Miqila - Hey, let me give my readers a lecture from time to time, I like to think that I'm writing something deep and educational :V
Jpx0999 - :v
Shahryar - Rest, heh, would be nice. I'm spending most of the month working, just not writing :v
kax321 - From a perspective of a country right next to a potential rival of US, let me just tell you that I'd prefer US to stage more coups rather than less :v
Raw666 - :D
(***)
Izuku feels like he should be angry when he realizes that the orphans after his father attempted to dismantle everything his son built. Instead, he ends up being disappointed more than anything else.
"Those… goddamn… dumbasses." He says once Principal Sasaki finishes updating him. Their return from Kyoto is a bit faster than anyone assumed. "Do the Moderates have at least a single braincell left among them?"
Principal Sasaki corrects his glasses.
"I'm afraid that being politically radical often coexists with a rapid decline in the number of available brain power." He then agrees with Izuku. "However, this was extremely stupid, even for political radicals. I genuinely expected better from people who managed to keep the Council of Twelve in check for years."
Izuku decides to speak what he thinks, even if it's… not exactly a very hero-like.
"From the surface level of things, it made sense." Izuku admits. "A coup d'etat is a good way of purging Radicals from positions of power nationwide in one fell-swoop. All for One would be forced to start working on his control network from scratch."
"...Now you're making it sound as if you considered that option." Sasaki decides to comment.
"I considered all possible options for dealing with the Radicals after hearing that they existed." Izuku admits. "However, 'considered' doesn't mean that I planned to do it. I'm a, what, 18-year-old kid. With superpowers, yes, but it doesn't change anything. The only people that I know that I could somehow imagine pulling a coup is Governor Yagi, who is loyal to the Prime Minister AND controlled by All for One, and, well, you." He sighs. "Just in case, you're not planning a coup, right?"
"No, I'm not." Principal nods. Midoriya is a thoughtful kid who really took heroism to heart, but was reasonable enough to consider alternatives and not fully legal means when needed. A perfect candidate for a Symbol of Peace in times like these. "I do admit that with my connections and knowledge I could potentially stage a successful coup, but not only would it most likely spell the end to the country, it's also impossible to do that without All for One finding out."
The Moderates probably had a way of telling who was under All for One's mind control. They didn't.
Few months ago Izuku wanted to use his quirk to catch some yakuza thugs in the alleyways of Takoba. Now he was - hypothetically of course - talking about a potential coup d'etat with a man who admitted to be capable of staging one. How did all of that happen?
Izuku has no idea.
"I assume that what truly angered you is the fact that the Moderates tried to play the anti-metahuman card in the organization of their coup." The Principal changes the subject.
"Yes." Izuku leans back on the chair. "This does, indeed, piss me off the most. Are they all goddamn stupid? Do they have no idea what their move threatened to do? What can it still do if people start genuinely suspecting a metahuman mind-control plot?"
It threatened to collapse the society, end everything that Izuku attempted to build. End the last chance this country had to avoid going into a full-blown civil war, and with who knows how many sides.
"You assume that they feel emotionally connected to the metahumans as a group." Sasaki replies.
Izuku blinks at him.
"Why wouldn't they be?" He asks. "A lot of them have to have quirks, right?"
"Not necessarily." Sasaki replies. "A lot of them, especially the old guard, have them. But the newer, post-Yoichi recruits, don't have any, unless they were randomly born with them. What's more, it's highly likely that most of the Moderates and Radicals, even the quirked ones, see meta-abilities as tools they were equipped with permanently rather than parts of their identity. They see themselves as Moderates or Radicals, rather than metahumans."
That was incredibly dumb. If they were going to have children, there was a large chance that said child would be naturally quirked. Moderates and Radicals (somehow, especially the Moderates) clearly didn't care about their future.
Hatred made you do a lot of stupid things.
"This makes much more sense, while somehow being even more atrocious than simple stupidity." Izuku decides. The principal nods his agreement. "On the other hand, I think that the government will end up arresting most of the Moderates in the country after this stunt."
He prefers to not think about how many post-war coups d'etat were probably sponsored or openly organized by the remaining Moderate cells. He can fit only so much personal hatred towards his father before exploding.
"That's where you're wrong." Sasaki says, before sighing painfully when he sees the look that Izuku gives him. "Unless someone does something incredibly stupid during a coup, like massacre civilians, you can expect them to not be arrested but forced to retire by the victorious government. Coups are a moment when loyalties get muddled, with people switching sides or taking the neutral option. If the Prime Minister tries to push too far with her punishments, there is a possibility of accidentally instigating a countercoup of people terrified of being arrested because they didn't support the government quickly enough in a moment of confusion."
Izuku groans. Yeah, that was just spectacular.
"I think that you should continue with your hard-earned holidays…" Sasaki continues. "... or, perhaps, start getting acquainted with your job as a president of the Hero Association. The headquarters are already operating, although they are mostly just starting things."
Right. Yaoyorozu has already all but moved there, being the new head of the Department of Rescue Heroics. Mei and Shinsou were having a job there, even if for now it was mostly being the figureheads and learning the bureaucratic 101 from people that Sasaki found for them.
Repulse was the new head of Combat Heroics, temporarily focused on helping deal with the aftermath of the Moderates coup.
Still, as stated, for now it was mostly just getting the hang of it and literally existing so that the government could show everyone just how welcoming Japan was to the metahumans.
Plus paperwork. The heads of the local branch offices were suddenly faced by a dreadful realization that now that they were theoretically something of a freelance government employees, they had to do paperwork.
Izuku himself wasn't sure how to live in a world where he had to at least theoretically put a few signatures under several different documents to get his hero uniform 'legally' repaired after Esuha.
Then again, it was a bit like democracy according to Churchill. He said that democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried. You could say the same about paperwork - it was the worst thing ever, except there was nothing better.
Somehow, running a nation-wide organization on the basis of 'trust me bro' looked like a perfect way of getting infiltrated and/or becoming a victim of who knows how many scams. Or just having your underlings steal money from you.
Half of the forms they had to fill for things had to be figured out from scratch, because they were making a completely new and previously unheard of organization.
Needless to say, Izuku would feel pretty alright not having to show up in a certain skyscraper in Roppongi District anytime soon.
According to what he heard before heading to the Hatsumes', the biggest issue to solve right now was goddamn taxation. Namely how to do things so that the heroes were getting paid regularly, didn't bring tax inspectors on their heads (or, comparably worse, didn't become a useful foundation for tax frauds by being somehow freed from taxes entirely), and, chief of all, were going to receive retirement pay eventually.
Which was pretty hard to figure out from the bureaucratic point of view when you remembered that the heroes were supposed to be allowed to stay anonymous. And if someone had a solid retirement pay despite, apparently, not having worked anywhere his whole life, it was going to be a big red warning sign for the local villain that they might be a retired hero.
With who knows how many secrets in their head.
Frankly speaking, it was the sort of a mess where Izuku had literally zero skills in, something left to professional bureaucrats, just overseen by slightly more skilled people like Yaoyorozu that also had powerful surnames and connections.
"I think…" Izuku replies. "... I'll spend a while recovering."
If only because he actually ought to do it, to avoid the public disregarding Esuha as a governmental fake.
Besides, they have a home to properly furnish and all.
(***)
"Those… fucking… idiots." Hisashi Shigaraki grumbles. His injuries still ache a little, but to be honest, he is much more interested in something else. "I swear to gods, Moderates lost 90% of their brain power when my brother blew himself up."
"I'd argue that it was a professionally prepared coup." Nine comments. Teaming-up with another Councillor in order to save his holdings in Japan from collapsing were already a slap in Shigaraki's face. "It almost worked, and if it did, you'd be screwed."
Not even 'we'. Instead, 'you'. Shigaraki is fuming, but he is keeping that hidden. No need to make his position any weaker than it already is.
"It might have been professionally prepared, but it failed." Shigaraki replies calmly. "And that's what truly matters. Now we're in a position to finally end the Moderates, except we can't do that or the regular soldiers that lack context for the coup will launch another coup in self-defense."
Oh, so that's what pains him so much, Nine decides. Family drama, all the way. Nine himself has succeeded in taking down most of the Moderate cells in his part of the world.
The biggest problem was making sure that the sheiks won't raise the oil price too high, in order to earn as much money as they can off the present crisis. The Council was trying to make sure that the government's of the world were in a position to continue rebuilding themselves, and low gas prices were useful in that.
Frankly, the Council barely exists nowadays.
Could it even be called a Council anymore if there were only three members of it? One, who was increasingly cornered by the Moderates and/or superheroes (seriously, 'lmao' was putting it mildly in Nine's opinion). Nine of the Middle East, who was doing pretty reasonably. And Six of Russia.
Six's range of regular control didn't exist far past Moscow's outskirts and a few major cities in the Western Russia that were still listening to what was left of the central government of the Russian Federation.
He was just waiting for the warlords (mostly former generals) that were tearing the rest of the country, trying to win the civil war, to chill down so that he could take them over, but even if he did, Six's domain was going to be a shadow of its former self.
They had less supernatural control of many notable former supporters of the Council (the willing supporters) in other countries, but that was it. They had an influence, but nothing more than that.
Four died less than a half year ago, assassinated by the Moderates, taking their entire control over North America with him. It was, probably, a tipping point. Still, Nine was ruling over a small continent worth of people, and he refused to stand down without a fight.
"Your control is slipping." Nine comments. "You shouldn't have put everything that was left of our research branch in one place, for Nedzu to…"
Shigaraki slams his fists into the table.
"You think I don't know?" He glares at Nine over the table. "The best prophets are the ones that predict events that already happened, Nine. Their skills and achievements are phenomenal, but I can't exactly say that they are constructive."
"Fair." Nine admits. "We've never waged a war like this one. And the war… I lost count as many of our agents were arrested or killed because some local counterintelligence agency decided that they were foreign spies."
"Don't fucking remind me." One groans. It's the trauma that goes deep. And they both remember losing Ten and the entirety of China because that dumbass decided to stay in Tokyo during the late stage of the war when Americans began to level the city down with relentless bombardment. "How's your fishing for an immortality power going?"
"Nothing thus far." Nine admits. To be honest, the whole 'looking for immortality powers' business smelled of defeatism to him, but… it was officially just 'playing the long game' and trying to outlive Moderates. "How about you?"
"I think I located one, but I need some further confirmation." Shigaraki replies. "It should take me a few weeks to confirm it, before trying to steal it. I don't want to pick any weird mental influences."
Right, that would suck.
"For now, we should focus on catching Destro." One adds. "He has a lot of metas in his little Meta-Liberation Army, catching them all too should give us a much needed boost to manpower now that my Threat Elimination Unit has been… weakened."
A part of Nine feels like he should point out that Destro isn't a pokemon, but… ehh. One is treating people around him as some goddamn pokemons to catch into his collection, and Nine realized that long ago.
One was too stubborn for his own good.
Actually, screw that, Nine is going to address the issue.
"Speaking of your pokemon collection, how's your daughter doing?" Nine asks, his voice as dry as humanly possible. One gives him a look completely devoid of understanding. "You know, the daughter with an incredibly potent power that you're treating as a part of furniture, which totally won't make her feel tempted to go Yoichi on you?"
Hisashi growls at the mention of the name. Yoichi's little stunt gave him a close approximation of a PTSD.
"Aiko is a good daughter, she won't do anything like that." Hisashi replies with certainty. "I do agree that I've been… a bit too distant recently. This whole mess is a big drain on my time and nerves. I almost died to Defiant, and I'm lashing out on people a bit too much for my taste."
"So?" Nine is actually pleasantly surprised with the sudden openness of the man in front of him.
He might be here mostly in hopes of finding interesting powers among the Meta-Liberation Army members, but…
"So I've been trying to make it up to her, but…" One sighs. "I'm not a family man, let's be honest. I don't know how to talk with her, and I fear that if I say something stupid it'll get even worse. Or that I'll do something really stupid because my fuse is extremely short nowadays and Aiko is… complicated."
Nine isn't surprised. She is a teenager, goddamnit. One was kind enough to involve her almost uniformly in a demolition work and erasure of evidence (rather than regular battle), the Gunga Mountain being a bit of an escalation born from the seriousness of the situation, but…
She was still a teenage girl in a company of soldiers and politicians.
"I'll be honest with you, One." Nine sighs. "You shouldn't have had any children to begin with. Excuse me for saying that, but you're just not the right person for being a parent."
"And you're any better?" One asks dryly.
"No, I'm an ambitious politician by trade." Nine replies. "But that's why I made sure to not have any children. You, in the meantime… Seriously, why?"
"Accidents, that I at least tried to take responsibility for." Hisashi admits. "Aiko developed a powerful power, so I figured out that I could as well involve her in my work. Asa never had any, so I left him with his mother, and limited myself to paying her a child support. Judging from what I discovered nowadays, it was a horrifyingly bad idea."
"Oh?" Nine asks.
"After discovering that I have a nephew, I checked out what was going on with Asa." Hisashi admits. "Turns out that his mother was arrested by Commissioner Aizawa for child abuse. The same Aizawa that assaulted the Gunga Mountain compound with Defiant."
Nine blinks at him.
"Is he…"
"We're at this point about eighty percent sure that Asa's running the Musutafu Branch of the Network for Defiant, because according to the gossip on the HeroNET the hero in question, nicknamed Rabbit, fits his description in behavior and looks." Shigaraki states flatly. "At least according to his past neighbors that I had asked about it described Asa. So it looks like he developed a power despite no early markers of being a power-holder."
"You have an awful track record with your family, man." Nine actually looks like he empathizes with One. Because, yeah, he might not have a family himself but he had his own share of failings in the past. And this one feels like a really big one. "You wanna talk about this?"
"I think I had a bottle of whiskey somewhere in my office." Shigaraki sighs while standing from his chair. "Give me a moment to fetch it."
They're going to visit Destro's little base in Deika Valley tomorrow. And they both have just the right powers to deal with hangovers, a side-effect of the fast injury recovery powers they all got.
(***)
"I have a feeling that I should say something nasty about the Moderates." Destro says calmly, stirring the tea while looking at the TV. As one can expect, the failed coup dominated all news stations. "But I'm trying to be diplomatic about things, so I'll merely say that they really didn't think this through."
"True." Nedzu agrees through a computer screen, a large Voice Only displayed proudly on it. "The coup was well planned and executed, but they made one crucial mistake. They got so habituated into hiding their faces from the Radicals that they tried to pull a putsch while staying as anonymous as possible. This lack of recognizable and popular faces on their side was what did them in."
That was true. Yagi Toshinori speaking out against the coup really aggravated the issue. For most of the soldiers they had a war hero on the side of the legal government, and… who exactly on the other side?
Some colonels, and one or two generals? Most of them pretty much no-names for as much as people of such rank could be?
This, to be frank, dealt a killing blow to the coup's legitimacy. A lot of soldiers surrendered to the government because they began to suspect that if there was someone who felt like they were controlled by metahumans, then it could as well be the officers involved in the coup.
"Looks like we're in agreement over it." Destro agrees. "Trumpet's opinion is that the failed coup is going to strengthen the image of the Government."
"Oh?" Nedzu appears surprised by it. "I thought that it would expose its weakness? It almost worked."
"It almost worked, but then it ended in a few hours." Destro replies. It seems that the rat still has problems figuring out the human mentality. Reassuring. "Unless Shimura messes something up in the post-coup clean-up, she just proved her government to be capable of swiftly responding to an unexpected disaster of this magnitude. We can expect at least several organizations that most likely considered the coup to be an option to back down for time being, deciding that the government is still too powerful for such… radical means of taking it down."
"Makes sense, makes sense." Nedzu admits. "I suspect that Moderates are in for some rather troubling times, having expended most of their assets on the failed coup, while also exposing a lot of their inner workings to the Radicals."
Oh, now that was interesting.
"You think that Shigaraki will delay his visit in Deika to clean Moderates out?" Destro asks. Nedzu clearly thinks it over for a moment, at least judging from the lengthy silence.
"To be honest, I'm not sure." Nedzu admits. "I lean towards the option that he will visit us just to strengthen the numbers left to the Council in Japan in preparations for the proper purge of the Moderates. Besides, remember the fact that the coup was at least nominally anti-metahuman."
What does he… oh.
"So he can as well leave locating influential Moderates to the government, which will be busy cleaning up after the coup." Destro replies dryly. "Then, when the 'right time' comes, he will send the MLA, a known pro-metahuman insurgency group, after the identified Moderates that he'll have the Government force to retire. So that he'll be able to deal with Yoichi's leftovers while propping us as an even bigger threat for the heroes to face. All while secretly taking over or replacing key figures of the Hero Association, or just having us kill those that he'll see as too big of a problem to subvert."
"Precisely!" Nedzu sounds almost cheerful. "I believe that this is his plan. The MLA is too established as an anti-government group for him to have a shot on using it to strengthen his grip on the government. However, we're perfect to use as something to occupy the Association's attention during the silent takeover."
That was just going from bad to worse, wasn't it? And if the plan wasn't going to work, Shigaraki was going to execute it with Destro's hands and mind. Just… great.
If there was one type of meta-ability that Destro was genuinely uncomfortable with, it was mind-control. And, well, the whole 'quirk-stealing quirks' business.
He takes a sip of his tea. Repetitive motions of the process were significantly calming to his nerves. He is actually surprised when he hears a loud sip from Nedzu's computer.
"Wait, are you telling me that you've taken my suggestion seriously and actually started drinking tea too?" Destro asks, with slight disbelief in his voice.
"I've decided that it might be a crucial element of my attempts to understand human behavior, yes." Nedzu admits. "I still need some time to get used to the taste."
Huh.
(***)
The next day after the failed Moderate coup, Izuku is arguing (mostly playfully, really) with Uraraka about her choice of curtains that are going to hang in one of the rooms in their home, when someone messages him on the HeroNET.
He apologizes to Uraraka immediately, because yes, this is important.
Mir4ge: you stupid fuck
Defiant: Chameleon, I presume
Defiant: stealing my line? I should be the one asking this
Defiant: does all of your organization in total have at least a single fucking braincell left
Mir4ge: SAID THE PERSON THAT JUST HELPED AFO WIN
Defiant: I told you that if you pull any shit on us, it'll be war.
Defiant: I don't need you to end him, all you're doing is getting in the way
Defiant: Shigaraki is going to be done in within a week or two if you stop trying to ruin everything
Mir4ge: blah blah blah, that's all I'm hearing
Mir4ge: you're ruining your father's legacy
Defiant: FUCKING GREAT, I HATE THAT PIECE OF SHIT ALMOST AS MUCH AS I HATE ALL FOR ONE
Defiant: Moderates have two weeks to surrender. I don't care about their regular members, but any natural-born metahumans in their charge are to be surrendered to the Association for rehabilitation into the normal society
Defiant: no more metahuman child assassin training
Defiant: Do it and I'm going to assume that you were genuinely heroic in your aspirations, you just sucked at the execution of those or were forced into doing nasty shit
Defiant: and I will ignore your past and not attempt to jail anyone to keep Council as a whole a secret from the world
Defiant: otherwise, I'm going to treat the Moderates as another group of villains identical to Radicals
Defiant: End of the message
He blocks her, and then sends a message to the network administrators to ban her account. Hopefully the lesson will stick, and Izuku can finally focus on his free time.
Six hours later he receives a message that the Council of Twelve and the Meta-Liberation Army had a regular battle in the Deika Valley, that resulted in a big part of said valley being leveled down.
It appears that resting is illegal for heroes in this country.
(***)
I mean, we all knew that this confrontation was waiting for us for a while :V
Feel free to speculate about the outcome of it.