Jpx099 - For as much as he is a smart one, I really don't think that he can think that far in the future :P
Trixuny - Oh, trust me, it's going to be a... very emotional evening.
(***)
"Governor Yagi recently began to consider abandoning Hosu completely." Sasaki announces during the meeting.
It's not the official council meeting. It's on the UA, yes. But the only people present in the room are Principal Sasaki, Superintendent Takami, and the two Assistant Commissioners. So, the principal and the major powers of the local police.
Talks like that are mostly composed of Sasaki informing them about various things that he learned through his information broking network. In a place that's guaranteed to not be wiretapped. Most of that is, typically, mostly meaningless, with a 'may become important later on' clause.
Sometimes a bomb happens. Like that one.
"You're kidding. "Aizawa stares at him over the table. Mera is clearly too shocked to speak. Even Hawks is slightly taken aback.
"I'd like to, but no." Sasaki replies while adding some sugar to his fresh cup of tea. His secretary has been providing them from nowhere for a while now. "The city is practically occupied by the GSDF for what? Two years? And things are only going worse and worse there."
"But… we can't just abandon an entire city!" Aizawa protests. Mera nods fervently. "Overhaul will practically rule it openly when that happens!" He already moved there after losing Rewind, after all.
"Unfortunately." Sasaki replies scarcely. "The problem is that he de facto does so already. The city has been slowly collapsing for at least half a year now. Everyone who can is fleeing Hosu. The safe zones are shrinking. Worst of all, the general aura of hopelessness has recently caused a growing number of desertions and resignations from the local GSDF unit. So the GSDF wants out as well."
"Well, shit." Mera summarizes the situation well. "So we just lose a city completely. What are the chances of Overhaul NOT recruiting an army to conquer the prefecture openly on its streets?"
"Relatively large." Principal replies. "He is a mob boss. Without a political or religious system behind you, you can't hope to field an army that can actually fight someone seriously. Money only takes you so far. You can expect thugs, and a lot of them, but nothing truly serious. If you exclude his praetorian guard and the villains." He sighs. "But he'll be able to operate in Hosu openly. And soon enough, his world will be law in the city."
"This is going to end up horribly." Aizawa embraces his inner grumpiness. "We can't even meaningfully cordon the city if he has Kurogiri in his ranks. Hosu will become even more of a bleeding wound. Or, more like, it'll turn into an infected wound, spreading poison throughout the prefecture."
The city will continue existing. Businesses will still be there. Shops on the street, a power grid and so on. Except, it will all be paying taxes to Overhaul. And illegal businesses will no longer be illegal.
"Well, it won't happen tomorrow or the day after." Sasaki adds. "We talk about slowly shrinking the controlled zone over the next few months. Good thing is that without Hosu acting as a money sink and with a lot of police officers freed, your police departments should start getting paid better. And get reinforced with some transferred officers."
"Who knows how many of whom are getting paid by Overhaul." Aizawa grumbles. "That's just great."
"At the very least, we seem to be slowly winning in Takoba." Hawks points out. "Sure, it's an extremely slow process, at least since the Marukane Ward fire, but there is clear progress." He doesn't add it, but said progress is mostly due to two reasons.
First one is the fact that they started going around Senior Commissioner Koji and the prefectural police headquarters. The second one is the superheroes. They were still far away from getting anywhere, but… they were at least marching in the right direction.
"That's what scares me the most." "Aizawa says. "The problem is that the Shie Hasseikai is no longer a simple criminal organization. We can't arrest its leadership. The only alternative option is to have the underlings lose faith in their leaders, but Overhaul has Inquisitor to detect the prepared coup way before it's ready. Besides, what coup? He'll just unleash Dabi, Carnage and his praetorians on them and call it a day."
His elites were the only group with a serious chance of killing him. But they were all extremely well paid. More than that, in at least a few cases, Overhaul healed permanent injuries/diseases that they (or their family members) suffered prior to getting recruited by him.
They knew he could resurrect them if something happened to them in the field. They knew he could resurrect or heal their family members if something happened to them. But they also knew what he did to traitors. So they were loyal to him. They weren't fanatics, and there was a reason Overhaul didn't have them murder random civilians or extort money. But they were ready to kill his enemies for him.
Two of them resigned from their post in the past. In both cases Overhaul gave them extremely generous severance pays and thanked them for their service - with a clause that if they ever talk with the police or his rivals about what they saw and did while working for him, he would find and murder their entire families in front of them. And then let them live.
The clause included subclause if the information will be tortured out of them, their families will be spared. Such a thing was no longer their decision, but something was forced on them. And Overhaul, apparently, was an understanding boss. At least for as long as the person in question actually tried to hold under interrogation.
One of them was kidnapped by one of Overhaul's enemies. He held under tortures until Chisaki located the hideout (despite the man leaving his services months before) and had his remaining praetorians slaughter the kidnappers. He healed the captive and paid him enough money as a reparation for what he went through for him to move to the US and settle there in peace.
Aizawa knew Chisaki cared little about others. Lives were meaningless to him - except for the one of Kai Chisaki. He would murder that man without batting an eye if it was going to help him achieve his long-term goals a bit more than helping him. But he was, for all his megalomania and evil, brilliant. In both intelligence and understanding of humans.
He did all of that precisely because he understood what praetorians often did to Roman emperors. All of that for the same reason he enjoyed suddenly surprising his bodyguards by, for example, congratulating them about their children's school exam results. Thus making them realize he knows private things about their families.
Loyalty. The message was obvious. Stay loyal, and you'll be drowning in money while working for an understanding and caring boss. Betray Chisaki, and the word hell will not suffice to describe your future. And if you don't have the stomach to work with him, tell your boss about it openly and he'll let you go. With a nice goodbye money. Instead of letting you brew in resentment, that would eventually bloom into rebellion, betrayal, or assassination.
Overhaul was playing the same game with most of the important members of the Shie Hasseikai, like various heads of the clan-aligned illegal businesses. One or two of those tried their chances in the past. No one knew what happened to them. Chisaki knew that not knowing was scarier than knowing. Imagination filled the gaps with the images most horrifying.
"This is a building like none of us has ever seen before." Aizawa continues. "And I can't tell what will happen if we destroy its foundation. Will it collapse? Will it explode? Will it keep standing? If we continue slowly dismantling it a bit, cutting its roots one business at a time, what will happen?" He sighs. "Overhaul will not let the Shie Hasseikai decay in silence. If we push him too far… I do not know what he'll do. And that scares me the most right now."
At least it will take them a lot of time to get there. Perhaps by then, they'll cross at least some of his S-Ranks out of the picture.
(***)
"So…" Mina, because of course it was Mina, confronted him once he returned to the headquarters. She was busy with her dance training in the corner of the common room when he entered it, with music playing from her phone in the background. Naturally, all of that was thrown out of the window immediately. "... how was it?"
"How was what?" Izuku feigns stupidity. It will work, right?
"Stop that!" She says before pouting at him for a second. "You were on two dates today. I want to know how things went!"
Of course she does. Her interest in the love lives of everyone in the vicinity is only equaled by Mieko. Although unlike their human taxi, Mina was mostly interested in love. She was a romantic at heart. Sex was something she didn't really want to talk about.
Izuku sighs.
"Time, money, and stamina consuming." He replies non-comittantly. "Although quite nice. Now, sorry, I have to g…"
She gives him the Stare. With her hands resting on her hips. And yes, she is still pouting a bit. Ugh.
"Alright, alright." Izuku sighs. There's no winning against her now. "First, I went to an engineering museum in Tokyo with Mei. At the beginning, she didn't seem to like it, as those were all old inventions that weren't her own and so on. But I had a contingency plan. And once I started asking her how she would improve the things we saw, well, that's when she started enjoying it very much. She's also looking forward to having her own inventions displayed there so that others get to witness them like that as well."
"No one had problems with her talking about how to make everything better?" Mina seems a bit confused. "She can be loud."
"Well, I silenced her when she talked too loud." Izuku says. "Either by changing the subject or… uhm… kissing." It made him feel like they were the stereotypical, way too touchy in public couple pissing off everyone in the vicinity. But it was a cheap price to pay to stop Mei from becoming disruptive and them from being booted out of the museum.
"That sounds nice." Mina decides. "That was all?"
She isn't letting him go, it seems.
"Well, we spent like three hours on it." And damn if his legs would be killing him if he wasn't making himself lighter with his telekinesis. "Then she realized she had some new ideas for things to design. She decided she had to hurry back to Kyoto to work on them. But she was, err, quite grateful to me for the date."
Which is a nice codename for 'please tell Eclipse to drop me by your bedroom on the way back'. And actually something that Izuku can feel like saying openly. Judging from the wry smile on Mina's face, she knows what he meant.
Mei seemed to really enjoy the date. Which meant that there might have been more in the future. Izuku isn't exactly against it. Giving Mei Hatsume some experience in interacting with normal people makes perfect sense. He had to explain to her that entrance tickets are a thing. It was that bad.
"And Tsuyu?" She then asks. Because of course she does.
Izuku actually curses himself for trying to have both dates on the same day. Eclipse was supportive enough to act as a taxi several times (it counted as quirk training, this way or another), but… too much.
"Well, I wasn't exactly sure where to bring her." Izuku admits. "Took me a while to figure it out. I basically rented a self-driving car." Contrary to popular opinions, he DID have a driving license. His mom thought it could be helpful. But he was way too nervous to actually drive any larger distance on his own. "We drove around the city. I was answering her questions about all the things that were there, and on a few separate occasions we stopped by and I bought her food from stalls to try."
They couldn't actually (at least not yet) just enter any establishment. Unfortunately. Of course, even once the Reveal Day comes, there'll probably be many establishments that will deny her (or them) entry. Mankind was so unreasonable sometimes.
Still. It was a teaser of what she would be able to be a part of, eventually. A teaser that she really, really liked. After all, she never really had an occasion to get this deep into civilization. She was always living on the outskirts. Now she got to see the real deal (during the day, no less) and from a safe haven of the car, so that she wasn't at risk of freaking out.
"She liked that?" Mina asks .
"Well, she reached a level of about one ribbit per five seconds, all of them happy." Izuku replies. "And when we stopped for a moment and there was no one nearby… uhm… she was… err…" He blushes furiously all of a sudden, trying to ignore the shit-eating grin on Mina's face. "... she was grateful."
"You know, I'm still deeply shocked how you can be this small and yet this degree of a stud… hey, wait!" She shouts as Midoriya (deeply red, seriously, that word was a step too far) runs away from the room, his ears covered.
He'll face her wrath for abandoning the talk so early some other time. Besides, he really wants to rest a bit. It was a rather tiring day. And it was almost evening.
(***)
Kirishima is tired. It's a rather natural thing for a young man who was roped into accompanying their girlfriend on her shopping spree. Even if it was a small and fund-restrained shopping spree. And even if the boyfriend was strong, resilient and had a lot of stamina.
Despite all of that, Kirishima persevered. That was, after all, the manly thing to do. Besides, Mina was clearly in a good mood today, which probably had something to do with Midoriya and his double-date. And how flustered he was when she asked him about it.
She thought it was romantic. And cute. Kirishima didn't consider himself to be an authority on romance and cuteness, but he considered it heartwarming. After seeing Mina slowly patch herself up, and seeing the rampage of Dabi and Carnage, he thought it was great to see Midoriya function well and be clearly happy about his private life.
He was their leader. That was a lot of responsibility. So much that Kirishima wasn't sure if he would measure up to it. Midoriya, holding up to that, was incredibly manly.
Kirishima persevered throughout the entire trip, but it was still tiring. Mina realized that at some point and let him go for a moment. He enthusiastically agreed and went to the supermarket, which was a part of this shopping mall, in order to buy himself something cheap to drink.
Few people were at the supermarket. Some kid (13-14 years) was loading water bottles onto a shopping cart. Kirishima also passed by two or three other people en route to the drink section. In short, rather quiet time.
It was evening. The shops were slowly closing, something that was guaranteed to end this nightmare, eventually.
"Fancy meeting you here." He suddenly hears someone's voice. A female one. He turned his head in the direction from which it was coming. There was a woman standing there. Something about 25 years old. Long black hair. Wearing a hoodie that clearly looked like it had seen better days. And… a breathing mask. And some badly concealed gun in her pocket. Oh, no. "Kirishima. Or… what's your superhero name, exactly?"
Shit. They certainly didn't meet earlier. She didn't look like a police officer off-duty. And she knew his real name. But not his hero name. This meant… Shie Hasseikai.
"Gargoyle." Kirishima replies while taking a step back from the shelf. "And you?" He is trying to buy some time. But also… she almost certainly knows his meta-ability. Finding out her villain name sounds like something to give him a clue about what to expect.
"I used to go by Blaze." She replies. "But I think I'll prefer something more intimidating. How does Firestorm sound?"
Most likely some sort of fire quirk. She is old for a metahuman. First generation. Since she confronted him directly, this is certainly not a case of a weak power. Shit. Another Dabi?
"Let the kid go." Kirishima replies. The teenager keeps filling his shopping cart, completely unaware of the battle that's about to start. "Then you'll have me all to yourself." He has to get the civilians to safety. That's what heroes do, right?
"No." Firestorm smiles at him. The smile somehow reminds him of Dabi. "I don't think I will. Do you think Dabi will love me more if I bring you your corpse, hero? And throw in some additional bodies? You can never have enough methinks."
Oh great, Kirishima thinks. It's Dabi's girlfriend/wife. And she is as fucked in the head as he is. Wonderful.
There is no more time to waste. He hardens himself and runs towards her, feeling the floor tiles crack under him. Firestorm responds with a maniacal smile. Then her hair is set aflame.
The fire is green. He does not know what it means, but it's certainly not a normal fire. And she confronted him, despite knowing what his quirk was. Alone, unless her backup was waiting for them outside (shit, Mina!). This means that she thought she had the upper hand.
She grabbed her hair and tore bits of flames from it. Then she threw it at the shelves next to her, right before he got to her. The fire spread through the shelves, way faster than it should have . Producing probably more smoke than it should. It also seemed to move around unnaturally, so she could control it to a degree.
She was nimble. Nimble enough to dodge his straight punch. More of them followed, but she was dodging them well enough. While laughing at him. Kirishima was pissed off, while the fire spread and…
Suddenly, he felt it. Pain in his lungs. Dizziness settles in. He ceases his assault, and Firestorm vanishes into the cloud of black smoke. What was…
"Aaand, it's kicking in!" He heard her cheerful voice coming from the cloud. "It's my quirk. Generation and control of a green flame that eats everything inorganic… and produces toxic smoke. Few types of it, depending on what it ate. And guess what, I'm immune to them all!" She giggles loudly. "Oh, and I cut off some of my hair before confronting you and put it throughout the supermarket. It's all on fire now. No escape, hero. How long can you keep your meta-ability active, I wonder?"
The loud bang rings through the supermarket, audible even behind the noise of the fire. She fired a gun at him. She hit the target. So she probably dispersed the smoke in a straight line between her eyes and him to aim. That means that she had enough skill with her quirk to control the air flow through selective heating of air in the area.
It's surprising when listening to Midoriya's lectures about the quirks turns out useful. Kirishima is certain that he from a month or two ago would have never figured that so quickly.
She was blocking his way out, her fire and smoke slowly getting closer and closer. Most of the civilians in the supermarket had already escaped. The aisles were wide enough, and if they ran away immediately, they didn't have the time to inhale the black smoke. But there was someone left. Someone who wasn't Kirishima.
Gargoyle turns his back towards where he suspects Firestorm to be and runs towards the teenager he saw earlier, grabbing two water bottles from the shelves in the passing.
The boy is clearly horrified. He had enough time to realize that he was trapped. He did not know why the two were fighting and why one of them had their hair on fire. Or why the other one looked like a stone golem. He probably didn't recognize the gunshot, but…
He was freaked out when Kirishima ran towards him. Understandable reaction, all things considered. Gargoyle tackled him behind a shop freezer a second before Firestorm shot him.
"Wha…!" The kid tried to yell, but Kirishima didn't let him. They didn't have enough time for this.
The freezer was damnably low. Kirishima had to kneel to not be visible. He pulled the kid (kid, heh, he was like 3-4 years younger than him) up, not enough for Firestorm to shoot him.
"Listen to me." Kirishima says into his face. He doesn't have a way with words. He is neither Midoriya nor Ashido. But he'll have to do. "I know this might be hard to believe, but I'm a superhero."
The shock on the kid's face only grows. Kirishima takes off his backpack. It might have been a simple shopping excursion, but Midoriya was adamant about some precautions. This paid back now.
He pulls out a gasmask. If only he had two. Unfortunately, Mina carried the other one. Whether they were going to be of any use against this completely different gas quirk was anyone's guess.
He then shoves it into the kid's face.
"Take this." He says. He left the smoke's direct range, but he was still dizzy. And the pain in his lungs was still there. He felt weak. He didn't like that.
Kid was still blinking at him in shock, while Kirishima was taking off his hoodie and wrapping him in it to the best of his ability.
"Take the other aisle." Kirishima keeps talking. This time, he opens the bottles up and soaks the hoodie in the water. Why the hell were the fire sprinklers not working?! "Run to the exit, and check if your clothes caught fire. If you see a woman in a pink hoodie, tell her what happened. Got it?"
Other aisles were obviously on fire as well. And Firestorm was probably standing around the place where the perpendicular aisle was, connecting all the regular ones. The right position to react to him trying to move sideways by doing so himself and blocking his escape route.
"Y… yes!" Kid replies. Having someone tell him what to do saved him the trouble of trying to figure it out himself. "Bbb… but what…"
"I'll distract her." Kirishima says as confidently as he can. "Now go." The kid doesn't move for a second, so Kirishima decides to be a bit more pushy. "GO!"
This time, it works. Gargoyle has to fulfill his promise now. So he stands up from behind the freezer. The green flames crossed half of the distance between their last position and his hideout. There is truly nowhere else to run to.
He will try to buy the kid a few seconds. Then he will take a deep breath, harden to the maximum and run towards the exit, even if he'll end up trampling Firestorm. Yes. That's the plan.
"HEY, FIRESTORM!" He yells. His skills in buying time suck, but maybe he is better at taunting people. "I THOUGHT DABI WOULD BE HERE HIMSELF, BUT IT SEEMS THAT HE IS ENOUGH OF A LIMP DICK TO SEND HIS GIRLFRIEND AFTER ME!"
Not a very manly thing to do. He made it sound like having a girlfriend do something for you was unmanly. Or that it was disgraceful to rely on a woman's help. But it was the best taunt that came to his mind.
And it worked.
"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Firestorm yells. Someone's really touchy about their boyfriend. She emptied her clip into him in fury. Yeah, good job. "You're dead!"
Well, she can't shoot the kid now, so he probably slipped out. Time to get out of here… hopefully, he'll run into Firestorm in the smoke en route there. Kirishima hardens to the max and starts running.
(***)
"Not so tough now, huh?" Firestorm asks, standing over him. He can barely hear her through the smoke. He can barely breathe.
She got him. She could control and partially extend her hair when it was on fire (or, to be exact, when it was the fire). Her flame whip - together with her moving some shopping carts and a shelf or two with it with the smoke as a cover - was enough to make him trip.
She expected him to charge at her. He took a few deep breaths. The smoke was most concentrated there. He can barely move now.
That's why he prefers leaving planning stuff like that to professionals. Too bad Midoriya or Hawks didn't accompany them on that shopping trip.
Firestorm reloaded her gun earlier. Now she aims it at his face. He can feel his hardening slowly fail, his consciousness failing. She deignited her hair now, probably to preserve her quirk's strength. The green flames throughout the supermarked died out, but the remaining heat made a few normal fires spark here and there.
Shit. At least Mina and that kid are safe. That counts, right?
"Goodbye, Gargoyle." Firestorm says. Her smile is just as insane as that of her boyfriend. Except, the gunshot does not come. Instead, the acid does.
It's like a tidal wave. Mina kept its ability to dissolve things to a minimum (it only lightly tingled on his skin), but it was still a liquid. Enough to put out most of the fires in an instant. Enough to soak Firestorm from the boots to the hair.
"Hands off my boyfriend." Mina says, her voice furious. She is standing by the ruined entrance to the supermarket, in her pink hoodie, now thoroughly soaked in her lowest-strength acid. There is a gasmask under it. She came prepared. "Bitch."
"Two heroes for the price of one!" Firestorm shouts back. "Come and d…"
She ignites her hair. It's still soaked in Mina's minimal strength acid. It's not a normal material, but a quirk-created one. Firestorm never set that on fire. And the gas component of her quirk depends on what she sets on fire. Because of this unexpected combination, her quirk malfunctions.
The green flames are still there. But they are acidic. And she lacks resistance to acids.
She screams in horror as her own flames start devouring her. The last thing that Kirishima sees before losing consciousness is Firestorm falling to the ground, either dead or unconscious… and still on fire.
(***)
Blaze, Dabi's girlfriend, changed her villain name... and got unmasked. Shocking? Maybe. And yeah, I changed her quirk slightly, because green flame does feel like a cool thing to associate with poison. AND YES I KNOW THAT ALL SMOKE IS TOXIC TO A DEGREE, THAT ONE IS JUST MUCH MORE :V But it's still a first generation quirk, hence her mental state AND the quirk malfunction.
Was it a lethal one, or did Firestorm survived? Why was she even there, trying to face Kirishima in 1vs1 fight? How's Mina going to react to what she just did? That and more in the next chapter of Dead on Arrival ;)
[you didn't think that Kirishima would be the one saving and helping Mina the whole time, right?]