Shahryar - :D
(***)
They eventually managed to locate the QLF remnants. Midoriya knew the right people, and knew how to play that game. Most of all, he had some known villains in his roster. Something that made other villains be slightly more talkative.
Who could even consider Mastermind to be in any way, shape or form connected to the heroes? When he asked about something, he did it for villainous reasons. There was also the fact that CRC and QLF had a fairly positive relationship in the past.
It was hard to find people less divergent from human form than the quirkless. If anything, QLF was the less enthusiastic group from the two when cooperating was involved, mostly by the virtue of CRC being sorrowfully quirked. But it was 'less enthusiasm', not 'hostility'. So it still worked out.
Oddly enough, the meeting was scheduled to happen in a fast food joint. Eclipse always had a bit of an odd taste in things. At the very least it seemed like Midoriya's prediction of being welcomed by the QLF with vodka or whiskey didn't come to fruition.
Eclipse arrived in baggy pants, a T-Shirt of some music band, a hoodie opened wide in front and a pair of sunglasses. Looking relatively relaxed. Pros of managing to maintain the tradition of her family and keep her face unknown to the heroes for the whole time.
She looked quite foreign. Blond hair, blue eyes, rather robust build resembling Yaomomo. Age similar to Midoriya, although that's all that he could say about it - she never quite told him how old she really was. And he didn't feel like asking.
Midoriya's face was still somewhat recognizable. Rarely, and not as a villain. Instead, as a person blamed for ending the Era of Peace. So he disguised himself. His hair was a rather signature part of him, and it was truly miraculous how much could be achieved with a re–coloring and some styling.
He chose the pure white color. A bit of an inside joke. He was going to deeply enjoy washing the color off and seeing his natural green return.
Tsu-chan and Uraraka helped, because for all his skills in villainy, Midoriya wasn't an expert on things like that. His fashion sense was severely lacking. Even Re-Destro despaired over his inability to reign in his own tie.
Midoriya remembers Trumpet joking years ago that teaching that skill to Notebook was his greatest achievement in life. When it came to his hair, they all gave up. Even Curious waved a white flag.
Midoriya also thought that Uraraka's presence was the only reason why Eri had anything resembling a fashion sense, even if warped to resemble that of her father's.
With her and Tsuyu around, they managed to achieve… something.
"Ehhh, you look much less like a tramp." Eclipse comments when he sits on the opposite side of a small table, putting his food down. "Finally found yourself a girlfriend to set you straight?"
"That hurts, Mieko." Midoriya deadpans. "The suggestion that I can't look decent without a girlfriend to micromanage my clothes and hair."
"That's not a no." She replies, with maybe a hint of a wry smile on her face.
"True." Midoriya nods. "My girlfriend did help. So, I must say that it's very nice to make an actually normal meeting when people 'like us' are involved. People keep assuming that we do meetings like that in shadowy alleyways, but most of the smart ones do it in places like this. With civilians around to keep things from escalating into a fight."
He decides to ignore the smile that blooms fully on her face after the 'my girlfriend did help'. Not very important right now.
"Really?" She feels and sounds vaguely interested. "Who else did you meet with? Mastermind?"
"Among others, yes." He replies, letting the question of 'who else he met with' stew with her for a bit. "In an empty bar, can you believe it? I half expected Kurogiri to come back to life, warp in and start being passive aggressive about our choice of alcohol."
That gets a chuckle out of her.
"Sounds like something he'd do, yeah." She agrees. "Rai being a weirdo is honestly nothing new. So what do you two want from me? The CRC representative was, how should I put it, very vague."
He probably didn't know shit to begin with. Mastermind was smart enough to not tell anything important to someone who could be easily caught. Smart people were going to be the greatest asset of the new Paranormal Liberation Front.
"You know what I was doing after the war ended?" He asks. He would be deeply surprised if the answer was positive.
"No, not really." Eclipse replies. Midoriya's suspicions are confirmed. "I actually figured out that you kicked the bucket after Haiboro, since I couldn't even imagine you staying quiet for so long."
"Nah, I simply gave up on trying to fight the system." He replies. She looks surprised by that fact. His past acquaintances all remember his old self, the one with a burning hatred for the government and the whole hero system in his eyes. To see that gone from the world was shocking. "I did something else for a time, anonymously. Does the name 'Support Network' ring any bells?"
Eclipse stares at him for a few long seconds.
"You son of a bitch." She eventually states. He shoots her a tired stare. "You helped us smuggle the quirkless kids out of the country for YEARS and you didn't bother to tell me that it was you?"
He shrugs. It makes her even more angry. He isn't surprised.
"I just wasn't in the mood for meeting my old acquaintances." Midoriya replies honestly. "Even those that I genuinely liked. I focused on my job and on bringing up my adoptive daughter." She opens her mouth, probably to voice her surprise with him having a daughter, but he doesn't let her finish. "Then, however, our dear government snatched her for the Paragon Program. So I decided to annihilate the government."
It was perfectly logical, really. But it still made the second bearer of the Eclipse villain's name stare at him in shock.
"Is the QLF interested in becoming part of the Paranormal Liberation Front once again, Mieko?" He takes advantage of Eto being struck speechless and asks. Doing that over a McBurger feels oddly wrong. Then again, does the aesthetics really matter if there are no onlookers to witness them?
She doesn't answer straight away. She is a cautious one, after all. Not a villainous mastermind, just someone conventionally experienced in the business. It would be a large stretch, but she could be considered a C-Lister mastermind. Then again, C-List members were probably counted in the hundreds in Japan alone.
"So you got Mastermind in." She guesses correctly. He DID help organize the meeting. The only source of doubts on that field was whether Yoshihiro did it because he worked for Midoriya now, or if he did it as some sort of favor exchange.
"I got EVERYONE in, Mieko." Midoriya replies. "League of Villains and the Inhuman Supremacy Party exist again. Meta-Liberation Army and Creature Rejection Clan have both rejoined the family. We also got two new groups that decided to throw their lots with us. I'm thus confident that we have everything we need to start the Second Paranormal Liberation War."
Hatsume Industries is in. The only question left is whether the Ascending Path will join them fully. He suspects that Aiko will give him the answer soon.
"... and why would I agree to that?" Mieko asks, her eyes narrow. "Why would I agree to risk what's left of the quirkless in Japan by having them fight against the country once again?"
"Because we both know that our kind is done for." Midoriya replies. Sure, she has a quirk, but was a very late-bloomer like her mother. Sure, he has a quirk, but he suffered from being perceived as quirkless for years. They both have the right to treat each other like a part of that group. "Each generation has less and less of them being born. The discrimination in Japan grew to the point where most of them don't get to have children. How many are left in the country, to begin with?"
"Officially, around a hundred thousand." She replies. "Unofficially, maybe four or five times that. Most of them either fool others that they have minor quirks, or live in what's a de facto ghettos where no one bothers to count them."
"My point exactly." Midoriya replies while Eclipse is staring at him. "You can't win, especially not on your own. Not in this country, not in this age. Besides, what's your definition of victory, even? You can't hope to help the quirkless enough to make a major difference, now can you?"
"I'd say…" She replies coldly. "... that we're making a lot of difference."
"A lot doesn't mean a major one." Midoriya shoots back. "What's the point of killing people that support discriminating against the quirkless, if they'll be just replaced with more assholes? What's the point of trying to organize the ghettos if they're going to continue existing? What's the point of trying to smuggle quirkless kids into slightly more enlightened countries if there'll be no Support Network to aid in that? How much can you actually do without me?"
"I…"
"How long until the government figures out some proper genetic quirklessness tests and starts applying them to children in a prenatal stage, hmmm?" Midoriya says, not giving her time to speak. "We both know that they have a massive edge on quirk sciences thanks to securing Overhaul's lab. We also both know that your predecessor and the first Paranormal Liberation War buried all hopes of peaceful coexistence."
Contrary to popular opinions, the Era of Peace wasn't THAT bad for the quirkless. It sucked, yes, but it was more akin to being fat or ugly. It made some kids pick up on you, because you stood out. But nothing more than that.
MAYBE a tiny bit worse than that, yeah. But not by much. Then the QLF threw its lots with the PLF, and suddenly quirklessness was not just powerlessness. But also had serious villainous (or at least criminal/terrorist) connotations.
That was probably the worst combination imaginable, to be frank. Because people at least feared the villainous quirk users and complex mutants.
"And your idea is to do the same thing once more?" Eclipse points out. She points out correctly, to a degree. He'll have to correct her notable lack of vision.
"No, my idea is to do the exact same thing once more… but this time successfully." He replies. She gives him a questioning stare. "You can't make them like you, Eclipse. You can't make them treat quirkless like equals because this will require decades of hard work and we both know that the quirkless in Japan don't have decades. So, what's the alternative, Mieko?"
He gives her a rather… predatorial smile. She understands it immediately. She is, as stated, a smart one.
"Fear." She replies. "You want to do what my mother tried to do. Achieve respect by terrifying the general population."
"Yes, except her methods were idiotic." Midoriya shoots back. Mieko seems to be in agreement over that. "She tried to terrify them with simple terrorist attacks. This produced fear, but also loathing. Because she struck mostly against civilian targets. Honestly, why did you even inherit the name? I thought you hated her."
Second Eclipse shrugs.
"Peer pressure, I guess." She adds. "Identical quirk, lack of alternative quirkless-dedicated villain organization for me to join. The QLF needed a leader, and I was the only potential candidate. Besides, it was the middle of the war at this point, and people started to care less and less about ethics. Myself included."
Ah yes, the kill or be killed mindset. Midoriya was no stranger to it. Wars were an ugly business. Peer pressure was probably a combination of her quirkless friends wanting to see the world burn and people expecting her to succeed the first Eclipse. Interesting, but probably beside the point.
"Right." He decides to get back to the main subject. "That's where her tactic was stupid. She tried to prove that the quirkless aren't powerless by striking against civilians. The people that were mostly powerless by default. How do you prove your own strength that way? You just prove that you lack the balls to fight those who are really powerful?"
"And then the war came, during which our achievements mostly remained unnoticed in the general chaos." Eclipse follows the trail of logic. "Further cementing our reputation as a major supply of weak and expendable mooks for the PLF heavy-hitters."
"Precisely!" Midoriya says while cocking up some finger guns at her. "This time it won't be a campaign of terrorist bombings, nor a regular war. It's going to be a guerilla campaign. Sure, some civilians will die in the crossfire, I don't really care about that at this point. But don't you think that such a David vs Goliath scenario with thousands of heroes getting slaughtered helplessly is a wonderful occasion to teach Japan that quirkless doesn't mean worthless? Especially as I'm going to give the QLF members plenty of opportunities to score some high profile kills on their own."
She is thinking it over. Unlike the others, there is probably no chance for her to agree immediately. On the other hand, her saying no doesn't matter. As if she will do it, they'll simply replace QLF with the Ascending Path. Keeping the four satellite organizations scheme.
At least, the four satellite combat organizations. Hatsume Industries was something else a bit. Even if its leader with some tools could totally fight S-Rank villains or heroes like an equal.
"Think it over, Eclipse." Midoriya says while standing up from the table. "I'm willing to give you a few days to come to a decision. Contact me through Mastermind once you have an answer for me."
"Fine." Eclipse replies. "I'll contact you once I have it." Hopefully it'll be the correct one. Then again, it's not like it matters. QLF will be an asset to him this way or another, though he'd prefer to have them in his camp right from the start.
Manipulating the government's response to the PLF to make them strike against quirkless ghettos just to force the QLF to join or at least cooperate with the Paranormal Liberation Front would be… painful. Both literally and to what was left of Midoriya's conscience.
(***)
"So… are you going to make it in time?" Midoriya asks. They are now in his new office in the Overlook. The room is still rather bare and impersonal. Despite rather intensive scrubbing there is still a faint smell of decay and dust in the air.
Overlook was left without maintenance for years. It was built to last, so it wasn't at risk of collapsing, but making it feel homely was going to take a while more. As a result, a notable chunk of Hatsume Industries' loan malfeasances was spent on obtaining cleaning supplies.
"That depends on many factors." Hatsume replies. She is sitting on a couch on the other side of the room. Wearing a black business suit and a set of black glasses. Midoriya will probably never get used to seeing Mei Hatsume in such attire. "But probably not."
Midoriya sighs. This isn't good. This isn't good at all. They have a very precise schedule and a solid deadline. Not getting everything is going to be… an obstacle. With a situation skewed so much in the government's favor, any additional obstacle was a big deal.
"How many will you manage to equip before the Revival Celebration?" Midoriya asks. He was rather shamelessly borrowing the MLA terminology. Then again, if there was a single person out there that had the right to do that, it was him.
"That depends on whether the QLF will join." She replies. "They are very reliant on equipment, even if it's mostly things that we can mass produce. Making sure stuff fits is less time-consuming than having to go through the entire design process separately for every person. You know that the MLA is the biggest pain in the ass on that field, right?"
"Of course I do." He shrugs. It's rather obvious. "Unique, typically powerful quirks. Having to get personalized support items. Worst of all, they prefer to look unique as well. The others are easier to deal with, but for different reasons."
CRC had their robes and typically weaker quirks. So at the very least the uniforms were more or less standardized. ISP had less diverse quirks (no emitters and transformations), meaning that it was mostly standard combat equipment as well. QLF could just receive mass produced equipment copied from what the GSDF had. MLA was… a problem.
The problem grew more problematic if you considered the fact that they were the strongest of the four subsidiaries. Strongest and, most likely, the most loyal to him as well. So he had to give them a priority, if not one large enough to make others feel abandoned.
"How many do you think you'll manage to equip by the deadline?" He then asks. Hatsume thinks it over for a moment.
"Maybe around half a thousand?" She eventually replies. "Depends on the QLF, as I said. And on whether someone realizes that the Hatsume Industries stopped working on all contracts that have a deadline after the Revival Celebration' date, instead focusing on mass-production things that are certainly not very legal."
Hatsume appeared to be almost cheerful due to the fact that she soon would no longer have to pretend that she wasn't Lex Luthor with pink dreadlocks. She was happy, Midoriya had a brilliant support engineering supervillain to support his war effort against the society, everyone won. Except for heroes.
"Less than I hoped." Midoriya admits. Mei shrugs with a faintly apologetic look on her face. "We're going to be hard-pressed to make it, but…"
"Can't you just send everyone?" Mei decides to ask. "Sure, they'll be underequipped, but…"
"We have an image to develop." Midoriya replies. "One that isn't compatible with an image of zerg rushing heroes with mooks of inferior quality and meager equipment"
"Ah, a brand promotion!" Mei gets it. Of course, CEO experience. "I get it, I get it. I'll try to produce as much as possible. We'll probably end up having to subcontract at least some of the less obviously villainous things in various legit businesses. In the meantime…"
Knocking on the door. It's Uraraka.
"Apocrypha's here." She says after peeking in. "Wants to talk with you face to face." Oh, that might be interesting.
"Apocrypha?" Hatsume appears curious. "Who's that?" Yes, the leaders of the satellite groups weren't enlightened about her existence… yet.
"It's… well, you'll find out eventually." Midoriya dodges it for now. "We'll continue that meeting later. I get the feeling that it might be important."
(***)
"You know, I feel like I should have been told that you're visiting Overlook beforehand." Midoriya says when Aiko enters his office. She is in relatively normal civilian clothes, most of which is a colorful sundress. "It's location is a secret, in case you didn't notice."
"I'm a goddess. I go where I want." She shrugs. Izuku at this point has no idea how much she truly believes in her own godhood. Then again, her god complex seems to be grounded in facts to at least some degree. "I've made a decision. And I wanted to communicate it to you, oniichan."
Uh-huh. What might it be?
"Communicate it then." He says as she sits down on the other side of the desk.
"I want to know your plan, first." She says. When he opens his mouth, she cuts in. "The ENTIRE plan. Your true endgame, not whatever bullshit you're going to feed Mastermind and Counterfeit with. What I'm going to communicate to you depends on that."
He doesn't insult her by asking whether she was going to keep it a secret. She was a family. One of the very few people out there that he was willing to trust.
So he narrates it. His game plan for the Second Paranormal Liberation War. Starting from the Revival Celebration, through the subsequent build-up until the final day. He doesn't go into the contingency plans and potential alternatives, because if he tried to do that, they'd be here for hours. Besides, he is still working on those.
It's just a summary. But it should be enough.
"I see." Aiko nods once it's clear that he reaches the end. "Then I wish to communicate this: Ascending Path wishes to officially join the Paranormal Liberation Front as a satellite organization."
He… despite everything, he didn't see that coming.
"You want to… join?" He says, his eyes narrowing down on her. Did she really… "You mean, you want your cultist to fight alongside us, without hiding their allegiance?" When she nods, he decides to say more. "Aiko, you're going to lose everything if we lose, you can't be serious about that, what about your cultists…"
"They agreed." She cuts in. "I've been recruiting them mostly from people that shared my quiet grudge against the government. Those that have no combat-skills I'll evacuate out of the country before the war starts. The rest will stay to fight. I can give you at least five hundred trained cultists and thirty templars, each of them an Exalted hero or villain of notable combat strength. Don't tell me that you won't find use for that many assets."
He most certainly will, but… some part of him cowers at the idea. He isn't sure why, especially after he recruited her, Tokoyami and Ragdoll for the PLF, but…
"Aiko, I…"
"Oniichan." She cuts in. Despite her being almost a legal adult, that word somehow fits her. Aiko not using it towards her brother would feel alien. The stare that accompanies it is very, very adult however.
"You aren't the only person that lost their mother in Deika, oniichan." She says, and he can feel his teeth clenching at that. "You aren't the only person that lost so much to the heroes. Our mom, all our uncles and aunties, our country… Why do you think I secreted myself behind my own cult?"
"God complex?" He asks with a faint smile. She rolls her eyes in badly faked exasperation before continuing.
"It's because I was angry." She says. "I was so unbelievably angry. But I decided to bottle it down. To surround myself only with the people that I know wouldn't harm me. That I know I could trust to not take anything or anyone I loved from again. To focus on something… constructive."
Relatable. Almost painfully so. But it's not over yet. And somehow, he feels like it's going to go downhill from here.
"But guess what, oniichan." Aiko smiles at him. It's a smile worthy of an angel, yet one that somehow makes his blood freeze. "Bottling it down and trying to forget didn't work. I'm even angrier than I was at the beginning. Kidnapping Eri was the last straw for me as well. I can no longer live with the knowledge that people that took everything from me can live happily. So, I'm going to do what gods do when someone angers them."
There is a second-long pause. Something in her shifts. Was she using some quirk to amplify the effect? Or did she simply stop herself from suppressing the bloodlust that would make Stain take a step back in horror?
"I'm going to skin them alive, oniichan." She says with a smile. "I'm going to bathe in their blood. I'm going to make crafts of their bones. I'm going to torture them all to death, one by one. I'm going to decorate my temples with what's left of them after I'm done vivisecting them. I'm going to make them feel the same pain that I did, and then tenfold more simply because I feel like it. I'm going to rip and tear until I run out of grudges to settle. And I really think that you can help with that."
She concludes her short speech. Her eyes are on him, the malevolence no longer there. Once again, it's bottled down. For how long? No one knows.
Inko, it seems, wasn't the only Midoriya to have died in Deika. Perhaps none of them survived it. Just angry ghosts left, yearning for revenge. It really put Midoriya's villain name in a perspective, even if the death he seeked to take revenge for happened long before Deika.
"Yes." He nods. What would have knocked out most of the top heroes and villains out there didn't do a lot to him. He met Stain. He met and killed All for One. That changed his perception of 'scary'. "You know, each and every of the past attempts to take the government down were always done by a pair of people. All for One and Re-Destro. Entropy and Overhaul. Miruko and Knuckleduster. Aizawa-sensei and Ms. Joke. I plan to keep up with the theme. I expected Yaomomo to be my teammate on this, but… if that's how angry you are, I believe that you'll be an even better fit for the seat of the co-commander of the Paranormal Liberation Front, Aiko."
"The family stays together, oniichan." She smiles at him and he smiles back. "Let's make the world suffer as we did."
(***)
Three days later Midoriya is busy watching a film together with Tsuyu. She snuggled close to him on the couch in their joint quarters in the Overlook, using her tongue to steal the snacks from him occasionally.
It's… nice, even if one of them wants to die and the other wants to kill a country. It makes things a bit weird, yes. But neither of them care. They might be villains, but they aren't committing atrocities 24/7.
That's when he can feel his phone vibrating. He decides to check the message, ignoring the stare she was giving him. Tsuyu doesn't like things drawing his attention away from her when they are alone. But it might be important, soo… just a quick peak.
"Something good, ribbit?" She asks a few seconds later. She can see the smile blooming on his face.
"The Quirkless Liberation Front agreed to return to the fold." He announces while putting his phone down again and petting her head. "We just got close to a thousand additional soldiers and another warper. The Revival Celebration will happen according to schedule."
They will set the country on fire in twenty-two days. On the tenth anniversary of the USJ attack. After all, what better place to start the Second Paranormal Liberation War than where the first one began?
(***)
This concludes the House Divided Arc. And honestly? If I was the heroes and I realized how much they managed to piss of Aiko, I'd consider suicide. This is going to be... nasty. In many, many ways.
The next chapter is the official start of the hostilities AND the Revival Celebration Arc. Stay tuned for more (including a lot of death heroes).