MosesArk Reborn2000 - Let's just say that things get more complicated than just Dabi xd
Shahryar - That he is, yup.
Chaoscontrol85 - Regretfully I have a policy for NOT starting to write any more longfics. I just want to finish those I started and leave the fandom :/
(***)
"Izumo confirms that they managed to purge the infected crew members." One of the staff members announces. "The aircraft carrier is still operational, but its crew is down by sixty percent, and it suffered heavy damages."
Aircraft carrier. They almost lost one of three aircraft carriers available to the Maritime Self-Defense Force and they didn't even know how.
"Does Admiral Honda have any idea how the hell did that happen?" Mindscape asks. The chief of staff of the JMSDF wasn't under her command and had no reason to report to the person responsible for the evacuation efforts, but if she actually knew how the fuck was Necromancer advancing that fast, she would have a better shot of getting people out of Shikoku.
"The attack came from the inside." The officer - her liaison from the Navy - replies. "One of Necromancer' clones and a number of infected appeared within the aircraft carrier. With the security system in shambles, they don't know where and how but…"
Mindscape can feel her blood go cold. It can't be it, right? There is just no way, right?
She tells the Navy officer to go continue overseeing the naval evacuation, then she leans over to one of her sidekicks.
"Run a quirk registry search." She says. "Quietly but as fast as possible. We need to know if there were any warp quirk users living in Shikoku." The sidekick's eyes go wide. "If yes, they are a priority for extraction. If they can't be located, send their identity to Mera and tell them to make them a priority target for the Sword of Damocles if the SatCom manages to locate them, got it?"
The woman nods a few times before scurrying off.
If Mindscape's suspicion is confirmed, all attempts on keeping Necromancer contained to Shikoku are useless. It was just exterminating the Shikoku's population before moving to Honshu.
"What's the Seto Bridge status?" She asks. Onodera bridge was just blown up by the Navy' missile strike after it became obvious that it was about to fall to Necromancer's vanguard. There were still civilians on it, when that happened, and at best half of them made it.
Shit. Shitshitshitshit.
"Under attack, but the 14th Division, 6th Brigade and most of the Shikoku heroes that accompany them are holding ground for now." The JGSDF liaison replies. "They know that every five minutes they buy is another evacuation train leaving the island. They won't retreat."
It looks like they were still heroes in Japan. You just needed an armageddon to make them realize that.
Mindscape truly and genuinely hopes that she's wrong with the warp quirk user suspicion, because if so, then the sacrifice of those people was going to be utterly meaningless.
(***)
Fumikage Tokoyami is a man of internal calmness and balance. They might enjoy some things with genuine excitement, and then there is their honest and fervent devotion to Judgment, yes.
But when it comes to things like anger or hatred, they are utterly devoid of them. They just don't see the point in them. Deep inside, they are looking forward to the time when his goddess will surpass those particular flaws of hers.
She was still a human as much as a goddess. The former part of her was chaining her down. Blackwing understood that, and it only made their veneration of her grow more fervent. She was… significantly more relatable that way.
All the anger and hatred they had for the world died the moment he drank poison and fell asleep, before being reborn as an exalted. They just didn't see the point of holding onto them when they were no longer a human being.
Seeing Dabi was a surprise to them. But unlike Ragdoll, there was absolutely no hatred in them at the sight of the person that killed Hanta Sero during the Training Camp Massacre. They only saw an obstacle to Judgment's plans, one that had to be dealt with quickly and efficiently.
They could fight with the Arch-Arsonist in a glorious battle of supervillains, they supposed, but what was the point?
A single gesture, Mechanist pulling a trigger a level above, and a 7,62mm bullet entered Dabi's skull from above, splattering his brain around and making his body fall down the elevator shaft.
What a dumbass to expose himself like this. It's like he wanted to die again.
Blackwing leaps off the wall of the tunnel, pulling their comrades behind them and crawls through the now open elevator door. Then they immediately block Muscular's punch directed at their face.
"HAHAHAHAHA!" Imasuji shouts. "Finally, a worthy oppon…" Tokoyami reshapes their form, opening a hole for Ragdoll - who just left the elevator behind him - to fire through. She does so with a look of murderous delight on her face.
Muscular moves quickly enough to shield his head with a sudden explosion of muscles from his shoulder, but Tokoyami reshapes their other arm into a blade and severs Muscular's right arm above the elbow.
Imasuji jumps back, shielding his face with his sole remaining arm, while Ragdoll continues to pull the trigger on her rifle and Tokoyami helps their comrades get out of the elevator shaft.
"IS THAT ALL?!" Imasuji shouts, clearly pumped up despite missing an arm. "IT'S JUST TICKLING ME, TRY SOMETHING S…"
Ragdoll does just that, firing the mounted grenade launcher from her assault rifle. The explosion sends Muscular reeling, the shrapnel tearing through the surface layers of his muscle armor.
"YOU FUCKING B…" Tokoyami has enough. Deceiver covers his approach with their short-timed illusions, Muscular barely having the time to notice him before a sharpened shadow spear impaled him through the chest. Blood bursts from his mouth, but before he has a time to even try to react to that, he is decapitated by a shadow blade.
Tokoyami takes a step back to admire their work, Muscular's headless body slumping down. Then they are almost severed in half by an attack from the side. They reform what they lost, before facing the new arrivals.
Their eyes meet the ones of Eclipse. The first Eclipse, the one killed years ago by Endeavor, her body incinerated by a Prominence Burn practically in front of cameras. Next to her stands a hulking giant that Tokoyami immediately recognizes as Beast, the former High Warlord of the Inhuman Supremacy Party.
Apparently, if what Judgment told them in secret was true, turned to dust by his daughter's lover, with Revenant making sure that Entropy thought that he just 'vanished mysteriously'. Once again, years ago.
The fact that Purity, the former High Priest of the Creature Rejection Clan is standing right behind them in her ridiculous (and highly sinful, even for someone like Tokoyami who's from entirely different religion) nun cosplay is, honestly, the final straw.
None of them looked like they aged a day since their deaths.
"This…" Tokoyami announces. "... is just ridiculous. You're all dead."
"So are you." Eclipse points out calmly, but with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. Around her float her surfaces, like the one she launched at Tokoyami earlier. "But did you see any of us pointing that out, unprompted, and making it sound like it's somehow wrong?"
The fact that they even speak like their original version is just… are they actually the original versions of themselves or what? And if yes, how the hell did they survive? They are going to find out. But first, they need to deal with the boss fight at the end of the dungeon.
"Fine point." Tokoyami replies. The situation is not good at all.
Blackwing is extremely dangerous in melee, but their comrades are mostly from the heroics' (or villainous) second league. Ragdoll is decidedly the most dangerous of them all, and even she would fail to finish off Muscular.
Eclipse is Tokoyami's natural predator, being able to hold them at bay with her shields while severing parts of their body from a distance. And if the murderous smirk on Beast's face that Tokoyami can see through their face mask is anything to go by, the High Warlord will leap at their comrades while Eclipse will be holding them at bay.
He had a plan to deal with the situation, but it was going to be… a close call, probably.
"So…" Blackwing announces with a bellowing voice. "... who wants to die again first?"
The fight starts.
(***)
"Sup, Neito." Setsuna Tokage says when she enters his car and takes the front passenger seat. "How's it going?"
Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu and Reiko Yanagi are slightly less vocal about it, taking the rear seats. All of them in their hero uniforms. The only thing that changed since their school years in them was that the colors tended to be slightly more subdued.
"I haven't eaten a decent meal in three days, my favorite anime was canceled a week ago, the support company responsible for maintenance of my equipment raised prices significantly and the island of Shikoku was just devoured by the army of ravenous zombies, with seven digit number of casualties in about six hours." Neito Monoma replies dryly while starting the car's engine. "I'm fine, how are you?"
Setsuna blinks at him a few times.
"Very much the same, minus the meal part." She replies. "So, what sort of help do you need from us? You were awfully sketchy in details."
"Still working as Kendou's wetwork man?" Yanagi decides to comment from her seat. "That's unhealthy."
Monoma keeps driving down the street, an activity that doesn't stop him from flipping Reiko a bird.
Emily - officially a B-Rank hero and a member of Tokage's agency - rolls her eyes before returning to looking through the car's window.
"Yeah, we have a bit of a crisis." Monoma can only hope that his need to drive off to pick them up didn't give Shiozaki the time to dash away. But he had to do that, because none of the people he was with right now were stealthy enough, and he was fairly sure that the area was being watched. "Something that I want to solve quietly."
"Are you sure…" Real Steel (another B-Rank) says. "... that I'm the right pick for that?"
That was an awfully good question.
"It's a family matter, so to speak." Monoma replies. "I believe that I managed to locate a high ranked member of the Paranormal Liberation Front, but I want to make the arrest quietly and… unofficially."
Monoma is still busy driving towards Shiozaki's house, but he doesn't miss the brief exchange of looks between Tokage and the others. Eventually, Lizardy (A-Rank hero) speaks.
"Monoma-kun." Tokage says officially. "Look, I do respect you for your skills when being shady and shit is involved. We both know that I already asked you a few times for help in doing something that… let's say, the police shouldn't know about." That was true. "But don't you think that running your own private prison is going a bit too far?"
"A bit?" Yanagi appears vaguely surprised by that. Tetsutetsu chuckles at her reaction.
"It's not a private prison, more like a private cell in an undisclosed location." Monoma retorts. "In this particular case, the situation absolutely calls for it."
"Dude, don't get me wrong, I know you love her a lot, but that's…"
"Don't pull Kendou into this, alright?" Monoma cuts in. They knew about them being a thing. Itsuka doesn't know that they know. "It's fucking serious."
"Elaborate then." Setsuna says. "Because I think that if it's fucking serious in the wake of an undead apocalypse, then you should call for more help than one A-Rank and two B-Rank heroes."
"We both know…" Monoma cuts back. "That I should be an SS-Rank together with Kendou, and you all should be S-Ranks, the government just doesn't like us enough to permit us to get popular. This is the largest quiet strike force that I can muster on the fly, without involving Honnenuki. Or, gods forbid, Kamakiri."
He wouldn't trust Shemage with throwing the trash out of their hero agency, because knowing Komori she would shift through it to look for overlooked confidential documents that she could sell through Kuroiro, her secret A-Rank villain boyfriend, for some pocket money.
Gods, their old class was a mess.
"Try Kodai." Yamagi comments. "An S-Rank villain and high ranking member of the Levelers would fit right into the shifty business you seem to be so much into."
"I'm not even going to comment on that." Monoma retorts. He's already regretting certain decisions. "It's Shiozaki."
"What?" It's not the shocked what that he escaped from Tokage over the revelation so she probably didn't realize what he meant.
"The high ranked PLF member we're about to try to arrest is Ibara Shiozaki." Neito says, and… yeah, the shocked gasps tell him that this time the hit connected. "And there is a shitload of brats on the premises, so it might get sketchy at a moment's notice."
"Oi, scratch the operation planning thing, what the fuck?!" Tokage sounds like she wanted to punch someone. "Ibara joined the PLF?! How the hell is that supposed…"
Reiko just sighs and starts playing with her phone. Tetsutetsu glances at her, shakes his head and returns his attention to the events on the car's front seat.
"I tracked old PLF members, located one named Crucible, discovered that a young woman fitting Shiozaki's description hanged out at his joint a few times and that Cloud, Midoriya's warper, was present at the premises as well." Monoma summarizes the story, while leaving a lot of crucial details behind. "Now I want some answers from Shiozaki."
Silence in the car for a few seconds. Eventually, Tokage speaks.
"Okay, I guess that you have a point." She sighs. "Cursed Class is currently busy annihilating the country, it's already bad that Kuroiro and Kodai went villain, if we have another traitor in our midst, we'll start being seen as even more politically undesirable. Shit. Fine, you know what, fine. We'll do it." She looks through the window, clearly angry. "I hope she has a good fucking explanation to all of that."
Monoma would like that as well.
(***)
"Izumo was just boarded again." The Navy liaison says with a grim look on his face. "The captain issued the order to abandon ship. Kongo is launching what's left of its missiles stores at it to make sure it sinks. We also lost Akebono and Ariake, so…"
"So the 1st Escort Flotilla of the Maritime Self-Defense Force has practically stopped existing." Mindscape replies dryly. It's down to Kongo and Akizuki, and frankly, them being boarded is just a matter of time. "And we still don't even know how."
Mindscape is only curious why Necromancer didn't target Kongo first. Maya, the other missile destroyer of the flotilla, was the first ship from the naval blockade to be lost to the undead.
Taking over the blockade ships clearly wasn't the point. If Mindscape tried that with Necromancer's assets, she would eliminate Maya and Kongo first, then take over Izumo. Without those two ships, the 1st Escort Flotilla wouldn't have the firepower to sink the aircraft carrier.
Of course, it'd be then sunk by an air strike or Sword of Damocles, rendering the point moot. Still, some things didn't add up. And she hated that.
"The 3rd Escort Flotilla will arrive in thirty minutes." The liaison adds. "The 2nd in an hour. However, in the meantime, the naval blockade is effectively gone."
Fucking brilliant. The 1st Escort Flotilla has by now sunk twelve ships of the evacuation fleet that stopped responding to calls. When it stops existing, the risks of a ship full of zombies getting to the mainland will skyrocket.
She has no idea why they didn't already. They almost certainly had a warper, but if so, they could just warp a handful of zombies into central Tokyo. Is it a range? Ships were close enough for the warper, but the mainland wasn't? Then again, if so, they could just frog hop through the smaller island, rendering the whole containment effort useless from the start.
She was chugging the best type of tea to power up her quirk right from the start of this mess. Despite that, she was at loss.
If they continue naval evacuation without the naval blockade, then - if another evacuation ship will be overtaken - they'll have to redirect either Sword of Damocles or the air force away from supporting the last stand of Shikoku's garrison.
The last railway or the ships. She runs the numbers through her quirk. She knows the rational answer to the dilemma, but it's one of those things that will ruin her sleep schedule for months after this.
Shit.
"Naval evacuation is on hold until the blockade is reinstated." She announces. The people in front of her clearly avoid looking at her. Cowards. "Report to the Prime Minister that Mindscape recommends activating the third stage of the Sword of Damocles."
This time they do stare at her, but in shock. Before the message is sent.
(***)
"You look like absolute shit." Mastermind announces when Yaoyorozu leaves the command center to take a nap. "And you really should go rest, if only for a moment."
He isn't wearing his villain uniform. Just a simple combo of a T-Shirt and long trousers, the former with a logo of his favorite rock band. He looks distinctly un-villainous for a megalomaniac genocidal racist.
"I'll rest when I'm dead." Midoriya replied dryly before drinking some coffee from a cup. He prefers tea (especially when Tsuyu made it), but right now, he needs an energy boost. Even a short-term one is good.
"I don't enjoy being your fucking nanny, Midoriya." Mastermind says, drawing out words. "But this shit hit the fan when you were about to go to sleep. And you wake up early. So by now, you're overseeing a crisis response while driven by coffee, spite and desire for whoever started this shit being quartered in front of you while being active for, like, 20th hour in a row? You're going to start making mistakes, and…"
"I've made mistakes my whole life, whether I slept enough or not." Midoriya replies. "I need to be here."
"Stop proving me right." Yoshihiro replies. "And go take at least a thirty minute nap or I swear I'm going to knock you out."
"Try it, bitch." Midoriya grins wryly. Or, well, he tries. He isn't sure if it worked out well. "It's my mess and I'm going to see it cleaned up or the nightmares won't let me sleep either way."
"Well, I fucking tried." Mastermind comments. "Suit yourself. Speaking of, I really want to see whoever unleashed that fucking abomination being murdered to super-death."
"Oh, really?" Midoriya glances at him. "No brilliant masterplan to include it in if it was on our side?"
"We both know that noumus disgust me." Mastermind cuts back. "Humans are perfect the way they are, fully natural. I look down even on tattoos and piercings, it's just warping what was already alright for little more than wanting to stand out or looking for attention. Singularity I can tolerate, because it wasn't her choice, but Necromancer fucking volunteered, so I drew the line here."
"You know, I'd like to point out how piercings and noumufication are two completely different things…" Izuku retorts. "... not to mention pointing out intrinsic hypocrisy of tolerating Singularity because 'it wasn't her choice' but being alright with hating mutants for being born that way… but I think I'm not in a mood for debating you."
"You're in a mood, you're just too tired and might lose the debate, so you're dodging it." Mastermind proves himself to be a good reader of people. "Listen to reason and go take a goddamn nap."
So much about 'suit yourself'.
"No." Izuku replies dryly.
"Do you want me to involve your girlfriend in that?" Mastermind stares him down. "Singularity, maybe? If I elaborate deeply enough on the long-term results of not sleeping, she might decide your orders are actively detrimental to you and will put you to sleep by force."
Izuku really wants to punt him out of the window. Unfortunately, Overlook is located underground, so there are no windows to speak of.
"Don't…" Yoshihiro then says slowly. "... make me involve Trumpet, please."
Ugh, that fucker.
That's when Midoriya receives a message from someone. His spy in the highest echelons of the government.
"It appears…" He then says slowly. "... that the government considers dropping some nukes on Shikoku."
A bit too early, in Midoriya's opinion. Then again, it's too early in more than one way, and they have nothing really important left on Shikoku since Juggernaut's group left. Well, for as long as the noumu production facility isn't on the list of targets, as they still need it to locate the original Armageddon.
Tokoyami's group was still off the grid.
Mastermind curses, before giving up officially and returning to work in trying to compile reports of this mess.
Three minutes later Kongo sank Akizuki before sinking itself. The situation was going from bad to worse at a lightning speed.
(***)
"Alright, so that's the plan." Monoma announces once they concluded their brief bout of strategizing. "Now it's time to execute it."
They can only hope that nothing goes wrong. Especially with so many children in the area. Hopefully Shiozaki will see reason, but…
They leave the car and cross the street.
(***)
Tenko Shimura stops helping Fireline load her small army of brats into a 'borrowed' bus (scheduled to run for the coast as soon as possible), and checks his phone.
The best way of describing his reaction to the message he just got was 'well, fuck'. And it was putting things lightly.
"W-what happened, uncle Tenko?" One of the kids noticed the flinch on his face. "Are we in trouble? Are the…"
"Don't worry, kid." Decay replies. "It's adult stuff, keep loading your things into the bus and get ready for a trip."
This worked well enough. Midoriya kept joking that children listen to him because they detect a fellow child in him. Decay sometimes wanted to decay his vocal cords for it.
Fireline gives him a questioning stare. Tenko leans over her ear.
"Heroes located Eden." Her eyes grow wider. "Get the kids out, I have a job to do."
Hopefully Midoriya will let him borrow some of his assets for this particular clean-up operation. Because if Tenko is really retiring as a villain, and this is going to be his last serial murder of heroes, he really hopes to end his career properly and without a screw-up to haunt him in retirement.
Time since the activation of Armageddon: 8h
Est. number of civilian casualties: 1 460 000
Est. number of uninfected inhabitants of Shikoku: 1 800 000
Est. number of evacuated civilians: 650 000
Sword of Damocles: 70% depleted
Naval Blockade Status:
1st. Escort Flotilla - Annihilated
2nd Escort Flotilla - 1 hour away from positions
3rd Escort Flotilla - 30 minutes away from positions
Ground Forces Status:
JGSDF 14th Division - 65% casualties
JGSDF 6th Engineering Brigade - 45% casualties.
Shikoku Pro-Heroes: 75% casualties.
Shikoku Police Force: 55% casualties.
Evacuation Status:
Naval: Blocked
Ground: Ongoing