Alright! So, in the prologue and first chapter of My Hero Academia: World At War, I mentionned the fall of the United States after the 13th Dark Crusade... We all know what this is... And yes, I decided to replace Cadia by the United States.
I felt like that would be a fun thing to do!
However, I didn't really expand on anything related to that... So, first one-shot will speak about how hellish the battles were... Through the eyes of a guardsmen!
Enjoy!
The Fall of the United States I: Apocalypse.
The United States.
A land of progress, hope, and wealth.
A beacon of civilization, shining at the heart of the world.
It is from there that man defied the heavens and set foot on the lunar surface for the first time.
It is there that visionary minds tamed the atom, granting humanity immense power, both savior and destroyer, life and death alike.
It is there that millions of dreamers built skyscrapers, shaping the skyline of cities where the future seems to take form with each dawn.
A land of struggles and triumphs, America has shattered the chains of tyranny time and time again.
In Philadelphia, it proclaimed its right to independence.
On the beaches of Normandy, it crashed like a tidal wave against the forces of obscurantism.
In the frozen depths of the Cold War, it stood firm against the red shadow, shielding the free world from a future in chains.
But if America has always been a bastion of progress, it has also always been a bulwark against evil.
A frontier between order and chaos.
Today, it is no longer just a symbol. It is a wall erected against the darkness.
When quirks emerged, despite the gravest challenges, the United States endured until a new day, a new light, came.
Then, through twelve dark crusades, they became a shield against the countless legions that threaten humanity and the IMPERIUM.
The United States is no longer just a nation as it once was.
It is a citadel, a fortress of flesh and steel, where every man, woman, and child knows that if they fight, it is for something greater than themselves.
How many times did the plains of the Midwest have become battlefields, where tanks canons thunder as in the old days and rifles rain down death?
How many times have the streets of New York, illuminated by progress, been crisscrossed with barbed wire and defensive lines?
How many times did the Great Plains been carved with trenches and disfigured by song of a thousand canons?
How many times has Silicon Valley stopped producing smartphones to instead build guidance systems, auspex scanners, or war-ready AIs under the guidance of the Mechanicus?
Wasn't it in the United States that a new kind of soldier was born?
The Imperial Guardsman.
The perfect infantryman.
A soldier who does not retreat, who no danger can stop.
A soldier who no longer swears allegiance merely to their country, but who vows to serve all of humanity, to preserve civilization from terror.
Yet, though the Americas have always stood firm…
Today, their fall is more than probable.
…
The skies were darkened by the smoke of a thousand megafires, casting light over a land ravaged and littered with more corpses, craters, and spent shell casings than the most apocalyptic of war zones.
The cities that once stood on the horizon were now nothing more than fields of ruins, where colossal war machines played a deadly game of hide-and-seek, their cannons thundering with the fury of erupting volcanoes.
Fields that had once been lush and green had become the stage for brutal battles between the IMPERIUM's forces and their pro-hero auxiliaries, locked in a relentless struggle against the MLA, tearing each other apart amidst screams of agony, the roar of cannons, the whistling of bombs, the sharp cracks of gunfire, and the chaotic sounds of quirks being unleashed in a bloody mass grave.
Even the skies were not spared, as aircrafts roared and spun in a lethal dance. When they dove toward the ground like starving raptors, it was not to rescue those who fought, but to reap, to destroy, to annihilate both ally and enemy alike.
And it was in the midst of this charnel house that Tom Fox, a simple guardsman of the 204th Infantry Regiment, ran for his life.
His ragged breath was swallowed by the deafening noise of battle, his hands clamped around his lasgun, his eyelids long since burned by sweat and the dust that had turned to fine, choking ash.
Every beat of his heart was a dull detonation in his chest, louder than the song of the cannons, a countdown to the moment fate would catch up with him.
He was alone.
At least, that's what his tormented mind screamed at him.
All around him, other figures moved, soldiers like him, or pro-heroes, all condemned to advance, to kill, to fight just to survive another minute. A few meters ahead, he saw a group of guardsmen assembling behind a shattered wall and recognized their regiment's number as his own.
But just as he took a step toward them, an ear-splitting detonation sounded, and the wall vanished in a torrent of fire. Shards of carapace armor, lasguns, and torn limbs were flung in all directions, tracing crimson arcs through the air.
At that exact moment, a Thunderbolt fighter dove toward the ground and opened fire, its heavy-caliber rounds shredding the earth, the dead, and the living, ally and enemy alike. At the last moment before it could hit the ground, the aircraft pulled up, its roaring engines passing no more than six meters above Tom's head as he instinctively dove to the ground.
The Thunderbolt didn't make it far. As it climbed, a missile tore off its wing, sending it spiraling out of control before crashing hundreds of meters away in a fiery explosion that lit up the hellish landscape with yet another small sun.
Choosing not to stand, Tom crawled toward the nearest crater, pressing himself deep inside just long enough to steady his nerves. Once he did, he braced against the earthen and ashen surface of his cover, shouldering his lasgun and aiming at the silhouettes of the MLA soldiers rushing about, screaming, enraged, darting from crater to crater like a rabid horde.
His finger pressed the trigger.
The impact in his arm required all his strength to hold steady. He saw the laser strike a soldier wearing a corroded helmet and holding an automatic rifle, straight in the belly.
The man's scream was drowned in the cacophony, but he doubled over, dropping his weapon to clutch at his stomach, blood already seeping through his fingers before he collapsed onto the ground.
Tom switched targets.
Second shot. Miss.
Third shot. Hit.
The back of a man's head, tattooed with gang symbols, exploded in a spray of molten brain matter and shredded scalp.
Then, he had to duck again, his heart pounding, as several automatic rifle rounds bit at the dirt around him.
And then, he was no longer alone.
Another guardsman slid into the crater, his eyes wide as saucers in his mud-streaked face, half-dried from the intense heat. Then, several sharp cracks of a lasgun fired, and a commsman dropped in beside him.
The commsman's helmet was cracked, his radio pack damaged beyond use.
Tom had no time to greet his new companions before hell erupted once more.
A roar tore through the air, followed by the sound of clanking metal. An allied Leman Russ tank rolled over the crater, the ground trembling as if it were being torn apart under the weight of the monstrous war machine. Its battle cannon fired, the shell whistling away into the distance… Then, the two side heavy bolters swiveled in their mounts before unleashing a storm of fire.
Tom cast a quick glance. That should hold them long enough for them to get out of this he—
He had spoken too soon.
A creature, something between a dog and a machine, covered in brass and bronze armor, slammed into the side of the tank, crushing and reaping its armor as if it were paper. A scream echoed from within the vehicle as the muscular beast jerked its head back. A crew member was dragged out by the arm… An arm that remained attached only by a few strands of muscle. The creature let out a guttural growl and hurled the man away.
The arm detached in the process, and the tanker vanished.
The rider leaped onto the tank's hull, a mutant with crimson skin, an elongated skull, and wielding a massive black blade, and moved toward the hatch.
Tom watched in horror as the monstrosity ripped the turret hatch from its hinges and sent it flying before jumping inside the tank. A geyser of blood and a severed head were ejected seconds later, just before a rocket struck the vehicle.
Tom ducked back into cover as the engine was hit, followed by the ammunition stockpile.
The explosion, given its proximity, was even more deafening than the others. Or maybe it was just because his eardrums were already screaming in agony… The turret was launched high into the sky before crashing down with a loud clang, and a white-hot chunk of metal embedded itself into the crater with them as smaller fragments rained down on their armor and helmets.
When the storm of debris subsided, the tank was nothing more than a burning ruin. The front part of monstrous hound had been reduced to a misshapen mass of molten metal and flesh…
The MLA fighters who had been near the explosion had been obliterated, leaving behind only ashes and blood paste, ashes that were soon swept away by the distant shockwave of yet another explosion…
Those who had been knocked down slowly got back up, dazed. Tom steadied his weapon on the edge of the crater, ready to take down more enemies. The commsman moved and positioned himself to Tom's right. The young Guardsman remained cowering at the bottom of the crater, terrified.
Only then did Tom notice that he couldn't have been older than eighteen, likely a conscript…
Which meant he had little to no training…
Not the time to pity him. Tom refocused on the MLA fighters and lined one up in his sights… He didn't hesitate for a second to pull the trigger, but his lasbolt vanished into a swirling vortex of water that tore through the air with a deafening roar.
A pro-hero stood atop a pile of corpses, his silver and dark blue costume stained with blood and dried mud, hands stretched forward, his face contorted with the effort of maintaining his quirk active.
The MLA soldiers were tossed like ragdolls, hurled against the burning tank, flung into the air, or sucked into a gaping pit of mud as water seeped into the scorched earth.
Some struggled to rise in the thick, clinging muck, but the pro-hero made a sharp motion with his hand. The water on the surface coiled into a liquid whip, hissing through the air before crashing down on their skulls, shattering them like eggshells and sending their brains splattering out in pinkish pulp out of the back of their busted craniums.
The heroes had changed something during this war… Their rules. Normally, a hero was supposed to stop criminals and villains and bring them to justice. But the MLA followers had long since turned into beasts that deserved nothing but death…
And for humanity's survival, they had to be killed. That was the mindset the heroes and IMPERIUM soldiers fought with as they faced down waves of psychopaths, serial killers, and anarchist fanatics…
A single bullet whistled through the air, and the hero exploded in a spray of viscera, his entrails and flesh scattering in all directions. The torrent of water stopped instantly.
A second later, a frag grenade, pin already pulled, rolled into the crater and detonated.
Tom was lucky, relatively speaking. He was thrown out of the crater and into the mud when the explosive detonated. He could hear nothing. His eardrums throbbed, sending daggers of pain through his skull with every pulse.
The crater had become a slaughterhouse. Amidst the torn earth, he could see only the commsman's torso and half of his head… The young Guardsman had been reduced to a pile of charred carapace armor fragments, surrounded by crimson red clumps.
He tried to move, but a searing pain shot through his legs… He looked down.
His feet… They were gone.
The mud was soaked in crimson.
His mind reeled as he struggled to process what he was seeing.
His feet were gone. Only bloodied stumps remained, splintered bones, burned flesh peeling away in blackened shreds…
He tried to scream, but only a strangled gasp escaped his throat. His hands trembled as he reached for what was left of his legs, as if, by some miracle, he could somehow bring them back.
He only felt the vibrations in the ground at the last moment and turned his head.
From the smoke rising off the burning Leman Russ, a figure emerged, an avatar of death itself, clad in night-black armor, tarnished gold defiled by blasphemy. The massive warrior who stepped through the haze filled Tom's heart with a visceral terror.
His breastplate resembled a mausoleum, two straps driven through a gilded ribcage, the buckle shaped like a nightmarish, fanged face fused into the armor's decorations.
His helmet, sculpted into a grinning skull, bore a permanently twisted sneer, while his optics, two blood-red pits, scanned the battlefield with an intensity only an Astartes could possess.
His massive pauldrons were adorned with human skulls, stacked into a pyramid of death, empty sockets staring into the abyss above slack jaws, held together by nothing but simple ropes.
A jagged banner of spikes jutted from his power pack, bearing the hated sigil of the Arch-Traitor's own Legion, decorated with yellowed skulls, the mocking remains of those foolish enough to oppose his warband.
To complete the nightmarish display, a rusted chain wrapped around his waist, weighed down by a crimson leather banner, scrawled with esoteric symbols and strange runes.
In his iron grip, he wielded a chainsword, a weapon of murder, its jagged teeth still slick with the gore of his last victims. Tom found himself staring in sheer horror at the spinning teeth of the weapon, moving slowly, like a predator savoring the moment before the kill.
The man's bolt pistol rested in a worn leather holster at his belt, but what caught Tom's attention the most was the grenade pin he toyed with absentmindedly in his free hand. That was what finally snapped him out of his paralyzing fear.
In a desperate attempt to fend off the corrupted Astartes approaching him, Tom groped blindly for his lasgun.
The Marine continued forward with a near-contemptuous stride, grinding corpses and armor pieces beneath his boots into pulp like they were nothing. His glowing red optics landed onto Tom, utterly ignoring the lasfire and quirks being hurled his way.
Indeed, these attacks left only small scratches or burns, but nothing more.
Not finding his weapon, Tom tried to crawl backward and activated his own quirk. A teeth was shot from his mouth before being replaced in mere seconds but bounced harmlessly off the armor.
The corrupted Astartes continued to approach in the terrifying silence of the battlefield.
The guardsman panicked and tried to crawl away. In vain. An excruciating pain tore through his back and chest before the world turned black and empty as his body was shredded by the roaring blade of the chainsword.