Katsuki Bakugou would NOT admit that he was worried about Izuku Midoriya´s wellbeing, but after lying on press about his stupid wanted criminal girlfriend that damn nerd had disappeared again. Was that operation with the Americans happening right now? Bakugou felt a bit nervous for his friendly rival, if his inference was right, he had allied with the Americans to fight one of the top ten villains in the world. He had already deduced that Ashido was on a similar project against the number one villain, Ndege Mweusi, that piece of shit African dictator that seriously pissed Bakugou off, and Ashido wasn't working with Deku, so it had to be one of the other nine.
An assortment of terrorists and shitheads, the distance between the number 2 villain, Pestilentia, and the third villain, a warlord in the Middle East, was quite substantial. So Deku was after one of these other guys? Which one? Damn nerd, why are you getting into all that trouble? Wasn't All for One enough? If it is because of that Toga bitch I´ll kick your ass next time I see you.
"Hey, Katsuki, there´s a special hero report on the news scheduled in a few minutes, wanna see it?" Eijirou said, barging into Katsuki´s room. "What the hell would it be about, anyway? Endeavor jailing some rando again?"
"I don't know, they were pretty secretive about it." "What the hell, let's see it."
The hero couple moved over to the living room, and they switched on the tv, changing the channel from the food network Katsuki had last seen to the Hero Network, where national and international Hero exploits were reported. The presenter, that brunette reporter that made Mineta breathe heavily, started speaking after the initial jingle "Hello, and welcome to a special report here on the Hero Network! Today we are joined by the hero Deku and the special agent codenamed Holy Diver, from the American Quirk Intelligence and Intervention Agency, with good news: the number two most wanted criminal in the world, Pestilentia is no more! We have a short video of the fights after a brief explanation of what happened! Miss Holy Diver, Deku, if you would?"
The agent, a woman wearing armoured combat fatigues and a full-face helmet spoke first "We started operations against Pestilentia, who now we now was a retired Russian Intelligence operative named Dmitri Krasnov, about two years ago, around the time All for One resurfaced.
"With all that we learned we now know that Krasnov came from a family with deep ties to the KGB, who turned a blind eye to the Krasnov operations around the world. Pestilentia´s own mother, Kseniya Ivanovna Krasnov was the KGB´s last Director before the Russians shut it down and purged their intelligence agencies some seventy years ago. The KGB covered up relating to the Krasnovs in the end, so we only made a breakthrough a few months ago, when our Agency made contact with Deku and made a deal with former villain Himiko Toga."
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" yelled Bakugou. "You already knew Midoriya was lying about that girl, Katsuki, calm down!" asked Kirishima. "Tsk" huffed Katsuki, paying attention again. That damn nerd started talking next "In the year between All for One´s defeat and today, I managed to convince Toga to surrender to the authorities and make a deal, so the Agency took her in and she helped us against Pestilentia. We fought his people in London, where our identities were still classified."
While the show played a clip of the "SAS Agents saving the Prime Minister", Bakugou checked his cell phone, that was vibrating. "Did Mineta text you too saying that "Midoriya convinced that villain with ridiculous amounts of sex"?" "That little fucker is so damn predictable! That Setsuna needs to put some more sense in his mind!"
On screen, Deku continued "After London, we hurried to capture Pestilentia in Saint Petersburg, based on information we extracted from one of his men."
"By asking nicely, of course" added that Holy Diver woman, with an icy tone that chilled Katsuki´s spine. "On the way, we were intercepted by men from the Mountain Brigade allied with Pestilentia. After the encounter, bolstered by the rest of my team and the best heroes from the Nordic Confederation, we attacked a secret base on Denmark, where we found out a great deal on Pestilentia´s villainy, and the fact that he had his men kidnap Toga as a young girl to make her into an assassin, based on her Quirk, Transform, which allows her to take the form of the person whose blood she ingests."
"That´s really f´ed up, man!" said Kirishima. The Holy Diver woman continued "Our Denmark battle was successful, and we decided to invite the rest of Team First Response to join on our assault on Pestilentia´s last stronghold. The team would attack a position in the sea between Japan and Russia, which I believe your Hero Network already covered a few days ago. Meanwhile, the rest of us would attack the stronghold, a town called Krasnograd, and this school, the Tselinoyarsk Institute, where Pestilentia trained assassins and soldiers, some from birth, as his tools of war and domination."
A short drone camera video showed the school and the town it overlooked as it was swarmed by Russian and American forces. The drone footage was sped up, condensing about an hour of mission time into three or four minutes. Jets dogfighting, artillery firing, tanks…Katsuki´s pyromaniac side loved watching that. "Now that is power!" he said as he saw a tank exploding. Near the end of the video, that dangerous plane that mechanic girl, that Deku wasn't dating for some reason Katsuki could not understand (they were two goddamn nerds!), had crafted, hovered on top of the school. The drone zoomed in on the heroes entering; that Freya mentioned looking badass as fuck, Deku carrying his criminal girlfriend like they were in their honeymoon, the agent Holy Diver fast roping.
"Inside we faced strong resistance, so we split up; Deku and Toga secured the basement, and Freya and I took down the section above ground." Next, they showed a "PG rated" montage of the teams clearing the building, made from security cam footage, body cams on their hero suits; even footage from the helmet cam of one of the villains. The montage obviously did not show anyone dying on screen or the gunshots hitting anyone; that restricted version would undoubtedly be added for some editions of this report further on, or on "dark and edgy" documentaries.
Bakugou was on the edge of the seat when they showed a fight between Deku and a super soldier, the cuts in the edition obviously to censure the most grievous wounds. "That guy looked strong, Midoriya really has improved since first year, huh?" "Damn nerd kicked his ass! Stupid guy was probably genetically modified and shit and Deku beat him! Damn right." A few shots of a duel between Toga and another girl who fought exactly the same way were also added, but not too many, probably because they would traumatise young viewers who just wanted to see badass heroes punch stuff.
"Now for the footage of Deku confronting Pestilentia we used a few cameras around the room and combined it for a 3D image." Holy Diver said, sounding slightly excited at that. The video was played in a vignette between the reporter and the heroes, showing Deku walking towards Pestilentia, a guy with red eyes that had danger and death in them. "I will take you down, villain!" said Deku, as he stepped from a downed Toga on the ground, having some sort of seizure.
The villain injected himself with a syringe that Kirishima instantly recognized "That´s Trigger!" Deku said the same in voiceover "Pestilentia´s Quirk allowed him to invade the unconscious minds of people infected with cells he produced, the cells affected the brain and allowed him total control of nightmares. Using Trigger, he attacked my mind, as I had been injected the cells in his base in Denmark. But on Trigger a Quirk is both stronger and unsafe, and he could not control the dream…" the footage showed Deku falling to one knee and blood squirting out from Pestilentia´s eyes, ears and nose.
"The next part is a bit graphic, Pestilentia grabbed a gun and tried to shoot me point blank but Toga saved me with a thrown knife. That was the end of the villain, and with the information on his computers, we are working tirelessly to end his criminal empire!" Deku still had that hopeful gleam in his eyes, apparently a guy getting inside his dreams, finding out his villain girlfriend was a kidnapped child soldier and being drafted into a goddamn war did no more than the League of Villains and All for One had managed. Fucking Deku.
"And here´s a video we took when we blew up that horrible place." Holy Diver added, pointing to the vignette. Deku, Toga, Freya and Holy Diver posed in the middle of a huge group of soldiers, Russian and American, some wearing pilot and tanker gear, most infantry soldiers. First the large group picture was taken, then one where everyone did a "wacky" pose, the Russians squatting and holding signs saying "Cheeki breeki iv damke", the Americans in a huge variety of poses, Deku laughing as he tried to pose in a badass way and Toga kissed his cheek, Holy Diver holding up Freya´s gauntleted hand in a "I declare you the boxing winner" way.
And then two fighter planes flew above them, dropping bombs, and a huge explosion formed behind them, and the video froze there. "Kiri, I can´t even get angry. Deku took down the number two villain without even giving us a heads up, he is a shithead, and I should want to kick his ass, but that explosion, babe. Those were old-school MOAB´s Kiri, I´m going to cry, that explosion was perfect!" He hadn't noticed but he was standing up, gesticulating with both hands. "Tsk, let´s just watch the rest." He sat down again.
"Well Deku, miss agent, that is a most unexpected story, we are grateful you have defeated such a menace to society. We have a few questions prepared, if you would be so good as to give us an answer?"
"Sure."
"Of course!" The presenter took out some notes, cleared her breath and began "This gives us the revelation that Himiko Toga was indeed involved in all of this, and actually helped the forces of justice against a supervillain…is the agreement made by the ex-villain Toga available for the public? Can you tell us what it entails?"
Holy Diver shifted slightly, and then answered "Toga is an asset under the Quirk Intelligence and Intervention Agency, her status as an inmate of the Department of Justice is not something we can really discuss openly. But I assure you, under the terms brokered, Toga will not abandon US territory unless supervised by our Agency. And she still has a great debt with society, which she will alleviate with service in the name of freedom and justice."
"Great!" said the reporter "There have been heroes who fall to darkness and become villains, but never the other way around. Could this be a first? Next Question…there´s gotta be hundreds of social questions about you and Toga, Deku, so we´ll let them ask you for more details…you two are together?" Deku looked like he wanted to be anywhere else rather than to answer an uncomfortable question, but in a few instants, he steeled himself and, with determined eyes, answered "Yes, we are. I had to lie before because it would have affected the mission."
"Kiri, I´m getting bored with this, lets cook something or play a game." "Yeah, looks like its ending soon anyway."