Chapter 18: A Horrible Weapon

Chargebolt

As soon as Deku landed everyone they looked around. It was an older part of the city judging by the buildings and had a lot of Irish flags on it. "There are a lot of Irish people here it seems," Lemillion-senpai said. "Not really," Headless Rider told him in English, and Denki translated, "A lot of Irish immigrants arrived here centuries ago. Their descendants like to keep their heritage, but they're not 'Real' Irish, except for on St. Patrick's Day when they celebrate their heritage. A lot of Americans do that, call themselves by wherever their ancestors came from." Lemillion scratched his head, "Sounds weird, but okay. So, where do you think the kids are?"

"Before we do that," Creati said, "Take these. They're ear mics set to a unique radio frequency so we can keep track of each other in case we're separated." She lifted her hands and the ear mics appeared, and everyone took one and put them in an ear. "Does it work?" Frankenstein's Daughter whispered, and everyone heard it. "It looks like it does," Creati said, and then Marie took a whiff of the air and said, "Follow me. Stay alert." She broke out in a jog, and everyone followed her. Willow Wisp turned into her light ball form and flew next to Marie. Creati said, "Deku, grab Marie and fly over us, try to scout ahead." "Understood," Deku said, and grabbed Marie and floated up.

Denki heard his wife give their old friend directions, and he then told them through the ear mics where to go. The Heroes were watched and recorded as they ran through the city, and Denki prayed that they were moving fast enough that the Brotherhood wouldn't be alerted before they reached them. "Everyone, I found the kids. They're in a storage shed up ahead, take a left at the next corner."

"Can you smell anyone else, Wolfheart?" Slither asked. After a minute Marie answered him, "No, I can't. There are no other people in the storage shed. Maybe they abandoned them. And before anyone gets worried, they're not dead. Their scents are too strong for them to be dead. Let's just get them and hurry out of here!" The Heroes followed their comrade's instructions and soon spotted the storage shed. "They're all divided into different units," Marie told them, "Slither and me will go ahead since we can detect them better." Everyone was split into two groups and went into the storage shed.

As soon as they neared the units, Headless Rider drew his sword and yelled, "Everything's going to be alright kids! We're Heroes here to take you home!" His voice echoed through the halls of the storage shed, but there was no other noise. Marie smelled the air, and Slither stuck out his tongue to taste the air. "There's no explosive chemicals here," he said. Marie said, "I don't hear anything either… This isn't right. I can smell the kids, but I can't hear them. Even if they were gagged, I'd be hearing their muffled noises. But they aren't saying anything…" Denki translated for the Japanese teammates and Lemillion said, "I'll check one of the units. Point one out to me where the kids are."

Slither drew one of his own swords and pointed out a storage unit. "Get ready for anything," Creati said as she created a shield and baton. Denki charged up, wondering just what was going on, none of this was good; something bad was coming and everyone knew it. Lemillion stuck his head into one of the walls, and then pulled away as loud thumps knocked on the door, denting it outward. "They did something to the kids!" Lemillion yelled before several storage unit doors exploded out and they saw…creatures emerge. "Oh God no! These are the kids!" Slither and Marie screamed, one in English and the other in Japanese.

The children all had their animal parts, but their bodies were too tall, all of them at least 6ft or 180cm tall with muscles that rivalled Lemillion's and Deku's! The top halves of their heads were covered in some kind of helmets with red lights going off in the center, that was all the Heroes could see before the mutated children attacked!

Lemillion quickly charged in, the children's attacks passed through him as he hit them all with hard hits to the stomach, yelling his battle cry, "PPPPPOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRR!" This stopped them all, for all of five seconds, before they got back up and kept on attacking. Denki barely avoided claws and tails and tentacles as he tried to think of what to do. Everyone was put on the defensive, struggling not to hurt the kids too much but having to fight back or be ripped apart! "We have to stop this somehow!" Frankenstein's Daughter screamed as she wrestled with two of the mutated children who seemed to have gorilla Quirks. Denki barely avoided a swipe from a tiger claw before he hit the attacker with 500,000 volts of electricity. That stopped them dead, only for the red lights on the helmet on the mutated child to turn blue and they got up and went back to attacking him.

"Creati!" Deku yelled as he unleashed his Black Whip and wrapped up the kids. All of them struggled furiously, and Deku was quickly sweating, "We need to get rid of the helmets!" Now that the kids weren't moving, Denki could see how tightly the helmets were attached to their victims. "We can't rip them off, that could hurt the kids, or worse. And if I try to fry them, it might do the same," Denki said. "I have an idea, but it'll be drastic," Creati said, then opened a pouch on her belt and quickly ate some candy that was inside it. She opened the front of her outfit a little, and soon a machine roughly the size of a minifridge emerged from her stomach. "Chargebolt, this machine can create an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse that should disrupt the helmets and let us take them off. But you'll need to pour a whole lot of energy into it for it to work," Creati explained as she put the machine down.

"Alright," Chargebolt said as he cracked his knuckles. "HURRY!" Deku yelled, "They're tearing themselves up to get free!" Denki saw that the mutated kids were all starting to bleed from their struggling against Black Whip. Chargebolt focused all of his power, grabbed the EMP machine, and let loose!

Wolfheart

Marie watched her husband unleash all of his power into the EMP machine, and immediately felt as the electromagnetic pulse went off around them. The lights on the helmets immediately turned off, and the mutated kids shrunk down, enough for the Heroes to get the helmets off of them. All of the kids were unconscious as Deku gently let them down, and the Heroes grabbed one or two children, even Denki managed to lift up one kid even though his brain was fried from unleashing all of his power in one go. "Was…good?" the short-circuited Denki asked her as they walked out of the building. Marie smiled and kissed his cheek, "You were amazing, babe."

"I can't believe any human being could do this, to kids," Slither said as they emerged from the storage shed, a whole crowd of people snapping pictures and taking videos, while reporters ran up to the Heroes. Someone must have heard all the noise, because two minutes after they left the storage shed police and ambulances arrived. Everyone handed the kids over to them, and the paramedics checked the Heroes; luckily no one had anything worse than some bruises from fighting the brainwashed and supped up kids; except for Denki, his poor brain was still fried.

"This was too easy," Slither commented as they were done being examined by the paramedics. "I know, this felt like a trap, but we got through it with barely any injuries," Creati said. Police went in to examine the crime scene, and the Heroes waited outside for them. To their surprise, bomb squad arrived barely ten minutes after the officers went inside. "I think we did just get lucky," Frankenstein's Daughter said.

After half an hour, one bomb squad officer came out and said, "You're gonna want to see this." Everyone went in and saw some more bomb squad officers surrounding a pile of objects. They looked like fire alarms, to be honest. "What's going on?" Willow Wisp asked them. "We found these while we were examining the walls. It would have escaped us, but if you look here, they're all burnt out," one officer explained and pointed to the part where the light would be on ordinary fire alarms. "They're bombs. They would have gone off once the signal was sent, but from what I hear, you guys made an EMP happen, which shut down the receivers for them. We disarmed them, but between the dozen of them that we found, they had enough C-4 to reduce the whole building to a large crater," the bomb squad officer explained.

"Yeah, we got really lucky," Denki said, his brain finally recovered, "Way too lucky."

?

The hooded man watched as his trap failed. He never thought that an EMP could be used against him, it was only luck that the owners of the storage shed had ruggedized their cameras to make them immune to such events. Internally he seethed, he would have to come up with a new way to stop those Heroes. However, he was not so angry that he couldn't think about the larger picture. His experiment was a success. The helmets worked, now he just needed to get his true subjects, in America and Japan. Once he had his subjects, and the final ingredient, his plan would not, could not fail. He sent a message online and turned off his computer.

This was a minor setback, a mere trip on the march to victory. Nothing more.