Friday

"You're making an awful lot of assumptions."

"You don't think I'm right?"

"I know for a damn fact that you're right. What I don't understand is how the hell you got this far in the first place."

"Heh. Let's just say that I have a unique perspective."

"Yeah, yeah… Listen, about this meeting. If they bring her up-"

"All I need is to confirm that they're thinking about me. It'll probably take two and a half minutes after they walk through the door. I don't need them alive, Giran."

"Alright, yeah. Thanks, Mineta."

Sometimes, Giran hated his job.

It was to be expected, really. Rubbing elbows with the scum of the earth to learn all their dirty secrets, just to sell them off to the highest bidder. Keeping his finger on the country's pulse and his ear to the ground. No morals required, just a strict understanding of client confidentiality.

"Bringing ugly bodyguards to the meetings now, are ya?"

There was never a time that Giran hated his job more, than when he was forced to deal with this lot. He rolled his lit cigarette with his tongue, the only outward reaction he was willing to allow himself.

The feeling was mutual, he knew that much, through no fault of his own. His information was always perfect. Up to date, coherent, concise and direct. His database might not have been as official as what the Government boasted, but between his own archives and the extensive reach his web of informants encompassed, it was even more valuable.

His list of customers reached beyond the borders of Japan. He could shake hands with a member of the local diet in the morning, and share a drink with All for One's personal doctor in the evening.

He'd been doing this for decades. His Quirk was fairly useful, but the limitations held it back from truly being a force in his operations.

More than anything, this pack of clowns hated that. Fighting against the oppression of their people, only for that same oppression to turn inwards after the predictable asphyxiation of their cause.

Really, it was almost enough to make a man laugh.

Giran huffed a silent sigh through his nose, puffing some smoke out along with it, as the three men walked into his office, none of them sparing Twice's masked face anything more than a sneer. In stark contrast to how the man would have reacted when they'd first met each other, Twice did nothing more than narrow his eyes slightly, stepping forth to close the door behind the trio before retaking his position beside his desk.

At least he could be thankful to Mineta for that. Rather than needing to clean up three bodies and calm a grown man down from a murderous tantrum, Giran could simply sit back, and wait for them to excavate the burial site for their entire organisation.

To think that helping that tiny child, out of morbid curiosity more than anything else, would one day lead to him actually feeling confident in looking down upon one of the most violent groups in the country…

"Times are changing, gentlemen." Giran settled further into his comfortable chair, grinning at his guests and hoping they noticed the distinct lack of cushioning where he'd designated them to sit. "I run a very valuable business, you know?"

Facial expressions were a universal language, one that most people could read but very few could write. With his missing tooth and naturally narrow eyes, Giran often had to work that much harder than anyone else to come across as sincere, even when telling one of the many lies his industry existed within.

Naturally, that also made it all the more difficult for people to figure out if he was purposefully mocking them. Already, he could see the confusion in their eyes, along with the first vestiges of anger.

Good. Perfect, even. Either way, this was going to be his encounter with their ilk. They'd made an enemy of Mineta, and for whatever reason, he couldn't find it within himself to doubt that the man could triumph over an entire army.

He was going to enjoy getting even with the Meta LIberation Army for treating meetings with him as a punishment. They didn't seem so scary after the gambles that had gotten him this far. The scowls and murderous intent that had made him worry for his family and his own safety now was almost making him laugh.

"We could go anywhere for this info." The man that had apparently been elected to speak pursed his lips slightly, shifting in his seat. From the corner of his eye, Giran could see Twice's shoulders shaking slightly, the man's wide frame drawing attention away from the remnants of the chairs they'd swapped out for this meeting in particular. He'd be saying goodbye to this office after this meeting, cleaning up some scrap wood in the corner wasn't a priority anymore.

"I'm sure you could." The placating mockery left his mouth as smoothly as the smoke from his cigarette. Some of his clients would have laughed; they were his favourites. The ones who held actual respect for those who safeguarded their secrets and enabled their operations. If he actually believed that, then he'd have to ask himself why they kept coming back. "Now, what info would that be, exactly?"

The man in the lead clenched his fists against his thighs, to Giran's silent delight. They were angry. Maybe even furious. Exactly as Mineta had told him they would be.

"They'll probably call me something really dumb, like the Purple Man, or…"

"The Purger." If Giran's desk was closer, the man probably would have slammed a fist against it. Instead, he swiped his hand through the air, stabbing at Giran's face with a finger as though he'd never been taught a sense of decorum. "What do you know about the Purger?"

"If they're dismissive, then I'll tear it all down. Burn the army to the ground and salt the remains so nobody will ever decide to come along and be inspired by their idiocy."

The other three men in the room were all but forgotten as Giran scrutinised the leader from behind his glasses, the slow rasp of his cigarette the only noise in the room.

"If they're angry, then that's fine. Angry just means I'm on the right track, and it'll only take a few more pushes."

The finger wobbled, just a bit. The lackadaisical veneer that Giran's drooping eyelids granted him did nothing to deny his otherwise excellent eyesight, which made the droplets of sweat beginning to gather on all three men's foreheads all too obvious.

"The Purger." Even though he'd droned the name, all three men twitched. Giran leaned back in his chair, eyeing the ceiling with nary a care in the world. "Name, unknown. Location, unknown. Quirk- ahem, sorry, Meta Ability. Also unknown."

The leader tilted forth in his chair, as though he was trying to close the distance that Giran had made in his leisure. "How did he know about the top potential recruits?"

He hadn't, not really. Giran could still remember the phone call, the list of names he'd been given to sort through, the responsibility of choosing which lives Mineta would cut short for his own goals. He'd had the information, after all, so he'd clearly know best. Had the man, or had he been just a boy back then? Either way, had he known that Giran would ultimately pick out the very names that would launch him into the sights of the most dangerous organisation in Japan?

He seemed to know other pieces of esoteric and hidden knowledge. At this point, Giran wasn't entirely sure what he was willing to put past him.

Really, the juxtaposition between that meeting and this one was like night and day. An army against one man. People who hid away in the shadows and scrounged for their power compared to someone who walked in the sunlight and challenged murderers in public. One side was desperate for information, while the other had it in abundance.

Whatever Destro had spent his life fighting for was gone. His doctrine had been killed by the actions of himself and his followers. In a world that cared little for a time before Quirks and the powers that bound them, those potential recruits would only ever remain as that. Potential.

What care would a serial killer have to fight for the people? Muscular would have slaughtered their army just as readily as he would have any other group. With their fascination with powerful Quirks, he likely would have attacked them over any others, in the hopes of an exhilarating fight. He'd had prior dealings with that man, and it was a relief to know that he was dead.

Liberation was a shade of the past. Even if by some miracle they did win, it wouldn't stop them from chasing after more power. More to control, more to subjugate, until they eventually collapsed under their own weight, or were destroyed by those who could truly rotate the world.

It might have been a stroke of misfortune that set Mineta's sights on the Meta Liberation Army, but any demise that would befall it had been inevitable long before their book had even been published.

"Who's to say, really?" This meeting may have just begun, but it was also soon to be over. They'd gotten what they needed, confirmation that their enigma had been entirely correct. It would be nice to see what would happen to the world when someone with actual ambitions decided to take it on. "Perhaps they got tired of your stalking, and sought him out themselves?"

Even Twice turned around to look at him at that one. Fighting to keep the grin off his face, Giran reached up slowly, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth and tapping the filter of it against his chin twice. The mask widened almost imperceptibly, and he stepped back, crossing his arms behind his back and hiding the mud that was now beginning to leak from them.

The three men's faces had gone carefully blank. It might have been impressive, if Giran cared to critique their performances. He took another drag from his cigarette, looking for all the world as though he had nary a care in it. Their eyes followed his movements, completely ignorant of the Quirked mud that was slowly sliding behind the two outer chairs, courtesy of the carpet coincidentally camouflaging it.

A new aspect of Twice's Quirk that Giran hadn't known about. It wasn't too difficult to figure out just where he'd taken his inspiration from.

"Is that so?" The man in the middle, predictably, was the first one to break the silence. At the sound of his voice, his two associates turned their attention to Giran, apparently completely dismissing Twice as a threat. The one on the right began to bulge slightly, his arms more so than the rest of his body, while the one on the left opened his mouth beyond the normal human limit to breathe out a steadily growing cloud of steam.

"You know something, don't you?" The middle man pushed himself out of his seat, his hair beginning to grow longer. Random sections were cycling through different colours, moving quickly enough to give Giran a headache, though he didn't dare to look away. "You have five seconds to tell us, now."

"Five seconds?" Giran climbed to his feet as well, tilting his head back and blowing out a cloud of smoke larger than the left man's Quirk was producing. "Can't do that, I'm afraid. I'm not paid to speculate."

It would take one last push. One final little jab to send them over the edge and end the charade. He could taste it clearer than the tobacco that lay atop his tongue.

"If I had to guess…" The cigarette was stamped out into his ashtray. The hand that had been holding it slid across his desk, settling atop a part of it that was hidden from the rest of the room by standing folders. "I'd say that you're all terrified of him, aren't ya?"

The man's hair stopped shifting colours. Where before it had been a veritable rainbow, it was now a uniform, incandescent crimson.

"We may have failed to secure Creation." The sclera of his eyes had turned black. Thin wisps of smoke escaped from the sides of his face where the skin had begun to crack and peel away. The temperature of the office was rising steadily, not yet uncomfortable but still noticeable. "But it was surrounded by guards and outside interference."

The desk beneath his hands began to blacken as he leaned against it, close enough that the sparks flying through his hair were almost landing on Giran's face.

"We won't fail with Lizard Tail Splitter."

"Do it."

"Do- huh?"

Loud cracks and pained gasps erupted through the office. The middle man almost lost his balance as he spun around, his hair extinguished now that his focus had been broken.

The other two men that he'd brought with him had remained in their seats, not that it had made much of a difference. Both sat in the shadow of a Twice clone, their heads tilted at unnatural angles and the bones in their necks very apparently in the wrong places. The one on the left was completely still, blinking rapidly, while the one on the right was pawing weakly at the hand still wrapped around his throat.

The clone tugged again, and with another sickening crunch, the man on the right stopped moving.

"Koukan! Kanou!" Two flaming whips struck the clones across their faces, separating their heads from their bodies. They melted back into muddy puddles as the middle man whipped his head back around, an enraged snarl turning his lips.

A single, solitary gunshot rang out across the office before he could lash out further. His hair returned to the inky blackness it had been when he'd entered the office as he collapsed, slamming against the desk on his way to the ground and leaving a long streak of red behind.

With his arm tensed against the knockback, Giran waited for a moment, stepping around the desk and glaring down at the bodies on the floor. It had been a long while since he'd had to end someone in the middle of a meeting, and the last time had taken three bullets to get through whatever Quirk was protecting the guy's head.

It hadn't been impervious, though. And neither were these men. None of them were breathing, nor moving. With a sigh, he flicked the safety of his gun on, dropping it into the chair he'd risen from and pulling another cigarette from his jacket.

"Two minutes and twenty-nine seconds!" Twice announced cheerfully, his phone in his hand as he directed more clones to clean up the bodies. There were cameras in the office, but speed wasn't the only reason that Mineta had requested a vocal recording on top of that.

"If they're scared?"

Giran shook his head, blowing a ring of smoke towards the ceiling. This time, he was actually going to retire. He was going to move to some island out in the middle of nowhere, start an apple orchard, and never have to think about weird gremlin children that turned out to be demonic aliens.

No matter what he heard from his daughter's room whenever she thought he was asleep.

"I just won myself an army."