Flashpoint huffed, rolling his shoulders.
It was the night before they were meant to be deployed 'early' and sent off to find this fucking vigilante. He could barely believe that someone would even bother becoming a vigilante nowadays, with how easy it was to sign up to the adult warden courses.
Not that he had needed to wait. His Meta Ability, Explosion, had caught the eye of the assholes in the WRD, and they had shown him the respect that such a powerful ability deserved. Or at least, that was the story he told everyone.
Flashpoint was smart. He knew what the WRD's 'early recruitment' program was. The dumbasses weren't even subtle about the fact that they were indoctrinating kids into becoming wardens.
And the old him? The one that looked up to people like Inferno and thought 'that will be me one day!' He might have let them. He might have let himself fall into the trap of power, let his Meta Ability take over his identity, leaving all the rest of him to rot.
Then he met Shutdown.
Shutdown was a grumpy, jaded old fart. A grumpy, jaded old fart that didn't give two shits about the power of his Meta Ability, or how cocky he was as a kid, or the ideals of the MLA. And his own Meta Ability, Erasure, coupled with his martial arts prowess, made it so that not even the strongest recruits had any chance against the man at the beginning.
Flashpoint wouldn't admit it, but he struggled to fight the man even now. Even without any physical enhancements of his own, Shutdown was capable of taking out almost his entire trainee squad on his own. He respected that about him.
It was why Shutdown was one of the few people that Flashpoint could truly look up to anymore. One of the few people he could strive to be like.
And he knew he wasn't alone.
Harmonic couldn't sleep.
But he always had trouble sleeping, so it wasn't really a problem nowadays, more of an inconvenience. As he laid in his bunk, his face only around a meter from the roof, he let his Meta Ability flow into his hands.
It was soothing, to have such a balance inside him. He knew that many of his squadmates had issues with their Meta Abilities requiring stamina, or some other resource, like Genesis's lipid reserves.
Harmonic didn't have that issue. As long as he was warm, he could make ice. And as long as he was cold, he could make fire. He assumed that was where his codename came from. He was in harmony as long as he was using his Meta Ability correctly.
'Correctly…'
It was one of the first things he could still remember, being scolded for 'not using his ability correctly' by his father, Inferno, when he started to use his mother's Ice too much. And why wouldn't he?
Ice was soothing, Ice was a solid barrier between him and his opponents, Ice was a reminder of a woman who he could remember nothing but love from. Fire was painful, Fire reminded people of Inferno, a man who Harmonic wanted absolutely nothing to do with.
He moved his left hand up to the side of his head, feeling the line of rough skin just above his ear, where no hair would grow anymore. It was a reminder to him of what Inferno, and the MLA as a whole, stood for.
Pain, and the ability to rule over others and do whatever you want due to something no-one could control.
Harmonic hated it. He hated the MLA. He hated Inferno. He hated the society that took him from his mother and then silenced any attempt she made to get him back, before finally silencing her altogether.
At one point in his life, he might have denied his father the privilege of seeing his 'creation' become a Warden by failing the training, just using his Ice. But then he had met Shutdown, his instructor, who had shown him a less self-destructive way forward in life.
Shutdown understood him, like no-one else had at that time. Honestly, Harmonic thought of Shutdown as more of a father than he did Inferno. Especially since he actually knew what Shutdown's real name was. Shouta Aizawa.
It was an honour to know the man's name. None of his squadmates actually had one, instead having code names given to them by the WRD when they were abducted. But shutdown had been alive before the takeover. Shutdown had a name.
Harmonic envied him.
Genesis was worried.
As the squad leader, due to her ranking in both academics and Quirk application, she was going to have to have a good showing while they searched for this vigilante. Best case scenario, She was able to catch them quickly.
But from the information they had been given, this vigilante had been active for around a year, with almost no non-civilian witnesses. This meant that either the vigilante was an escape artist of the highest order, or that they had some sort of escape-assisting Meta Ability.
That wasn't really where the problem lied though. The problem lied in the fact that Genesis couldn't find any faults in what this 'Vandal' was doing. She hid it well, adopting a persona of aloofness and, dare she say it, bitchiness, during the day, but she was a very caring person at heart.
She had been given to the WRD freely by her parents in exchange for a massive payout, as not even the WRD wanted to go up against the Yaoyorozu's legal firm, small as they may be, they were the best there was.
She resented her parents slightly for it, but she had to make sure that no-one knew that. She wasn't supposed to know that she was a Yaoyorozu. The only reason she knew at all was thanks to Shutdown.
She knew that Shutdown had approached a few of her other classmates with his ideals, after making sure that they wouldn't tell the WRD about his views, and she was honoured to be one of them.
For all his grumpiness, Shutdown was a kind man who taught Momo about the world without the filter of MLA propaganda over it. She would be forever grateful to him that he didn't let her become a cookie-cutter, propaganda-spouting Warden.
That was why she was worried. Because she didn't know if she could keep her act up and hunt down someone who was telling the world everything she wanted to say. But she had to.
She had to keep playing along until she graduated and became a proper Warden. Then she would have even more power than most other people, in society's eyes. Only once she became a proper Warden could she start to make change, ever so slightly.
She could only hope that it would work.
Atomiser had never really wanted much from life.
His dreams were something along the lines of 'vibe till I die.' He had a passion for video games, not that anyone from the WRD knew that, and was an incredibly lazy person. But even he knew when shit was all wrong.
He could still remember what he did to get the attention of the WRD, the carnage he had wrought as a child, to his own family. He remembered the black-suited man in the big mask who had taken him from there, and given him to the WRD.
It was there that he fell under the care of Shutdown, the first person since his Meta Ability came in to be able to give him a hug without vanishing in a cloud of dust. He hadn't known how much he had needed a hug at that point.
He had participated in all of the training that the WRD had given him at the urging of Shutdown. Apparently the head honcho of the department, Director Shigaraki, had brought him here himself, so Atomiser wasn't allowed to fail.
He didn't want to know what would happen to him if he did.
Izuku followed Slipstream through the small corridor nervously.
There were doors lining most of the walls, with pillars in between them. It was a beat-up old corridor, looking like it hadn't been properly serviced since the MLA had taken over. Actually, it probably hadn't, if it was a resistance hideout.
Izuku made sure to pull his hood as far forward as he could, not wanting to give these people more information about him until he knew he could trust them. Slipstream kept turning his head every now and then, seemingly checking that he hadn't gone and disappeared on him.
"So, Blink. We got our training rooms and shit on the left. This lets us practise with different applications of our meta abilities. The training we do is overseen by Vacuum, who was one of the newer UA teachers when it got shut down. She's also like our resident clean-up gal."
Izuku was actually already able to hear the sound of suction. Who could that have been? UA was only shut down around 10 years ago… Thirteen, maybe? She had a Meta Ability that let her fingertips act like Black holes… right?
Slipstream hummed. "We are gonna let you participate in training eventually, but until you've proven yourself and all that, we can't let you have much info on us, alright?"
Izuku nodded, shrugging. "That's fine. Newbie and all, right? But Nezu seems to think I'd be a good fit here, and I want to be able to trust you. I'm not planning on betraying anyone."
Slipstream just gave him a thumbs up. "Glad to hear it, man. On the right are the various like, workshops or tech rooms and stuff. This is either to build support items for our agents, or just like, experiment with new technologies and stuff."
"We usually leave all that work to Telescope, she's kind of like, a mad genius. Makes some pretty awesome tech though."
Izuku shuddered as he heard a small explosion go off, smoke wafting under the door as mad cackling made its way to his ears. "Are they… are they alright?"
Slipstream just waved his hand and chuckled. "That was a fairly small explosion. They'll be fine. They've tanked worse."
Izuku just nodded, continuing to follow Slipstream until they reached a larger door than the rest, which looked much better quality. "This here is our storage depot. You'll be spending most of your time at the beginning in here, helping Wither out with transportation and supply management."
Izuku heard the sound of a keypad being pressed, before a soft hissing noise came to life, and the metal door opened. Izuku followed Slipstream in to see a medium sized, room, filled with all sorts of items.
To his left were shelves and shelves filled with various articles of clothing, bits of gear, before changing to a food section further down the line. To his right, the shelves closest to the door were filled with weapons, with more food behind them.
But there was definitely something strange about all of the things in this room, mainly because all of them seemed like they were made for dolls. Everything in the room looked like they had been shrunk down to conserve space.
Actually, now that he thought about it, that was pretty clever.
Izuku had to step out of the way as a small robot, which looked like half a beat-up yellow ball with two, antenna-like eyes, dragged along a small cart on wheels towards a desk near the front of the room.
Sitting at the desk was a person with a very cheap, dollar store mask on, in the visage of a blue demon, smiling. They were female, with black, shoulder-length hair framing the mask, and bright blue eyes shining through the eye-holes.
As Izuku watched her pick up a shirt from a pile next to her desk, it rapidly shrunk, leaving it about the size of the others, before moving onto another one, shrinking it as well, and placing on the pile.
Slipstream waved at her. "Wither! How's it hanging? I brought a new recruit for you! He's gonna be like, your helper for the next little while."
The girl just looked Izuku over, scanning him up and down, before nodding to Slipstream. "Hmm. acceptable. Does he have a codename?"
Izuku was confused about her quick, no argument acceptance of him, but Slipstream seemed used to it, continuing. "Yep! Wither, meet Blink. Blink, meet Wither. Blink is gonna help with transportation and all that jazz. You can fill him in later!"
Wither just nodded, before turning back and the shirts she had shrunk on one of the yellow robots on the head, letting it scurry off to one of the shelves. Izuku just turned to Slipstream and tilted his head in confusion, but the man just waved his hand.
"She's quiet. You'll get used to it. You'll be working together after all! Now, there's also the area where we can sleep and rest, but that's gonna be off-limits for you until you do a few missions for us, alright?"
Izuku nodded, understanding completely. Right now, both he and this group were dancing around each other, gaining information on the other before committing to working together.
Izuku cracked his knuckles, and rolled his shoulders. "Alright then, what do you want me to do first?"
Slipstream's eyes crinkled slightly, making it clear that the man was smiling. "Nezu, bring up the docs for our next plan in meeting room C ."
[Of course, Slipstream, accessing documents now.]
[Good Luck, Blink. I am looking forward to seeing you in action]
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