Jpx0999 - Aye.
Nix Seven - Or something xD
Raw666 - Never read it :P
RenegadePizza - What else can I say, the rest of the fic was like 68 chapters of a build-up to this one moment xD
(***)
Izuku's first reaction to the revelation is shock and disbelief. It's, honestly, rather natural. He just heard something patiently impossible, something that implied some rather unbelievable things about himself and his family.
"W-what?" Izuku blinks at Nedzu from behind his mask. "Is this a j-joke? Are you…"
"Ignition isn't a natural part of your quirk, Midoriya-kun." Nedzu replies. "It's your natural quirk, Force I believe was the name, being supercharged by you tapping onto the One for All's energy stockpile. Even the electric discharges surrounding you when you use it are a clue. It's an excess of energy that Force failed to utilize being vented out. I strongly suspect that if another quirked individual was touching you while you were 'sparkling', some of that energy would be assimilated by their quirks, temporarily supercharging it to a much, much smaller degree as well."
It… wasn't exactly what Izuku was shocked by.
His mom… his mom was a part of some ancient conspiracy? His father was one of its leaders, a walking definition of a Well-Intentioned Extremist that made a heel-face turn when midlife crisis hit him?
A heel-face turn that made him START A WORLD WAR? The same world war that left millions dead, dozens of countries ruined, left Ayako an orphan (leading to her eventual death due to Bakugou), left Uraraka an orphan, left so many people as orphans?!
The same world war that made the collapse of Japan as an unitary state practically unavoidable?
It… made sense. It made an incredible amount of sense. His mother being always dodgy about her relatives and where she was living before moving to Musutafu. His mother claiming that his father was a 'heroic individual' (she was his follower, after all), who was killed by someone forcing them to hide.
Yes. Izuku realized the reasoning for all of that. What Hisashi Shigaraki was establishing smelled an awful lot like Year 1984 in real life. No one should have that much power, especially when literal mind control was involved.
Izuku wouldn't trust himself with so much power, he knew well enough that his knowledge was limited, he would have committed mistake after mistake with honest and good intentions, no matter how good his advisors would be.
Even if not right from the start, then certainly it would happen eventually.
If it was the truth… he had many questions to ask his mother when that was over. He was almost certain that Commissioner Aizawa would add a few dozen more once he heard of those revelations.
(Did his mother give him one of the most powerful quirks in history… because she wanted him to start living again? Is that why she was alright with him leaving home? Because she knew that he was bullshitting her with Eri, and that it was him who saved her? Because she knew that he was a fledgling superhero… and preferred that to him being a zombie?")
"I… see." Izuku takes a deep breath. "That's… a lot to digest. Does that mean that Force was my natural quirk?"
"Most likely, yes." Nedzu agrees. "Unless there is something I don't know about Yoichi, your mother must have had a latent or a very weak telekinetic quirk. One that you inherited in the form of a second generation quirk, so more powerful yet stable. Overusing it probably knocked you out quickly at the beginning, but almost stopped doing so nowadays, didn't it?"
"How do you know that?" Izuku decides to play his cards openly. It's not like it's that much of a weakness of his nowadays, so…
"Because I suspect that your Force was awakened prematurely by One for All being inserted into your body." Nedzu replies. "You managed to mostly overcome that issue only partially thanks to training. Force has simply matured fully, resulting in a situation where using it doesn't cause side-effects even nearly as bad as at the beginning, at least unless you supercharge it with One for All, something that your body is still failing to fully process."
Izuku is still processing it when Nedzu speaks again.
"What a fascinating coincidence." He states. "The fact that you've managed to climb into the seat of the government's strongest asset in such a short time is one thing, proof that your mother chose wisely. The fact that you're facing me now, though…" Nedzu lets out an electronic sigh. "... and that's without mentioning the fact that Hisashi Shigaraki's illegitimate son, and your cousin, is one of your strongest assets. That man really has horrible luck with his family members. Either that or, well, maybe it's Musician's sense of humor to make the man with the ability to have all the power in the world end up being locked in combat with those biologically closest to him? He can have everything he wants, but he can't have a family to support him, sheesh."
Rabbit is going to freak the hell out, isn't he? Izuku doesn't even want to imagine having that talk.
"So what's going to happen now?" Izuku asks. "Don't bullshit me about it. You have an agenda in the whole thing, you wouldn't confront me otherwise."
"Precisely, Midoriya-kun!" Nedzu replies cheerfully. "You see, I told you already that the Council of Twelve is my personal enemy. They are, even in their current state, too powerful. Too imbalanced. And that's without mentioning their ability to return me to the state of non-sapience."
"So, you decided to weaken them… in favor of the MLA?" Izuku asks.
"Indeed." Nedzu admits. "Destro is a man of vision, willpower, charisma and assets, he has everything that he needs to battle the Council's influence in Japan, especially with me there to advise him. However, there is one slight problem with this."
"That being?" Izuku asks when the silence grows slightly too long.
"The Council still controls the Japanese government." Nedzu replies. "Or, well, what's left of it. In both cases. That's a problem for both the Meta-Liberation Army and the Metahuman Network, won't you agree?"
"Looks like…" Izuku replies slowly. "... Network's decision to start building our structures from the basement level upward was a correct one."
"Indeed it was." Nedzu nods. "All for One is aware of you and your organization, but with his information network in shambles, he isn't aware of the true scope of it. When this prefecture is involved, he knows only as much as Senior Commissioner Koji and Governor Yagi do, and we both know that they know nothing. He must have even missed out on mind controlling Principal Sasaki, clearly enough, a major oversight. However, we both know that you're going to be telling the truth to the government sooner rather than later, isn't it?"
"Unfortunately, yes." Izuku says slowly. "It's going to crack down on us, doesn't it?"
"Thankfully, no." Nedzu replies. "This facility was the Council's last shot at preventing the Dawn of Quirks. The second Hisashi will realize that he was bamboozled by me, he's going to go for the plan B. This actually gives us our organization a shot at taking him down."
"Wait." Izuku cuts in. "Are you proposing us an alliance?"
"Purely a temporary and secret one." Nedzu replies. "With Destro's full agreement. You're free to engage MLA assets side by side with the government and tell them about the MLA's existence. In fact, it's a crucial part of the plan."
"Elaborate…" Izuku replies. "... on the plan."
"Very well." Nedzu agrees. "Now that the Dawn of Quirks is unavoidable, All for One and his lackeys are going to go for the plan B. Namely, they are going to get even more radical in a last ditch attempt to avoid the inevitable."
Izuku groans. That's just getting worse and worse.
"Hisashi learned something from the French Revolution." Nedzu replies. "The king back then was too indecisive. Too nice to drown the rebellion in blood, but not 'nice' enough to use his remaining popularity to join the revolution and maintain his position by blaming the people and aristocrats around him for fooling him about the true state of the world. This facility? It was an attempt at a forceful solution. Now that it's out of the picture, the Council will attempt to take the helm of the changes to come."
"How so?" Izuku asks.
"Remember that in the end, the Council is trying to make the world a better place." Nedzu replies. "Or, at least, that's the general idea. One that, I have no doubts, would eventually decline even further. What's the source of all the woes of the modern world? Of inequality? Discrimination?"
"Human stupidity?" Izuku asks.
"According to the remaining Councilors…" Nedzu replies. "... the answer is 'society'." Oh. Oh God, no. "All for One's end goal is a world of true equality. Mutations will make the division between races look unimportant by comparison. The end of the market economy will come when the entire world will switch over to the quirk economy. You can imagine that?"
"Entire society made into a network of mutual interdependence." Izuku realizes it. "A green thumb user provides foodstuff for his entire community, an animal controller ensures that wild animals show up for the slaughter, an item creating meta-ability is used to provide them all with tools, a water-creating metahuman providing clear and unlimited water for the settlement they all live in…"
"... and Hisashi Shigaraki at the top of the system." Nedzu cuts in. "... regulating the system and making sure that the people that aren't ready to 'do their part' have their quirks stolen and given to those who can be productive members of society. End of discrimination, because everyone will need each other to survive. Who cares about the skin color of person X, when they are the only source of clear water in your community?"
"This is insane." Izuku decides. "It could work if quirks could be created at will, but you said that this option died with Yoichi. There is just no way for a single man to regulate the population of the entire world."
"Oh, I suspect that Hisashi is planning to start from Japan." Nedzu replies. "Wait until quirks become more common while preserving the Council's assets, overthrow the government, establish his little 'quirk utopia' with himself as a god-king, then… why not have a few children? Maybe they would inherit his quirk? Or maybe some future scientist of his would find a way to copy his quirk somehow? Have one child rule Korea, divide China between a handful of more… and so on. Quirk Singularity would accelerate the process for him, countries looking up to someone who could take quirks that were too powerful into people about to die and replace them with the controllable ones, the governments refusing his help eventually collapsing under the Singularity, leaving Shigaraki and his descendants to be a ruling caste of the still habitable part of the world. One finally free of discrimination, poverty and so on."
Somehow, Nedzu managed to make the mockery audible in the last sentence.
"I…" Izuku replies dryly. "... do not trust the anti-discrimination systems that require a creation of blood-based leadership caste. And that's without mentioning me not trusting people suffering from a serious case of power trip with anything more important than… honestly, with nothing at all."
"We're in agreement here." Nedzu admits. "I fear that Hisashi would eventually attempt to sabotage the strive for cure to the Quirk Singularity in order to ensure his own supremacy over the world. I'm immortal, so I have to think about the future. And Hisashi threatens said future. He has to be eliminated. Returning to the subject - with this facility destroyed, Hisashi will attempt to put himself at the forefront of the change."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that you're free and in fact encouraged to introduce yourself to the government." Nedzu replies. "All for One will make sure that the government will agree to your initiative, because collapse of the government will be actively detrimental to what's left of the Council. Besides… don't you think that the hero society feels like a necessary prerequisite to making the society accept the meta-abilities? Which, in fact, is also a prerequisite to Shigaraki's endgame?"
"... he'll attempt to put mind control on me." Izuku realizes. "And if a certain event is to be believed, I'm immune to that."
"That's…" Nedzu replies. "... an inherent part of the One for All, increasing your resistance to hostile quirk influences. What's the point of making a stockpile quirk that dies out because its user was touched in combat by someone like Overhaul? Overhaul would probably still cripple you, and that's if he touched you in the hand, for the record, so don't try anything stupid."
"I didn't plan for that." Midoriya replies dryly. He might have even been immune to disassemble but what if Overhaul reassembles his uniform and makes it strangle him or impale his guts? Big no-no. "That's your plan? To make him approach me, and then having me and the Network jump at him?"
"It's one of the possible outcomes." Nedzu replies. "I see two options in which Hisashi can react to the destruction of Garaki's laboratory. The first option is that he'll decide to rule superheroes from the backseat, something that I personally find as a less likely outcome, if only because Yoichi liked them as a concept. The second option…"
"... is the Meta-Liberation Army." Izuku cuts in. Nedzu doesn't seem to mind.
"Indeed, that's the second option." Nedzu replies. "That's why I'm perfectly fine with you revealing our existence to the government and, through it, the Council of Twelve. Because I'm certain that Hisashi Shigaraki will succeed in locating the MLA headquarters. And if he won't manage to overcome his natural dislike of superheroes… he will attempt to mind-control Destro in order to reinforce the Council of Twelve in Japan with the Meta-Liberation Army members. And we'll…" He grins, displaying his small teeth. It's… worrying unnatural. "... be waiting for him."
"What if…" Izuku replies. "... we'll fail to kill him?"
"That's entirely possible." Nedzu admits. "He might have his faults, such as a massively overgrown ego and recurrent issues with loyalty of his family members, but you don't become a secretive overlord of Earth without being extremely skillful in avoiding danger. We need to take him off-guard and then pummel him to death without giving him time to formulate a counterplan for it to work. Pummel to death, or, well, force him to deactivate his mind-control quirk for even a moment. Which should free the government members from being controlled."
"And with the current chaos and some heroes knowing that he exists…" Izuku comments. "... reapplying brainwashing would be… hard to achieve."
"Precisely." Nedzu replies. "You're very smart for a two-leg? You, Destro, Yoichi and Hisashi are made from the same clay. Principal Sasaki too, though I never got to meet him. Sadly." For some reason Izuku is sure that Sasaki wouldn't be interested in that particular meeting. "Well, returning to the subject. If Hisashi Shigaraki ends up surviving the attempt on his life, by either Metahuman Network or the Meta-Liberation Army, there is a fair chance that he'll attempt to do the same thing with the other side. If he won't, or he'll fail at that again while we'd fail to kill him again, we're going to cooperate against him exactly once." Nedzu continues.
"A joint assassination attempt?" Izuku asks.
"Hisashi will certainly manage to locate the MLA headquarters." Nedzu replies. "But it goes both ways. I'm almost certain that I know the location of the Council of Twelve headquarters in Japan. It's just that tearing through himself and his force will be much less painful if we end up doing it away from his personal citadel."
That sounds surprisingly logical. More or less. It was still atrocious, but…
"So, a joint assault?" Izuku asks.
"Elite strike force of both the Network supported by the police and the Meta-Liberation Army." Nedzu replies. "Attacking from both sides to avoid friendly fire. We attack, we kill All for One and lay waste to his organization's headquarters, we retreat and pretend that nothing has ever happened. And, naturally, return to being at a state of de facto war. The ideological positions of the Metahuman Network and the Meta-Liberation Army are entirely incompatible."
"That's not a decision for me to make." Izuku admits. "But if All for One's as dangerous as you make him to be, and if he truly controls the government, we won't have that much of a choice in this."
"I'm acutely aware of that fact." Nedzu replies. "I presented you this offer with an explicit purpose of making you relay it to Principal Sasaki and Commissioner Aizawa. However, I also suspect that they are both to at least a degree influenced by you, if only because they are to a various degree trying to groom you into a position of a Number One Hero, a fact that they consider to be a necessity for the continuous existence of Japan…"
"Wait, they are doing wh…"
"... I really have a feeling that your IQ drops significantly when your own good is involved." Nedzu lets out a mechanical sigh. "You should work on that. I've made sure that the corpse puppets populating this facility would only put a token resistance, not to mention all the Hollywood Tactics employed by them, because making the Network suffer grotesque casualties is currently not in the Meta-Liberation Army's interest…"
Izuku isn't even going to comment on that. If that was a 'token resistance', then he is slightly scared of what a serious resistance would entail. Nothing good, most likely.
"... and, as for All for One… well." Nedzu sighs. "He'll give you ample reasons to be aware that he's a threat soon enough. After all, you DID tell Governor Yagi that you're going to assault the Gunga Mountain Compound, now did you?"
Oh.
Oh shit.
(***)
Today
"Unfortunately to us…" Aizawa says. "... the governmental conspiracy in question has not taken our intrusion lightly."
There is something deeply uncomfortable with telling that to the mole responsible for the entire operation going belly-up. Of course, Yagi is entirely unaware of the fact that he is a mole. In fact, if his behavior thus far was anything to go by, he would be absolutely livid if he knew that someone was using him that way.
Aizawa Shouta knows about Hisashi Shigaraki's existence for less than a day, but he's really looking forward to putting a bullet between his eyes. To a degree comparable to Overhaul, even if the amount of people in Musutafu that All for One killed was pathetically small in comparison.
Goddamn government conspiracies.
"It intervened?" Yagi asks.
"In force." Aizawa replies. "Nedzu promptly informed Defiant that he was actually attending the meeting from a completely different location, presumably the not yet located MLA headquarters, before wishing him good luck and severing the connection to avoid the group in question tracing him. Defiant rushed back from whatever inner sanctum he was warped to, and we've managed to reestablish communications with him."
"He warned you about it, I assume." Yagi replies. "What was your reaction?"
"Seeing as all the captives were at this point either evacuated by us, kidnapped by the Shie Hassaikai or escaped aboard the dragon, I've ordered immediate retreat from the facility." Aizawa replies. "I've deemed the value of potential evidence to be secondary in importance over the risk of coming under another surprising attack, and by a force completely unknown to us. I…"
"No need to explain that to us." Yagi replies dryly. "Getting evidence towards the MLA would be extremely helpful, however after seeing the clash between Dabi and Amplitude I'm entirely sympathetic to the concept of treating evasive maneuvers as the initial reaction to the notification about unknown supervillains possibly entering the area. Obtaining the supposed evidence, especially as Nedzu most likely had enough foresight to avoid anything substantial being there, came at a second place when compared to maintaining the lives of the people under your command."
Okay. Aizawa really likes the governor he is working for. Yes, he might be mind controlled by a worldwide conspiracy, but he's still smarter than most of the politicians he ever got to interact with.
That's, honestly, slightly sad.
Scratch that, that's extremely sad.
"The decision turned out to be correct." Aizawa admits. "And has most likely succeeded in limiting the casualties sustained by our forces significantly. Regretfully, while Defiant relayed the warning immediately, it came simply too late for us to avoid the fallout entirely."
A fact that, Aizawa was almost certain, was a part of Nedzu's plot. He could start from 'oh, by the way, Council's extermination unit is about to arrive, and you should start retreating now'.
However, making the local police suffer some casualties felt like a perfect way of making sure that said police was treating the threat that the Council possessed significantly. Not to mention making sure that there was exactly no chance of the Network going into bed with the Council for the sake of establishing at least some form of order over Japan.
Goddamn rat. He and Destro are getting a bullet between their eyes when only it'll be possible as well.
"What happened?" Yagi asks.
(***)
The warpgate they used was vastly different from what the Network and the Shie Hassaikai had available to them. By an odd stroke of luck, it was actually mostly inferior to what Kurogiri and Eclipse had.
But it did the job.
The Council of Twelve's Threat Elimination Unit (Japanese Branch) began to emerge from them three minutes before Defiant's warning reached the police force and the superheroes on the surface.
In the forest, between the Army cordon and the facility itself. On a slight elevation, enough for its leader to be able to see the facility in question through binoculars.
"Well, that's a clusterfuck if I ever saw one." Wolfram, head of the TEU, announces dryly. "I think we're late for the party, especially since I don't hear any gunfire. Mechanist, connect to the network remotely."
The cyborg accompanying him opens up his laptop and connects to it. He is a living combination of a mild technopathic quirk and surgeries, his quirk allowing him to interface with his mechanical parts on a level impossible for human beings.
What a shame that he was the only working prototype before Yoichi destroyed the laboratory of that particular secret project.
"We have a problem/situation." Mechanist replies after less than a minute. "The facility isn't under our control."
"You don't fucking say." Wolfram cuts back.
"You misunderstand." Mechanist replies emotionlessly. "The Gunga Mountain facility/target wasn't under our control for a long time. The recovered data I found/located indicate that it was taken over by the Meta-Liberation Army, which used our own intelligence network/agents to run a recruitment facility. All while feeding us with false data that made us think that the facility was still under our control."
Wolfram was actually trying to lit up a cigarette when he realized what the Mechanist was trying to tell him.
Oh. Oh fuck.
"The research data." He says, staring at the cyborg with his eyes wide, the cigarette falling from his hands and landing on the ground. He'll consider the risk of forest fire afterwards. "Tell me that they continued the research and …"
"The research directory of the facility's main computer…" Mechanist replies. "... is entirely filled with a large collection of hentai mangas and anime, tagged as 'bestiality'/degeneracy. All arrayed into a series of folders with a single letter name. Together they form an anagram of 'suck my rat dick, All for One'."
Nedzu.
Nedzu took over their research facility.
Nedzu just eliminated the last chance of restoring the Council of Twelve to its former glory.
Oh, he's going to pay.
"Doctor Garaki?" Wolfram asks, making sure that his anger wasn't visible. He was always more into action than words or looks.
"According to the medical data of the facility…" Mechanist replies. "... his lifesigns flatlined together with those of the rest of the lab crew about a year ago."
A year. Nedzu played them around for a year.
Heads were going to roll. Thankfully, not Wolfram's. Though he'll be the one to have to clean up after this mess.
"Plan B." Wolfram announces. "We're killing everyone and making sure that the evidence of the Council's existence stays buried. Unit one and two, attack the main building. Unit three, attack the police force outside. Unit four, you stay as the reserve. Apocrypha, stay with the reserve as well. If they repel the attack, you're going in."
"Sure." Aiko Shigaraki, All for One's daughter and unofficial heiress, replies. Her outfit - that of a magical girl, except clearly inspired by business suits - makes her stand out a little around trained soldiers. Then again, she could kill most of them in one or two attacks. "Go wild."
(***)
"How much are we f_d?"
"Yes"