Shahryar - *screams*
(***)
14 Days Before Revival Celebration
"Alright, before we start, I'm going to make an announcement." Midoriya announces to the room full of people. "One concerning the Revival Celebration, our goals and the exact execution of the plan."
They are all in the conference room of Overlook. Midoriya by the slide projector in front of the room. In front of him, the leaders of the PLF's sub-organizations in their civilian outfits. Apocrypha, Mastermind, Lady Murder, Eclipse, Clockmaker and Trumpet, the last one accompanied by Kouta.
Behind them was a crowd of their crucial members of their organizations. League of Villains members. A handful of Ascending Path templars. Some heavy-hitters of the MLA (not the executives, those were supposed to stay hidden, even from other PLF members). Several QLF lieutenants. Rini's courtiers. A small group of veteran Hatsume Industries' engineers.
"I'm sure that you all at some point of your life watched anime or saw a film detailing some secret operations." He says, the last two words spoken in a mocking tone that draws some chuckles from the audience "The sort where one or both sides have everything planned to the most minuscule of details. Where everything goes accordingly or almost according to the plan. Where all tools work as intended. Where no detonator fails to work. Where you can make a plan composed of several stages and coordinate operations of several groups in a stressful and unpredictable combat situation flawlessly. In short, the sort of things that cannot work in real life."
He pauses for a few seconds, letting the vision float around the room. Some of them, especially those experienced as commanding officers or planners, appear to be faintly amused by his words.
"Unfortunately…" Midoriya then speaks. "... that's exactly the sort of thing that we have to make work." Some murmur in the crowd. Yaoyorozu and Mastermind give him slightly worried stares. "What I'm going to describe to you in a moment is going to be one of the most complicated operation plans that you ever will be witness to . And we're going to have to execute it flawlessly or almost flawlessly to have a shot at winning the war. Because if we get defeated here, we can as well commit a group suicide."
He isn't one to sugarcoat it. The people in front of him need to realize what the situation truly is. They are all competent, smart and motivated people.
"I assume that there is a good reason for that." Yaoyorozu decides to speak. Trumpet seems vaguely worried. Aiko is the only fully calm person in the front row, mostly because she already knows what it's about.
"Yes, Counterfeit." Midoriya replies. "As of now, we have several major advantages over the government. Very good information sources. Unregistered warper. And, last but not least, the fact that the government doesn't know that the Paranormal Liberation Front exists once more. This gives us the element of surprise on both tactical and strategic level. However, there is a problem."
"It's all going to vanish after the Revival Celebration, right?" Yaoyorozu figures it out as the first one. Midoriya nods.
"We do not have the firepower to fight the government as an equal." Revenant decides to elaborate. "Yes, we have lots of powerful and smart people. But the government has more of them. Yes, we have a fortress. But the government has more of those. Yes, we have a few thousand followers. But the government has more of them. Revival Celebration is all about exchanging the advantages we have but we can't keep for others that will be useful to us in the long term. The first and most important is changing our image."
"Brand promotion!" Hatsume the Amoral CEO is there to help, immediately recognizing what his plan was about. "PLF is a name associated with defeat. So you want to change that with our first attack."
"Precisely!" Midoriya cocks up some finger guns. "I'm sure that you all, except for the Ascending Path and the Hatsume Industries, know what we're talking about. How many times have you tried to recruit someone only for them to refuse because your groups no longer matter? To look down on you for being a thing of the past?"
He hit the nail, at least judging from the amount of angry growls he heard. Especially Mastermind looks like he just bit a sour lemon. Yeah, that was a major problem for them all the whole time, maybe except for the QLF. The quirkless didn't really have that much of a choice.
"Hence the choice of the location of the Revival Celebration first attack… and the fact that we're going to publicize the recording of it." He announces, to some surprised looks. "Live, in fact. We're going to repeat the USJ attack, except make it decisively more successful than what Entropy did. Thus making the people realize that this is no longer the PLF of the past, but something completely new… and ready for a rematch."
"How exactly are you planning the live transmission to work?" Hatsume raises her hand and asks. "Don't get me wrong, when they shut down the transmission we can hack the TV broadcasts to keep it going for a few more minutes, especially with enough time and funds to prepare the hack beforehand. I'm more concerned with the whole 'live' part, as we're going to need a way to make the recordings during an on-going battle while avoiding potentially compromising parts."
Which means, mostly, 'our soldiers dying in front of the cameras'. Thankfully, Midoriya has an answer to that.
"I happened to inherit a few assets from All for One." He replies. "This includes a certain dedicated… how to put it… Public Relations Special-End Noumu."
Honestly, the whole concept sounds incredibly weird. He isn't surprised when he gets a lot of weird stares from the crowd in front of him. He'll have to elaborate.
"It has a combination of quirks that allows it to remotely record all events within a fifty-meters radius from its position, while transmitting them to a nearest computer. "Midoriya explains. " Doctor Garaki also gave it a sum of memories of some movie directors, TV journalists and war correspondents. It's capable of simultaneously observing the on-going battle around it while picking the right events to record and transmit as ordered beforehand. You're all getting your own close-ups with a short introduction, folks, so make sure that you look cool and your kills are artistic enough."
Should he be surprised when Lady Murder is suddenly very, very pumped up? Nah, not really. Rini is probably already imagining getting famous as hell and having strong people come to fight her on their own.
"Sounds awesome, but not very live anymore." Hatsume points out.
"True, it's only going to be live at the beginning. Afterwards, it's going to continue lagging behind slightly but that's all within the plan." Midoriya replies. "Noumu's going to stay behind Counterfeit's group, so keep it alive Yaoyorozu."
"Sure thing." She nods. In her mind, probably a hurricane of ideas on how to use such an asset in the future. "Does it look in a way that will make it a priority target?" Fair point.
"Not really, no." He replies. "It's supposed to remain low-profile. So, the first phase of the operation is going to include hacking a part of the USJ system in order to let me villain monologue for a moment."
"... seriously?" Mastermind doesn't seem to be convinced. "That's your idea for the brand promotion? A fucking villain monologue?"
"Trust me, Rai." Midoriya smiles. "It's going to be utterly terrifying." To his former classmates, his smile was frightening enough.
(***)
Revival Celebration Day
The anniversary of the USJ attack was a major date for Japan. The public was blissfully unaware of the entire story behind the One for All and All for One, so it didn't know that the Paranormal Liberation War was merely a small part of a very long, secret war.
So for them, the USJ started the first regular war between heroes and villains on Japanese soil ever since the first Meta-Liberation Army. The country wasn't particularly stable for most of its post-Dawn of Quirks history, but it also didn't have regular wars of this scale.
No villain out there amassed enough firepower to start an all-out war against the heroes that lasted for years. Before All for One, that is.
The League of Villains attack on the USJ ended with three fatalities. Space Hero: Thirteen perished when Kurogiri redirected her own quirk against her. One student, Minoru Mineta, never got out of the water zone. Another - Kaminari Denki - died in the landslide zone to a minor villain, Tesla.
If the League was less prepared, it might not have ended up that way, but Entropy for all her homicidal mania was a shrewd tactician. She brought a lot of communication equipment with her and issued orders through it even when engaged in combat. Tesla might have tried to weasel his way out of this mess by using his hostage, but he feared Entropy more than he feared the heroes. So when she ordered him remotely to kill the hostage, he did.
Kyoka Jirou never fully recovered from the guilt caused by that incident. And with UA's scarce psychological help and further events aggravating her trauma, it was the start of her slow slide to the barely-restrained murderer that she was today.
The tenth anniversary was, naturally, meaningful to the country. And modern Japan, like most dictatorships, liked things to be big, impressive and televised to the whole population. So UA obediently organized the rescue training of four hero classes (1-A, 1-B, 2-A and 2-B), some parts of it were going to be televised. All of that while a large group of politicians and heroes were busy making speeches in the central plaza.
There was a stage. A large monitor behind it, to make things visible. Ranks and ranks of chairs where various guests were sitting. A lot of recording equipment placed everywhere. And, last but not least, the everpresent security.
S-Rank Hero, Firefly, was busy making a speech (about how much better prepared they all are today blah blah blah) at the stage when suddenly the image on the monitor behind him changed.
On it was a young man with messy green hair, sitting on a wooden throne, its back on some nondescript white wall. Wearing a black business suit with a white fur coat and a red cape. Outfit that everyone recognized. Some people present at the USJ have also recognized the person wearing it.
"Welcome, Japan." The dead man says. "For those who don't recognize the 'man that ended All Might', I'll introduce myself. I'm Midoriya Izuku…"
"Cut the feed." The UA principal says to one of the technicians, his hands clasping the handles of his wheelchair with enough strength to look almost white. The perfectly staged event was just ruined by some fucking prank of the quirkless excuse of a former student and…
"... or, to use my villain name, Revenant." Midoriya continues, completely ignoring the increasingly frantic attempts to cut the feed and the growing confusion of the audience. "Now that I have your undivided attention, I'd like to announce my ascension to the seat of the Grand Commander of the Paranormal Liberation Front, a fact that you can probably guess from my outfit alone."
"How much longer are you going to let him talk?!" The principal is increasingly furious. The blow to UA's image… a quirkless guy delusional enough to use the PLF's name, yet competent enough to somehow hack the UA servers? During a celebration that was THIS important?! A monumental humiliation, and…
"You're probably wondering what brought this." Midoriya smiles faintly. "At least those of you who already realized that this isn't a prank. You see, after the HPSC used me as a scapegoat to clear up their own fuck-up that ended All Might, I joined the first Paranormal Liberation Front. By the time Entropy and Overhaul took command of it, I was their chief advisor. De facto a third co-commander, although one kept secret from the world."
The shock and disbelief appear to be the most common reaction from the increasingly confused crowd. Some smarter (or more cautious) guests already began to leave it in order to head towards the exit, typically with a bodyguard or two.
"I was the brains behind the majority of the Paranormal Liberation Front victories." Midoriya smiles at the camera. "I planned the death of Endeavor, the Number One Hero. I broke Gigantomachia out of Tartarus. I laid the groundwork for the battle of Sendai. It was me who organized the bombing of the National Diet that managed to kill the prime minister and three members of his cabinet. It was also me…" The smile that blooms on his face is almost angelic. "... who guided Hitoshi Shinsou on his little revenge rampage that ended with the Number Two Hero being bound to the wheelchair for the rest of his life. Isn't it, Thunderbolt? Or, should I say, Mr. UA Principal?"
Thunderbolt freezes, his eyes locked onto the screen with a fury raising within him. Did that quirkless runt just…
"But do not worry!" Midoriya's smile grows somewhat wider. "You won't suffer like that for much longer, Mr. Thunderbolt. Because the Paranormal Liberation Front has returned to the world of the living. It even got two new sub-organizations filled with aspiring and talented villains as members!"
A second-long pause. Enough to make them realize that he isn't going to elaborate. A time to take a deep breath before the conclusion of his little speech. It was all planned to the most minuscule of details, after all.
"Something as joyous as a resurrection is to be celebrated. And thus, you are all cordially invited to our Revival Celebration. We've even brought our own recording equipment to make sure that you won't miss any detail of it! After all.." He makes the MLA salute, accompanied by a truly cheerful smile. With a carefully measured amount of mania and bloodlust on his face. "... what better place to start the second Paranormal Liberation War than where the first one began?"
Within a heartbeat, black clouds erupt at and besides the stage. And the figures start to walk out from it. The same thing happens throughout the USJ, the PLF members engaging the hero classes and their teachers in combat in order to stop them from interfering with what's going to happen at the main plaza..
(***)
14 Days Before Revival Celebration
"Our spies managed to get us the list of heroes that are going to serve as a security during the event." Midoriya continues. "It includes two SS-Rank and five S-Rank heroes. Naturally, there is a risk of someone arriving at the last minute, if that happens you'll have to improvise Yaoyorozu."
"No problem with that." Momo replies, staring at him questioningly. "I'm going to be the commanding officer for the USJ attack then, I take it?"
"Yes, but we're going to move over to this subject in a moment." Midoriya shoots back. "For now, the heroes. The list is one of the best guarded secrets in the country, which naturally didn't stop me from finding out that the two SS-Rankers present in the USJ roster will be the Strongarm Hero: Valiant and the Far-Seeing Hero: Foresight."
That does provoke some reactions. Unfortunately, it's not a positive surprise at the fact that they knew who was going to be there. But something much more negative, connected to the names that he mentioned.
"Don't mind me being pessimistic about it…" Eclipse says. "... but this is going to be ugly. Especially with Foresight there." They fought once. She didn't remember that fondly. Quite the opposite, in fact. She only barely managed to avoid dying or being caught.
"Who the fuck are they?" Lady Murder is as oblivious as ever. Apparently dissecting your enemy's strengths and weaknesses during the battle is a crucial and fun part of a proper fight between the strong.
Midoriya was prepared. The first slide is that of a man built like All Might, but with short black hair. Even the uniform is slightly similar, although of much more subdued color scheme. There is also a large sword sheathed behind his back. He looks strong. Naturally, Midoriya can see Rini's eyes starting to look borderline thirsty. And not in the sexual way.
"That's Shimomura Tsuneo." Midoriya announces. "Hero name Valiant. His quirk is called Bravery. Officially, it's just a simple physical enhancement quirk. Unofficially, it's a physical enhancement quirk that gives him strength, speed and endurance boost proportional to how confident and focused he is at the moment. At the top level, he is at the very least equal in pure physical power to Muscular, while being way smarter and not above using weapons. He was propelled into the SS-Rank after he defeated Miruko during her failed coup."
"Can I…" Lady Murder's hand raises in a heartbeat, the look on her face being a mixture of innocent happiness and total bloodlust.
"No, I need you elsewhere." Midoriya replies and Rini looks murderously dejected now. "Trust me, you're going to do something great. Something that no one has ever done before. But for now, back to Valiant. You see, while Overhaul was killed during the assault on his laboratory, his assistant, Chronostasis, was captured by the HPSC. As a result, the government has access to some of Chisaki's research. This includes the limited ability to bestow quirks through surgeries and pharmacology."
Shame that the only thing that Chisaki failed at making was the quirk removal drug. Oh, the irony. That was his initial goal, after all. When he was merely a yakuza boss. Before he switched into politics and tried to make the world burn alongside Entropy.
"You're kidding." Yaoyorozu seems to have regained her ability to speak as the first one.
"I wish, but no." Midoriya replies. "They can't give anything overly complicated, and the additional quirks are weaker than the primary ones. They are also only giving that to heroes they trust AND try to stick to low-profile quirks to keep the matter hidden. Valiant, I believe, has two such pseudoquirks, one that improves his stamina and one that gives him a limited form of regeneration. He cannot regenerate lost limbs, but he WILL continue fighting with all but instantly lethal injuries." Midoriya sighs. "Unfortunately, he is the objectively less problematic of the two SS-Rankers that we'll be facing."
Another slide. Another face. This time one with spiky blond hair. Vaguely resembling Present Mic's hairdo. Even the body-built is similar, clearly not a heavy-hitter oriented towards physical strength. He is wearing a combat vest that makes him look slightly like a ninja.
"This is Hattori Haruka, also known as Foresight." Midoriya continues. "His quirk is known as Second Chance. To speak of it in simple terms, it's a relatively simple future-seeing quirk. He knows what's going to happen within the next ten seconds. Like Sir Nighteye's quirk, he can only 'see' what happens, not hear it. Unlike Mirai Sasaki, however, Haruka CAN change the outcome of his predictions, and he can only see what's going to happen in front of him. His ability to change the future makes him extremely dangerous, especially as he is an expert tactician that has also received movement acceleration and telepathy pseudoquirks. He can warn his allies of incoming attacks seconds before they even start."
Officially, there was another hero in the area. One with a two-way telepathy, reading Haruka's prediction and warning others. It was all but a low-profile pseudoquirk, but damn if it wasn't helpful.
"How do you even deal with someone like that?" Oddly enough, it's Yaoyorozu that asks. "The only thing that comes to my mind is to make an attack of such a large scale that he is incapable of responding to it in time, but with Valiant and the others around to help him, it'll be…"
"... exactly what we're going to do." Midoriya cuts in. She blinks at him a few times. "We'll move over to that in a moment. The thing is, they expect an attack from the outside. Considering Foresight's prediction ability, he'll probably be at the edge of the USJ, near the entrance. Since we'll attack from the inside, this gives us a brief window for opportunity to eliminate Valiant before Foresight gets close enough to warn him of our attacks. We just have to make things bloody enough right from the start to make the Strongarm Hero engage without waiting for Haruka. And make a good plan."
"I think…" Yaoyorozu speaks. "... that I have an idea."
(***)
Revival Celebration Day
How to make things bloody? How to make things terrifying to the people of Japan, even after the Paranormal Liberation War? How to sow panic among heroes that were just surprised with an attack out of nowhere, but need some additional push?
Guns. Lots of guns. For some reason, that was shocking to people even today. Quirks? Old news. Guns? What the hell, man. We are not America.
What emerged from the warpgates to the left and right of the stage was a line of QLF soldiers. A wall of tactical shields decorated with Paranormal Liberation Front's crest, bristling with assault rifles.
Thirty of the QLF elites on each side of the stage. Each of them equipped like the members of the Anti-Firearms Squads of the Riot Police Units. By all intents and purposes, special forces operatives. They knew how to shoot. And they just entered what could be considered a target-rich environment.
Hero badges, it turns out, doesn't make you bulletproof. The storm of bullets began to tear through the surprised heroes. They respond with attacks on their own, some of them managing to find cover and some of them actually being bulletproof thanks to their quirks.
The first high profile hero to die was Firefly. He was a dangerous combatant, no doubt about it. His quirk was a simple mutation that made his hair be composed entirely of minuscule yellow-ish balls that he could split off and manipulate in the air through some sort of selective telekinesis.
When split, they glowed. And after a few seconds, they exploded. The more of them connected into a single lump, the stronger the explosion. He could demolish a building with a lot of them, he could use them as a flashbang if he didn't want that.
None of that helped him much when he saw standing two meters from the suddenly opened warpgate. Before he realized that he was facing a warpgate, Singularity (the first one to emerge onto the stage) had five fingers on his chest.
Firefly, an S-Rank hero and a rising star of the ranking, imploded into a clump of gore in front of millions of people. That were immediately introduced to a still image of Singularity grinning maniacally next to imploding Firefly, with her name, her villain name and a portrait displayed right next to it. Together with her allegiance as a member of the League of Villains.
Four seconds later Counterfeit was out at the stage as well. On her, an almost full-body black armor, with a large opening between her abdomen and breasts (with just a hint of an underboob, because so Yaoyorozu decided). In her left hand, a shield to protect that part of her body from attacks.
She decided to spice up her own unmasking by not bringing it on herself. Instead she pulled the grenade launcher from her abdomen in full view of the cameras. When the first Trigger-filled grenade landed among the panicked audience, trying to establish the exact chronology of deaths became a fool's endeavor.
She also got introduced to the world as a leader of the League of Villains. Yaoyorozu's estate was probably in full-blown panic right now.
Songbird and Biohazard emerged right after her. Each of them carrying a pushable tactical shield and assault rifles. That they immediately directed into the audience in front of the stage.
Naturally, they had their own introductions. In Midoriya's opinion, the maniacal glint in Songbird's eyes looked particularly villainous. Especially while firing her gun at a crowd of civilians busy tearing each other apart in a Trigger-induced rampage.
Then came Quicksilver, wearing a color-inverted outfit of Thunderbolt (instead of red and yellow, it was yellow and red) that concealed her identity. No introductions (yet), instead she quickly runs to the side of the stage off-cameras and jumps off it. She has a job to do, although it's for a later stage of the attack.
The last ones to emerge are Hypothermia and Clockmaker. The former wearing an armor and a crown of ice, and pretty much nothing else - which was quite erotic, except no one in front of her was in a mood to admire that. Hatsume had her business suit and glasses, followed by what was de facto a self-propelled arsenal.
A large, blocky container on a tracked suspension, ready to dispense her babies when prompted. It would have crushed the stage under its weight if Uraraka didn't take most of it away.
Both emerged on the opposite side of Yaomomo than Valiant's position at the beginning of their attack. They managed to hack the USJ security system deeply enough to compare the events on the TV screen to the camera feed beforehand, in order to make sure that UA didn't try anything funny.
The bait was tasty enough. Valiant arrives. He has quite an entrance. Thirty meters long jump, calculated perfectly to land right next to Singularity. He is wearing a suit, not his hero uniform. But somehow, the sword is there.
He doesn't just land. He lands while making a vertical swing of his grossly oversized sword, targeting Singularity. Uraraka's enhanced reflexes are good enough for her to jump the side, but the stage doesn't have even remotely as much luck. It's practically shattered apart, Yaomomo's group briefly losing their footing.
"You have one chance to surrender." Valiant announces while standing up. His giant figure towers over the villains in front of him. He seems to be talking to Uraraka. Did he recognize her? Is he treating her as a potentially brainwashed victim? Nice of him, especially for a HPSC lackey. But it doesn't last.
Uraraka lunges forward. She touched some of the pieces of shattered stage around her, showering Valiant with projectiles. He doesn't move for an inch, despite the impacts being powerful enough to shatter concrete. His suit is damaged, but not his body. The distraction is correctly identified as such and ignored.
With this degree of a resilience power-up, they would have needed an anti-tank missile launcher to harm him. The QLF soldiers don't even bother trying.
He doesn't risk getting close. Not against a five-finger point quirk user that just liquified an S-Rank hero on touch. Especially as he can't be sure that this was her top speed. The swing is horizontal, and too fast to avoid. Singularity is cut in half in an instant.
There was a tiny chance of her dodging it… if not for the fact that she didn't even try. It was part of the plan. She landed too far from him to try to touch his leg from a blindspot, so the first version of the plan didn't work - but they had an alternative.
Valiant prepared himself to charge towards Yaoyorozu, whom he probably identified as the enemy commander. Except, that's when Uraraka touched the stage between them with all five fingers of her hand, completely ignoring the fact that she just received mortal wounds.
The stage erupted, the large part of it sent flying by the gravity amplification and redirection. Valiant didn't expect an attack from a dead woman, and it came too fast for her Hyper-Regeneration to kick in, warning him that she isn't done yet.
He might be powerful, but he can be surprised. And he has no solid footing. He flies backwards from the stage, landing in the area beside it that was just cleared by the advancing wall of the QLF soldiers. Between them and the still open warpgates.
The crew on the other side calculates everything perfectly. The attack should connect. The punch came from the blind spot. Powerful enough to kill unsuspecting Valiant instantly - or at least damage him notably. However the fist of the USJ Noumu - the one once sent by Entropy to occupy All Might's attention - is blocked by the flat side of the sword.
"Tsk." Counterfeit clicks her tongue in irritation. They wasted too much time. Foresight arrived, moving fast enough to dodge gunfire from the QLF soldiers on his side, slaying three of them with nothing more than a knife. His eyes jump around the area, busy analyzing the nearest future and sending warnings to the remaining heroes. No wonder that the resistance stiffened instantly.
(***)
14 Days Before Revival Celebration
"But what if my plan fails?" Yaomomo asks. "Or we don't even get to execute it? We can't be sure where Foresight will be at the beginning of the attack. And what if he'll rush towards Valiant instantly once your broadcast starts?"
Midoriya really missed the feeling of working with people that knew what questions to ask. That didn't take their plans for granted. Hers is a very good one, one that he failed to significantly improve with his own ideas, but… there is a fair chance that it won't work.
"Don't worry about that." He replies swiftly. "Killing or injuring Valiant at the beginning will make things easier and limit our casualties, yes. If it doesn't happen, though… we'll get him during the second stage of the plan."
(***)
Revival Celebration Day
"Counterfeit to all." She doesn't waste time to despair over her plan not working. The Noumu (where the hell did Midoriya find it?) will hold Valiant back for now. Uraraka, her body now reconnected, stands up, ready to intercept if either of the SS-Rankers tried to go after Yaoyorozu. Just as planned. "Hammer Down in one minute. Hold your ground."
The reinforcements start emerging from the warpgates. The heroes, reinvigorated, lunge forward.
(***)
Yes. Those are practically Borderlands-style character intros. Doing that in the middle of an on-going assault and towards the entirety of Japan is certainly one way of establishing dominance. And probably better than goddamn T-Posing over them.
Also, Thunderbolt is here. We can see where it's all going, hmm? Except, it's not exactly going where you're expecting it to go. Because I enjoy plottwists.
Also we all know what was Hitoshi Shinsou's revenge rampage caused by, hmm? At least if you read Ties that Bind you can probably imagine that. Although details (and what happened to Shinsou afterwards) are going to be hidden from you for a while longer.