MrDyzio - More like shadenfreude lol.
(***)
Okay, before we start, a disclaimer. The CRC are a bunch of murderous loonies. You aren't supposed to agree with them. If you do, please consider therapy. This chapter is here because I want to give them at least some... well, maybe not depth, but at least some... well, not spotlight. Attention, maybe? The PLF subsidiary groups are supposed to be a bit more than just a name, a brief 'they hate X' and that's all like in most of my fics. So this chapter is a result.
(***)
The chronologically second organization to have joined the original Paranormal Liberation Front was the Quirkless Liberation Front. Midoriya somehow found the name overlap kind of hilarious.
However, locating the QLF remnants was a pain in the ass. They hid really deep in the aftermath of the Haiboro Woods. Midoriya's Support Network/Underground Railroad had some connections with them, yes. They helped smuggle enough quirkless kids out of the country for that. However, Eclipse was a paranoid woman.
There was also the part where Midoriya forgot to mention that he was in charge of the Network. It would make things way too awkward. Midoriya felt alright with making QLF remnants think that Tenko Shimura was the leader of the Network.
Organizing THAT meeting was going to take a while. So, against himself, Midoriya decided to alter the sequence of events a bit.
Finding what was left of the Creature Rejection Clan was slightly easier. Not easy - they WERE in hiding, after all - but easier. Midoriya knew their current High Priest, even if they didn't meet during the last few years. He knew his way of thinking. He knew his methods.
They also shared some acquaintances. They, honestly speaking, could find each other if they truly wanted to. They knew each other's true identities. They both knew that the other was still alive.
Revenant was simply content not seeing Mastermind ever again. And vice versa. Knowing one of the country's top racists when running an organization helping the discriminated against isn't exactly helpful.
On the other hand, Mastermind knew better than to try fighting said organization. Because Revenant had no doubts about the fact that Yoshihiro Rai realized that it was Midoriya's new playground.
Still, once the situation changed, and Midoriya needed to organize a meeting, it wasn't that hard. Although Mastermind's choice of the location of the meeting was rather… questionable.
(***)
"A bar?" Midoriya asks when he is allowed inside. Not a single white robe in sight. It reminds him of the bar that Kurogiri had in Deika during the first half of the Paranormal Liberation War. "Really?"
It's empty. No one is manning the bar itself. The handful of bar visitors that certainly were a part of the CRC stayed outside. Together with Singularity and Quicksilver, his escorts for the mission. Mastermind was a cautious man. Although he also knew Revenant.
He knew that if Midoriya wanted his death, he would approach the issue completely differently. It was more of a manner of keeping up appearances.
Mastermind himself is sitting by the bar, with a mug filled with beer in front of him. He didn't change much. Short brown hair, black eyes, one year younger than Midoriya. He was… wonderfully nondescript.
It would be extremely easy to miss him in a crowd. He really didn't draw any attention to himself. CRC endorsing very human looks made most of their members look that way. It might have been two centuries into the quirks as a phenomenon, but the pre-quirk human form was still the default thing.
Not having it made you stand out. Not a lot of villains enjoyed standing out. They had their villain uniforms for that when they wanted it.
"Feels homey enough." Mastermind replies as Midoriya approaches the bar. "And unlimited access to alcohol is sometimes helpful." Looks like CRC wasn't doing particularly well if Mastermind sounded like an alcoholic.
There is a bar stool next to the one occupied by Yoshihiro. There is an empty mug there. And a few beer bottles of various brands.
The MLA greeted him with wine. The CRC greeted him with beer. Is QLF going to greet him with moonshine? Vodka? Whiskey? Because he is quite sure that the ISP will greet him with blood.
No one was getting the memo that Midoriya prefers tea, apparently.
"Understandable." He replies instead of complaining, taking the seat and pouring the contents of one of the bottles into the mug. "It's been a while since we've last seen each other, Yoshihiro."
"Yeah, when was it again?" Yoshihiro pretends to have problems recalling it. "A week before Haiboro?"
"Something like that." Midoriya agrees. "We made quite a good trade. A murder for a murder. Truly, an exchange of favors worthy of supervillains."
They are talking in code. Both Mastermind and Revenant are, after all, villainous masterminds. The chances of someone wiretapping this bar were close to zero, but close to zero wasn't zero.
There was more than one type of secrets. That one was rather special. If anyone found that Midoriya Izuku helped Yoshihiro Rai murder his mother, previous High Priest of the Creature Rejection Clan, people would die. If anyone found that Yoshihiro Rai helped leak the intel to the HPSC that led to the Battle of Haiboro Woods, people would die.
Both sides just reminded each other of that, without saying anything aloud. A bit of a 'remember that I can destroy you just as you can destroy me' reminder. Sometimes you have to do things like that. Sometimes you simply have the weirdest ways of breaking the ice.
"Fun times." Mastermind says. Midoriya doesn't say it, but those times were fun mostly because the CRC meant something back then. "Why did you do that, exactly? I never asked back then. Considering the aftermath, it wasn't an internal coup like I suspected."
The answer will probably decide whether he'll try to kill Midoriya further down the line. He didn't have resources to waste on starting a war, so he didn't bother trying. But now that Revenant resurfaced…
"More like an euthanasia." Midoriya replies. "I was cutting down the losses. The war was over. And there is nothing more destructive than people who keep fighting for a lost cause." He probably reads it at least partially as an attack on him and the CRC. Perhaps correctly so.
Mastermind stares at him in visible surprise. Temporarily forgetting about his beer. Yes, that might be a bit surprising.
"I don't think we had anyone more zealous among us back then." Mastermind says. "And you just…"
"Hana lost it completely." Midoriya replies calmly. "You were mostly commanding in the field, and she was quite good at hiding it, but…" He sighs painfully. Those aren't nice memories. There was a time when he liked her. When they were a family. "She was always prone to mood swings. She would break something, then conjure an elaborate lie to make someone else be punished, and then freak out and apologize to the victim in tears. Without All for One to micromanage her moods, with her total power over the Paranormal Liberation Front and the numbers of people she was killing on an almost daily basis… she fell off the deep end."
"How bad was it?" Mastermind asks. He wasn't there for most of it. And the central command of the PLF was an informational black hole. Midoriya made sure of that.
"I realized that it was over when I went to report to her that Overhaul died and I ran into her getting spitroasted by Muscular and Dabi, all three so drugged that I'm not sure if they knew what universe they were in." Midoriya announces and Mastermind almost chokes on his beer. "They shared the appetite for destruction and wanton murder, so I guess it brought them together. And not just them, she was sleeping with most of the League by the end. Last few months were just one large orgy of sex, murder and drugs. No wonder we've lost, hmm?"
"Wow." Mastermind announces once he manages to cough out all the beer that went down the wrong hole. "Guess that you've just managed to clear up all my doubts over whether I've done the right thing. Thank you."
Looks like Midoriya managed to avoid Mastermind trying to kill him. For that one particular issue. There were more, but none as grave as that one.
"No problem." Midoriya replies. He prefers the subject to end. "I wouldn't do that if there was any other way, trust me. She was… tolerable at the beginning. Even after she murdered some of my classmates and contributed to my defection. I hated her, yes, but I saw her as a symptom, not a cause of what happened."
They even dealt with the cause together. Her quirk was a bad match-up against an immortality quirk holder, but… the whole family was there. And so was she.
"She had some sort of an end goal and truly cared about her followers." Midoriya continues. Talking about things like that in a bar that's so much like Kurogiri's is a bit… "By the end… do you know what she said when I reported to her that Mustard just blew his brains out?"
"No?" Mastermind looks like he isn't sure if he wants to know.
"She said, and I quote: 'Looks like large scale engagements are gonna be harder from now on'." Revenant replies. Yoshihiro's eyes grow in shock.
"Weren't they…"
"... together?" Midoriya cuts in. Mastermind nods. "At the beginning, yes. What she was turning into greatly contributed to his decision of taking the quick way out. Can't blame him. Honestly, he was probably the last person in the League that I genuinely liked." Revenant sighs. "By the end, even you would have a chance with her."
Mastermind groans. Yeah, that was a really bad personal attack. So bad that it looped back to being funny. Yoshihiro also knew that it was intentional.
"I don't stick anything I don't want to lose into crazies." Mastermind replies. "I also don't stick anything at all into women. Except for some knives or bullets, occasionally. So a hard pass from me."
Midoriya relates, at least to one of the reasons. And the resulting decision. But it's time for a change of subject.
"I think that's enough old memories for one meeting." Midoriya decides to announce. It's… not the good type of memories.
"Right." Mastermind replies scarcely. "So, what is it about? For some reason I have a faint feeling that you aren't here to join the Creature Rejection Clan." He says before taking a few gulps from his mug.
Midoriya lets out a loud laugh.
"This is extremely tempting, Rai." He replies, giving Mastermind a wry smile. "But my girlfriend probably wouldn't like it. She makes the cutest animal noises when I'm inside her, let me tell you that much."
Rai shivers. There is a brief flash of disgust on his face. Midoriya knows where to hit to make it hurt. And this is one field when they'll never agree upon.
They know each other for years, yet to this day Izuku has no idea how Mastermind manages to mix a powerful intelligence quirk with this degree of racism. Shouldn't that be mutually exclusive?
"Why am I not surprised?" Mastermind sighs, now back in control. "It seems to be running in your family." Midoriya doesn't dignify him with a reply. Was it about Tenko's wife being a complex mutant? Was it about Entropy being insane, both in and out of bed? "So, what are you up to nowadays? Just don't bullshit me on this."
Yeah. He can read most of the lies from your face thanks to his quirk. Of course, they didn't see each other for years. He needs to recalibrate his readings. Most of the minuscule, subconscious body language stayed the same, but certainly not all of it.
"Well, I woke up one day and decided to choose violence." Midoriya replies. It's not exactly a lie. Maybe a white lie - he did wake up. Just not from sleep but from years of apathy. Way to throw Mastermind's readings off.
Then again, he probably knew that. The tired stare that Midoriya got was telling.
"Elaborate on violence, please." Mastermind asks.
"I've decided to start the Second Paranormal Liberation War." Midoriya sees no reason to sugarcoat it. "I'm gathering the old party back together."
"Sure, we're in." Rai replies without a second of hesitation.
Now it's Midoriya's time to stare.
"Really?" For all his preparations, he didn't see that coming. Certainly not from Mastermind. "No headbutting? No backstabbing? No negotiations? Just a simple agreement? You're alright with handing me your entire organization on a silver platter without any resistance whatsoever?"
"You know my quirk." Yoshihiro replies. It's true. It's… incredible. An ability to transform his brain into a living computer, allowing him to run precise calculations and predictions that tend to work more often than not for as long as he knew all or most of the variables. A true Class-Five intelligence quirk. "My predictions are often wrong, but in this case… practically all of my calculations point to one outcome. The eventual and permanent collapse of the Creature Rejection Clan within the next two years at best."
"... that bad?" Midoriya asks. He doesn't even bother to hide that he isn't exactly terrified about the news.
Mastermind was good at information security. Midoriya had no idea how much was left of the CRC, only that it was still operational… although in a deep hiding. Keeping their operations on the downlow, doing its best to avoid dragging the government's attention to them.
It was only prolonging the inevitable. Severely limited their ability to recruit. No underground organization can survive indefinitely without recruiting new members. No large terrorist organization can exist without anyone knowing they still exist.
"Probably worse than you think." Mastermind replies with a tiredness on his face. "We had a serious internal schism. We've destroyed the schismatics, but we now have less than two hundred members left. The morale is…" He sighs. "... it could be better."
"Two hundred?" Midoriya expected more. When Entropy recruited them to the PLF, they had close to ten thousand members, and that was just the active members. Their supporters were a small army. Truly, the CRC was in dire straits today.
"Don't salt the wounds, please." Rai says, clearly irritated. It's not easy. Midoriya enjoys doing that, at least to some degree. "That's the point. CRC is done for unless we'll do a leap of faith and change the game rules entirely. Starting the Second Paranormal Liberation War sounds like enough of a game changer. Especially as I know your handiwork. Whatever you're planning, it's going to be… serious."
To say the least.
"So what do you have thus far?" Mastermind asks. Midoriya considers what he's ready to share for a few seconds, before saying.
"A new League of Villains with some powerful new talents." He replies. "At least three SS-Rank materials, and a group of very competent extras. Necessary logistical support, an unassailable fortress for a base, some very good spies and, as of five days ago, the undisputed loyalty of the Meta-Liberation Army remnants."
Frostfire is already there. He also counts Counterfeit and Hypothermia as additional SS-Rankers. The former is only graded as an S-Rank because she was maintaining a low profile. Despite being very, very nasty to her enemies. This will change immediately when she'll debut in the field of political terrorism.
In Midoriya's opinion, Yaomomo had a fair chance of becoming a triple S-Rank. An existential threat on a national level rather than prefectural. She still had to… develop a bit to get there, however.
Mastermind is good at hiding surprise. But Midoriya notices it regardless of that. Someone didn't expect Midoriya to have that much prepared. If even his old acquaintances underestimate him after the years, things are going just as planned.
"Of course you got them first." Mastermind says. Midoriya doesn't even bother to give him a tired stare. "We don't really have many regular facilities to man left, and I suspect that you're going to go for an asymmetric warfare due to us lacking numbers this time around. So you'll probably want to relocate us all into whatever unassailable fortress you have."
"Correct." Midoriya admits. "I have just the right plan to make it work. It doesn't matter if the enemies outnumber you a hundred to one if you make them lose two hundred of their soldiers per every kill they score, am I right?"
Mastermind, in Midoriya's opinion, is good. Not as good at Revenant, though. If there was some sort of grading in play among true masterminds, he would be playing in a second league.
All for One died. Re-Destro died. Sir Nighteye died. Nedzu probably died (Midoriya was something like 90% sure that the rat didn't fake his death). Today, their kind was almost gone from Japan.
What was left was a bunch of B-Listers like Mastermind. Some had potential to get the lower half of the A-List… maybe. One day. And in a very particular set of circumstances. Revenant was the only one left in the upper A-List.
Those B-Listers could still think in circles around practically everyone else. Midoriya has managed to recruit two - Mastermind and Counterfeit - into his party. Which gave the new PLF a solid foundation when brainpower was involved.
"Right." Mastermind doesn't seem to be persuaded that it's possible. Time will show him the truth. "Anything else to talk about?"
"Elaborate on the schism part." It sounded interesting. And, all things considered, CRC was kind of a religious organization, even if its theology was bogus. Its doctrinal unity influenced their combat effectiveness.
"Well, we had another major shift in doctrine." Mastermind clearly doesn't enjoy talking about that. "You know what Purity did to it?"
"Yeah." The fact that he didn't agree with it in the slightest didn't mean that he wasn't familiar with it. Especially after Deika, where every asset left to them could mean a world of difference. "She switched from hating all the mutations to hating complex ones."
"Which was idiotic." Mastermind replies. "Sure, it gave us a recruitment boost for a moment thanks to idiots from the ISP running wild among the general population, but… from the logical point of view it was stupid. As a result, the stupidity eventually caught-up to us."
"Really?" Midoriya is only tangentially interested in this, to be frank. But if he has to work with those people, he would do best to find out what they are up to nowadays. "So, what's your current justification for the hate crimes?"
"Genetics, mostly." Mastermind's answer isn't very surprising, all things considered. "Honestly, we're cooler with the complex mutants than the normal ones nowadays. Too much of a shift, which was the main reason for the schism."
That was… surprising. Doing a theological 180 right after they lost the war? Midoriya was both shocked at Mastermind risking it AND CRC somehow surviving the result. Why did Yoshihiro decide to risk it? Was doctrinal purity this important to him?
"How's that actually working?" Midoriya asks while Mastermind is busy with his beer for the moment. "Doctrine-wise."
"Look." Mastermind sighs. "You're super knowledgeable about crime stats before and after quirks, right?"
Midoriya nods. This sounds like it'll be something actually interesting. Midoriya enjoys deepening his knowledge. He will, naturally, spend some time checking every single detail that Mastermind will provide him with. He already disagrees with his conclusions, but it doesn't stop him from trying to find out the reasoning behind it.
"Have you ever checked medical statistics as well?" Mastermind asks. Midoriya, after a few seconds of thinking, decides to shake his head. "See, that's the problem. They got much worse as well."
"Unsurprising, I mean the amount of villain attacks means a lot more injuries…" Midoriya decides to point it out, but Mastermind interrupts him by waving his hand.
"Not that." Yoshihiro adds, his eyes on Midoriya. He is probably busy observing his reactions in order to get a grasp on his body language, opinions etc. Every few seconds Midoriya can see his eyes glowing a bit for a second, a clear sign of Mastermind engaging his quirk for a short while to analyze something. "We're maybe fifty years away from our entire healthcare system collapsing, and probably taking the economy with it. Especially if we'll get more villain attacks and one or two economic crises."
"What?" Midoriya blinks at him a few times. "What do you mean?"
"The system more or less worked before the quirks." Mastermind replies. "When everyone had more or less the same biology. There were ups and downs, but with enough funding, it worked. Worldwide. Do you have the tiniest idea how much things got worse once a significant part of the population started having a nonstandard biology?"
"Probably by a lot." Midoriya could guess it from the context. And the whole 'the system will collapse' from earlier. But he was still guessing. All that he really knew about the subject was that there were some specialized hospitals dealing with the mutant quirk bearers nowadays. And those with enough vestigial mutations (like Tokoyami or Shoji used to have) to be barely different from them, healthcare-wise.
"It's going down, frankly speaking." Mastermind shrugs. "The costs of maintaining the public healthcare system have multiplied since the Dawn of Quirks. Even something as stupid as appendectomy requires extensive medical tests and a skilled surgeon to make sure that they understand your anatomy properly before sticking their scalpel inside. If you even have an appendix. The more you diverge from baseline human anatomy, the more it'll cost you to stay healthy. There is a reason why the less human you are, the shorter your average lifespan."
Midoriya really questions the logic where someone's naturally shorter lifespan justifies shortening it further. But he's ready to let Mastermind speak for now before pointing it out. He'd prefer to avoid starting an argument right now.
"That's only one thing." Mastermind continues. "Yes, the more… egregious mutations tend to manifest when you're a few years old, but this doesn't change the fact that the rate of miscarriages and deaths during childbirth among them is vastly higher. Want more reasons? How about microbiology? Do you want to know how easy it is for, for example, an animal disease to cross the species barrier thanks to someone whose biology mixes animal and a human? How many epidemics happened during the last two centuries because of that?"
Midoriya has enough. He IS going to check those statistics, yes. Mastermind provided him with knowledge, and now he wanted to know how he interpreted it. What was his reaction to it? Because that influenced a lot of things.
Such as the chances of Midoriya murdering Mastermind further down the line. He has standards. Not an awful lot of them, but he has to draw a line somewhere. He got enough mutants out of the country to not be alright with ethnic cleansings.
"And so your solution is… genocide?" Midoriya asks. "That sounds a bit excessive, don't you think?"
"If mutants are going to suffer in life, live in squalor and eventually die early, don't you think that letting more be born is… wrong? Evil, even." Mastermind asks. Midoriya doesn't reply. At least not vocally. The stare is there.
"Shouldn't you be working with the government instead of opposing it then?" Midoriya shoots back. He realizes that he made a mistake when he can see Yoshihiro's hand grasp on the mug strongly enough for his fingers to go white.
"Don't. You. Fucking. Dare." Yoshihiro stares daggers at Midoriya. Daggers and probably a few chainsaws. "We aren't like them. We won't be like them. What they are doing is pretty much a slow genocide. What's the point of hating mutants as a bunch of animalistic beasts if we end up acting like even worse beasts? We're supposed to be better." He practically spits the last word in Midoriya's face.
Wow. So if you get racist enough you can loop back to being … well… a slightly smaller racist? Yoshihiro Rai's clearly a weird one. In Midoriya's opinion, in a better world, one where he would be taken away from the CRC early one, he would make for a great hero.
Then again, you could say the same about most monsters out there. Nature versus Nurture. Midoriya believed in the latter wholeheartedly. No one is born evil. Maybe except for All for One because honestly Midoriya can't even imagine him not being a total monster. An outlier at its utmost.
"All I ever wanted, all that I want even now, was some goddamn rationality in the approach to the issue." Mastermind says. Or, more like, rants. "Make sure that those more mutated do not reproduce any further with some legislation and policing. Make sure that we have a vast majority of baselines to finance the necessary healthcare for the mutant minority. Buy the time necessary for the technology to progress, allowing us to correct divergences accompanying quirk manifestations, thus fixing the problem entirely. Instead everyone screams about discrimination or…"
Midoriya cares little about CRC's justification for doing hate crimes, to be honest. He still has no idea when did they get the whole 'we're actually a religion' bit from. Honestly, he probably doesn't want to know. But he is very interested in something else. Especially in light of the eventual recreation of the Inhuman Supremacy Party.
"And complex mutants?" He asks, cutting the rant short.
"That's where Purity was an idiot." Mastermind replies. "They are divergent, and most of them are acting like animals pretending to be humans, but if we fuck up, they might end up inheriting that world from us. Because while divergent, they are at least consistent about it. And much more resistant to vestigial mutations. Guess that we'll have to…" He makes a wry smile. "... deal with those who are too animalistic in our own way. Make sure that they don't spread their genes too much. Make the world a better place one person at a time."
Yeah. So much about even the faintest traces of wholesomeness in his beliefs. Midoriya isn't sure what he expected. Then again, it sounds like making the CRC and ISP cooperate might be easier than he thought.
It's not like he is going to deploy those two groups together with another organization between them, of course. And he doesn't expect a lot of marriage proposals. But maybe they won't murder each other too quickly.
"I see." Midoriya nods with a thoughtful face. "Well, I guess that we're all heroes of our own stories, now ain't we?" Mastermind gives him a tired stare. He knows that he was just shittalked in a very diplomatic way. But he decides not to escalate.
"Right." Mastermind replies instead. "So, we're on board?"
Midoriya doesn't like the concept. He'd honestly prefer to kill Mastermind here and now. Dealing with that man is… displeasing, to say the least. But two hundred mooks? For free? He's going to need them, even if he's going to treat them as more expendable than PLF's average.
Leaving him out without killing him isn't an option. Mastermind is too dangerous. He'd take advantage of chaos and make his organization grow quickly. How did the saying go? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?
"Yes." Midoriya extends his hand, and Mastermind shakes it. "Welcome to the Paranormal Liberation Front, Mastermind."
The fact that this probably isn't the most morally questionable thing that he is going to do in the near future is actually quite sad.
(***)
In a way, Entropy and Mastermind are a form of a personal criticque/parody of the main characters of two stories by the same names (which in both cases are Izuku Midoriya). Entropy had big words about making the world a better place after getting rid of heroics, but in the end she was just a ball of hatred and spite that felt hurt by the world that she decided to destroy it, while being smart and dangerous enough to come very close to it... and caring very little about what was going to come after.
Motive decay at its finest. Not to mention doing things that are absolutely horrible and probably getting a secret kick out of it. Entropy's protag had a point or two at the beginning but the Uraraka bit was crossing the line, ngl. They also seem to share their purely instrumental approach to their henchmen, despite acting in front of them like they matter to them.
Mastermind in the meantime is brilliant. Smarter than everyone in the room. Smart enough to border on being a Villain Sue (the moment the other Mastermind outplayed Nedzu in chess I went NOPE - sorry but if you are quirkless and smarter than a guy with powerful intelligence quirk, you aren't quirkless but misdiagnosed). But in the end, he is just using it to justify and act on his own petty hatred. Except this one hates mutants not heroes. A small change, but suddenly he no longer feels like a champion of justice, even outwardly, hmm?