Only a handful, those with particularly powerful quirks. People like you, Frostfire or Hypothermia. The last resort in case of war, a natural disaster or a true villain attack. The rest… What was the point of Uraraka going to a hero school, Yaomomo?"
"What?" Momo is taken off-guard again.
"Why did she have to get through years-long special education covering details of criminal law and a variety of combat training?" Midoriya replies. He feels vaguely bad about having that talk without her, but… she would simply agree with him, regardless of what he said either way. "Why couldn't she simply use her quirk openly in Uraraka Constructions' service? Why couldn't she earn the money that way? And if she wanted to help people, couldn't she simply sign up to a local fire department and use her quirk alongside standard equipment there?"
What he doesn't add is 'if she did that, All for One would never notice her existence', but… deep inside it might be one of the major reasons. Does Yaoyorozu realize it? Probably.
"Because letting quirks be used without strict regulations would break the economy." Yaoyorozu points back. Which is a valid point of criticism, even Midoriya recognized that much. "Her quirk would lower the costs of transporting goods to the point where other companies couldn't even try to rival it, and…"
"And what?" Kouta, surprisingly enough, cuts in. "What's the difference between that and some company getting a good contract on cheap resources that helps it dominate a local market? What's the difference between that and some larger companies being able to offer lower prices, still getting enough income to squash their smaller rivals out? What's the difference between that and some building company managing to hire a particularly brilliant architect that makes their construction desirable enough to expand? What's so unique about meta-abilities that we need a special set of laws that forbid using them in public? And, to an even greater degree, when earning money is involved?"
"Personally I think that this law is a relic of times when meta-abilities WERE unique." Midoriya comments. "When only a handful of people had them. Pretending that they aren't a thing now that almost everyone has them is, basically, a form of madness that only lawmakers are capable of."
"You would have given said lawmakers a lot of power." Momo is clearly not done with the subject. "The amount of legal mess that unregulated quirks would cause would be simply insane. And that's if you completely ignore the economic chaos that would accompany it."
"The mess and chaos would only be there because we've waited for too long." Midoriya replies. "Meta-abilities should have been unregulated bit by bit through the last two centuries, just as they became less and less rare. Allowing the system to transition smoothly from pre-quirk to post-quirk form. Instead we've simply kept pretending that nothing has changed for too long. Meta-abilities are only growing stronger with every generation, Yaomomo. Do you think that we can keep the system with its inherent villain creation going if in three to four generation we start getting ten times as many Frostfires', Counterfeits' and Hypothermias' as we do now?"
That argument finally connects. Yaoyorozu is thinking it over deeply.
"Well, the good news is that we'll have to unregulate meta-ability usage at least in the field of construction companies when that happens." Trumpet comments. "Because, uuugh, we don't have enough heroes with meta-abilities useful in construction to be able to rebuild cities faster than they'll be destroyed."
Midoriya actually chuckles at that. Even Kouta has something resembling a smile bloom on his face for a moment.
"We also won't have to worry about the Quirk Singularity." Midoriya decides to add. "Because our governments and economies will collapse under continuous battles between powerful heroes and villains long before that happens."
"What about some form of quirk licenses?" Yaoyorozu seems to have been… maybe not convinced, but certainly influenced by the arguments of the people in front of her. "Something to widen the pool of legal quirk uses, without unregulating everything and risking anarchy?"
"Good luck doing even that without a civil war." Trumpet comments from the side. "Trust me, we've tried. The post-Destro MLA switched into a full blown villainous organization only after trying to be more of an undercover grassroots movement, exerting pressure on the system by social campaigns towards deregulation of quirks and so on. Didn't work, mostly thanks to the government suppressing it and the population treating it as some sort of anarchist bullshit, if not a downright villainy enabling scheme."
HPSC was especially active in that field. It was a quintessence of the system, an organization dedicated to keeping it in its present form. The same form that - through support companies, advertisement, merchandise and whatnot - was a big source of money.
Marrying show business with law enforcement? It couldn't end well.
"Why would it work?" Midoriya sniggers. "Heroics are a massive business, a centerpiece of the system that no one wants to change. And if you try… you're clearly a villain supporter, aren't you? Who else would try to suggest that heroes aren't perfect if not a villain or someone supporting them? It's easier to fight those opposing it than to try to change anything. Especially if you were among those benefiting from it. Especially if the whole show business bit made people see everything in white and black. "
"Tell me about it." Trumpet groans. "Hearts and Minds Party wasn't actively speaking against the whole Hero Society, uugh, but merely pointing out flaws in the system and suggesting that some bigger reforms might be a good idea was enough to make all other parties form a sanitary cordon against us. No one would consider forming a coalition with us, even if we managed to win elections."
"Communists or outright anarchists? Not a problem." Midoriya cuts in. They were used to complaining about it back then. "Fascists or extreme nationalists? Tolerated. Hero-skeptics?" He and Trumpet let out theatrical gasps as if on cue. "The absolute horror."
Yaoyorozu is still giving them a weird look. Yes, they did stray off-topic a bit, but they didn't see each other for years. It was understandable to act like that, at least in Midoriya's opinion. Besides, it nicely summarizes the reasons for the MLA deciding to do things the hard-way.
"Returning to the subject: I'm a staunch moderate by MLA standards." Midoriya decides to humour Yaoyorozu. "Most moderates believe that an expanded system of quirk licenses is going to be a necessary stopgap measure now that the two centuries of a delay in freeing the meta-abilities have aggravated our societal issues. Precisely to avoid anarchy. The extremists want a total free-for-all and rule of the strong. You also have… let's call them centrists, people that are between the moderate and extreme wing. Most of which considers full or at least radical deregulation of quirks… done as soon as possible. Kouta is, I believe, a centrist."
He can scarcely imagine him being an extremist. Their line of logic made them sound like Muscular way too often. And he just doesn't give him a fellow moderate vibes, if he's to be honest.
"Yeah." Kouta nods. "We're far too deep into the problem by now. Trying to make small moves is pointless. We'll get as many people protesting against these changes as we'll get demanding them to be faster. So it's chaos either way, and probably the reforms being stalled or stopped entirely. Shock therapy will still mean chaos, but it's unavoidable either way. And we risk getting bogged down in politics less."
"Well, we're going to have to agree to disagree on the methods, I guess." Midoriya shrugs. Kouta seems to not be particularly horrified by it. "Trumpet? Something changed?"
"Not really, no." Hanabata replies. "Centrist, slightly moderate-leaning. Full deregulation, but not before making some logical fixes to our economic, uuugh, and legal system to weather the storm. It's better to swallow the bitter pill once and for all than to chew it in your mouth until it makes you retch."
"This still sounds like something that's going to make the system where being born with the right quirk will set you up for life." Yaoyorozu tries to counter them one last time. "Where those with strong quirks will be influential and powerful by definition. Where those with weak quirks will…"
"What are the prerequisites to become an S or SS-Rank hero, again?" Midoriya cuts in. Kouta nods slightly. "A lot of public service? Bootlicking the government? Or, chief among all, the strength of their quirks? And how many supervillains with 'weak quirks' do you know about, Yaomomo?" When she fails to respond, he shrugs. "It already works that way. Strong quirk gives you prospects that a weak one doesn't. People aren't born equal. The MLA is just trying to not be hypocritical about it."
Yaomomo is intellectually brilliant, but talking about politics isn't her forte. She left that part behind years ago. Midoriya is almost certain that she hasn't voted even once in her life. It's clear that she was chased into a corner as a result.
"But enough about politics." Midoriya decides to ease it a bit. "It's a three-on-one fight, so not very sportly. In such a setting you could win even if your position was the stupidest of them all, simply by numerical superiority. So let's consider it a presentation of our positions rather than an honest debate." Kouta and Trumpet nod. Yaoyorozu does the same after a few seconds of thoughtful silence. "We have a future to talk about. I'm genuinely surprised that you managed to gather so many influential people into the MLA's new board of executives, Trumpet. Especially after the MLA lost a war."
"I didn't do that." Trumpet replies. "That was, well mostly, his work." Midoriya's eyes grow wider.
"You're kidding." One more thing that Midoriya didn't expect from that meeting. "The Second Circle was real?!"
"I'm out of the loop here." Yaoyorozu decides to cut in. "Second Circle?"
"Re-Destro's back-up plan." Trumpet decides to elaborate. "Despite all our preparations we couldn't be sure that we'll win. So, just in case of Re-Destro being defeated just as Destro was, we prepared a completely separate network of meta-liberation ideology supporters in influential positions. It was, naturally, minuscule when compared to what we had officially going. Only about fifty of our comrades, none of them even remotely close to the influence that we, the First Advisors, once held."
"That's… both incredibly clever and incredibly paranoid." Yaoyorozu says. Midoriya can't agree enough.
"You approach things differently when you are the head of a two-centuries long conspiracy, Miss Yaoyorozu." Trumpet replies. "They remained in hiding during the second half of the Paranormal Liberation War, slowly building-up their influence. When the Haiboro Woods happened, they attempted to rescue as many of the MLA members as possible. Becoming the new MLA leadership. They even managed to rescue me."
"And they just… gave you the seat of the commander?" Yaoyorozu doesn't add any form of 'to a half-dead man that was out of the loop for like a year due to being in a medical coma?' but it's clearly audible.
"The MLA values tradition." Trumpet replies. "And I still carried a lot of information that they weren't privy to. We would have kept many more of our comrades in action if I wasn't unconscious during the crucial time of post-war clean-up." He sighs. Yeah, that probably complicated Midoriya's situation.
"Speaking about it…" Midoriya says. "How many warriors can you add to the pool, Trumpet?"
"Good question." The scarred man replies. "I assume that fielding our executives is a bit… dangerous, as they are much more useful in their civilian personas. This leaves us with the lower-ranked lieutenants and regular warriors. I do not have the numbers on me, but I can estimate that we can field up to five hundred combatants. Unfortunately, we're way behind the level that you were used to back then. There is no Detnerat Company to construct support tools for us. Getting field training is also much more difficult."
"That's… less than I hoped for, but more than I feared." Midoriya replies honestly. "We have the resources and support engineers to alleviate the equipment situation. AND a place for you to train in. Second Circle isn't the only PLF urban legend that turned out to be true, Trumpet. Overlook exists."
"Oh." Hanabata lets out. "Oh, that's… spectacular. We're going to need at least a hundred warriors to keep our businesses floating, but the rest will be at your disposal, Grand Commander. Especially as I really look forward to seeing how far your quirk analyses and training regimens will bring them."
So does Midoriya.
"How are you going to bring them there?" Hanabata decides to ask another question. "Logistics of this are going to be a pain and probably the ideal moment for the heroes to spot something ami…"
"Don't worry about it." Midoriya cuts in. "We have a warper. Stronger and more precise than Kurogiri was."
The pained smile blooms on Trumpet's face. It's accompanied by a slightly murderous smile on Kouta's face.
"This war…" Trumpet eventually says. "... is going to be beautiful."
He is oh so very right.
(***)
In the end, there is one more meeting afterwards. It's a brief one. An eye to eye (if you can use that term for Trumpet) meeting between Trumpet and Revenant. Yaoyorozu is told to join Hypothermia and Singularity. Kouta is told to go with them and return in a few minutes.
"So…" Trumpet asks once everyone leaves. "...what's the true reason for your return?"
Of course Midoriya didn't fool him. He could fool everyone else, but not someone who got to know him well enough. Back then and among the MLA, where Midoriya stopped wearing masks.
"Why do you think I had any?" Midoriya asks regardless. "That I didn't simply wait for years, waiting for the government to redirect its attention elsewhere?"
"Because the subsidiary groups would have lost much less of their power if you were in charge, even from the shadows." Trumpet replies. "Giving you much more assets to use once the time is right. So, I take it that something happened to you after Haiboro. That you've given up for some time, until something happened to you again."
"What Entropy was doing by the end… the PLF was doomed even before Haiboro." Midoriya replies. "Afterwards, I… I just had enough mass killing I guess. I focused on something else. I've spent years running an underground railroad. For complex mutants, the quirkless, people with quirks powerful enough to warrant the Paragon Program attention. You aren't…"
"I'm not going to blame you, Notebook." Trumpet replies. "Deika and Haiboro Woods broke many of our former companions. The way it broke you was probably one of the mildest. Many forget that, but Destro's MLA was doing something similar, just for quirk bearers in general." He sighs painfully. "What happened then?"
"The HPSC found one of our safehouses." Midoriya sees no reason to hide it. Not in his current company. "Kidnapped sixteen kids for the Paragon Program. Including my adoptive daughter."
Silence. Trumpet eventually speaks.
"And now you want to take her back… while also wanting to end what you started back then." He says. "As you feel like she would be safe if we managed to win back then. If there was no Paragon Program to endanger her."
"Yeah." Midoriya replies scarcely.
"That's a fine motivation." Trumpet admits. "Both heroic and villainous, in a way. Just remember what Re-Destro told you."
"I'm less worried about myself and more about you." Midoriya retorts. He IS dodging the subject. Quite a bit, in fact. And he is certain that Hanabata knows. "You don't look very good."
"I have, best case scenario, maybe a year left. Probably much less." Trumpet replies. "My entire body is breaking apart. Constant pain, bad enough that I have to be drugged to fall asleep. I get most of my nutrition through drips because even my digestive system is breaking down on me."
Shit.
"Trumpet, it's…" He takes a deep breath. "It's about my daughter. She has the world's most powerful healing meta-ability. She should be able, if we get her back, heal you. We could…"
Overhaul's quirk wouldn't work. Radiation sickness, especially at this stage, was a big no-no. Perfect counter to regeneration and most healing quirks, because whatever you brought back was only going to be even more messed-up on a genetic level. He had it tested years ago and…
"Midoriya…" Trumpet cuts in. "I lived in unbelievable pain for years. Do you think that I fear death?" Silence. Izuku is struck speechless for a moment. "I'd say that I look forward to it. The only thing that I truly fear is dying while thinking that all I did in life, the cause I dedicated myself to, the sacrifices we've made, the comrades we've lost… that it all meant nothing. You being here is enough of a miracle for me as it is."
"You'd still like to be healed, didn't you?" Midoriya decides to ask.
"Oh, but of course." Trumpet lets out a small smile. "That would be a welcome bonus. But what I truly want is the MLA rising from the ashes. Get your daughter back and win the war. Don't worry yourself with me, Midoriya. Prioritize properly."
That he can do.
(***)
The canon MLA is... kind of a letdown. It has a supposedly big brain leader that does dumb stuff. It's kind of a quirk supremacist group but aside from Re-Destro and Geten their quirks are typically weak af. It's kind of a political movement, but also a villain organization with almost cult-like trappings. It's... a letdown, as stated. Especially as their criticque of the society actually seems to more or less have a point if you think about it deeper. Which is something that I can't tell about League of Villains which is double the letdown.
IT EVEN STOLE ITS OWN IDEOLOGICAL PLATFORM FROM A GUY THAT PROBABLY HATES THEIR GUTS. With everyone but the leader believing more in that guy than it its leader. And they are all just a bunch of DnD-like murderhobos. Ugh.
Big Sad that the MLA sucks at doing anything about said society. It's so bad that Re-Destro (lacking legs and Claustro) gets whacked OFF-SCREEN by Edgeshot, wtf Horikoshi.
Letdown, as stated.
I've decided to change that. Time to make the MLA what it should be in canon if it wasn't a shounen where solution to all problems is DETROIT SMASH. And somehow even after Lady Nagant's revelations the UA gently ASKS THE HP FUCKING SC about letting Shinsou participate in the plan. Where they should instead tell it all to f_k off. And that's without mentioning heroes being used to quell a civil war at the making without the army showing up. And. While. Still. Trying. To. Apprehend. Enemies. Uhm. No. PLW Arc is cool for heroes having to fight villains like an equal but it's also where all the logic flies out of the window.
Might have went off-topic a bit but it's a sour spot.
Also the next chapter has Midoriya visit what's left of the Creature Rejection Clan. While being in a relationship with Tsuyu. Talk about awkward situations and potential murders.
The Second Paranormal Liberation War will start in chapter 15.