TheGreatBubbaJ - It was late a little because I forgot to hit the publish button lmao.
Shahryar - Overhaul was made intentionally confusing. And yes, AFO and Garaki got... a bit... too crazy.
Jpx0999 - Aye. Someone really gotta nuke it.
Iron-slayer-dragon - Thank you! :D And don't forget that I have more longfics, since it's the first time I see your nickname in the reviews under my fics :D
Mernom - Thank you! And remember, as stated above, I have more fics :v
MosesArk Reborn2000 - Overhaul is just built different, ngl.
(***)
If Lemillion was told to summarize Japan as he saw it during their journey to Shizuoka with a single word, it would be 'quiet'.
If he was told to summarize it in two words, it'd be 'too quiet'.
It might have been different if they were wearing their hero uniforms, but with their disguises (Intelli was surprisingly good at those), they were pretty much unrecognizable. As a result, they saw the country from the perspective of normal civilians.
Not a lot of movement on the streets. Worried looks. People whispering to each other as if speaking aloud could make Revenant or Spyglass jump out from behind the nearest corner.
Lemillion had a good hearing. Everyone was talking about the battle. Opinions varied, from 'heroes fucked up again' to 'yeah but they decimated the enemy too, right?'.
They passed by a police patrol, in full riot gear. No one was in the mood for subtlety nowadays. The stares the police officers got from the few passersby were a mixture of apathy, disappointment and active disdain.
The police officers were constantly glancing at any corner, any alleyway they passed, any open window, as if expecting an attack at any moment.
They probably did.
Saiko was leading him. She had a plan. The closest thing that Lemillion had to one of his own was informing his sidekicks to get their families out of the country as soon as possible and either follow them overseas or head to a number of hero agencies belonging to pro-heroes from Lemillion's unofficial faction.
Hero agencies in a reasonable distance from Tokyo.
Thankfully most of the sidekicks in question were sleeping with their suitcases packed and ready to go ever since the Second Paranormal Liberation War started. Lemillion made preparations.
Saiko apparently had similar evac of her own planned to the detail.
They managed to catch the shinkansen towards Shizuoka. Almost empty, most of the people that took it seemed to be hurrying back to their homes. The place where surviving a true period of chaos was significantly easier.
Some sort of sixth sense, really. You had to spend just a few minutes away from secure districts for the wealthy and connected to realize that things were about to go downhill, bad.
Right after the train started moving, Saiko took a laptop out of her backpack. Someone was prepared for the journey. Lemillion didn't even ask whether the laptop was somehow traceable, Saiko would just give him a tired look.
"Ah, shit." Intelli lets out, her eyes still on the laptop. She's clearly speaking to herself. "Everything's going to the ground faster than I thought."
Well, that's just brilliant. Lemillion was told to keep watch on the people in their train wagon, to let Saiko focus on the rest of the country. But after words like this, how could he stay quiet?
"Talk to me, Saiko." He says, glancing at the woman next to him.
"I could talk to you until our arrival at Shizuoka and I would still fail to properly describe all the ways in which we and the country as a whole is fucked." Saiko replies dryly, her eyes still on the laptop, her fingers dancing on the keyboard. "Also, apparently the police and the heroes just stormed my hero agency."
Lemillion groans. So much about the last embers of hope that the Prime Minister wouldn't carry the idiot ball.
"Makes you wonder how long until they storm my own." Lemillion replies. He doesn't have a lot of hopes on that field. "You cleaned it up properly, yes?"
"Of course I did." Intelli feels vaguely insulted by the suggestion that she might have made a mistake. "Full data purge, security system completely down, everyone working for me told to run. I prepared escape plans for every single one of them. Only I know how to contact them once they reach their temporary hideouts, I'll tell them to go to Shizuoka once we have some local backing ready."
"Have I ever told you that you have a beautiful mind and I absolutely love it in you?" Lemillion asks. Saiko gives him a quick smile (she likes compliments, for as long as she feels they are earned), before her face shoots back to the laptop.
Lemillion quickly scans the wagon again. Nothing out of order. He doesn't expect anything to be out of order, not so quickly after everything went to hell, but it never hurts to be cautious.
"Hokkaido went dark." Intelli continues. "There is officially an insurrection happening and the rebels severed the optical fiber going to the mainland, but this is all absolutely bullshit. Nakahara is buying time to buy or force the loyalty of the local JSDF forces. The Government is yet to realize the full depth of the problem, so she can do whatever the hell she wants to."
"You think that she'll persuade the entire Northern Army to join her?" Lemillion asks back. Saiko sighs painfully.
"I'm certain that most of its command rooster already agreed to switch sides." She replies. "Hokkaido was never a major target for the first PLF, the Table of Rejects and the Underground Hero Network. It was never a priority. As a result, the JGSDF began to move the officers who criticized the government too much, but had enough backing and popularity to not be easy to force into retirement, to the Northern Army." Saiko sighs, before rubbing her temples. "I hope that whoever thought that this was a good idea gets fucking shot for the greater good of human genepool."
"So, the Government just lost four divisions, including our one and only armored division." Lemillion summarizes. That's like six hundred modern tanks alone, without mentioning other equipment and people. "Well, that's just great. Even if some of the soldiers desert, I don't think that Spyglass will have a lot of issues with replacing them."
"She won't." Intelli replies. Yes, it stings a lot that Spyglass managed to outmaneuver her to this degree. The fact that it wouldn't have worked if the PLF didn't massacre the loyalist forces so much changed little. "She moved the NVA forces from Marukane Ward to Hokkaido through Cloud. That's thousands of decently trained people that just broke the Hero System's back on their knees, the morale is probably skyhigh."
Right now, she was probably deploying them (wearing military and police uniforms, borrowed from local sympathizers or prepared beforehand) to seize TV stations, telecom facilities and so on, in order to keep the information lockdown as strict as possible. Officially as part of the attempts to 'take down the insurrection'.
The whole thing was still extremely fragile. The Government had a chance of squashing the whole movement if it acted fast enough.
The only formation that could have made it to Hokkaido before Spyglass persuaded (or arrested) all regular soldiers and the majority of local heroes to join her (and, hopefully, interrupt the process, giving the loyalists in Hokkaido a fighting chance) was the Rapid Deployment Division.
Following the Second Battle of the Marukane Ward, the Rapid Deployment Division no longer existed.
"Things are going only slightly better elsewhere." Intelli decides to continue enlightening Lemillion. "Villain Network is in uproar. There are already reports of riots coming in from police precincts nationwide. A few police commissioners with more foresight are already banging at the Prime Minister's door, demanding military deployment to their districts. And…"
Something pop-ups on the screen. Saiko whistles loudly.
"The HPSC just tried to activate the Citadel Plan, variant Yellow, but the Prime Minister seems to have countermanded their orders." She shakes her head. "Mera had a good idea and has more or less realized what's happening, but this is just going to worsen the chaos. I didn't expect him to try to ignore the Prime Minister, though."
"I'm going to share the folk wisdom I learned from some European hero that showed up in Japan as a volunteer during the First Paranormal Liberation War." Lemillion says, Intelli tearing her eyes off the screen to look at him questioningly. "I'll probably butcher the translation, but it went something like this: 'onto a lean tree, every goat jumps'."
Intelli thinks it over for a few seconds. Lemillion doesn't have to elaborate on the profound wisdom of the saying from another continent, she got the meaning of it herself.
"That would be a twist." She admits. Looks like, despite being a combatant rather than a mastermind, he still had something to offer in the thinking department. "The HPSC's personal empire was never properly dismantled by the Government once the Prime Minister was elected to lead it. Yokumiru Mera developing ambitions due to the Prime Minister's position growing weaker and the HPSC starting to try to play their own game behind her back would be a rather karmic punishment for Japan's Top Bitch, don't you think?"
He thinks so alright. Unfortunately…
"What are the chances of this issue escalating?" Lemillion asks back. Intelli thinks it over for a moment more.
"Regretfully low." Intelli replies eventually. "The fact that it was Variant Yellow rather than Red implies that the HPSC didn't realize how bad things are about to get, so Mera thinks that he has a shot at grabbing as much power as he can get from the Prime Minister at her moment of weakness. They're trying to tear the ship's steering wheel from each other at the moment, but they'll stop the second they realize the ship is about to hit the rocks."
"I guess if they weren't pretty good at the game, they wouldn't rule the country for so long." Lemillion decides. It was still going to complicate the work relationship of those two, so… nice?
"Yeah, it would also make all the decent heroes and politicians from All Might's era look like a bunch of clowns." Intelli comments dryly, her focus on the laptop again. "Our ambassador in the United States was just urgently summoned to the White House. Looks like we're about to lose a solid part of the territory."
"That's one part of your prediction that I can't understand." Lemillion admits. If he learned something from Saiko, it was that she liked voicing her thoughts. Helped her work out details of them.
"Star and Stripe was to the United States what All Might was to us." Intelli replies. "Her utmost fanboyism of All Might was well-known, and trust me, everyone there will figure out that she went overseas to avenge him by catching Revenant. And they treat Japan as pretty much a rogue state."
"Isn't that going a bit too far?" Lemillion replies with a question. "Look, I'm not a person to defend our government, because it's a bunch of total pieces of shit wearing a trenchcoat probably stolen from someone who had the bad luck of being born without a quirk. But it limited its shittery to its own people."
Uh-oh, Saiko decides. She knew that there was a lot of anger in Lemillion, he just kept it neatly locked deep inside to stay in the heroics and be able to keep at least some of it as decent as possible. Looks like he no longer feels like hiding it.
She briefly imagined herself, naked and bound before him, telling him some variant of 'treat me as if I was the HPSC'. Hilarious, but she doesn't want to die.
"Star and Stripe gave the Japanese hero diaspora a lot of media coverage." Intelli replies instead. "And All Might was a very big name there too. Big enough to make Japan significantly more popular than it already was. Then we turned into pretty much a dictatorship."
"Wow, and you're not even pretending otherwise." Lemillion comments dryly. "Nice to know, Ms. Totally Not Third-In-Command of said dictatorship."
"You want a fight?" Intelli glances at him with sudden hostility. "Besides, I'm not sure if you're allowed to point it out without being a hypocrite."
"Whose network of dissidents are we about to contact, again?" Lemillion shoots back. Intelli concedes the point. "I'm not telling you this out of spite, but you should do your best to figure out a way of presenting your case to said dissidents. Unless your goal is to be pretty much a backline advisor for me, with next to no direct contacts with anyone."
Right, fine point. You don't randomly defect to your opponents from a position as important as what she had. Everyone's going to assume that she got into an argument with the Prime Minister and decided to replace her just to continue doing what she did.
Ghrr. She should have cultivated at least some contacts with the opposition. Sure, it would have been potentially dangerous to her, but…
"I'm perfectly fine with being your pretty much sidekick." Intelli admits. Lemillion gives her a surprised look. "No, it's not my inner sub looking to serve you in any way possible talking. My public support to your faction might cause more damage to it than it's worth it. I'm willing to run a command center for your faction, but you'll be the public face, and I'd prefer to keep my name hidden from your 'dissidents'."
"Fine." Lemillion shrugs. "I see your point. What about the United States?"
Right, back to the subject.
"There is going to be a massive pressure on the White House to get some sort of 'revenge' on Japan for Star and Stripe's death." She replies. "In, as I stated, an unsanctioned operation at the behest of our Government, that's already seen as a bunch of racist shits there."
"And they'll try to occupy Okinawa and Senkaku Islands?" Lemillion replies, his brow raised.
"Geopolitics, Mirio." Saiko replies. "They need Okinawa and Senkaku Islands to keep potential Chinese expansion in check. For now it didn't matter that much, because Japan was a military powerhouse capable of keeping the People's Republic of China at bay at their own sea strip. But Romero annihilated most of our Navy during the Death of Shikoku, and now the country is going to openly collapse."
Judging from the look on his face, he suddenly realized what it was about.
"By taking the Senkaku Islands and Okinawa, they're going to take 'revenge' for Star and Stripe…" Lemillion replies. "... while reestablishing their sea wall against China. All while taking something that's reasonably small in comparison to Japan as a whole, meaning that there are next to no chances of the Prime Minister going nuclear against them in retaliation. Especially as, with our country in full collapse, there is a fair chance that China would do the same, if given some time."
"Bingo." Intelli replies. "And before you ask, the Pacific Fleet detachment stationed in Taiwan has just left their ports. God, I hate being right."
One day Lemillion is going to ask how the hell is she learning so much stuff from a single laptop. And not even one in a command center full of people ready to feed her their reports, but something she's using on a shinkansen.
It's not that day, but he's still loving to see her at work.
"Oh." She suddenly blinks at the laptop screen. "Good news, I just managed to infect Blindside with a serious case of 'fuck the government'."
"Wait, seriously?" Lemillion tears his eyes from a group of commuters whispering something to each other over the table (he swears he could hear the word 'Invincible' from them) and back at Saiko.
"Yeah, we're going to need every SS-Rank combatant we can potentially get." Saiko replies. "Trust me, it won't take the Government a lot of time to replace those they just lost, it's just that the potential replacements lack the same public weight as those already established."
True. Lemillion had an idea on where to get a few SS-Rankers for whatever Government they were going to establish. But that was something to be left for later.
"You trust him?" He instead asks Saiko. "Don't take me wrong, but he is a Paragon, even if they let him attend an official hero school."
"Yes, he is." Intelli admits. "But just so it happens that his wife almost died because she was hit by a very nasty quirk… and while there was someone with a quirk that could unfuck it, he was living in the United States. And while the Government pretty much raised a white flag over our bad relationships with America, I managed to smuggle Blindside's wife to the United States and back, and arrange for her treatment. That sort of stuff connects people."
Lemillion looks at her in surprise for a few seconds.
"Well, I can imagine that." He admits. "It also explains why he completely disregarded government deployment orders in order to follow Nejire, simply because you asked."
They're really dancing over the subject. Intelli isn't exactly keen on elaborating on the wonderful tale of how she sent a person to spy on her lovers' ex-wife, especially as said spy ended up summarily executing said ex-wife.
It made things kind of awkward between her and Lemillion, even if said ex-wife absolutely deserved that.
Then again, Mirio doesn't exactly want to talk about how said ex-wife turned out to be possessed by the spirit of the worst mass-murderer in the history of Japan, the same one that Lemillion apparently beat to death with a piece of rock in Haiboro Woods.
God, their relationship was a mess.
"Yeah, he grew slightly disillusioned about our beloved Government." Saiko admits. "I think it's still more about him being loyal to me for what I did than him being seriously against the Prime Minister. This is a reason why I'm not telling him about where exactly I'm heading right now. For now he was told to get his family overseas as soon as possible and inform me as to what orders the Top Heroes are receiving from the Prime Minister."
Another spy/traitor among the SS-Rank Heroes. Good god, the counterintelligence services of this country sucked.
Then again, now that Lemillion thinks about it, it makes an awful lot of sense. Pro-heroes are supposed to serve the country. Be symbols for it. Is it really that weird that a lot of them at some points have enough of giving kids autographs in the limelight before doing nasty shit (or enabling the Gov to do nasty shit) when no one's looking?
Lemillion withstood that by being the sort of person who actually did his best to cut down on said nasty shit wherever he saw it happening (there was a reason why the Government wasn't telling him things).
Even Intelli had enough at some point, especially when the Prime Minister began to threaten people that she was close with. The fact that she didn't have a lot of issues with her before that happened didn't paint a very good image of his lover, but… well, it was a work in progress.
"I got a lot of positive answers from other pro-heroes contacts that I was close with." Intelli continues, unaware of Lemillion's thoughts. "But that's mostly because I presented the situation as the Prime Minister beginning to purge those that weren't obedient enough. Self-preservation instinct is a powerful force, alright."
Right, especially as they were potentially seen as connected with someone already on the purge list. Namely, her.
"Any big names?" Lemillion asks.
"Not really, no." She shook her head. "The 'big names' I was more or less close with are mostly dead already, you know how little's left of the SS-Rank heroes that we started the war with. But I have a sizable number of S-Rankers. Most of them will defect to us officially once we start things openly, but a few will stay as informants."
Someone really had it all planned. And was clearly emotionally invested into the attempt. Excited, even. It's always the quiet ones, isn't it? Lemillion realized that it was the case with Intelli after their first night together, and what happened next has clearly cemented this belief.
"And let me guess…" Lemillion asks. "... you've told them to send their families to safety first?"
"Of course I did." Intelli replies immediately. "This is going to be ugly, Mirio. Very, very ugly. Once everything starts exploding, where the frontlines will solidify will be a matter of dice throws. If your family ends up on the front side of them, it might be… bad. It's the last moment for a frantic dash overseas with as much money and valuables you can pack with you."
Yeah. He knows. He always knew. There was a reason why he thought that letting the HPSC reign was a better alternative to what a civil war was going to bring. Too much pent-up hatred. Having the HPSC collapse on its own was going to be the least painful way of resolving the situation.
He is about to voice that opinion when Intelli curses quietly, her eyes squinting and her fingers starting to dance on the keyboard twice as quickly.
"What happened?" Lemillion asks quickly.
"I think that Midoriya got inspired by Nakahara's Hokkaido Gambit." Intelli replies dryly. "Shoto Todoroki just destroyed the bridges connecting Kyushu with Honshu. Western Army Headquarters reported multiple simultaneous attacks on numerous of its garrisons throughout Kyushu by the Paranormal Liberation Front forces, before going completely dark."
Well, that's great. Intelli probably wishes she could tell the Prime Minister a juicy 'I told you so, you stupid bitch' over it.
It was exactly what she tried to warn her about. Without dashing for the nearest Citadels, the JGSDF garrisons throughout Kyushu were sitting ducks against the PLF which could strike them whenever and wherever they wanted.
"A rather forceful solution." Lemillion comments. "I don't think that they are interested in trying to recruit anyone."
"Judging from the fact that the Western Army Headquarters apparently went dark because someone, read Yaoyorozu, hit them with a poison gas, you're probably right." Intelli replies dryly. "Not the Trigger one, just your standard old paralytic gas. I got a satellite picture from SatCom showing a bunch of people in hazmat suits carrying documents and corpses out of it, so I guess that the Paranormal Liberation Front came prepared. I also suspect they'll use similar means to try to capture as much equipment as possible now that the Western Army was decapitated."
They are maybe two hours into the regular civil war and someone's already using chemical weapons against their enemies. Yeah, this was going to be fabulous.
Kyushu only had three divisions nowadays, but it was still almost twenty-five thousand armed men. However, they were separated between numerous smaller garrisons that the PLF was now hitting one after another.
Lemillion was 90% sure that the attack involved a lot of new recruits that Midoriya's initial call to arms involved into the provincial structures of the Paranormal Liberation Front. A completely new generation of political villains that decided to throw their lots with Revenant. Now busy capturing equipment for themselves.
Hitting completely unprepared soldiers with a massive advantage of surprise on their side sounded like a good start.
A separate part from the PLF's old guard that was stationed in the mythical Overlook and used as Midoriya's equivalent of the Fast Response Unit. Sure, it bled out badly during the Second Battle of the Marukane Ward., but…
Once again, Intelli curses quietly. Lemillion is about to ask, but that's when her laptop's screen displays a familiar face.
"I promised you all that I'd end the government a hundred days after the Revival Celebration." Midoriya announces. He is once again sitting on his wooden throne, wearing the outfit that he clearly parroted after Hokori Shigaraki. "That's more than three months. How exactly did it crumble so much after less than two?"
He shrugs theatrically. Lemillion suddenly gets overtaken by a desire to punch him in the face. Shame that he doesn't want to destroy Saiko's trusted laptop.
"Oh, well." Midoriya sighs. "I guess that when you build your house on a rotten foundation, you shouldn't be surprised when it collapses on you. And what foundation is more rotten than the one of our wonderful country?"
He is looking at the camera. He looks sad. He looks surprisingly honest about it, if Lemillion is to be honest about it. That's quite a skill in lying.
"Lies." Midoriya says. "They lied to you all when they told you that the heroes could protect you. They lied to you when they said that everything was alright. They lied to you when they said that this country had a future… for as long as they were in charge of it. How many times did I hear on the TV that catching me was going to happen soon? Even Invincible, if he can still be called that way, failed to catch me."
Of course. Way to erode what's left of Invincible as the pillar of society.
"The people in charge of this country lie as often as they speak." Midoriya continues. "They told you that the Top Heroes were enough to end me, but hey, if they actually thought that, why did they involve Star and Stripe? And now, one of the heroes actually worthy of that title is dead. You think they actually told her all they knew about me and those that follow me, or did they lie to her as well? Compulsive lying in action, tsk tsk."
He leans back, giving the camera a tired smile.
"I was never quirkless." He says. "I had a low-visibility intelligence quirk that needed years to come to truly bloom. Did it matter to them? No. They ruined my life, by using me as a scapegoat to help sink Nedzu, the person that the current Prime Minister hated back then. After all, if he hadn't let such a quirkless waste of space as I was into the Hero Course, maybe the Summer Camp Massacre wouldn't have been a massacre. And then, All Might wouldn't have died in a failed rescue mission." He snorts loudly. "Well, that particular little scapegoat of theirs came back to kick them in the ass."
He leans forward once again.
"But how many of them didn't?" He asks. "Do you wanna know why Thunderbolt ended up in a wheelchair? It's because he and two other dickwads in hero uniforms murdered a girl for having a villainous quirk. And guess what, she was someone's sister, even if not by blood. So, Hitoshi Shinsou lashed out. You think that our Prime Minister, that the HPSC, didn't know? Oh, they did. Just as they did know that Thunderbolt was abusing his daughter. But they didn't care. Why? Because he was listening to orders. Makes you wonder how many other teenagers he beat up, with the Government enabling it wholeheartedly because he was loyal? No one's listening to your woes in this country unless you murder someone over it, it seems."
He tilts his head a little, still looking at the camera.
"Most of the Paranormal Liberation Front has similar backstories." He continues. "The government mistreated the quirkless. Why? Because the Prime Minister was a late bloomer and she hated her memory of being seen as quirkless, and their existence reminded them of that. So, the Quirkless Liberation Front was born. Inhuman Supremacy Party? Did you see what sort of life Lady Murder and her kin lived in a ghetto, before they decided that if they are going to die, then they prefer to die standing? And guess who helped establish the ghettos in their current form?"
He pauses, and takes a deep breath.
"But the Prime Minister's greatest sin was committed elsewhere." Midoriya then says. "The government nuked Deika, because killing tens of thousands of its own citizens that said 'no' to the HPSC's reign was a better option in their eyes than admitting their defeat. So, they killed my mother, my soon-to-be wife and a lot other people than I loved. Oh, and fun fact, my mother was also the mother of Judgment. The woman that killed Star and Stripe wanted to become a pro-hero before my expulsion from the UA… and didn't want to become a villain before Deika was destroyed. Can you name a common element in those two events? In case you weren't sure where to find it, it's probably in the Prime Minister's residence right now."
Pause. A faint smile.
"I think…" He then says. "... that it's time to set things straight. From now on, it's going to be a real war. A war that will make the war of Entropy and All for One look like a pitiful joke. We're going to take the Government and the HPSC down. We're going to purge the Hero System from the people that they let into it, ruining All Might's legacy while claiming to be protecting it. Whether you want it or not. After all, the clock's still ticking, and the Liberation Festival is drawing closer and closer."
Another pause. This time, no smile. Just an almost serene look of sadness.
"This is the message to all the heroes, soldiers, police officers and other governmental officials in the country." He then says, looking straight at the camera. "You have 24h to defect, desert, resign or deliver me the Prime Minister's head. Once that period passes and you're still serving that woman, you'll be treated as willing supporters of all of her crimes… and treated accordingly."
The recording ends. Lemillion and Mindscape exchange looks. This is going to end badly, isn't it?
(***)
In short: things are bad, and they are going to get worse. Heart of Darkness Arc is going to be a chronicle of the collapse of Japan as a state, and it shows.