For The Love of Mankind

Whenever he had been sent out by his Overlord, his Master, the one light in his world, he wasn't really expecting a very simple task to devolve into something like this. True, it might have had something to do with the fact that he could be found by anyone that was sentient, but it really wasn't his fault this time.

That damned Hero just so happened to be passing in the same direction on his patrol, and he was awfully fortunate that the Hero, dressed to the nines for whatever damn reason as if he was going to meet with someone important, had not brought any of his sidekicks with him. At least God hadn't totally fucked him over this time around.

Still, the devastating blow to his jaw from the Hero's hard right hook was something he could've really done without today. Much less the arrogant proclamation that hero was going to make sure that he finally brought this "Heinous creature of the night" and "Monster" to heel before he was shipped off to one of those supposedly inescapable prisons.

If the Hero had it his way, the Monster Among Men, Balor, would never see the light of day again.

As if that was ever going to be a realistic outcome as Balor picked up the Hero with minimal effort and tossed him into a nearby alleyway with a simple flick of his wrist. The sheer strength and impact knocking the wind out of the Hero as he landed hard on the dirty floor.

"Balor" was tall. Very tall. Standing at what looked be 6'9 at a bare minimum with splotchy red skin intermittently invading otherwise milky white skin. The pair of hateful golden eyes that store down at the Hero from atop the mountain were stained with black sclera. Said Hero didn't dare want to know what the third eye, closed in the centre of his forehead, was like. Equally black hair was messily kept in shape by various hairclips mainly attached to his bangs as a pair of curved, black horns twisted at the side of his forehead. A tail, the same kind of splotchy red as his skin, thrashed about wildly as if it was trying to find something to puncture. His clothing was militant in nature, he wore what looked to be some form of black SWAT vest that was more or less destroyed in totality apart from the shoulders and some parts of the centre. The rest of his clothes seemed to follow this pattern of military looks but obliterated to the point that wearing them looked like he had just walked through a war. In addition, there were two metallic, golden knee braces strapped into place around the jagged spikes that jutted out from said area.

"David Suzuki, the Survival Hero Unbreakable. Know this, I obliterate anyone who defies me." Balor declared as he smashed his knee squarely into the Hero's jaw, a sickening crack and dislocation followed after the choked whimpers died out and the Demon Lord repeated the manoeuvre one more time, destroying any hope that the damage would heal any time soon. "Even if your Quirk makes you nigh invulnerable, everything in this world has its breaking point. I'm going to find yours and shatter it."

However, just as he was about to complete the trifecta of strikes, the battered Hero reacted on pure instinct alone. He swung a hard strike towards the offensive knee, killing Balor's momentum in its tracks as the Monster Among Men staggered forward and grimaced as he held the throbbing area.

Unbreakable, sensing that this was his moment to make an escape, struggled back up to his feet. He had to find somewhere, anywhere; he could hide before the destructive beast that he had just angered further found him. It was a disgraceful thing for a hero of his standing to do, but you could do a lot more as a hero by actually being alive as opposed to just another statistic on an increasingly steep death curve. Plus, he had made it his job to keep dangerous villains like this off of the street, and he wasn't going to stop just because he took a bit of punishment.

He had barely been able to shuffle more than a couple of feet away into another one of the alleyways in this twisted maze before he heard the sound of metal striking the ground. The brace on Balor's left knee was now lying on the floor and the Demon Lord was charging him down with inhuman amounts of speed.

"We're not finished by a long shot, Hero." Balor growled as he swiftly lifted the hero up in a seated position onto his shoulders, the black-haired giant then promptly proceeded to drop the hero on both of his outstretched and raised knees, smashing Unbreakable's back in the process. The cry of pain was about as loud and deafening as one could possibly make it. The following cries once the move was repeated not once, but twice more, were equally close to shattering the sound barrier.

It wasn't as if the move wasn't painful for Balor either, considering he was now dropping the weight of an entire person onto his already damaged knees. However, he was doing a hell of a lot better than Unbreakable, who was sprawled on his back and screaming to high hell. "Your Quirk, Hero, blame it for you having lived through that. You have an inordinate pain threshold, and your family would be awful disappointed in you were to give into to just that. Still, I wonder what I have to do to break it. Therefore, like most things I don't understand, allow me to rip you apart to figure out."

Dragging the helpless hero like he was a sack of potatoes; Balor was back in total control of the situation. "Talent isn't sexually transmitted, you know." He droned, wrenching on the helpless hero's legs as he repeatedly stomped down and down on them, digging his knees into the back and his horns into the neck as he shifted his entire body weight onto his victim. "If you were half as good as your dear old daddy now would be the time to show me…" He whispered into his victim's ear as he smirked. He was going to savour slowly squeezing the life out of this pest that dared to dream he was actually worth something.

The pain was agonizing. Unbreakable had run into destroyed war zones, burning buildings, and had even been the front line for some raids against villains, and in all of them he had come out unscathed. This was something else entirely. Not only was he being methodically dissected like he was some kind of human operation game, but he was certain that there wasn't any sign of Balor using a Quirk at all. Sure, the appearance was definitely the result of one, but that third eye had to mean something and all it had done was remain shut this entire time.

His own Quirk only gave him his immense durability, he prided himself on "No flips, just fists" for his fighting style. He had spent his entire life being the underdog in many a situation. His entire class had come with some of the strongest Quirks known to mankind at that point. Fuck, he had to deal with people with power on the level of a God, and he had made it damn it! He was a Hero despite the odds! And he wasn't going to let this villain end his journey here!

Powering back up to his feet, he strained and struggled as he found Balor still locked firmly onto him. Yet he had to carry on. If he didn't go beyond his own limits then it would be a disgraceful death, and he didn't much feel like dying today.

With the monster now under his control, Unbreakable charged. There was an outstretched section of a wall that had been torn to pieces over the years, and now the building's pipes were sticking through it. If he could smash Balor's head against it, it may knock the villain out for long enough to allow Unbreakable to make an escape and call for back up.

However, dreams like that are made to be broken.

"I don't need to use my Quirk in order to rip your limbs apart." As if he read Unbreakable's mind with his earlier comments on Quirks. The attempted come back was quickly snuffed out as Balor overpowered his hold and rammed the hero into a wall, smashing him repeatedly to the point where there was doubt his spine was never going to be the same again. Unbreakable's head taking multiple blows to the steel piping.

Maintaining the chokehold that he found himself using, he watched as he slowly drained all life out of the Hero, Balor's other arm grabbed a hold of the damaged leg and twisted it until he heard a sickening crunch "You see, Hero, using my Quirk would hand you a much too painless demise. Instead, what would be more personally satisfying to me would be to dissect you as you stand. I mean, if your family can brag about being the "Ultimate Survivors" then this should be a drop in the ocean."

Just as Balor was about to hear the sweet tearing of flesh and snapping of bone, he was struck with a strong kick from the hero's other leg, which forced him to relinquish the chokehold. Holding the back of his head as he grimaced in pain, it only made him want to do even more horrible things to the retreating Unbreakable for daring to fight back. His Overlord would have his head if he didn't rip him limb from limb, after all.

Balor followed the broken Hero, whose own Quirk, despite the immense durability, had long given up the fight in keeping him fully functional, as Unbreakable crawled and scrapped his way across the ground towards a far more open out area. One that looked like it hadn't been cleaned or even surveyed in ages if the wreckage of steel steps, barrels, chairs, and various other pieces of discarded junk littered it.

"You're worth more than I thought you would be. Struggling to the bitter end to escape." Balor murmured, stomping on the Hero's back as he stalked him further, the blow to his head doing nothing but stunning him for the moment. Having regained the upper hand with such ease, Balor wasn't about to ever let it go again. "I retract what I said earlier about your lack of talent, clearly there's something about you if you've managed to live through it all and then strike me twice. However, just as a cockroach can survive without its head for a while, it hardly matters when you squash it under your heel." With callous brutality, the black-haired giant repeatedly smashed his boot down upon the fractured body of the Survival Hero.

With the vermin still crawling, Balor clicked his tongue in annoyance before powering Unbreakable onto his shoulder and unceremoniously dumping him on a scattered assortment of the discarded industrial equipment. Using a strewn barrel as leverage, the large boot of Balor contorted and stretched the hero's neck in an inhuman way as it was stomped over the edge. "I like that you stopped screaming, Hero, it's nice to be able to hear my own thoughts for a while." Balor sneered, taking his boot off for just a second long enough for the Hero to let out on last breath before Balor rammed his foot down again "Ah, ah, ah, I didn't say you could breathe, though."

Unbreakable gagged, it was becoming harder and harder to keep the ever-growing weight on his eyes from shutting them forever. He scraped his nails deep into Balor's leg, failing his arms about in any attempt to do anything to shift the tide of battle.

However, there are just some things in life that are never meant to be.

Stone faced, Balor hooked the hero's arms behind the hero's body and held him upside down and right against his own body. "How sad this must be for you. Your life snuffed out by someone not even using their own Quirk as you desperately cling onto your last moments. Enjoy your last wretched moments and remember to follow the buzzards." With that last declaration and a sickening crack of the tortured neck, Balor dropped the broken Hero on his head against the pair of discarded steel steps, the light behind his eyes finally fading as he was laid to rest in an absolute dump of a location.

Balor then kneeled down, tilting his head slightly as he began to wave his hand in front of the body's face. Taking great joy in the lack of light shining out of them, he hadn't lost a single step no matter what the rest of those fuckers liked to say about. The work of the Inner Circle was taxing so it was rather nice that he could have these moments to let off steam, otherwise he'd be ready to explode at any other moment.

It wasn't anything personal, it could've been any hero really. Could've been a bystander as well. It just happened to be this particular one that incurred his wrath this day and had paid the iron price for it. Needless to say, to stir the flames of a Demon Lord was about the worst thing one could do, especially when said Demon Lord was in a very bad mood that day.

Speaking of bad moods, once the instant gratification that came from the delicious sound of that neck snap had dissipated, Balor was already feeling the anger that had possessed him before the fight re-enter his thoughts. Having to run errands for the sake of Effigy, even if it was at his Overlord's behest, was about the worst thing anyone on planet earth could have happen to them. The little bastard was never happy with anything Balor did for them if it wasn't exactly to specification, and he didn't exactly feel like giving the shit what he wanted. It felt like he was raising some spoilt brat that didn't understand the concept of "I don't give a shit".

Naturally, it would lead to him directly disobeying orders which in turn would leave him at the mercy of his Overlord. However, he would much rather be on his knees begging for his forgiveness for days on end than spend any amount of time fulfilling the whims of a spoiled brat.

Crawling back to the shattered corpse of what was once a Hero, Balor spoke in a low drone. True, there was no one that could hear him, both living and dead, but it was better than being a slave to Effigy, so that was a positive. "Let me regale you with a little monologue, Hero. On the eighth day, Hero, God created "mankind". The question must be asked. Why was he having such a bad day? Why did he create you normal, and forget so many important parts of me? He made the teeth that I made you swallow. The ear that was ripped from my Overlord's skull. A face that no longer exists for one of our fellow comrades. It must've been on hell of a bad day. But really, when you think about it, deep inside people like you are merely a mirror image of all our atrocities. The ugliness that exists outside for "Villains", lives inside every one of you "Heroes". However, ff there's one thing I know for sure, amongst all the squalor and despair in this world, it's that destruction can be beautiful."

Jamming his fingers into the side the of cadaver's neck, the central third eye slightly twitching and flickering to life as he did so, a disgusting slurping sound reverberated around the surrounding area as the body gradually got lighter and lighter in mass. Muscle and bones liquifying as cartilage faded to the point of non-existence, until everything was nothing more than a discarded mound of putrefied flesh that stank to high hell.

Retracting his fingers, Balor covered his nose as he licked the remains off of his afflicted fingers. "Jesus, what a fucking stench. Do you people just not wash yourselves anymore? Whatever, not my fucking problem anymore." At least this whole thing had kept him from Effigy for a while, still, the work had to carry on.

The message could not be spread if there were no disciples to carry it forward, and he would obliterate anyone who dared to defy them.

No one would survive.

Whenever the Police and a few Heroes came upon the scene in the dead of night, once a hallowed civilian ran in to the local precinct with the stench of death clung onto them like a bad smell and a thousand yard stare, they were mystified by the fact none of them had even cracked a grim look or chucked up their dinner in flowing chunks upon the pervading smell invading their nostrils nor the mound that used to be a dear ally.

Instead, they were all staring at one large piece of writing, smeared on the wall with reckless abandon and crudely constructed characters.

"FOLLOW THE BUZZARDS"

"Yes. Yes. No! All of our spots are full! Look, if you're not calling me for a good reason, I'm going to have to ask you to hang up." Ever the busy man, Kyte was cooped up in his office. To anyone who knew him well, they would know that you were to never bother the man during the night. It was tantamount to a death sentence to even knock on his door without first notifying him of when you were to do so, and the one person that did now had an express fear of knocking on doors. The reaction during daylight hours was something that horror stories were made out of. "What?! No! Get off this fucking line before I travel over there and make you meet your maker!" He declared, not waiting for the person on the other end as he ended up slamming his phone down on his table, smashing it in the process.

Kyte grumbled, sweeping the shattered remains onto the floor and under his desk, as he retreated back into the darkest corner of the office. If there was another thing he hated about his Quirk, it was how accurate to a vampire it really was. Granted, he was allowed some leeway with the sun, not bursting into flames on immediate contact usually did him the world of good. However, it made doing the whole "functioning like an actual human being" thing incredibly awkward at best and impossible at worst when you started burning up mere seconds after you stepped outside.

The most light he could stomach at any one time consistently without feeling some part of him burn away were the two candles that dimly lit up the room enough for others to walk around without messing the place up. Once more, Kyte had learned the hard way the first time he had directed one of the initial Foundation members to meet him in here. He wasn't best pleased when he found his carefully decorated sanctuary destroyed by an overly excitable young girl and the equally overly enthusiastic mess of a Faculty member. Turns out that just because one's Quirk gives him functional night vision doesn't mean that everyone had it, as he came to understand.

Still, that was years ago, and it was far easier dealt with than the bunch of idiots that he had to deal with on the phone on a regular basis. Stupid sweathogs trying to offload perfectly normal children for the sake of it, someone who had gone through just one bad moment in their life, all of it made him enraged beyond belief. Imbeciles that didn't understand the point of the Foundation were going to get nowhere fast, and Kyte happened to use a very liberal definition of the word 'nowhere'. If they wanted to make an example of themselves so badly, then who was he to stop their wishes?

Running his hands through his hair the Vampire Lord growled, patrolling over to one of the nearby windows. There wasn't much time until the sun would rise again and force him to retreat back into the coffin placed in the far, far corner of the office until the cool darkness blanketed the city he could see stretch for miles outside the window.

He had heard many a story handed down from his family of what had happened in this city in centuries past. One of the only positives to the familial cruse was the coven's longevity, it wasn't that far back ago for his grandparents to be alive during the many battles that ripped the city down to its foundation and then some.

It was truly inspiring when he had heard those tales and then arrived in the city himself. The addition of his Foundation was sure to be another thing that would add to the storied history once he was finally able to let it come into its own. There was so much untapped potential here, he had twelve excellent specimens, and all they needed were the correct tools to fix their shattered hearts and unleash it.

Still…

"This wasn't our moment; this is my moment."

Those words would forever haunt him. A crass jeer that tore away everything he had worked for prior to the Foundation. Once he got his hand on the sweathog that had ripped everything to shreds he would make sure that it would be th-

It was then that there was a knock at the door, quickly followed by one more, and then two final short raps on it. Kyte couldn't help but breathe a slight sigh of relief as he snapped out of his self-induced anger trance and returned to his desk. "Come in." He called out, glad that someone else with a working brain was finally going to talk to him.

"Hehehehehe, what's with the long face, Kyte-sama?" However, just because he had a brain, it didn't mean that Kyte didn't hate his guts and ear grating voice. "Got something troubling you~?" The jovial voice was accompanied by the sound of the shuffling of a deck of cards, no doubt making the blue haired man prime "trick-testing" material.

"The usual, Subaru. Count yourself lucky that you've never had to actually do any of this yourself. I'm just glad that the initial intake is over now." Kyte grumbled, the shuffling sounds were already grating on his eardrums as the flickering candlelight illuminated parts of Subaru's face. His cold pink hair falling loosely down to his shoulders with dark highlights briefly coming in and out of sight, the light briefly reflected off the assortment of piercings stabbed into his face as his glossy, black lips curled into a smirk at Kyte's word. His red eyes dancing with mirth.

"Mhm~ Hehehehe, true, true, but you've never had to deal with the members on a day-to-day schedule in decades. Dear old Sati is likely going to go mad if you give him one more person with a Quirk like his own." Subaru responded, dragging one of the cards across Kyte's desk back and forth in an almost hypnotic pattern.

"Don't blame that on me. That one was supposed to be yours." Kyte responded, not impressed by Subaru's antics as a brief glint of his pearly white fangs shone out amongst the dark "This time, there is to be no rigging of the distribution. Do I make myself clear?" He wasn't about to deal with yet another year of the pink haired male pawning off the comparably difficult challenges just because of this whole "Fujinaga way" shit he liked to spew.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Kyte-sama." Subaru replied, blowing off the whole thing without so much as a guilty look on his face as the result of the accusation. "Although maybe you should make a special case for Sati. I believe the best descriptor of his situation is that he's not going to be able to stomach as much as he did last year."

That last comment made Kyte frown as he leant backwards. That news was not good in the slightest. He could barely maintain the Foundation as it was now. Oh, he had no trouble funding anything that the Foundation required, but money only talked so much. If he was slowly losing his faculty there was a severe issue as to the integrity of the Foundation being eroded. He was a busy man, he simply couldn't handle every little detail about the place, much less the actual correction of the members. He also wasn't about to taint his life's work by bringing in people that didn't understand the message he was trying to send to these wayward souls.

It was made all the more difficult due to the unsightly death of a possible candidate earlier in the day. He didn't need to see the crime scene to know who did and why they did it, it was blatantly obvious and all it did was make Kyte even more mad than he already was.

"What's his status then?" The blue haired man asked, running his tongue across his fangs in the process.

"I'm an optimist, Kyte-sama." Came Subaru's response, devoid of the pervious jovial nature and manic giggling that had featured his previous comments. Those playful red eyes steeled in the moment as he brought the card he was dragging across desk up to his mouth and bit down on it "However, I don't know for sure. The only one that can really know for certain is Sati, and he's being purposefully difficult about it. He seemed fine yesterday, but knowing him, though, it could be anything really."

Great, that cleared up absolutely nothing about the situation. Still, Kyte couldn't allow this to affect the correction of his new members. If there was thing about the Vampire Lord that could be attested to by everyone one of his allies, and very much the man sat opposite him, it was the undying loyalty he possessed. Pride in what he was, who he was, and what he stood for. He had promised these people the tools to fix their lives and he would be damned if he had to squash it all after he promised so much. "I'll work with it." He replied sounding a bit more dismissive about it than he would've liked. "I trust you can handle an increased load?"

Smirking with the card still in his mouth, a simple tap to its corner soon found it being split into three comparably smaller cards. Only for them to all fade into nothingness as Subaru brought his hand back across his mouth, his smirk only getting wider as he poked Kyte's nose with an outstretched finger "Nishishishishishi~ I'm the best there was, there best there is, and the best there ever will be, Kyte-sama, this is just another walk in the park. I'm hurt that you can't see my greatness when you need it the most! Things can only get better! And I have an ace up my sleeve in order to make you see things the same way I do~."

It didn't take much time for Kyte to extend his arm out and point to the still open door before Subaru got a chance to get another word in edgeways. "Let it hit you on the way out, I'm not dealing with your nonsense when the sun's nearly up." He said, one of his eyes spying the rising rays of light which caused him to instinctively growl. Plus, he very much didn't want to deal with Subaru's "Ace" if he didn't have to even when it was a good day, even less when he was about to go to sleep. "Go and get the rest of them ready. We begin tomorrow." He ordered, pulling out a selection of files and handing them over to the pink haired man.

Subaru fell in line instantly, he may have loved pushing his superior's buttons, but there was no contradicting a direct order from Kyte, particularly when he wanted you to follow it to the letter. Adding in his own flair, bumping himself against the door twice for good measure, Subaru, full name Subaru Fujinaga basked in the light of the Foundation. His outfit consisted of a black button up shirt under a black buttoned vest, a red tie, a black overcoat with golden chains hanging off the edges with a black lanyard connecting it together over his form. The overcoat had a silver trim to it and the inside of it had a red and black checkerboard whilst his trousers were grey and have the same kind of checkerboard to them.

He giggled as he flipped through each one of the files. "Oooh~ This is going to be such a fun year! Nishishishi, let's show them the Fujinaga way…"

A/N: So, here we are again. The start of the story proper will be the next chapter, but I wanted to give an actual chapter instead of simply stating a cast list. Therefore, this is where the cast list shall be announced. I received a number of submissions and these were the lucky ones, if you use a very liberal definition of lucky, to be accepted.

Arius Amilios - Psyman21

Ani Talin Grigoryan - Nekoreku

Shizuka Ikariko - Roggi

Jeung Meilia - KaosuShin

Hoseki Akashi -StylishDescent

Isshiki Rei - Sempi

Fukuro Kumatobu - BigChokka

Yoshizumi Mahoro - arans

Joseph Weaver - SomeWarlock

Kinrō Hisumi - Captain Jaku

Yua - Angelx987

Haru Hinata - FireDusk

No ifs, no buts, these are your members for the story. Until we meet again, when a few, if not all, may be shown in actuality. I hope this chapter ties you over until I can get it out.