TheGreatBubbaJ - And it's not even the whole culling lmao.
Jpx0999 - Really explains why so many former Tartarus inmates caught by him promptly dashed outside of the country to avoid running into him again, am I right?
Shahryar - Time will tell :P
MosesArk Reborn2000 - To be fully honest with you, I'm fairly sure that the remaining Top Heroes could take him down if they worked together. And they are certainly at least some contingency plans. It's just that most of them kicked the bucket by now :V
(***)
In Izuku Midoriya's defense, the original plan would have worked.
The anti-Invincible task force would hold the Symbol of Hope in combat long enough for the trap to close, with Apocrypha being the one to deal the killing blow while Invincible would too busy with the distraction (and not the original task force distraction, but what was going to happen next) to activate Light Refraction in order to stop Extinction Ray from killing him instantly.
If Light Refraction would even work against it.
The plan failed because of three factors. Factors that Revenant should have prepared contingency plans for, but he either didn't or they didn't work.
Pride comes before the fall. And while Izuku Midoriya was a brilliant strategist and tactician, he made a bit too many assumptions and got too habituated to one-sided victories thanks to the raids.
He knew that they were an exception, but to know something was a different thing than to feel something. His steadily declining mental state (kept afloat only by Asui being there) didn't help.
The first factor was the arrival of Star & Stripe. While it was impossible to predict without a future-seeing quirk, Midoriya made the crucial mistake of not keeping Apocrypha hidden until Invincible's arrival.
He assumed that she couldn't find a match on that particular battlefield and elected to use her to break through the 20th Regiment positions faster to limit the PLF casualties. While it worked, it also exposed her to unexpected attacks.
As a result, not just Apocrypha, but also Blackwing never made it to the fight against Invincible. While losing the main damage dealer and the one person capable of ending Invincible with a reasonable degree of certainty was going to hurt later on, the real problem was Tokoyami.
They were one of the two tanks/damage sponges for the attack party. Tokoyami were a perfect counter to Invincible's attacks, their shapeshifting nature allowing them to respond quickly enough to protect the squisher fighters (like Frostfire and Firestorm) from attacks, while being nearly indestructible to Invincible's main means of attack.
Fumikage Tokoyami died less than a minute before Invincible arrived on the battlefield, the Symbol of Hope never even seeing him. Worst of all, the other tank/damage sponge, namely Uraraka Ochaco, didn't show up either.
The original plan was for Tokoyami to serve as the main tank, while Uraraka would support him thanks to her movement acceleration quirk. What's more, her copy of Thirteen's quirk (that she used to catch Foresight during the second USJ attack, All for One's people got her blood from the hospital where she died to the injuries after the first USJ, Garaki copying her quirk) was among the few things that could actually injure the Symbol of Hope.
This would allow the two of them to keep Invincible occupied, Tokoyami taking in attacks, Uraraka using Black Hole to pin him down while moving around to shield her compatriots from attacks that slipped past.
However, and that was Midoriya's second mistake during the day, Midoriya decided to attack the field hospital in order to take down Molecular.
It was, once again, a logical assumption. Midoriya wanted to take down another SS-Rank Hero for the day, and he succeeded. What failed was his belief that the Feel Good Inc' reconnaissance satellites would give them all a necessary early warning to do a quick switcheroo of positions (through Cloud) before Invincible's arrival.
Skeptic would manage to detect Invincible if the Symbol of Hope didn't bring Dead Record with him, his sidekick whose touch-based quirk rendered another person undetectable by electronic methods of surveillance for fifteen minutes.
As a result, the Feel Good Inc. satellites failed to detect Invincible, due to the Symbol of Hope being made invisible to them.
Midoriya got too used to his information advantage, and didn't expect Invincible to take personal initiative, the man actually expecting the PLF to use some form of electronic early detection system against him (drones or radars), and deploying a natural counter to them all.
With Dead Record being the modern equivalent of an underground hero with very little public presence and Invincible's hero agency being very secretive, foreseeing that threat by Midoriya was simply impossible.
This didn't make his decision to attack the field hospital any less disastrous. Because as a result of Skeptic's failure to detect Invincible's arrival, Cloud had only enough time to open a single local warpgate around before he would engage the attack party in combat.
Because if she tried to do more, Invincible would be in position to strike against her while she was warping someone to his position. And while losing the entire strike party would be extremely bad to the Paranormal Liberation Front, losing Cloud would be apocalyptically disastrous.
As a result, Yaoyorozu had to make a choice between warping Uraraka to the strike party position and evacuating Midoriya with an unconscious Molecular out of the ruined field hospital. Which could as well become Invincible's next target if someone from the heroes and soldiers managed to pass the message to him that Midoriya was there.
Hell, Invincible could as well rush there, ignoring the strike party and going for a higher priority target. And while Cloud's warpgates were quick, she couldn't open them instantly - and Invincible was pretty damn fast.
Yaoyorozu made the correct call, despite knowing that Shoto Todoroki was in danger. Not exactly out of loyalty to the cause, since she didn't have an awful lot of it. But she knew that - in the worst case scenario - they should manage to warp his body out, Midoriya using Overhaul's quirk to reanimate him.
Unlike Songbird and Biohazard, who had gone dark, they knew the strike party location perfectly, they just had to deal with Invincible. And literally their entire plan included the man leaving that position very soon.
As a result, Uraraka Ochaco didn't make it to the fight as well.
Midoriya's third mistake was going to manifest itself fully later, for now being largely irrelevant. It was the fact that Saiko Intelli managed to survive the assassination attempt, Mindscape reaching the secondary command post around the time Invincible arrived to the battlefield.
For now, she couldn't do a lot, the communication lines of the heroes filled with incoherent screams of dying people and intentional misdirections from the enemy side, Skeptic, Mechanist and Clockmaker succeeding in hacking onto the enemy communications and feeling it with false reports.
But there was something that she could influence. And this something was going to make a lot of waves a bit later.
For now, the time came for the trap to spring to life, Invincible having taken the bait that Revenant and Spyglass prepared for him… and being right in the position for it to work, despite much higher casualties than expected.
Spyglass timed it perfectly too.
(***)
Seven Days Ago
"Bait?" Nakahara actually stared at him as if she suspected that he lost his mind. "The entire assault group is just a bait?"
"Big game, big bait." Midoriya comments dryly. "This is what we're going to do once Invincible takes it."
(***)
Today
Despite the intense combat occurring everywhere throughout the Marukane Ward, not all of the PLF heavy-hitters and executives were committed to the on-going massacre of heroes and soldiers.
Hypothermia and Eclipse didn't show up until now, and for a very special reason - because unlike Judgment, they had to show up in their designated position instantly for the plan to work, forcing Eclipse to keep herself ready to open her warpgate at a moment's notice.
She did it immediately after she heard that Invincible was here. Soon after that, Hypothermia used her quirk.
And almost immediately made everyone in the Marukane Ward realize that there was one more god in Korusan that day. One whose quirk - thanks to almost two centuries of quirk marriages (that Re-Destro stopped the day their quirk supremacist sub-organization of the MLA tried to overthrow him) - reached the apex available to quirks as a phenomenon.
It was still a Class-Five quirk, not a Class-Six one. But there was never a non-Class Six quirk as powerful as the one that Soma Michiko awoke.
If the quirk was a tiny bit more powerful, it would be too powerful, Hypothermia destroying herself (and probably everything around her) before managing to master it. She was an inch from becoming a cold Dabi, but the inch was all that she needed.
"Heavy…" She says, her hand swinging downwards, Hypothermia standing on Eclipse's surface, far up in the air. Eto warped her here seconds before to avoid them all being detected by the enemy radars. "... Downpour."
In a heartbeat, the rain clouds above Marukane Ward stop existing, replaced by approximately five million tonnes of ice that begin their freefall towards the positions still held by the heroes and the JSDF.
The apocalypse that no one was ready for.
The discipline among the heroes and soldiers lasted for about five more seconds, before everyone capable of it began to do their best to run away from the blast zone.
Invincible, the perfect hero that he was, reacted the fastest. Just as Midoriya planned.
(***)
"I'm afraid that this is the moment that I must bid you adieu." Midoriya announces the moment he shows up at Spyglass' command center. "I don't know where Judgment is, but without her around, the chances of taking down Invincible are too small for my taste."
He doesn't know yet. Heroes aren't the only side that's experiencing serious communication issues, the battle devolving into pure chaos on both sides (although only one of them was advancing).
Yaoyorozu mentioned the delay, but the supposed reasoning for it was too ridiculous to believe, which caused the backlog.
Revenant looks like Spyglass would expect his namesake to look like. Pale-faced, with something of a deranged look in his eyes, the business suit decorated with fresh blood. At least three close-by arterial cuts, by her expertise.
Spyglass quietly glances at the USJ Noumu walking right behind him. An unspoken threat.
"I assume…" Spyglass replies calmly. "... that this is the moment that you retrieve our little hostage, and leave the NVA to die." She expected that it was going to happen from the start.
Asui is still held by two former S-Rank heroes turned vigilantes, the woman properly searched and in handcuffs. It was Spyglass' idea of a security guarantee. She knew that she and Revenant were a thing.
"Naturally." Revenant replies. No longer feeling the need to pretend. "There can be only one revolution against the government, and yours? Yours is a hypocritical joke. The NVA dies today, together with the majority of SS-Rank Heroes."
"And if I try to resist?" Spyglass replies calmly. "Your girlfriend might have a very bad day if I do so."
"Feel free to kill her." Midoriya replies, completely unmoved by the threat. "I have enough Overhaul's quirk left in me to resurrect Asui after I kill you all. You should save your bullets and quirks for your glorious last stand until the government's reinforcements and Invincible if we fail to kill him."
Midoriya appears to genuinely think that he won. He's probably on a quirk combination that would allow him to slaughter anyone in the building, even without the noumu. Less taunting, and more picking up his girlfriend.
Spyglass is going to enjoy seeing his hopes squashed. It's really not that hard to push a button secretly, her earpiece returning a ping a second later. It's one thing that she didn't tell him about, simply because she expected to use it against him.
"Well, if that's how you're going to play it… let her go." Spyglass says to the people holding Chameleon.
Asui joins Midoriya. On his face, suddenly a worried frown. Is he expecting some foul play? Does he think that Spyglass agreed too easily to it? Did he really forget that there are more smart people in this country than him, Yaoyorozu and Mastermind?
He tells Cloud to open a warpgate between Spyglass command center and the one that Yaoyorozu was running (so that's where he kept his warper). Three seconds later, the worried frown deepened, Midoriya suddenly glaring at Spyglass.
Who lets a smug smile pop on her face.
"What have you done?" Midoriya asks.
"I've activated Lockdown, my chosen FRU countermeasure." Spyglass replies. "A vigilante with a quirk that allows her to restrict the coordinate range of all warp quirks active within a ten kilometer radius from her. And she just restricted them all, rendering warping impossible." Their eyes meet, the smug smile on Spyglass' face growing wider. "Either we both leave Marukane Ward, or no one will."
Thousands of vigilantes in the Marukane Ward. She can bet everything she ever had that he is considering slaughtering them all, but… ten kilometer radius.
Lockdown might as well be behind enemy lines now, or among the still evacuated Korusan civilians. They are certainly within the stated range of her quirk. That is, if Spyglass was honest with the range in question.
Eventually, he surrenders, clearly hating her guts for that. Oh, well. Soon afterward, the first of the NVA members started arriving in either Naruhata or Hokkaido.
One warpgate for the NVA, one for the PLF, the deal lasting only for as long as every NVA group checked back to Spyglass that they arrived at their destination. That was the deal, as both sides of the temporary and now dead alliance began to abandon Marukane Ward.
The Alliance succeeded in evacuating all still living (and free) executives, including Crawler, Earthquake, Spyglass, Ryukyu, Gang Orca and their new big name, Crusader - plus an still unconscious Miruko.
(***)
Hypothermia's attack was, in the end, a distraction. But a distraction of biblical proportions.
Invincible moved fast enough to catch up the largest of the ice meteors, his forcefield expending itself to its limit, slowing down the drop of more than a million tonne-heavy chunk of ice that was scheduled to impact the remnants of the 44th Regiment and dozens of heroes still attached to it.
He couldn't stop it. He could only slow it down, and not by very much. But every second was a few more soldiers or heroes managing to escape to safety.
Around him, Korusan stopped existing, its death long overdue. Ice meteors falling from the skies, crushing buildings, some of them piercing through the abandoned (or not) skyscrapers, starting the inevitable process of collapse of what was left.
The remaining JSDF forces and heroes were decimated. Who didn't die, was traumatized for the rest of their life, having witnessed armageddon and found themselves unable to stop or escape, surviving only thanks to luck.
Against all odds, Invincible held. His quirk extended to the limit.
Just as Midoriya planned him to. Invincible was an epitome of a hero, a person who tried to be the new All Might despite the country going down the drain. And All Might, when given a choice between apprehending villains and saving people, would always pick the second option.
There was a reason why he deployed the Invincible bait group in the middle of their forces - and the largest of the meteors right next to it. Originally, it was to occupy Invincible's attention, allowing Judgment to snipe him with an Extinction Ray from a safe distance.
Now, only plan B was left.
Eclipse - standing on one of her surfaces, launched her monomolecular blade at Invincible. The blade incomparably sharp, but having too small of a surface for Reflect to repel it strongly enough to stop it. It was merely a single molecule wide, after all.
Invincible had no time to react. No time to even notice the attack happening thanks to the sounds of the apocalypse all around them and of cracking ice above him.
Someone else reacts, the blade deflected and lodging itself into the ice above. A figure in a gray hoodie floats between Invincible and Eclipse.
"Sorry for being late." Redirect grins. Midoriya described him as 'Accelerator without his redeeming features' during the PLF/NVA war council, although no one recognized the ancient reference. "Mindscape said that you might need a hand, Old Man."
Eclipse screams in impotent rage, firing more blades, Redirect changing their trajectory with a smug smirk on his face, all while keeping himself up in the air.
Midoriya's third mistake. Allowing Saiko Intelli to survive. Sure, it was a fluke that she did. Revenant didn't attempt to follow up upon the initial attack with an artillery barrage, assuming (due to the damages surrounding the enemy headquarters and the subsequent chaos among the JSDF and heroes) that she died.
If she was killed, Redirect would have kept protecting the 6th Division artillery battalion. Instead, she made a hard choice, and had him choose Invincible over the soldiers.
Redirect is still thinking how to engage Eclipse (she is dangerous and has a dangerous reputation), when Invincible, for the first time since the start of the battle, speaks.
"Hold it for ten seconds." Sugita Kenta says. Redirect looks back for a second, wondering what the hell was happening (his redirection field will protect him from Eclipse's attack) when Invincible takes his hands off the meteor above their heads.
Redirect screams in horror, expanding his field to the maximum, trying to slow the fall of the biggest object he ever influenced with his quirk.
Eclipse looks down in shock, Invincible's hand submerged in her chest up to his elbows.
"I'm sorry." Invincible says. Somehow, she believes that he meant it, even when he shakes her off his arm, sending her flying downward, Eto's life ending when she hits the ground three hundred meters beneath them.
Redirect feels the crushing weight vanish, Invincible back in his earlier position, his quirk keeping the sky from falling and crushing the soldiers and heroes beneath them.
"My bad." The Symbol of Hope says calmly. "It was just five seconds."
Redirect stares at him from under his hoodie, shocked speechless. He and Invincible never fought side by side, he never saw just how powerful the Undefeated Hero was. He knew that he was the most powerful of heroes, but this was still a bit…
"Hypothermia is above us." Invincible says. "Go. We can't let her escape."
Around them, the city is dying, proving him right. No one in the country expected, no one in the country could even imagine how much power Hypothermia wielded. If what happened to Korusan occurred again…
Redirect heard many villains being compared to nuclear bombs. All for One was there, for what he did to Kamino Ward when he was fighting All Might, his blows leveling down city blocks, killing thousands of people.
All for One was no nuke. A thermobaric bomb, and Redirect was being kind here. His quirk could destroy a district, a small town.
Hypothermia? Oh, she was most certainly a walking nuke. The first of her kind as the world was approaching the Quirk Singularity.
How many cities could she obliterate at Revenant's orders if they let her escape? How long could the citizens of Japan continue to believe in the government and the heroes if every larger cloud above their heads could spell their doom?
Redirect lifts off before Eclipse' body hits the ground.
(***)
Hypothermia is there, standing on the surface of her meteor, wearing her armor of ice, her quirk stretched to the limit as she did her best to make sure that none of the meteors hit the positions of the PLF and NVA.
She didn't even know that she could go that far. Izuku, of course, did. They tested it before the battle, Cloud warping them all to some uninhabited island about to be wracked by the storm, Hypothermia proving that she was capable of it.
It was exhilarating.
It stopped being exhilarating when quirk-accelerated tungsten blades severed her hands, right above elbows.
She was powerful and trained, but the enemy was stealthier than she was.
Pain. But despite it, she stood. The training she endured in childhood made pain a familiar sensation to her.
Redirect lands on the surface of the meteor in front of her.
"You keep waving your hands around while controlling your ice." Redirect asks dryly. "Like Tornado, you need it for your quirk to work, don't you?"
Hypothermia doesn't answer, staring at the hero silently.
"If you surrender, we'll attach your arms again." He is cautious, probably expecting some trap or another enemy to pop up out of nowhere. "Otherwise, I'll have to be a bit more forceful."
"And if I surrender…" Hypothermia says slowly. "... what then?"
"Then you're going to spill all you know about the PLF." Redirect is brutally honest. "Whether you want it or not. This is the only reason why I bother talking with you and why I didn't kill you right from the start."
"I'm afraid…" Hypothermia replies. "... that 's something I cannot do."
She made a promise. To someone that used to be the most important person in the whole world to her… before she met Izuku. And she was going to keep it.
"I…" Redirect replies." …wasn't asking. Besides, what are you going to do? Stare at me angrily? Try to kick me in the balls?"
Looks like it has come to this.
It was fun while it lasted, Izuku.
"I need to move my hands to control the ice." Hypothermia replies. "And to narrow down what I freeze. But I can create ice without them just fine."
"There's no water left, you froze everything alre…" She can notice it, the flinch of horror on Redirect's face when he realizes what she meant, the hero lifting off as fast as he can. But not fast enough.
Redirect and Hypothermia die simultaneously, the water in their bodies turning into ice in an instant.
(***)
The final tally of the Second Battle of the Marukane Ward casualties
KIA = either dead or too injured or traumatized to return to active service
Villains rankings include posthumous promotions
Government
SS-Rank Heroes
Maki Kanai [Crusader] - Defected to the NVA
Aya Kuwahara [Molecular] - Kidnapped by the PLF
Keiko Tada [Redirect] - KIA by Hypothermia
Masaaki Iseri [Old Flame] - KIA by Crusader
Juro Miyahira [Behemoth] - KIA by Crawler
Hadou Nejire [Nejire-Chan] - Defected, KIA by Blindside
Shizuoka Kuno [Emoji] - KIA by Lady Murder
Other Heroes
Star and Stripe - KIA by Apocrypha
S-Rank Heroes: 45/72 KIA
A-Rank Heroes 651/820 KIA
B-Rank Heroes: 923/1220 KIA
JSDF
Rapid Deployment Division: 7521/15400 KIA
6th Infantry Division: 9421/15500 KIA
New Vigilante Alliance
Four Natural Disasters
Inasa Yoarashi [SS/Tornado] - KIA by Invincible
Moe Kamiji [SS/Firestorm] - KIA by Invincible
Ryuko Tsuchikawa [SS/Landslide] - Arrested by Emoji
Regular Forces of the NVA
6500/16 000 KIA
~2500 arrested
Most of heavy equipment
Naruhata Vigilantes
500/2400 KIA
~200 arrested
Paranormal Liberation Front
Executives
Aiko Shigaraki [SSS/Apocrypha]- KIA by Star and Stripe
Mieko Eto [SS/Eclipse] - KIA by Invincible
League of Villains
Soma Michiko [SSS/Hypothermia] - KIA by Redirect
Kyoka Jirou [S/Songbird]- KIA by Lemillion
Miyuki Tagawa [S/Biohazard] - KIA by Lemillion
Subsidiaries
Fumikage Tokoyami [S/Blackwing][AP] - KIA by Star & Stripe
Kondo Goro [S/Curator][ISP] - KIA by Invincible
Nada Nobu [S/Airhammer][MLA] - KIA by Mindscape
Regular Members
1250/4000 KIA
~250 arrested
(***)
Next chapter is going to be the reaction chapter to the Marukane Ward, then World That Was chapter and then we move over to the Heart of Darkness Arc. Also, good news, next chapter is going to include an explanation of both the Citadel Plan and the 'Hokkaido' remarks :P
Congrats to Harleking for figuring out that Eclipse's quirk would work on Invincible!
In the end Intelli, Prime Minister and Spyglass all managed to outgambit Revenant at least in a small part of the battle (Redirect, Star & Stripe and Lockdown). Surprise. But in tags I did mention Midoriya making mistakes after all :P