Jack Redhawke - Orphans after him as in the Moderates that he orphaned after dying.
Jpx0999 - Took him a while to become an actual badass. Still remember the time when he fled the battlefield during the Marukane Ward.
Shahryar - Yeah, now it's time to show that Radicals aren't that much more skillful... xD
(***)
If there is one thing that Hisashi Shigaraki had in spades, it was style. If two, then style and serious family issues. If you wanted to list three things instead, you had to add decisiveness. Point one and three both played significant roles in the Battle of the Deika Valley.
To say it simply, Hisashi Shigaraki lived by the phrase go big or go home. And he always went big.
As a result, he arrived in Deika Valley through a warpgate with Nine, Apocrypha, what was left of All for One' Threat Elimination Unit - and majority of Nine's own TEU.
This totalled up to almost three hundred well-trained soldiers, all of them with a complimentary meta-ability.
In short, a force enough to - although with heavy casualties - fight a JGSDF infantry division and win.
The unfortunate part of Deika Valley was that it was, as the name implied, a valley. It was comfortably wide, but in the end it could only be approached or left on foot from north or south, the other sides being covered by mountains.
You could climb the mountains, but you could easily get lost, fall off a cliff or something, and generally speaking it was something for expert hikers to do.
The TEU would easily score that if they wanted, their members being all elite soldiers. However, even they - if they tried to do that - would lose cohesiveness of their units due to the heavily uneven terrain.
This, in turn, threatened to end with small groups of TEU soldiers being engaged in combat by enemies in comparable numbers and wiped out, because most of the mass-produced quirks that Yoichi installed in them were fairly weak, mostly relying on team-efforts to get anywhere.
And if the TEU learned something on the Gunga Mountain (or after watching the Esuha Battle recordings) it was that some of the natural-born powers were incredibly powerful. Even with Wolfram out of the picture, they made some adjustments.
Two hundred TEU soldiers were warped on the southern side of the compound. One hundred to the north, to block the MLA's retreat.
The MLA base was best summarized as a big mansion that Rikiya Yotsubashi sold to himself (but himself under a fake name) years ago, the whole thing covered with a masquerade so deep that even Shigaraki was impressed.
The mansion used to be a place where Rikiya Yotsubashi and his wife retreated to in order to recuperate (especially his wife, who was apparently of weak constitution and nerves) from the complicated life of a zaibatsu.
Nowadays it has expanded significantly. A number of buildings were attached to house MLA warriors, who most likely trained nearby, under the cover of forest to avoid being spotted.
The Government, naturally, was on the lookout for things looking suspiciously like military bases, despite having no connection to the JSDF. It was in crisis, but it didn't mean that it was stupid, it was just lacking assets (and even then that might change now that it began to employ superheroes).
According to the reading one of the TEU soldiers got on lifesigns in the vicinity, there were about one hundred people in the compound.
Respectable number of natural-born metahumans. And most likely only a part of the Meta-Liberation Army. After Gunga Mountain, All for One had a reasonable degree of respect towards Destro (or Nedzu, they weren't quite sure who was in charge of the MLA nowadays), and putting all eggs in one basket looked like a monumentally bad idea.
How many more members did the MLA have? A hundred more? Two hundred, maybe? This way or another, a monumental boost to the Council's strength. They just had to catch Destro. And, thankfully, they knew for certain that Destro was in the area.
The rest was just a matter of announcing themselves (the MLA already clearly gearing up for the fight) through a megaphone, stating their desire to have a meeting with Destro. And that otherwise, well, otherwise they are all surrounded and they should realize that they cannot win.
After a few rather nervous minutes, they got their answer. Destro was inviting them inside, while telling his goons to stand down.
Someone wanted to avoid bloodshed.
(***)
It took All for One about ten seconds since entering Destro's office to get him and his wife under the paralysis quirks. Frankly, rather underwhelming.
"I kind of expected more." Nine comments dryly, helping Destro's wife to sit on the couch. The woman (in her early forties) was clearly trembling a little, despite the paralysis, Destro shooting her some worried looks.
Not a lot of public presence she had.
"I think it's a case of knowing when to fold, eh, Destro?" All for One asks, putting the man in question on the chair. That's quite a long nose, huh. The man's eyes move back from his wife to give Shigaraki a rather defiant stare. "It was to die now or to potentially die later, it was a logical choice."
Yotsubashi is clearly still pissed off.
"The only question I have is where Nedzu is." All for One says. "He probably ditched the MLA, there is no loyalty in the rat, but… I'll sleep better knowing that for sure quite soon."
"Yeah, yeah, get it done, less theatrics and more brainwashing." Nine says.
No one joins them. There is a faint sound suppression power cast around them by Nine, and Destro said to not interrupt them. It was, honestly, going almost too easy, and Nine couldn't help but start being worried.
Then again, what sort of plan on the MLA side could potentially include having their leaders captured? And what sort of army one would need to resist the forces that the Council brought to the meeting?
"Before that, I'm genuinely curious what sort of power does a wannabe Magneto wield." All for One says. "Because to be honest, it has to be something powerful, and with your age, Destro… how are you so successful as a CEO despite having a first gen power? Whatever it was, you should have been about as mentally sound as Dabi. "
Destro's glare somehow gets more hostile. Nine sighs. All for One's love for powers was reaching unhealthy levels occasionally.
"Right, you can't answer me." All for One says. "Well, let's see it for ourselves, then."
He puts his hand on Destro's face, his quirk's tendrils entering his body, trying to grab onto his quirk, only to…
… find nothing?
"NOW!" Destro shouts. It makes no sense, he should be under paralysis, unless…
Nine barely has the time to register the couch next to him breaking under the suddenly multiplied weight. He conjures a shield on instinct, and this is the only thing that saves his life.
Destro's wife - now a colossus of black flesh - punches through the shield. But it weakens the attack enough that Nine isn't splattered on the wall. And instead, he is sent flying through the window, his attacker jumping after him, their much larger frame making a large, gaping hole in the outer wall of the building.
"I see." All for One says calmly, taking a step back from Destro, the man standing up from the chair. "I must say that I didn't see that coming."
"What can I say?" Destro replies, correcting his suit a little. "I'm a CEO. I know how to read trends. And the trend I see when I look into our society is that the metahumans are the brand to invest into. Marrying one, especially one that I genuinely like, so that my children will be a part of a brand in question is an entirely logical thing to do."
It's one of the things that he will probably omit from his biography, if he'll ever get to write one.
"Right, but what's not logical is trying to face me." All for One replies calmly, before firing his main offensive quirk right at Destro. The wall behind him melts down, but it's not a perfectly circular hole.
Half of it is Destro-shaped.
And, against all logic, it's not because the attack melted Destro before melting the wall. Destro is still standing there, giving Shigaraki a smug smile, the attack simply failing to kill him. The attack failing to even injure him.
"How the fuck?" All for One promptly drops his well-trained facade of calmness, and stares at Destro in shock.
"Wouldn't you want to know, you ascended chuunibyou demon lord-wannabe." Destro replies dryly.
(***)
Nedzu sighs as one of the noumus in his lab suddenly melts into sludge. Damage Transfer was an incredibly useful quirk, allowing to establish links between two individuals, damage (and a lot of offensive quirks, aside from All for One, clearly enough) transferred automatically from individual A to individual B.
However, they only had so many connected noumus. And Destro, for his own inexplicable human reasons, disliked the idea of using humans for that. Despite noumus being former humans.
He also forbade Nedzu from making more, stating that MLA image is important AND that despite what he did on Gunga Mountain, making them didn't bring Nedzu any closer to replicating Yoichi's research.
Humans were complicated.
"Six bodies left." Nedzu tells Destro through a commpiece hidden in Yotsubashi's ear. Two of those bodies were still under the paralysis that Nedzu transferred to them from Destro and his wife. "Make it count."
(***)
"To be honest, if I were you, I'd worry about something else." Destro says, while walking towards his desk, All for One glaring at him. "It appears to me that you're comfortable just standing there menacingly, waiting for your sidekicks or… Nine, was it?, to come save you."
"You have maybe a hundred people." All for One retorts dryly. "I have three hundred. Do the math. I just need to wait for them to come and end you." He is acutely aware that there are a hundred metahumans in and outside of the building. He isn't doing big moves.
And, he is probably powering up his escape quirk. Regretfully, thanks to Defiant they know exactly how long it takes to do it.
"You forgot about something." Destro replies, counting the time left (with some safe margin in his head). "Detnerat Company and its subsidiaries are international in scope. And Nedzu knows how to look for metahumans, not just in Japan, but also overseas.
Two people enter the room. Sanctum and Mindtwister. Both loyal members of the MLA. All for One glances at them, only to immediately get hit by Mindtwister's mental quirk.
Sanctum is there to use his defensive meta-ability to protect Mindtwister in case of All for One attacking him. Mindtwister is there to… yep. Do this.
"Did you really think that it would work on m…" All for One says, Mindtwister's quirk clearly dispelled, looking back at Destro… only to immediately create a forcefield.
Gunshot rings in the room. In Destro's hands, a hunting rifle that he kept hidden behind the desk earlier.
It was his father's old hunting rifle. The original owner used it to hunt animals, hunting being his main hobby. Destro, well. He is certainly going to hunt something big today. Although he'll refrain from putting his prey's head on the wall.
That would be quite morbid. And he already had to put his father's old display of trophies somewhere else, because suddenly seeing them in the middle of the night freaked his wife out. Her 1st generation quirk made her fearful and anxious beyond comparison.
The forcefield stopped the bullet. But it was all according to the plan. All for One's glare suddenly grows actively hateful, as his own plan goes to trash.
Oh, well, see if Destro cares.
"We know that you can keep three quirks active, and one of them is mind control." Destro says calmly, his gun still pointing at All for One. "This means two slots left. One you need to keep yourself clear from Mindtwister's quirk. The other… to stop me from shooting you."
Destro smiles smugly.
"Did I just interrupt the charge up of your escape quirk, Shigaraki?" He says, All for One this time not replying. "Did I do it? I'm so sorry! No, actually, I'm not."
This time there are two gunshots. All for One stopped Destro's bullet, but he failed to realize that Sanctum drew a pistol too.
Well, he almost failed to realize in time, to be honest. That man was something else, even Destro had to admit it. Sanctum tried to blow his head off, but Shigaraki repositioned the shield in time to stop it. Narrowly.
He also leaped towards the nearest corner of the room, just to avoid being shot at from two sides. Shame. Shigaraki was cornered, but actually killing him wasn't at all that easy.
"Looks like we'll be here for a while." Destro says with a sigh. "The plan, if we failed to kill you right off the bat, was to keep you boxed in like this until the MLA destroys your sidekicks. Then, well, then it's going to be lynch time."
They just had to shoot at regular intervals to make sure that All for One was keeping his shield up, all while Mindtwister forced him to keep his quirk-negating quirk up. Because Mindtwister was a mind-controller.
Of a limited scope, but all they needed was All for One being hypnotized for a few seconds to shoot him dead finally.
Killing All for One was the main goal. But destroying the Threat Elimination Unit meant that even if All for One somehow escaped, then following him to his base and finally disposing of him would be easy.
In a way, Destro and Nedzu decided to guarantee their success in the next attempt before making their current one. All for One was just that much of a slippery snake. He could as well have completely another way of escaping the predicament - or, worst of all, they might have been facing some sort of quirk clone.
Paranoia was sometimes the smart choice.
"You really think…" All for One finally speaks. "... that your little 'Army' will win? Against some of the best soldiers in the whole world?"
"Hey, I already told you that we're an international group." Destro replies calmly. Then he shoots AFO again. "Nedzu was incredibly helpful in recruiting foreigners into the MLA ranks, all to establish Japan as a safe heaven for the metahumans. You have maybe three hundred people. I have a thousand." Destro says, Shigaraki's eyes growing wide in shock. "Do the math."
That's what you get for not making a proper reconnaissance before waltzing in like you owned the place, dumbass.
(***)
It wasn't easy.
They wouldn't have managed to pull it off even nearly as well if All for One wasn't nice enough to waste time trying to take over the Hero Association.
The fun fact was that having a lot of mass-produced quirks in their ranks left the Council surprisingly blind when the true scope of meta-abilities was involved. They were too habituated to using quirks as reinforcements of traditional combat tactics.
They never realized how a simple ground-altering quirk can be used to produce an expansive network of underground dugouts. And how a stone-shaping quirk can be used to make them deeper.
They never realized that by now a solid chunk of mountains on both sides of the Deika Valley resembled an ant nest more than anything, loyal MLA warriors awaiting the battle in (questionable) comfort for almost two weeks now.
Outside of the life sign detection quirks range. Because the TEU was using the standard detection quirks made by Yoichi, and Nedzu could recite their range from memory.
They were, frankly, tired of this and looked forward to no longer having to live underground. The only thing between them and the happy end was about three hundred completely surprised Council soldiers.
It was going to be ugly.
The TEU realizes how ugly when Geten drops a small mountain lake on them, formed into a rain of ice spears. Killing or injuring - despite their frantic attempts to set up forcefields - dozens of soldiers.
And if they had any doubts about it left afterwards, then they get to witness a massive ice dragon grabbing one of their APCs with its mouth (with crew inside) just to drop it a moment from at least a hundred meters.
While the dragon gets mostly melted with their quirks a moment later, it's all the time that the MLA warriors needed to emerge from their dugouts and begin to march down the mountain slope.
Destro trained them to face a regular army. They know how to use covers. They know how to create covers with their meta-abilities. And just as the MLA warriors advance, some of their compatriots stand behind, on the elevated ground, raining death on the TEU.
Fireballs, physical attacks, even some conventional mortars. TEU replies in kind, of course, although they clearly lack quirks of the level where they can act as field artillery.
From the distance, with all the forcefields deployed by the TEU, it has to look like some fantasy world magic battle.
And it rather quickly becomes obvious that the MLA has the upper hand. Especially when its warriors get closer and the TEU realizes that a lot of them are carrying loudspeakers. Transferring words of Trumpet, urging them all to fight for their cause.
His quirk boosts their physical strength and lifts their exhaustion. It's strong enough to cover almost every single member of the MLA in the valley, although occasionally the sounds of gunfire, explosions and screams of the dying and injured drowns it in the background, temporarily lifting some effects.
It doesn't matter that much with both of the Councilors present in the Valley too occupied to try to reorganize the TEU's defenses and their communication network brought down by jamming quirks.
(***)
Nine has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
It started from being punched through the window by a rampaging, black She-Hulk, then everything went somehow worse when he realized that his soldiers are getting butchered and he can't do an awful lot about it.
He couldn't contact Shigaraki. He couldn't issue orders to his troops. Hell, their commanders had issues ordering their own troops due to jamming. The MLA was about ten times more numerous than they expected and someone (probably Nedzu) caught them expertly in a trap.
Worst of all, She-Hulk was still fucking after him.
That woman was fucking relentless. And her strength-amplification power was mighty enough to smash through his shields in a single blow.
Aside from the first strike that sent him out of the window, she didn't have quite enough strength to also deal damage to him. Nine used some movement acceleration power to dash out of the MLA encampment before its defenders could surround him.
Unfortunately, She-Hulk followed him. And his plan to get to the TEU positions was quickly ruined, because he exited the base to the west (that was the direction of the window he was thrown through), meaning that the advancing MLA just cut off his retreat.
He barely manages to raise new shields up in time to withstand the barrage of blows. He is basically asking to get sniped by someone from another direction.
He has no idea what her power is about. Why was the first blow much stronger than all the others? It's strength amplification, but what sort of? Was there a power out there that would allow you to just… glance at someone, and immediately have at least some understanding of their power?
That would be pretty fucking useful right now.
Alright, fuck it.
Nine blasts his enemy with some omnidirectional stun power. It buys him a moment he needs to charge his primary offensive power.
Shigaraki went for melting everything in front of you. Nine decided to be slightly more creative about it. In a heartbeat, the woman in front of him is hit by a thunder out of the clear sky.
Nine realizes that he might have made a major mistake when Destro's wife (what was her name again?), rather than keel over and die, stands up. Suddenly growing even bigger. Her power improved her durability by far, she was clearly injured and burned by the electricity, but…
"THUNDERSTORMS…" She yells loudly. "... ARE SCARY!"
Ah, shit. Strength amplification proportional to how afraid she was. And he clearly hit one of her who-knows-how-many phobias.
The resulting punch goes through his shield without losing a lot of strength. Nine is dead before his body hits the ground, and with him, the fragile peace in the Middle East.
(***)
"It's over!" His wife shouts, clearly relieved of most of her fear now that she won. She is still under her quirk, being slightly bulkier than she should and with large patches of black on her skin. "I won!"
All for One's eyes grow wider in shock as Nine's body - mangled almost beyond recognition - hits the floor.
"Spectacular, my love!" Destro smiles. It might have been in large part an arranged marriage to obtain quirked children, but it was the sort of an arranged marriage where there was a genuine fondness between the spouses, even if born after the wedding. "I knew you'd do it! Now if you could please help me again, there is another Councilor that requires urgent smashing, and since you're already h…"
A black cloud suddenly envelops All for One, Destro shouting in fury, his wife dashing forward but her punch going through the cloud and making a dent in the wall behind it.
Then it vanishes. A warp quirk. How?!
(***)
All for One hits the ground, right next to the crouching Apocrypha. The TEU soldiers around there are holding a forcefield up, but it's clearly on the verge of collapsing.
Some MLA warrior with a variant of ground digging quirk emerges from the ground near them, lunging for the throat of the nearest force field generator with a knife. Before he has the time to do it, All for One liquidates him with a gesture.
"I hope I didn't interrupt anything important." Apocrypha says dryly, while standing up. "But we have a problem here."
She got herself a warpsong, clearly enough. He has no idea how. She didn't mention it at all. Things might have played out differently if he knew that beforehand.
"I can fucking see that." All for One growls while standing up from the ground. "We're retreating. Open the warpgate to our base in Niigata Mountains, now."
(***)
"So, a failure?" Nedzu asks through his commpiece, as Destro falls to his chair, cursing quietly.
They were so goddamn close. Literally seconds away from killing that man. Instead they got a completely unrelated Councilor and who knows how many goons. He should have asked his wife to smash Shigaraki first.
On the other hand, the situation isn't without its positives.
"I prefer the term 'delayed success'." Destro says. "We should have destroyed most of his remaining forces today, especially if Nine's men return to the Middle East. It's plan B. Contact Defiant."
They are going to visit All for One's citadel in Niigata Mountains and drag that man out of his cave. As soon as they can. Because now that All for One lost both the Hero Association and the Meta-Liberation Army, he might do something stupid.
And Destro wants to take the government over, not be a side of a civil war that will end with the entire country becoming a Hobbesian wilderness, devoid of law and civilization. And that will be the result of Shigaraki going stupid and trying to destroy the Hero Association out of spite.
(***)
Out of the three hundred TEU members that Hisashi Shigaraki led into the Deika Valley, only a bit more than a hundred managed to leave it. The Meta-Liberation Army lost less than one hundred fifty warriors, and that's if you included both the dead and heavily injured.
(***)
Deika Valley (however it played out in other timelines) is probably the reason why AFO tends to NOT fight his enemies directly. Let's just say that he was painfully vibechecked by the Meta-Liberation Army. And not just in this one continuity.
To quote one of my betareaders, Moderates and Radicals are being consistently done in by the fact that they are both fighting the past war, having issues adapting to the fact that circumstances changed (which can't be said about the Metahuman Network/Hero Association and the Meta-Liberation Army, hell the League of Villains and the Shie Hassaikai understand it better than they did).
It must really hurt to fall from grace, doesn't it?