MosesArk Reborn2000 - To be fully honest with you, this world was already on fire. Midoriya is just pouring gasoline into it :V
Shahryar - Moe is going to have her opinions challenged sooner or later :V
(***)
Once the post-battle debrief is concluded, the congratulations are made, and the casualties are tallied, Midoriya Izuku is unexpectedly ambushed by two women.
Unfortunately, it's not the start of a threesome hentai. Besides, even if it was, there is enough space in his heart for one woman, and that slot is already occupied by Tsuyu.
And he is vaguely aware that sufficiently open attempt at seducing would have resulted with Tsuyu Asui's sneaking into the perpetrator bedroom and murdering them in their sleep.
Asui treated their relationship very seriously.
It was Eclipse and Incense. One of his executives and a head of the Quirkless Liberation Front… and one of Mastermind's lieutenants from the Creature Rejection Clan and the head of the PLF medical staff.
Eclipse is giving him similar vibes to Quicksilver when she was in a mood to set something on fire. So he told Incense to wait for a moment (the middle-aged woman wearing a cross between a nun and nurse uniform appeared unfazed by it) and had Eclipse enter his office first.
"What is it, Mieko?" He asks, while taking his seat. She is standing in front of his desk, while glaring at him with hints of hostility.
It's clearly not something that she expects to actually end with bloodshed. She is wearing her civilian outfit, some wonderfully nondescript jeans and a colorful T-Shirt.
"I'm slightly pissed off right now." She announces. Wow, as if he didn't notice. He is only wondering what the hell happened. "I have one question for you. Why aren't you more freaked out by Backup being there?"
… wait, what?
"What do you mean?" He says, doing his best to make her not realize how surprised by her words he was.
"I can do basic math, mr. Grand Commander." Eclipse replies while still glaring at him. "Tokoyami's little freak show brought my mother's head back with them. My mother, in case you didn't notice, died long before All for One. I expected you to at least acknowledge that fact and the risk that the old demon lord would pop up again, so the fact that you didn't made me realize that something's fishy."
Oh.
Yeah, that was her mother. However bumpy their mutual relationship was - it was only narrowly less bumpy that whatever Mastermind had with his mother, the one he murdered - it was something that her thoughts would drift into.
"Your mother didn't die in that battle with Endeavor." Izuku decides to admit the truth. "Her injuries were bad enough to render her brain-dead, but Garaki managed to get her body back with his Recall noumu while everyone assumed that she was burned into ash, and attempted to… bring the rest back as well. I assumed that Backup got her blood in the process, before Garaki's final pet ate Jaku from the face of the Earth and…"
She slams her hands onto the desk in front of him, interrupting him.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" She yells at him. "So many years and you didn't fucking tell me about this? She was a murderous stupid bitch but she was also my mother! How could you hide that from me?!"
Yeah, this is a big 'oh, fuck' moment on Midoriya's side. Eclipse is clearly pissed off to an extreme, and seeing as the QLF treats her like patron saint of their cause, if she decides to leave the PLF, it will be…
"When was I supposed to tell you about it?" He asks back, doing his best to remain calm. "I learned about it not long before Haiboro Woods, mostly due to completely drunk Entropy having a very loose tongue. I had no evidence towards it not being the alcohol speaking, and Garaki was dead at this point."
"You could have fucking told me aftwards!" Eclipse shouts back at him. "You could have not disappear on us like that! You could have come and announced that you were behind the Support Network the whole time! Instead, you just kept hiding right next to me and hiding stuff like the fact that my mother was in Jaku? And now that you had me rejoin the PLF, you still didn't tell me about it?"
Alright, she has a point. It's the worst. He hates arguing with people that he actually agrees with.
"Look, I know that this will probably make you more angry, and shit, you'll be right to be angry at me for this." Izuku says, Eclipse still glaring at him over the table. "But before I literally saw her head in front of me, I forgot about it."
"You… what?" Eclipse seems to be actually dumbfounded over it.
"Do you have the tiniest idea how many scary secrets are here?" He asks while gesturing at the side of his head. "Mountains of them, Mieko. Right next to traumatic memories and overwhelming feelings of loss. I had enough tragedies of my own to focus on. If I focused on those of other people, I would've gone fucking crazy a long time ago."
She says nothing while he rants, instead staring at him quietly. He isn't sure if it's working, so he can as well let it all out.
"And after Haiboro?" Midoriya says. "After Haiboro I just wanted to forget about everything. About all those people I failed. How do you think I felt after abandoning the Meta-Liberation Army? Its leaders were like family to me, and after their death, I just fled like a coward because I couldn't stomach what Entropy was doing. How the hell do you think I felt after reading in a newspaper that another holdout of the MLA was destroyed while I was in hiding? Do you seriously think that I had the time and mind to think about telling you that your mother spent a few years as a vegetable in Garaki's lab? Do you seriously think that it mattered to me back then?"
They stare at each other over the desk. The silence grows awkward, and only then does Eclipse speak again.
"Are there any more large secrets concerning me that you're hiding from me?" She asks.
What is Izuku supposed to reply? Now that he thinks about it, he almost openly stated one secret. And judging from what he expects Entropy to do sooner or later (it's a possibility, though), he could as well address it right now.
"It was me who led the heroes to Haiboro Woods." Izuku replies, and he can see her eyes grow wider. "Me and Mastermind."
It's as if someone slapped her in the face.
Mastermind was in from the beginning. Trumpet was already told the truth. Rini… honestly, she might not have been a part of it, but she knew. They were close before it happened, she went her own way after Haiboro Woods. From the leaders of the old PLF organizations (aside from completely reformed League), Eclipse was the only one kept out of the loop.
"Why?" She replies, the word coated in venom. "No, I have a better question. How? How could you do that?"
The word 'traitor' isn't there, but it's heavily implied.
"Because Entropy was a monster." Midoriya replies. "Something that she proved when she sent Armageddon after Shikoku. And because…"
She doesn't give the time to finish his reply. Instead, he finds himself grabbed by the shoulders and pulled forward over the desk. He doesn't retaliate, but he almost did that on instinct.
"You think that I fucking care?" She articulates the words slowly. "Do you have the tiniest idea how the quirkless were treated after the war ended? Complex mutants are at least fucking intimidating. Villainous quirk holders are at least fucking scary. We? We were the ultimate fucking punching bag! And it's all because of you?!"
She wasn't told that. No one did. But there was clearly a reason why Mastermind put her on the 'questionable loyalty if Entropy shows up' list. Midoriya would have given that man a raise if he wasn't certain that the money would be used to finance hate crimes.
And, well, if he was actually paying Mastermind.
"It's all because of Entropy, Mieko." He replies, trying to be as calm as possible. If she decides to kill him, things are going to go… bad. Especially as he grossly underestimated her anger level and didn't have Uraraka with him. "Her temper tantrums ran the first Paranormal Liberation Front into the ground. We could have won in Aichi if she didn't arrive at the battlefield with a hangover too bad to follow my goddamn instructions."
"Excuses." She hisses at him. "Did you think even for a second what would be the result of you backstabbing Shimura? Do you even care about the quirkless? Or was it just about your own little well-being and maybe, just maybe, the Meta-Liberation Army?"
"The cause of the quirkless really matters to me." Izuku replies. "Just as much as the Meta-Liberation Army. Just as much as the fate of the 'villainous quirk holders' and complex mutants. They are all discriminated against by the government. And, believe it or not, deep inside there is still something of an actual hero in me."
The best lie is the one interspersed with truth. He cares about the discriminated groups, he truly does. He saved enough of them and got them out of their country to be able to know that for sure.
It wasn't just kids, the Support Network was evacuating people (adults, and families) out of the country for years.
But the 'cause of the quirkless'?
Complex mutants and quirks perceived as villainous are here to stay. Quirkless are about to die out. His endgame was always the same as he believed would be Re-Destro's if the man got to hear about Overhaul's research.
Some simple - and free - quirks for everyone. Quirklessness eradicated. Goals of Midoriya and Mieko Eto were, in the end, at odds. Because she believed that quirkless were equal to the quirked and deserved to live alongside them.
Izuku believed that what they deserved was to get quirks they could call their own. He wanted the end of the quirkless as a social group as much as the Prime Minister clearly did, just in a much more humanitarian way.
It bothered him at night, sometimes. Wasn't he just, deep enough, reacting that way due to his own disappointment? He tried so hard to become a quirkless hero and then a quirkless villain, to prove to the world that quirkless doesn't mean worthless… only to discover that all he ever achieved was because of a quirk?
Then again, he had a lot of things that bothered him at night.
"If you back out of the PLF again…" Eclipse eventually announces. "... you better make sure that I die in the process. Because otherwise? Otherwise I'm going to spend the rest of my life looking for you. And when I find you, I'm going to murder you, your frog and anyone else that mattered you. And you'll die as the last one."
Without adding a single more word, she leaves the room.
Midoriya sighs with relief, before telling Mastermind that there was a chance that he was going to get a visit from a certain furious woman. And that he should continue observing her for a potential risk of disloyalty. Maybe slightly more closely now.
That wasn't how he imagined that day to look like when he was leaving his bed.
He quickly composes himself and calls Incense in.
"Love drama or simple drama?" She asks while sitting down in front of him. Midoriya gives her a tired look. "Right, don't mind me, it's my sense of humor. I came bearing rather… ill news."
"Please tell me that it wasn't a pun referencing your profession." Izuku replies. Incense gives him a poker face. "Alright, continue."
"It's about Trumpet." She says, and… crap. This was one more thing that he truly and honestly didn't want to hear about. "I am his personal attending physician as of right now, and I did run a lot of tests on him following that, and…"
"Cut to the chase, please." Midoriya replies.
"A month, maybe." Incense does as ordered. "Frankly speaking, he can keel over and die at any moment right now. How he made it to this day is a medical miracle."
Shit. Shit.
And he didn't tell Midoriya about it.
Of course he didn't tell Midoriya about it. This also explains why he spent so much time with Skeptic. He was probably preparing him to take over the MLA after his death, at least until Kouta would be ready.
Midoriya would have run up to the MLA quarters and scream at him, but… screaming at someone half-dead might have just ended up kicking the 'half' word out of the window.
"This way or another, no more deployments into the field for him." Incense continues. "Additional stress, even if he stays far behind the frontline, would just kill him. In fact I highly suggest leading the command to Skeptic and having Trumpet stay in our hospital permanently."
"Let me guess…" Izuku says dryly. "He doesn't want to do that, so you defaulted to coming to tell me about it. Hoping that I could persuade him in your stead."
"I'm a villain." Incense shrugs. "Legal ramifications of the doctor's profession kind of do not matter to me anymore. Even telling you about his state of his health is technically questionable. Villainy really opens up options."
Right, underground doctors. CRC was nice to provide them with a selection of ones that weren't quacks. But if Izuku could, he would still rely on official healthcare.
"I'll try." He says. "But he is a stubborn old oaf."
He probably didn't say anything because he feared that Izuku would rush the recovery of Eri in order to heal him before his eventual death. And he would rather die than be the cause of the downfall of the second Paranormal Liberation Front.
"You could say the same thing about most of the PLF leaders." Incense replies dryly. "Except some of them aren't 'old'. Lady Murder is very against getting any medical check-ups whatsoever."
Oh?
"I think it's mostly because of the organization you're representing." Midoriya replies. "That or you should just tell her that your medical procedures will be almost unbearably painful. Then she'll feel convinced to show you that she can totally withstand it, unlike you 'weaklings' from the CRC."
There is something of a faint smile on her face after the last line. Yeah, this sounds like a way to motivate Rini Akaguro into visiting a hospital. Just to prove to everyone what a bunch of extras they all were.
For a split second Izuku imagines what would have happened if Bakugou lived to this day and had a child with Rini Akaguro. Then he shivers internally. Yeah, the world might be going downhill, but this? This would be just needless cruelty.
"Any chances of persuading her to stop being an idiot?" Incense asks. "I get it that she's as strong as ever, but she didn't have any sort of medical check-up for years, and with her being a product of some twisted genetic engineering I'd argue that making sure that nothing nasty's happening with her is a good idea."
"I assume…" Izuku's eyes grow narrow. "... that she would get to leave your hospital in the same or better state than when she entered it?"
Silence.
"You know my backstory, don't you?" Incense asks. Her voice and face are utterly expressionless, and that alone is… slightly worrying.
"You've become the head of my personal medical unit." Midoriya replies. "Of course I did a background check on you."
He trusted Mastermind to investigate everyone but the members of his own organization. Even in the case of the ISP he would at best slightly exaggerate their loyalty issues - which was much less of a risk than overlooking someone's potential disloyalty.
Mastermind, regretfully, wasn't biased. He was a concept of bias made flesh. Izuku took that into account and acted accordingly.
"I used to have a nice medical practice in the countryside, a husband, three-years old daughter and a son about to be born." Incense announces. "Then, thanks to Beast, I was left with nothing but hatred, my medical skills and my quirk. Heroes were doing glamorous work making sure that the ISP didn't knock on the door of the 'proper' citizens, but in the districts that were less prestigious, the only people that were actually doing anything were either vigilantes or the Creature Rejection Clan. And unfortunately…" Her eyes narrow a little. "... vigilantes were trying to play it bloodlessly."
"That sounds…" Midoriya replies calmly. "... like you were trying to prove my assumption wrong."
"If you told me to take care of Beast, certainly." Incense replies. "I'd have murdered him, and in some very painful way. And you'd do best to keep Bearhead and Curator away from me for similar reasons, although since I recognize that we need them I'd simply tell other doctors to help them instead of doing it myself."
Not very hippocratic oath out of her, but…
"But we both know that the modern ISP is the old ISP's successor in name and some cadres only." She continues, unaware of his thoughts ."And maybe, just maybe I have a soft spot for girls the age that my daughter would be right now. Lady Murder's life won't be endangered by visit to your hospital. And I understand that we're all at an edge of total annihilation, and that we'll either fight together or die alone. Just don't expect any marriages out of it."
Yeah, they might be fighting together but Izuku would be less surprised by All Might returning from the dead and verbally (or even not just verbally) supporting the Paranormal Liberation Front than he would be by someone from the CRC marrying someone from the ISP.
Then he imagines it happening but between Lady Murder and Mastermind (regardless of his orientation and her total disinterest in sex), and he has to do his best to not start laughing openly. Oh, that would be the funniest thing ever.
"Fine, I'll relay it to her." Izuku replies instead. "Part of me suspects that I should tell her that you will attempt to murder her, just to motivate her into showing up at your hospital to defeat you."
Incense actually smirks at that.
Midoriya from years ago - from the times when he was still Analyst - probably wouldn't even imagine how much being a supervillain resembled being a kindergarten teacher or a nanny.
Then again, the only supervillain he knew back then was All for One (if you excluded Mr. Compress and Stain, but those had strong vigilante vibes to them), and All for One… yeah, Izuku doesn't even want to imagine him as a kindergarten teacher.
Half of the kids would kill themselves by the end of day one. The other half would probably chuckle nefariously due to being the ones who drove the rest to it in order to obtain a bigger part of their teacher's attention.
Or something like that.
He could be doing something constructive. Like, start planning another wave of raids or read reports from Hatsume concerning the equipment, the Ascension project AND the Five Under renovation. Or pleasurable and relaxing - like spending time with Tsuyu on snuggling, cuddles, their little family play and, since that would be a thing too, having sex.
But no, instead he had to be the kindergarten teacher.
"Trumpet." Izuku announces to the figure on the wheelchair. "Go to the hospital and stay there until further notice."
"No." Trumpet decides to be the ass about it. Izuku is seriously wondering how he is able to speak cohesively with so much painkillers in his system. Did he have a second quirk or some weird complex mutation? Or was it just Midoriya's tendency to try to explain everything with quirks?
All for One rubbed on him on that one field.
"Good luck with that." Skeptic groans. The two were having some sort of discussion in the MLA headquarters in the Overlook when Midoriya appeared on the horizon. "I've tried that already."
He honestly didn't change a lot. Just got older. An developed some truly atrocious beard that together with the long hair covering a bunch of his face made him look like a stereotypical caveman, except in a black turtleneck shirt with a black formal jacket over it.
Alright, caveman but one that actually took care of his hair.
"I wasn't asking." Midoriya replies, completely ignoring Chikazoku.
"There are still many things that I need to relay to Skeptic." Trumpet seems to be playing open cards here. No 'I feel quite well' bullshit, just an open admittance that he is preparing the MLA for his passing. "He was out of the loop for years, and…"
"You can do that from the hospital bed." Midoriya replies. "Just have Skeptic set up a computer with a camera next to you and you can continue to update him from the hospital, while receiving proper medical care."
Trumpet opens his mouth. Skeptic moves faster.
"Just listen to him." He says. "You need to rest. You'll just run yourself into an even earlier grave. And this will just make you fail to properly convey everything to me."
"I…" Trumpet is relentless in his rejection of his own mortality. "... also need to be there to teach Kouta."
He is really treating that boy as his son, doesn't he?
"If I promise to teach him in your stead, will you just finally see reason and go to the hospital?" Midoriya asks.
"You will do that?" Trumpet appears surprised by that. In the middle of the war, no less.
"We have several prospective young mastermind materials." Midoriya replies. "Red Fang, to start with. I'm sure that the QLF and CRC will find someone reasonably smart among them to throw in just to not stay behind. Kouta might not have the talent to become a new All for One or Re-Destro, but I'm sure that I can make him someone who would be able to fight Intelli or Nakahara like an equal."
Besides, when he gets Eri back… He taught her everything he knew. For years. Ever since she - barely ten years old at the time - decided that she wanted to know what her dad was doing when working.
Well, she wasn't yet at the point where she called him her dad back then, but that's beside the point.
And he didn't have a lot of things to teach her aside from 'how to be a villainous mastermind', unfortunately.
Giving her someone to interact with that could be at least remotely near her level might be… interesting.
"Well, I…" Trumpet is still trying to be obstructive. Goddamn politicians.
"I'm literally a frog's hair away from asking Uraraka to come and make you weightless before carrying you to the hospital together with your wheelchair." Midoriya cuts in. "And just so you know, Tsuyu Asui is an outlier. Frogs don't have hair."
After several seconds of silence, Trumpet sighs.
"Fine, you won." He decides. "I'll go there." Silence and some stares in the room. "Alright, I'll go there immediately."
He rolls out of the room. Hatsume must have installed some sort of engine into his wheelchair together with a proximity alert. Because he actually reached the door on his own. Kouta was, undoubtedly, waiting outside.
"Wow." Skeptic announces dryly. "You know, now I really see why Re-Destro made you his heir. You two are the only people I ever saw that could make Trumpet see reason."
"Keep talking like that and I'll have someone steal your collection of hair care products." Midoriya retorts. "I can be vicious as well."
Skeptic wheezes.
"Please, forgive this lowly First Advisor, Grand Commander." He replies. "I'll do my best to not warrant such an inhumane punishment."
Looks like it took a few years in Tartarus with the guards announcing all the defeats and casualties among the MLA (especially what happened to Deika) to him in detail just for the purpose of running him into the mood to make him somewhat likable. Or, at least, slightly more humble.
He was probably just overjoyed to be with his old comrades again.
Days until the Second Battle of the Marukane Ward:
20