Chapter Text
Newly Crowned No. 1 Goes Rogue
Loyalty Above All? Japan's New No. 1 Stands Against HPSC
The Ride or Die Hero: Mirko
With every new headline, Madame President could feel her headache intensifying. All that effort to make this edition of the Hero Billboard Chart JP a grand, morale-building affair had gone completely to waste. She cursed herself for not expecting something to go awry; Mirko was way too close to Midoriya for her to not have been compromised. Her general disposition already made her a wildcard, but allowing her to take the No. 1 spot over Best Jeanist was a calculated gamble that would have projected strength and security at a time when it was desperately needed. She was not only immensely powerful, but more importantly, she was young, so the public would have been assured that their new No. 1 would be around to protect and serve for many decades in a post-All Might world.
The guaranteed popularity boost from the mutant population wouldn't have hurt, either.
However, all of that was for naught given the nature of trusting a wildcard with the most crucial position. She flipped and symbolically joined Midoriya's crusade, and the media was losing their minds over it. The freshly minted No. 1 declaring their sympathies for a freshly minted terrorist and S-rank villain was unfathomable. It bordered on an arrestable offense, but the legality there was messy at best. Even so, Madame President was well within her rights to snatch Usagiyama's license and bar her from heroics entirely, ensuring that even the slightest act of vigilantism would have her locked up in Tartarus purely for the threat she posed, let alone full-on villainy in support of Midoriya.
Unfortunately, that was just as unlikely. Given the complicated nature of the Midoriya situation and the precarious spot Japanese heroics were in, she couldn't (or rather shouldn't) go that far. Doing so would make the HPSC look like tyrannical bureaucrats, and that would be bad optics. Playing political defense by leaking all of the dirt they had on Usagiyama was also out of the question, as the very last thing this nation needed was yet another scandal involving a Top 3 pro hero. It would completely defeat the purpose of building morale, and a society where the institution of heroics was implicitly distrusted would jumpstart a plunge back into the dark ages. Usagiyama had them by the balls, and Madame President knew that she knew it, too.
Her head throbbed. The root of this debacle was Izuku fucking Midoriya. Even in his absence, he was causing her issues. The manhunt for him had turned up nothing as of yet, and she had all of her most trusted operatives alongside their sidekicks and agencies on the case. Truthfully, she wanted him found and either captured or killed sooner than later, which was why she went as far as issuing a bounty on his head. Now, with Mirko drawing a line of allegiance (and more very likely to follow), she needed him taken out ASAP. Every day he was allowed to roam free was another day for him or Nezu to galvanize the public and other heroes against the government. The mere thought was forming a boulder in the pit of her stomach, or perhaps it was the fact that she lost communication with Airjet that was simply making her more anxious than necessary.
The Paragons had thankfully arrived at Nabu and were ready to make their official debut in Japan, but bringing them out specifically to hunt down Midoriya was admittedly heavy-handed at the moment, even if it was warranted, so she wanted the current crop of heroes to justify their paychecks to both her and the public before she officially gave them the order to move-
A sudden, thunderous crash in her office would have jolted her out of her chair had something not also crashed into her, slamming her face into her desk with a wet crunch that sent an explosion of pain lancing through her face. The intrusion limply rolled off of her and plopped to the floor as she cursed the glowing baby to hell and back, clutching at her rapidly swelling nose to unsuccessfully stem the blood trickling out of her nostrils. Murder in her gaze, she swiveled around to find that the windows of her office overlooking Tokyo had been obliterated, and at her feet was an unconscious Airjet sprawled atop the glass spattering the floor.
"What in blazes?" she muttered, peering closer at her employee who looked like he had been put through the wringer. In fact, simply describing him as "beaten" didn't even begin to cover it. His smashed helmet did little to hide the giant, bleeding bruise that was his face, both of his arms were bent the wrong way, and most of his signature armor had been torn off to expose the tattered, crimson bodysuit underneath (which was clearly hiding even more bloody bruises). Airjet had been mauled so savagely that Madame President was certain he had called All Might's mother a whore.
Then, her sharp gaze landed on a folded piece of paper sticking out of his boot, and she only noticed it because of a single, colorful flame clinging to life on the edges of the paper. There was now only one candidate for who perpetrated this, and her ire was beginning to reach a fever pitch. Still, her curiosity got the better of her, so she reached down and plucked the folded note from her pathetically groaning subordinate's boot. As she smothered the flame in her grasp and prepared to unfold the note, her door burst open as a squad of armed security filed into the room with their guns drawn.
"Madame President, are you hurt?!" one of them frantically asked, his eyes widening in alarm when he saw the blood pouring out of her deformed nose.
Whatever shock that had been present on her face earlier had already vanished as she was quickly ushered through the door and down the hall toward the nearest express elevator. Her stern, stony countenance had attempted to retake its place amidst their stride, but the state of her nose just made it look goofy, and she knew it.
"Was my office the only one attacked?" she nasally growled, snatching a rag from the frazzled security guard's hands before he could even think about applying it to her face.
"This was the only breach we were alerted to thus far," he confirmed with a frown after a moment. "We're locking down the building until the threat has been properly assessed, though."
The implications of that didn't need to be stated to be loud and clear. This was a targeted attack. Her only outward reaction was the darkening of her glare above the splotchy rag pressed to her face. Plenty of villains probably fantasized about attacking the HPSC headquarters, but very few actually had the balls to do it, let alone attack her directly. Izuku Midoriya was certainly earning his S-rank designation. His brazenness might have been respectable in any other situation.
Reaching the elevator that would take her straight to a designated panic room, the guard ushered her in before saluting and hurrying back down the hall. She dispassionately watched him leave as the doors closed, and then her eyes trailed back to the note in her hand. A beat of silence passed before she finally unfolded it and laid her eyes on the message:
Every breath you take is a courtesy from me. Trust that they are finite, and you will cherish your last when your ilk's totalitarian stranglehold over hero society is little more than ash at my feet.
One would have been forgiven for expecting newborn quintuplets to slide out of the elevator with how pregnant the silence was. Madame President's flinty gaze ruthlessly scanned over the note several more times to confirm that what she had read was what she thought she did.
The nerve of that boy…
The audacity of that child…
The unmitigated gall of that ignorant fucking whelp to threaten her as if he was some righteous force of nature whose victory was all but assured!
Izuku Midoriya's corpse would be paraded through Shibuya Crossing on live television by the end of the week. She'd make fucking sure of it.
Madame President was going to die a slow, horrible death when this was all said and done, and Nezu would crack open a wheel of his finest pecorino for the glorious spectacle. He had been awaiting this inevitable conflict since the very day he was officially granted the rights of a human (in no small part thanks to the efforts of Nana Shimura and Crimson Riot, but that was a story for another day), and he had been preparing in earnest once he usurped control over UA from the previous administration.
A small, fond smile briefly came over him as he ran his paws across the mahogany desk that had stuck by his side since that day, and then it vanished just as quickly as it appeared. Now was not the time to reminisce; his energy was far better served putting his plans for Madame President's demise into action.
Unfortunately, the path to achieving the Good Ending was arduous at best and catastrophic at worst. Attacking the HPSC meant attacking the established order, declaring war on the very institution that oversaw and maintained Japanese hero society on both a bureaucratic and practical level. To say it was no small task was grossly underselling it; an upheaval on this scale could very well be considered a revolution. A civil war was inevitable, and while many were (if even quietly) dissatisfied with the current status quo, there were many more who were not. Whether they were simply ignorant of the cloak-and-dagger antics that personified the bureau that employed them, or they simply believed the ends justified the means, it ultimately mattered little.
Nezu knew they were outnumbered in a war that Izuku had taken upon himself to kick off (not that he blamed him). He also knew that Izuku cared very little about those odds and was fully prepared to single-handedly torch the planet for the sake of his loved ones. Nezu would do whatever it took to further influence public opinion in Izuku's favor, including but not limited to leaking the information he had about the HPSC to every corner of the internet. To that end, he was already enlisting the aid of Manami Aiba once again, and he turned to his computer to rev up his army of bots. He had sat on the information she gathered for him about Hawks to have for a rainy day, and the storm had finally arrived. Thanks to Hawks graciously offering up the HPSC's dirty laundry as well as Nezu squeezing as much as he could out of Mera before sending him on his way to retirement in Hawaii, he had more than enough to capture the general public's attention. Meanwhile, he could trust Ms. Aiba to kick a particularly nasty malware through one of her many backdoors into the HPSC's network to keep them occupied just long enough for the bot campaign to reach as many eyes as possible.
The shitstorm that would generate would pair nicely with the list of identities of Madame President's inner circle that Nezu had sent to Izuku from an untraceable phone number; entirely devoid of context, of course. Even if he wasn't returning anyone's calls or texts (for good reason, he likely wanted to maintain UA's plausible deniability), that didn't mean that he wouldn't be kept in the loop.
Before he could stroll any further down that line of thought, his cameras alerted him to a pink blur speeding down the hallway toward his office. Being an eternal prisoner of his curiosity, Nezu pushed a button on the underside of his desk that remotely unlocked his door just in time for it to fly off of its hinges anyway.
"Principal Nezu!" Mei Hatsume frantically shouted from the doorway as the matching mahogany door toppled to the ground.
"Hello, Ms. Hatsume-" Nezu attempted to greet before she teleported in front of his desk and slammed her hands onto the wood, a small device pancaked under her gloved palm.
"Muscles!" she declared, a manic, desperate gleam in her crosshair eyes. "I know how to find him!"
An equally fervorous gleam bloomed in his beady gaze as he met Hatsume's. "Do tell."
"This is your final warning!" Ryukyu bellowed to a jetpack-clad criminal doing his damndest to stay ahead of her with the bank vault he and his team had stolen. "Stand down, or I will put you down!"
"Fuck off, dragon cunt!" he spat, sweating bullets in his high-tech harness as he did his best to keep out of the way of buildings. He was already facing armed robbery, destruction of property, and reckless endangerment should he be captured; he didn't need to add involuntary manslaughter to that list. The Dragoon Hero Was gaining on him, but fortunately for him, his jetpack wasn't operating at maximum overdrive. Kicking his jetpack into high gear, the machine sputtered and farted as it propelled him and the massive load he was toting along even faster.
Unfortunately for him, neither was Ryukyu. An annoyed huff was all that left her as the robber hopelessly chugged along, and within a matter of a single second, the hulking dragoness was in front of him with an unimpressed expression. The man yelped before jerking to change course, but Ryukyu snatched the steel cables attaching the bank vault to his harness so hard that they snapped before he could even think of abandoning ship. The confusion left him in a tailspin and on a collision course for a nearby building, but he was spared a hilarious demise by Ryukyu snatching him in her grasp with her free hand.
With both the criminal and the vault now safely secured, she slowly descended back to the street as she leveled him with a stern glare. "You really could have hurt someone, y'know. Hell, you could've maimed yourself. Who convinced you that carrying the weight of an entire bank vault yourself was a good idea?"
The man refused to even meet her giant gaze, looking around with an indignant pout aimed at the approaching street. "I didn't come up with the stinkin' plan. I'm not the brains of the group, lady."
"Clearly," she huffed, touching back down on solid ground as civilians on either sidewalk cheered her on.
That wasn't what had her attention, however, and neither was it the criminal squirming in her grasp. No, what caught her eye was the figure approaching their location from the rooftops, leaping from building to building with practiced ease. She narrowed her eyes at them as they continued their flashy trek, and she didn't recognize them at all. While it could have just been a hero that she wasn't aware of (there were tens of thousands in Japan alone), they could just as likely have been part of his gang coming to the rescue.
Unfortunately, that momentary distraction was all he needed to shimmy a flashbang out of his pants and kick it to the ground. Ryukyu snapped back to attention moments too late, and she along with the civilians watching from the sidelines were caught by the sudden, brain-scattering blast. The man slipped out of her grasp as she collapsed with a grunt, and even through the gongs within his ears and the herd of Dalmatians traversing his vision, the pleasant sounds of his squad's getaway car flooring it toward him gave him the biggest smile.
As Ryukyu was doing her damnedest to shake away the stars above her head, two things happened. First, a black sedan skidded to a stop in front of them with the driver screaming at the newly freed criminal to get the fuck in the car. Second, and even more surprisingly, the figure that had been leaping from rooftop to rooftop finally arrived, and he chose to do so by slamming directly on top of the car's engine. Crashing this party was a man sporting a cocky smirk and wearing a black bodysuit composed of black, armored plates lined with trimming as red as his boots and the bold number 1 emblazoned on his chest.
The occupants were, naturally, startled as all hell, but they were given no time to come down before the new arrival punched through the windshield, snatched the driver by the collar, and yanked him out of the car to send him sailing helplessly toward the unforgiving pavement like discarded garbage. The front passenger, a large man whose skin was made of stone, finally got his wits about him and barreled out of the car to fight their new challenger, throwing a wild haymaker aimed to take his head off. The new hero simply caught the punch with a loud thwack heard all the way down the street, and with his cocky smirk still in place, he returned fire with a devastating right hook to the man's jaw, rocketing him away to join the getaway driver in blissless unconsciousness. Turning to the remaining two passengers and the original, aerial marauder, he haughtily beckoned for them to attack. The two that were in the backseat, a set of identical twins with matching, brown bowl cuts, extended their left and right arms, respectively, and curved blades emerged from their elbows up the length of their forearms. The new hero simply protracted steel batons from the sleeves of his suit and grinned devilishly as they pounced.
Meanwhile, Ryukyu had recovered enough from the earlier flashbang to see the new hero in action. He was not only matching but outright winning in a two-on-one sword fight, parrying and weaving around their combo attacks with the ease of a seasoned veteran, his self-assured smile not faltering for a single moment all the while. Exactly who was this guy?
She could get her answer once he was finished, as she gingerly made it back up on wobbly legs right as he spun out of the way of a thrust from one of them and latched onto his arm, breaking it before booting the other in the chest when he came to help and slamming the injured robber onto the destroyed hood of their car. Then, without missing a beat, he swung his arm back out and clonked the other twin in the head with his baton as he tried to skewer him with his back turned. The last man standing, the doofus who she had previously captured, had also finally recovered, and he was snarling at the new hero with unfettered malice. Without a word, he inhaled and coughed, firing a large ball bearing right out of his mouth at him.
The newbie didn't even move, simply letting the bearing smack him right in the forehead and bounce off with a loud, metallic clang. The doofus coughed again, firing another ball bearing at his face, and the result was the same. So, he kept doing it, coughing bearing after bearing at him just for each one to bounce off of him like rubber balls… if the rubber balls also functioned as tuning forks. Through it all, the newbie kept up that cocky smile, at least up until a final bearing slammed right into his sternum; after that one, the smile, while still cocky, was much, much more put-on than before. As if to finally put a merciful end to the day, he dashed right to the doofus, snatched his face into his palm, and then slammed his head into the trunk of the car to knock him out…
…And possibly concuss him? That was a little much in her opinion.
Regardless, the crowd erupted into uproarious cheers at the day being saved and the villains being vanquished. The new guy turned to the crowd and posed in victory, soaking up the adulation of the rubbernecking civilians with calm, casual confidence as if this was light work for him. Ryukyu knew better. She could spot the tells; he was idly favoring both his left ankle and his right hand as if simply clenching a fist was an immense task, his abdomen was overtly tense like he was clenching as hard as he could, and his cocky smile was the picture of strained. He was clearly in excruciating pain, but he was doing his best to hide it.
Ryukyu, her head still aching and pink spots still dotting her vision, groaned as the police finally made their way from the sidelines to pick up the bank robbers and sequester the stolen vault. She was considering waving all of this off and just letting the new guy take the credit and the payday simply to get out of this commotion; Nejire wasn't with her, so she only had herself to account for. However, any plans of that were squashed when said newbie moseyed up to her with a confident strut (read: well-disguised limp) and a gleam in his eye.
Gods above and below, kill her now.
"Ryukyu, right?" he said, the light, flat timbre of his voice reminding her too much of Hawks right now. "You're welcome, by the way, for saving your ass."
"…Excuse me?" she spoke, thoroughly caught off guard by the audacity of this greeting.
"Hundreds of agencies in this city, and no one came for the assist?" he had the gall to continue, humming in wonder. "Womp womp. That's gotta suck, huh?"
He was not done, however, now even going as far as to pat her on the chin. "Good thing I was around, then. Y'know, to clean up your mess."
Ryukyu's first instinct was to punch this jackass in the throat. Her second was to throttle him. This ultimately meant that she needed to consult her third instinct: what would Rumi do?
…Kick him in the throat, probably. Not terribly productive.
Thankfully, he sniffed out an approaching field reporter and cameraman like a bloodhound, and he spun around to meet the charge, leaving Ryukyu alone to stew in the interaction they just had.
"What an absolute fuckhead…"
"Today's leading story, the Hero Public Safety Commission has come forward with a new, polarizing initiative in the wake of the Rabbit Hero's shocking statement at the Hero Billboard Chart JP. Yesterday saw several debuts of powerful pro heroes, each sporting a different number. Our very own field reporter, Chie Nakamura, was on the scene for the first of these debuts at the sight of a skirmish involving the newly christened Number Eight Hero, Ryukyu, and a gaggle of ambitious bank robbers."
Sir Nighteye quirked an eyebrow at the screen as Nakamura approached a man in a gaudy, ridiculous-looking black and red suit.
"First, allow me to say that was a very impressive showcase. Could you tell the people a little about yourself? I'm sure they're dying to know who you are and what that interesting quirk must be."
"The name's Unbreakable, but you can call me your new Number One. As for my quirk, well, my bones are special. Pure tungsten carbide. I'm practically indestructible, y'know?"
"Oh? And where do you come from?"
"Well, you probably heard Boss Lady up at the Commission's statement by now; 'promising youths specially trained to help usher in a stronger society,' and all that jazz. She's diplomatic, but I'm not a bureaucrat, so what she really meant to say was that we are the elites, and we're here to clean up the mess before it gets any worse."
"Could you expand on that?"
"Of course. All Might went out in a blaze of glory taking down the greatest evil this nation has ever seen. He's been a constant fixture in our lives for three decades, and he backpacked our society out of the dark ages. Now, he's gone, and it's clear that our society doesn't really know how to function without him. Japan needs a new symbol, and, well, that's where we come in."
"He's talking about Toshinori like he's dead," Nighteye seethed with an enormous quantity of venom. "How dare he imply he's worthy of bearing that responsibility…"
"That's a powerful declaration. Any other words for us?"
"Yeah, actually. There have been a lot of people out there fancying themselves as irresistible forces, some more colorful than others, who have gotten it in their heads that they're unstoppable—you can thank our currently weak era for that. Well, I'd like to personally introduce them to the one truly immovable mountain in their path. I'll line 'em all up and knock 'em all down like the pathetic frauds they are, and there ain't gonna be any beacons to save their asses from rotting in Tartarus where villainous scum like them belong."
"And that was simply the first of what the HPSC has dubbed the 'Paragon Initiative,' a collection of outstanding talents trained from adolescence to bolster our forces with competent heroes, and a potential, budding alternative to traditional hero academia. You just heard from one of them, but several others gave statements after similarly impressive debuts."
The screen cut to a woman with straight, chin-length black hair framing the black rebreather mask with a small, violet 7 on it covering the lower half of her face. The paradoxical intensity brimming within a violet gaze so utterly devoid of life unnerved Nighteye more than he would admit.
"We're simply doing what's best for the nation. Parity is pleasant in sports leagues, but in the real world, power vacuums are dangerous and ripe for exploitation."
The irony of her statement wasn't lost on him, and he would have found some humor in it had the woman on screen not extended her arm back to point at a criminal who had slipped away from police custody, firing a purple laser from her index finger that slammed into his back and sent him crashing back to the ground.
She didn't turn back to look at him once.
Nighteye was thankful when the screen cut away once more, this time to a man whose mutations made him look completely alien. He looked like a slim humanoid composed entirely of indigo and magenta crystals that fashioned a blocky head with a crystalline horn and singular eye.
"Our society has strayed too far from law and order. Consider this a much-needed paradigm shift."
"Paragons…" Nighteye muttered with derision. "Paramilitary is more apt. Their ulterior motives are as transparent as glass."
He paused, reconsidering his statement. "Or crystal?"
He shook his head. "No, crystal is translucent at best. I'll leave the puns to Mirio."
"In other pro hero news, Mr. Brave was found hanging by his cape on a lamp post in Osaka this morning, beaten nearly beyond recognition-"
Nighteye cut the TV off with a tired sigh, leaning back into his chair while eyeing the bottom desk drawer where he kept his stash. With a heavy heart, he looked away. No smoking on the job.
"Sir, your 5:30 appointment is here," the voice of Bubble Girl announced through the intercom on his desk, providing just the distraction he needed.
He cleared his throat and pressed the button to respond. "Excellent. Send them in."
"Right away, Sir."
He leaned back again, humming in discontent. "Not even a hint of a joke out of her. Another round in the tickle machine it is."
Minutes later, the door to his office opened, and in stepped two blue-eyed blondes. His gaze landed squarely on the more fidgety of the two as they took their seats in front of his desk. "Toshinori."
"Mirai," Toshinori awkwardly greeted back. "It's good to see you again."
An indecipherable hum was his only verbal response, and then his gaze shifted to the girl sitting beside him. She took that opportunity to speak up.
"Melissa Shield," she introduced herself with a slight bow. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Sir Nighteye. I've heard quite a bit about you."
Rather than respond, Nighteye continued his silent scrutiny of Melissa Shield just long enough for Toshinori to begin to squirm under the awkward tension.
"So, you're the new wielder of One For All," he finally spoke, startling Melissa and invoking a small spurt of blood to jet out of Toshinori. "Don't give me that, Toshinori. You wouldn't have brought her here, otherwise. Nezu already called and briefed me on his plans, so coming all this way simply to reiterate the situation would have been pointless."
He saw Toshinori sag in his chair, though whether it was out of relief or embarrassment, he couldn't say. Nonetheless, he continued. "I had assumed at first that it was Izuku Midoriya who you passed it on to, given his frankly impossible powerset and your insistence that he would be a fine symbol. I chalked up his public refusal to be another you to angsty teenage rebellion."
"He mentioned that he received an internship offer from you after the sports festival," Toshinori mused in understanding.
"I indeed sent him one," Nighteye confirmed. "I intended to test his worthiness for One For All. Should I have found him lacking, I would have compelled him to give it back to you for further reevaluation of a more suitable successor."
Toshinori snorted. "Good luck with that. If he did have One For All, not even All For One would've been able to pry it away from him."
"Yes, I know that now," Nighteye sighed. "Which is why it was a shock as well as a relief when Mirio informed me of the sudden arrival of All Might's niece with a scarily similar, late-blooming quirk."
Toshinori blanched, and then he grew sheepish. "Ah, well, yes, I suppose to anyone in the know, it would be a bit obvious…"
"As well as to anyone not in the know," Nighteye bluntly assessed, returning his gaze from an increasingly shrinking Toshinori to Melissa. "But back to the point. You were the one chosen to inherit All Might's mantle as the Symbol of Peace. Frankly, I'm not impressed."
"Mirai!" Toshinori hacked in indignation, but Nighteye simply raised his hand to silence him while keeping his gaze on Melissa's blank expression. "Nepotism notwithstanding, you are not a fighter. You're barely even a trained hero student. Your talents lie in support engineering, and conventional knowledge would suggest that you're nearly unmatched in that field given your pedigree."
As expected, a minute twitch marred her blank expression before it was squashed. Unbidden, he continued. "The mantle of our society's ultimate protector is not one to be treated lightly. The amount of time and work it would take to catch you up to where a suitable candidate should already be is not something I can look past just because of your personal connection to Toshinori, especially not when one of your peers is already an outstanding example of a symbol in the making. It is my opinion that you should relinquish the quirk to Mirio Togata for everyone's sake, including yours."
"It's not your choice to make, Mirai," Toshinori predictably rebuked with steel in his tone. "It never has been."
"When only one of us chooses to act rationally regarding the pillar keeping Japanese society from collapse, that becomes irrelevant," Nighteye argued back. "Those dogs of the Commission are looking to usurp your position and keep power within the hands of an unfeeling bureaucrat. This is no time to be putting a civilian through a training montage!"
"If I must re-emerge in the public eye to address the Commission myself, then I will do just that," Toshinori rebutted. "However, you don't get to dictate who my legacy goes to. When I was on I-Island, I saw a hero's spirit in the eyes of Melissa, the same spirit I've known was there since she was barely eye-level with my knees."
Toshinori's expression was already steely, but when it grew to be a solemn brand of blithesome, Nighteye knew he was in for another speech. "The insatiable desire to help those in need and the unbreakable will to do anything in her power to accomplish that has always been burning brightly within her, but it was a raging inferno all those months ago when I offered her my power. Since then, she has worked herself to the bone and then even harder than that to use One For All's awesome power. I've never been prouder of her. Passing on One For All to Melissa was my decision, one that I do not regret in the slightest."
Nighteye was at his wit's end with this. "Your sentimentality is making you foolish, Toshinori! By all practical measures, she is worthless! Are you forgetting what Foresight foretold? Now is no time to be playing this dangerous game with our lives!"
That particular verbiage may have been a mistake, as Toshinori's glare darkened into an abyss. "Do not ever call her worthless again."
"It's fine, Uncle Might," Shield surprisingly cut in, sparing him and this meeting from going even more tits-up than it already had.
"It's not fine, Melissa," Toshinori tried to argue, and Nighteye honestly couldn't fault him for it. Nighteye allowed his frustration to get the better of him and made a comment that was out of line (but no less accurate).
Shield simply sighed, waving him off as she crossed her legs and considered Nighteye with an unimpressed gaze. "I grew up in STEM. I know my way around a vainglorious fuckhead with Main Character Syndrome."
…Alright, that was fair. In principle, he could let that comment go despite the fact that it only proved that she, like Toshinori, didn't see the forest for the trees.
"Look, I can see that your heart is in the right place even if your head is so far up your ass that you can swallow your food twice," she continued, inadvertently smashing through the tension in the office and invoking another bloody hack from Toshinori. "But like Uncle Might said, it's not, nor was it ever, your choice to make. I knew exactly what I was getting into and what was being asked of me when I accepted One For All, and I'm ready for all of it. You were Uncle Might's sidekick once upon a time, so, respectfully, the only difference between you and my dad is that you're not facing life in prison, but your opinion on this matter is equally as worthless."
Nighteye had been making a concerted effort to not allow his frustration to bubble over again, but his fists clenched at that slight despite himself. He wasn't sure why either. The comparisons between himself and David Shield had been following him his entire career, even after he and All Might parted ways. It no longer bothered him that, to some, he was simply David Shield 2: Electric Boogaloo. It did not bother him that the specter of David Shield would always be hovering over his time at the side of the Symbol of Peace. It did not bother him that, to his knowledge, David Shield and Toshinori never fell out, ultimately leading to him bestowing the honor of his succession upon Shield's progeny over his-
"Besides," Shield continued, snatching him out of his thoughts, "One For All reached singularity. Togata is really nice, and I wouldn't just up and kill him by passing it along to him simply because you think I should."
Nighteye could have sworn that he heard a record scratch echo through the room upon that statement, and had Toshinori and Shield not looked equally startled, he would have assumed he had hallucinated it.
"Sorry, Sir, we're testing out the soundboard you ordered for mission debriefs," Centipeder's voice came over his desk intercom.
Nighteye cleared his throat and pressed the button on the intercom. "No harm, no foul, Centipeder. As you were."
Then, his narrowed gaze snapped back to the daughter of David Shield. "What exactly do you mean that One for All would kill Mirio?"
"Long story, and wholly irrelevant to why we're here," she succinctly answered, irritating him even further. "What matters is that I was trusted with the responsibility of One For All, and I'm not giving it up. You can accept that, and we can be colleagues because you're very important to Uncle Might despite yourself, or you can't, and Uncle Might and I walk through that door and never look back. Choice is yours."
Nighteye stared her down, and she stared right back at him, though the underlying heat in his glare wasn't at all returned. In truth, her expression wasn't exactly blank anymore, but it was still fairly unconcerned as if whatever decision he made was no skin off her back either way. He momentarily broke their silent battle of wills to look toward Toshinori, and the steel in his expression made it clear that he was in lockstep with his new apprentice. Nighteye could do little more than close his eyes and sigh. Knowing what was swiftly approaching from the horizon, his pride wasn't worth the headache.
"Fine," he eventually gave in. "On one condition."
Shield quirked a curious eyebrow at him. "And that is?"
Nighteye hesitated, but even he knew that this was necessary. "Allow me to use my quirk to see your future."
Toshinori was visibly taken aback by that. "Wait, seriously, Mirai? You're going this far?"
"If you're this sure about your decision, Toshinori, then I will respect it," he replied. "With that said, I would feel better knowing what is in store for her. While the future I see is immutable, that doesn't mean we can't still prepare for what's potentially to come."
Toshinori looked back at Shield, and she just shrugged, extending her arm for him to touch. Toshinori must have mentioned to her how Foresight functioned before they arrived. He'd have to beat him with a stick for that, but that could be done later.
"Just so you know, I don't believe in fate," she said as he reached across his desk to place his hand on her arm. "There are too many possibilities amongst temporal quirks for destiny to be fixed or for there to simply be a single timeline. Fatalism is also stupid and limiting, but that's just the scientist in me talking."
Nighteye pretended not to hear her as Foresight got to work, inundating him with scenes of Shield's yet unlived life. He wouldn't have the time to sit and parse through all of it right now, but he was taking note of the major scenes he was coming across along the way. He saw a sea of chains and red hair, the United States' No. 1 Hero, one horrifying monstrosity with a really big nose, an even more horrifying blob of a man with fleshy tendrils facing down Shield and a brightly burning Midoriya at once, a metric fuckton of purple portals, and…
What…
What in the FUCK was that??
Fortunately, neither Toshinori nor Shield questioned him going stockstill. They also did not question him when he shook his head and leaned back in his chair, likely assuming his frazzlement was him simply making sense of future events. He was afforded just enough time to compose himself.
"I…" he began, but his brain was still in shock. "I will need some time to piece all of it together. Thank you for allowing me to do it. I have some matters that I must attend to, however."
Thankfully, Toshinori did not push the subject and accepted the dismissal with a nod. "It was good to see you again, Mirai."
"You, as well," Nighteye nodded. "I will be in touch."
Once the two exited the office and the door closed shut behind them, Nighteye was in his desk drawer, and out came a bong and a lighter. He didn't care if he was still on the job; he was not going to be sober for the phone call he needed to make to Wash.
"And you're absolutely positive that this will lead us right to him?" Inko questioned once more, doing her level best to clamp down on the desperate hope threatening to bubble over as she stared at the tracker in Mei Hatsume's hands. "How can you be sure that he hasn't found and ditched the tracker by now?"
Mei sighed, slumping in her seat in front of Nezu's desk. The look about her was far wearier than Inko ever thought possible from the manic ball of genius attached to her son.
"It's possible that he knows I chipped the suit," Mei admitted. "Hell, it's probably a certainty that he does; I made it pretty clear that I didn't want him getting kidnapped again. Even so, he wouldn't be able to find it no matter how hard he tried, and he respects me way too much to destroy or ditch the suit."
Mei held the tracker out to her, her expression growing resolute. "This will find him. I'm sure of it."
Inko studied her face, and the steely determination in her expression matched the certainty in her declaration. Taking the tracker into her grasp, she allowed herself a single moment for her hope to swell within her, and she sent Mei a warm smile. "Thank you, Mei."
"He'll very likely be expecting a familiar face on his trail, which is why you're going alone, Inko," Nezu chimed in, gently swishing his cup of tea in his paw with a frown. "He won't immediately run from you. Just remember what we discussed."
Inko's face soured for a brief moment before she begrudgingly nodded. "Yes, I know. Bigger picture."
"Good," Nezu nodded, as well. Then, he retrieved a phone from his desk drawer and handed it to her. "You know what to do. Make this count."
Inko took the phone and turned toward the door, pulling her domino mask over her eyes as she exited the office.
Verdant was on the hunt.
"My dearest viewers, welcome to another installment of the dastardly activities of Gentle Criminal! Ordinarily, I would be out and about for whatever public display was on the agenda for that day. However, as you all can see, I'm very much inside and in a non-distinct, very untraceable location!"
True to his word, he was, indeed, standing inside a dimly lit room. In front of him was a long table covered in manila folders that were all so full of documents that many needed to be held together by rubber bands.
"There are two reasons for this," Gentle continued. "For one, it is quite risky for me to be outside these days, as you all may have imagined from the news of our latest adventure earning me an S-rank villain designation. Apparently, infiltrating the workplace of the nation's highest elected officials to disrupt government proceedings grants you the unsightly label of 'domestic terrorist,' so I am now on the most wanted suspects lists of both the NPA and the HPSC."
Despite the misfortune, Gentle's smile became a conspiratorial grin. "The second reason, my darlings, is much more special. This video is a collab!"
With a flourish, he stepped aside and gestured to the darkness behind him. Behind the camera, La Brava flipped the light switch, illuminating the back wall that had, "THE LEAGUE OF ANTI-VILLAINS JOINS THE GENTLE BRIGADE," tagged in pink sticky notes. Then, a purple, misty portal opened up in front of it and out stepped the League to join Gentle Criminal in the room. An unamused Tomura juxtaposed the clear excitement radiating from Spinner, Twice, and Mr. Compress as they approached the table.
"It is truly a pleasure to have you all here," Gentle greeted the group. "I'd like to believe this was an inevitability after our collaborative work in taking down J-Store."
"That was like fifteen chapters ago- OW!" Tomura grumbled before Kurogiri yanked his ear.
"Behave," Kurogiri warned with a narrowed glare.
"Indeed, it does feel like just yesterday," Gentle whimsically mused, and then he beckoned for them all to take a seat at the table before he faced the camera once more. "You all may be wondering why the League is here. Well, they have recently come into a wealth of troubling information that otherwise would have never been revealed to the people who deserve to know it the most: you, dear viewers. So, that's what we shall do for you today as well as in the coming weeks!"
He spun fabulously in place before taking his seat beside Tomura at the center of the table. "The League of Anti-Villains and I have many things in common, but one crucial thing is our response to uncouth behavior by those who should, and often do, know better. We abhor it, so what else to do besides take action against such uncouth behavior? Be it J-Store, the Creature Rejection Clan, Uncle Tetsu, the National Diet, or even the Hero Public Safety Commission, if there is uncouth behavior, the League and I will be there to expose and correct it."
"The Hero Public Safety Commission," Tomura mused with clear distaste. "Such a fascinating entity. How does the agency responsible for ensuring public safety concerning heroes and villains manage to get away with doing the opposite for so long?"
"By making the general public think that nothing is wrong," Spinner gruffly answered from beside him at the end of the table. "They're real good at that. Been doing it for decades now."
"It doesn't seem to be working for them as of recently," Mr. Compress chuckled from the other end of the table. "I'd say that someone was finally calling them out for their behavior in the form of Izuku Midoriya, but it appears that several people are joining in with the leaks about Hawks making the rounds."
Gentle Criminal then took back the mantle as everyone grabbed and unbound a folder. "So, in the spirit of sharing the wealth, why don't we go into greater detail about the currently MIA Winged Hero than the leaks do? This, our adoring fans, is the first of our exposé series we're conducting about the HPSC in which we unearth the skeletons they have been hiding from the public they're sworn to protect for far too long. The best part? This is all straight from the horse's mouth courtesy of the HPSC's recent data breaches that they have been very tight-lipped about."
He gestured to the plethora of full folders on the table in front of them. "As you can see, we have quite a lot to get through, which is why we are not streaming this. Instead, we will painstakingly comb through each of these documents and expose the Commission for all of their misdeeds here and now, and then these videos will be released weekly for ease of consumption. These videos will be released, as by the time you are seeing this, they will have already been backed up dozens of times over and their scheduled uploads will have been set. Even if we were all to meet gruesome, unspeakable deaths in the coming days, this series will not die alongside us."
"Enough preamble, let's get to the good stuff," Twice spoke up. "I think we need to hype this up even more!"
"And with that, ladies and gentlemen, grab a snack," Gentle advised. "This is episode one of our HPSC exposé, and we'll be discussing the Hero Commission's very own assassins: Hawks, and his predecessor, Lady Nagant."
It was an odd sight to find Japan's favorite adrenaline junkie sitting still during a patrol, though there hadn't been a whole lot of normalcy in her life to speak of recently. Sitting up on a rooftop somewhere in Fukuoka, Mirko stared at the bustling city in contemplative silence. The hunt for her wayward dumbass had turned up squat thus far, despite the many breadcrumbs he had been leaving. First, there was the express delivery of Airjet to Madame President (and holy shit did she nearly bust a gut when she heard about that), and then he left Mr. Brave as a human piñata in the middle of Osaka. Hell, X-Less turning up with two black eyes and a mean case of testicular torsion the morning prior was the entire reason she was in Kyushu. She didn't know if he was heading west for any particular reason or if it was simply coincidence, but she was going to catch up to him… wherever he was hiding in this fucking city.
"I hope you're safe out there, brat," she sighed in stereo with the late-autumn breeze gliding past her, bringing her iridescent scarf to billow alongside it. "Can't beat your ass something fierce for going rogue without me if you're dead."
And wasn't that a nice thought? She'd beat his ass like there was no tomorrow, make him heal himself, and then they could storm the HPSC headquarters and wreck shit together. Individually, they'd probably be overwhelmed at some point, but as a duo, there wasn't a whole lot that could stop them from bulldozing a trail straight to Madame President's office before they tore her limbs off. He was already mowing down her top guys on his own as it was, those new Paragon fucks notwithstanding. All they needed was some bulletproof gear from Nezu to avoid the antipersonnel gunfire they'd be bound to face among who knows what else.
Nezu had to have a stash of that lying around somewhere, right? People tended not to take his world-domination jokes as seriously as they probably should have…
Her ear twitched, and she was already leaping in the air as a shadow bolted beneath her, carving a trail across the roof on its lightning-fast path to smash into an adjacent building. She cursed when she came back down, blasting off from the roof and leaping into the hole her attacker left. The frazzled patrons of the rooftop restaurant stood in shock as the dark, muscular creature jerked its long neck to peer at Mirko from within the hood of skin that was keeping its bright, yellow eyes in the shadows.
"You… the strongest!" the Nomu rasped in twisted glee, a demented smile forming within the hood. "Show me strength!"
Mirko surveyed the scene to ensure for a moment before an equally savage grin developed on her face. "Bring it."
No further prompting was needed for Hood to tackle her back into the sky, launching into a frenetic tangle of muscle that was on an ever-increasing collision course with the pavement. Mirko wasn't prepared for the absurd strength of Hood as he knocked the wind out of her something fierce and immediately clamped onto her throat as they descended. She wasn't unmatched in close quarters for nothing, though, eventually muscling him off of her with her legs before flipping their orientation to have her feet planted on his freakish chest. Once she was sure they would land away from civilians, she double-stomped him the rest of the way, torpedoing him to the asphalt with a thunderous crash. Never one to ignore the double tap, her leg muscles flexed as she came down like a nuke with a Luna Fall straight to Hood's chest, cratering the street around them and driving Hood deeper into the ground.
"Show you strength, huh?!" Mirko barked victoriously. "Careful what you wish for-"
Hood's large, meaty hand snatched her by the face before she could even finish and tossed her through a nearby apartment building like a fastball. In a matter of a single second, she was crashing into an adjacent, far busier road than the side street they were just in, bouncing off of cars and smashing into a storefront like a bull in a china shop. If any butterflies thought for a moment they'd be allowed to flutter over her head, however, they were sorely mistaken, as Mirko was back on her feet the nanosecond frantic horns began to blare. Barely even registering what was happening beyond saving lives, Mirko flashed onto the sidewalk to snatch a pedestrian out of the way of a car that swerved in the commotion, all while extending her foot to halt the car's movement and prevent them from crashing.
Well, crashing into anything other than her. She could take it.
Her brain finally caught up with her instincts only to see that while she did prevent a civilian from being fatally hit, the cars she initially pinballed against had wound up crashing into storefronts on either side of the street, and traffic was swiftly grinding to a halt. By some miracle, a massive pileup was avoided, but she wouldn't count her blessings just yet, as Hood chose that moment to burst onto the scene with jets protruding from his shoulders. His abdomen, which she had caved in with her Luna Fall, was healing itself right before her eyes, and he grinned at her once more.
"Is that all you've got, hero?" he rasped again. "I expected more!"
'The hell kind of Nomu is this?' she contemplated with a frown. 'It's nothing like the reports from Hosu or Kamino. Wish I was there to see for myself.'
She narrowed her glare and cracked her neck in anticipation. 'Doesn't matter. I'll tear this fucker apart until he stops growing back.'
She had to hold that thought, though. The police were finally arriving to set up a perimeter and evacuate civilians out of harm's way, and with them came a few other local pros. Leading the pack was the only one of them she actually recognized, Eel Boy, who extended his arms and activated his quirk, shooting two giant eels at Hood in an effort to capture him. Hood didn't even spare them a glance as slimy, gray balls shot out of his back in the direction of the other pros, revealing themselves to be even more Nomu.
"Shit!" she swore before leaping into action, darting directly into the fray of a group of Nomu that forewent the pro heroes entirely and directly targeted civilians. A quick but impactful overhand punch to the exposed brain stunned one before she followed through and slammed its head to the pavement. Now surrounded, she did a handstand on the downed Nomu and cartwheeled, battering the other Nomus with a Luna Ring. She barely even heard the stuttered, "Thank you," from the man she saved before Hood's big, meaty claws slammed into her and swept her back into the air.
"No distractions!" Hood growled, his free arm bulging and shapeshifting into an unholy wing while the hulking mass that had become of his other arm squeezed her abdomen like a lemon.
Mirko just grinned back at him, clamping down on the offending arm like a vice with all of her limbs before heaving as hard as she could to disrupt his flight. She managed to drag him off course enough to crash them both into another building, this one an empty high-rise apartment building that was nearing completion. Tumbling through the vacant rooms and hallways like excited wrecking balls, Hood's grip on her slackened, and she immediately took advantage by yanking herself free and stomping his extra-long neck, pinning him to the ground as she kept his arm in her grasp and wrenched. A satisfying pop echoed through the empty living spaces, but that wasn't enough; she kept wrenching, relishing the tearing and unholy squelch that arrived when she finally ripped Hood's arm right off of his shoulder.
That still wasn't enough. She hoisted the dismembered arm over her head before slamming it into Hood's face, pulverizing him through the floor over and over and over again until the arm was a mangled mess. Then, with a vicious roar, she squarely stomped on his face for good measure. As the Nomu's body went limp and the building finally stopped shaking, Mirko almost breathed a sigh of relief.
Almost.
It was her keen senses sharpened through over a decade of combat that compelled her to bend out of the way of the winged arm taking a swipe at her from below. Unfortunately, she wasn't quite quick enough to evade the sweep from Hood's stump of an arm that took her off her feet, and within a mere moment, the previously motionless Hood was now standing over Mirko with an even sicker, more excited grin.
"'Tis but a scratch," he damn near salivated, licking his malformed teeth with his slimy tongue.
Mirko's feet were faster than lightning and aimed to knock those teeth right out, but Hood's reflexes were even faster, snatching her by the ankle and hoisting her off the floor before slamming her straight through it. They fell through and crashed into the next floor down, but Hood was prepared and grabbed her ankle again before she could move, repeating his actions until she was sent through the floor a second time. When her back impacted the next floor down, he didn't even bother picking her up, instead just leaping through the two holes above to gain some momentum for a grand cannonball that brought them crashing through the remaining floors until the ground floor finally put an end to their journey. To add insult to injury, Hood then kicked her like a soccer ball out of the building and into the street.
The stabbing pain in Mirko's ribs went ignored as she dragged herself to her feet, blood dribbling out of her mouth through her gritted teeth. Sounds attacked her from all angles: the police corralling civilians away from the action, news teams reporting on the battle, scattered voices worriedly cheering her on, and even the odd asshole shouting that she deserved this for backing a villain. All of those sounds went ignored in favor of Hood strutting out of the building, the muscle and flesh of his arm growing back in as it finished regenerating. His toothy grin was still in place, though it was far more unhinged. His hood was fully pulled back, showcasing the exposed, damaged brain that made up his face.
"The strongest…" Hood began, his raspy baritone skipping like a damaged vinyl record, "…do not concern with puny humans."
The missing chunks of brain matter surrounding his wild eyes clued her in on the reason for his sudden malfunctioning. She knew exactly what she needed to do.
"You… are slowing down," Hood hacked, continuing his menacing strut as Mirko stumbled back into a kneel. "…Why?"
"Us puny humans don't have infinite stamina like you build-a-bears," she snidely remarked while closely watching his approach.
Hood stared at her for a long moment, his hood of skin curling back over his face to submerge his narrowing eyes back in shadow. Then, he pounced, lashing at Mirko with a thick hoof for a hand to paint the road with her brain. This time, Mirko was faster, dodging the hit and coiling around the Nomu to mount his head. Hood quickly found his neck trapped in the inescapable vice that was Mirko's legs. He pawed at her legs, arms, abdomen, and even her face to pry her off to no avail.
"Stubborn human," Hood coughed, digging his claws into the flesh of Mirko's legs. "Not strongest… so die!"
She gave him the bloodiest grin she could muster. "Sure thing! When it's time to die, I will! Till then, you first!"
With practiced ease, she twisted her body backward and yanked Hood's head with all her might, tearing it clean off his neck before smashing it into the street. "Luna Tijeras!"
The impact was so resounding that the tremors were felt in the bones of every man, woman, and child for several blocks. Civilians, police, and reporters alike were nearly knocked off their feet, but once the dust settled, they erupted into raucous cheering. Mirko stood in the center of the carnage, her mouth bloody, her hair stained red, and many of her ribs broken, but proudly she stood above the motionless body of a bioengineered monster surrounded by a sea of the people she put her life on the line for. This was a damn fine statement to make as the nation's new Number One.
Now, if only that fucking Nomu was actually dead.
"'Tis but a flesh wound!" Hood's severed head screeched as it rose from the crater like a phoenix, silencing the cheers and transmuting it into panic while bone and muscle grew from its neck to regenerate its lost body.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Mirko bitterly sighed, turning back around to face the rapidly recovering Nomu. "I can fucking hear you regenerating."
Unbidden, Hood fully reconstituted in all his grotesque glory, his skin hood pulled back again to place his wild, manic smile on display again. The insanity in his eyes was only matched by the length of his teeth, and his arms split into several sharp tendrils as he cackled in unhinged glee for yet another clash. Mirko sighed, finally acknowledging how viciously painful it was to simply breathe. If this was how she was going to go down, then she'd make damn sure he'd have to tear her limb from limb before the job was done. Hood attacked, closing the distance between them in no time at all. Rearing the sharp tendrils back, he was ready to cut Mirko to ribbons while Mirko's legs flexed to leap over him the second he got within a hair's reach.
She wasn't expecting a colorful wisp to zip into her vision, nor was she expecting Hood to be batted away mid-charge as if he was hit by a runaway freight train, crashing back into the vacant highrise with a hilarious thud.
She really wasn't expecting Izuku fucking Midoriya to be standing protectively in front of her, quirk blazing like a shining star.
"Holy shit, it's Midoriya!" Kaminari shouted to the rest of 1-A that wasn't already watching the news coverage of the villain fight. What started as just he, Sero, Mineta, Shoji, and Sato watching TV quickly found the entire class huddling around the couch to see their lost classmate safe and sound. Leading the pack was, predictably, Shoto and Bakugo (who had, for whatever reason, been trusted enough to be released from his restraints). Aizawa and Midnight, who were still watching their students like hawks, stood at the fringes of the group to observe the scene.
"MAKE WAY!" Ochako's emphatic shout startled the group, but they parted like the sea to allow her and an equally determined-looking Eri to make their way to the front of the pack where they plopped down right on the floor to watch Eri's big brother kick some villain ass.
Izuku's glare could ignite entire swaths of rice fields, and the full brunt of it was focused on the Nomu re-emerging from the building he kicked it into. Hood's excited gaze met the fury pouring out of Izuku's emerald eyes, and a monstrous smile bloomed.
"STRONGER!" Hood's distorted, horrific cheer would haunt the nightmares of everyone in earshot for many years to come. "Stronger human!"
Izuku looked the Nomu up and down, and his glare merely deepened. Turning back to his mentor, his gaze immediately landed on her abdomen, taking note of the nearly imperceptible twitch of her ribs with every labored breath.
"Did he do this to you?" he asked, his caring tone juxtaposing the murderous intent in his eyes.
"Tch," was all she could muster, looking away from her not-sidekick. "I'm fine."
She would've been offended if it was anyone else. The message was received, though, and Izuku turned back to Hood getting ready for another clash.
"All For One's dead," Izuku probed. "Who sent you?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Hood chuckled, an awful intonation reminiscent of dragging newborn babies along gravel.
It didn't matter much to Izuku either way, it simply confirmed that All For One still had associates with access to Nomus. It wouldn't surprise him if they also had his original quirk containing the last soul fragment in their possession. Given this one could speak and seemed at least somewhat intelligent, it was definitely of a higher breed than the one from the USJ or the horde in Hosu. A lot of work would have gone into developing it, so annihilating it would no doubt put Izuku on their shit list and potentially spur them to act against him even more brazenly.
With that settled, he cracked his neck and ignited into 2nd Gear, power emanating from him in waves that caused his radiant scarf to billow and visibly excited Hood even more. A furious stomp from beside him brought his attention to Mirko sidling up to him, her indignation outweighing her injuries.
"You've lost your fucking mind if you think you're benching me, you little shit!" she barked. "This was my fight, and I'm not sitting on the sidelines to let you finish it!"
"Who said I wanted you to?" Izuku remarked with a small smirk, and in a flash, she was engulfed in intense, pink fire.
She practically felt her ribs snapping back into place and the bruising of her diaphragm vanishing like the wind. Blinking, she took a deep breath and exhaled it with a grin when she felt no discomfort to speak of.
"Holy fuck," she marveled, clenching her fists with a feral grin. "You're almost forgiven for running off-"
"ENOUGH WAITING!" Hood bellowed, kicking off the battle with a wild charge and swiping his constantly deforming arms at the pair.
Izuku lightly shoved Mirko out of harm's way while spawning a bright, orange wall in Hood's path. Hood smashed right through it, but the millisecond delay was all Izuku needed to swerve around Hood's arms and plunge a boosted uppercut right into his chest that rocketed him into the air. Izuku blasted off right after him to continue his assault, leveling Hood with a fierce combo of punches to every inch of his body. He punctuated a series of haymakers to Hood's maybe-kidneys by pooling crimson flames in his right gauntlet and driving it into Hood's chest. Then, he fired the flames out of the grills in his gauntlet in a superheated burst that lanced straight through Hood, punching a massive hole in his midsection and launching him away.
He wasn't launched as far as Izuku anticipated, however. Rather than be blasted into a nearby, uninhabited tower, Hood came to a screeching halt in midair and faced Izuku with the same devilish grin he sported for the duration of the battle.
"Good…" Hood cooed, the hole in his chest quickly closing back up. "…But not enough!"
As if it was his turn, Hood shot off toward Izuku with the blinding speed his shoulder jets enabled, an enlarged, grotesque hand slamming into Izuku while his other arm twisted into serrated blades. Hood's hand squeezed him tightly as he prepared to hack Izuku to pieces, but the entirety of Izuku's body flashed red, and he became a ball of crimson fire within an instant, incinerating Hood's giant paw nearly instantly. Undeterred, Hood swung his other arms, but violet spikes emerged from the crimson fireball and stabbed straight through them, halting their advance. A fiery hand shot out of the ball and clamped onto Hood's neck, and before anyone knew it, the already intense fireball expanded to engulf Hood in a bright, red light show.
The spectators on the ground and all those watching at home were awed by the spectacle. This would do absolutely nothing to stop the rumors of Izuku being the result of Endeavor bottoming for All Might.
Back in the air, Izuku hovered in place, lowering his arm that was now holding on to nothing as he scanned around for any sight of Hood. A flare of that magnitude should have incinerated him, but Izuku wasn't going to drop his guard even for a-
A white blur zoomed past him, and he snapped his head around to see Mirko kicking the shit out of the floating head of Hood before it could sneak up on him.
"…second," Izuku lamely muttered, shooting his violet flames out to catch Mirko and deposit her on a nearby rooftop.
"Tearing off his head won't take him down, and he's already really stubborn as is," Mirko called out to him. "He can take a serious beating and keep on ticking."
As she said this, Hood's head flew back onto the scene, the rest of his body reforming just as quickly. A plethora of spiked tendrils shot out of his arms once more, covering a wide enough area in an attempt to skewer them both. Mirko and Izuku both easily evaded them, but the spikes heading toward the windows of buildings were a problem. With the snap of a finger, Izuku was engulfed in purple and shooting as many tendrils as he could muster in every direction. He hadn't attempted something like this before with violet, but that didn't matter as he blocked and intercepted as many of Hood's spikes as possible. Trapping him in a tangled test of strength.
He only noticed Hood's smile when it was too late, and before he could disengage, Hood used their newfound connection to close in on Izuku like a zip line. Fortunately, Mirko was right there with them to slam a devastating dropkick into Hood to knock him off course long enough for Izuku to break the hold.
Izuku did not do that, however, instead choosing to yank Hood back toward him.
"The hell are you doing?" Mirko shouted as she landed atop another building.
Izuku, meanwhile, began pooling his violet flames into his palm to form a dense ball. "If he can regenerate from just his head, what happens if there is no head to regenerate with?"
As if to punctuate his question, jolts of crimson fire shot into the ball and intermingled with the violet flames within. Mirko caught on and took a few steps back, and Izuku slammed the developing ball into Hood's excited face. He focused, not allowing the ball to blow just yet as the indomitable flames of 2nd Gear carried him straight up into the sky. Meanwhile, the violet ball was steadily growing larger and larger, expanding from the size of a softball to that of a beach ball until it was ballooning even larger than Izuku and Hood combined. The once violet construct had grown into a glowing, cerise monstrosity, empowered by the crimson fire heating it beyond comprehension. The flames of the mini sun in Izuku's grasp were cooking Hood from the inside out, but his regeneration worked just as fast to keep him in fighting shape.
No matter, the battle was already over.
"Supernova!" Izuku shouted to the heavens, firing the massive ball of superheated death straight through the clouds, taking Hood along with it. The death ball flew a considerable distance into the stratosphere before Izuku allowed himself to breathe and descend back down.
Then, it detonated, unleashing a titanic explosion over the city, the force of which rocketed Izuku back down to Earth like a meteorite. 2nd Gear ignited once again to slow his descent, leaving a superbly colorful trail in his wake. For those on the ground, the explosion was a vibrant light show of violet and crimson splashing over the orange hues of the setting sun. The comet-like rainbow falling back to Earth simply completed the beautiful mosaic left behind from the monumental clash. Even so, every single spectator held their breath, not daring to utter a word before Beacon resurfaced. The comet continued on its return voyage, creeping ever closer to the ground with every passing second. Then, as it passed through the skyline, a white blur intercepted it, marginally slowing it down as the fiery ball bounced between buildings on its way down. Eventually, they crashed into the ground, carving a deep trench in the street until they finally came to a stop.
A brave few hurried forward to see the wreckage, but before they could make any ground, two scarves emerged from the ground, one nestled behind a curtain of white hair while the other dressed a mop of green. Out from the ashes triumphantly rose Beacon and Mirko, and as the public's joy of their victory finally set in, Izuku took a few steps forward and blasted the full breadth of his quirk, launching a rainbow inferno into the sky to thunderous cheers.
"HELL YEAH, MIDORI!" Toru was the first to go wild at her friend's victory, but that sentiment was unanimously shared throughout Heights Alliance as the class flipped their shit in celebration.
"How is he always so cool?!" Mineta half-whined, half-worshiped through a fountain of tears. His pride-filled crying paused when a tap on his knee brought his attention to an equally tearful Eri offering him some tissue.
"Don't feel bad," Eri said, her voice filled with pride of her own. "It's genetic."
The fact that Eri was literally adopted was not at all lost on him, but he opted to leave it alone.
Behind the students, Midnight finally allowed herself to release the breath she was holding, whereas Aizawa was grumbling something about a "favorite problem child giving him a goddamn heart attack."
Izuku exhaled, smoke billowing from his mouth and the vents on his arms as he powered down. Mirko stepped up beside him and patted him on the back in the only way Mirko knew how, by nearly knocking Izuku off his feet.
"You did good today, Big Green," she complimented, stilling Izuku's heart.
"…Big Green?" he tentatively asked, probing the words as if they weren't real.
Mirko smiled at him, and it was very different from the grins and smirks she usually gave him. This one was soft and had all the warmth of a proud older sibling. "You've officially graduated."
Somewhere deep inside of Izuku, an old, neglected piece of him sputtered to life, and tears rapidly trickled down his cheeks. "Thank you…"
Before she could question why he was crying, he latched onto her and enveloped her in a tight, warm hug. "Thank you for everything, Mirko."
She only blue-screened for a second before she returned the embrace, understanding exactly what he was thanking her for. "Kid, I practically went rogue for you. You can call me Rumi, y'know."
That did nothing to stem the tears one bit, but it didn't matter to either of them. All that mattered to Rumi was that she finally found her boy, and Izuku simply relished knowing that he still had support after making the epitome of rash decisions at the school festival.
Unfortunately, the moment wouldn't last. The police did their best to prevent civilians from crowding the area, but the sidewalks were quickly becoming packed with people, least of all the press trying to get a good shot of Japan's No. 1 Hero embracing the most controversial terrorist in recent memory. To make matters worse, Mirko picked up on another figure bounding across the rooftops toward them, and her eyes narrowed as she broke the embrace to prepare for their lives getting substantially more complicated.
Izuku turned around to witness a man in a black and red armored suit drop from the heavens and impact the ground like a 21st-century superhero. He sported a cocky smirk and an excited gleam in his eye when he set his gaze upon them. The crowd on all sides gasped and murmured in… shock? Anticipation? Indigestion? Izuku wasn't entirely sure, to be honest.
"Rumi Usagiyama," the new arrival smarmily addressed before pausing with clearly insincere regret. "Sorry, Mirko. I should probably be a little more ceremonial with the Number One Hero."
He paused again, placing his hand on his chin to exaggeratedly consider something. "Then again, you won't be for long now that I'm here."
Silence was all the duo offered in response to that. Izuku stared blankly at him, whereas Mirko merely arched an unimpressed eyebrow.
Taking their silence in stride, he pressed on, patting the bold 1 emblazoned on his chest. "Allow me to formally introduce myself. I'm Unbreakable, your very soon-to-be Number One Hero. After all, this country deserves a Number One that they can look up to. They deserve a Number One that they can relate to. They deserve a Number One that's not… defective."
Mirko blinked, her annoyance steadily climbing the longer he spoke. Her first instinct was to kick him in the throat.
There was no second instinct.
Unknowing or perhaps uncaring of the fate about to befall him, he pressed with no less haughtiness than he arrived with, physically waving Mirko off. "Anyway, I'm not here for you, so you can step aside and watch a real hero at work while I bring in this-"
A single flash of yellow later, Izuku's fiery, green fist slammed into Unbreakable's jaw faster than anyone could blink, jettisoning him down the street until he came to a violent stop thanks to a parked car. His limp, unconscious body slid to the pavement in a pathetic heap while everyone on the scene and watching at home was left in stunned silence.
Izuku, on the other hand, simply turned and calmly walked away. It would be best if he vacated the scene while the other pros were still processing what was happening. He wasn't sure who or how many among them would jump at the chance to bring him in. Slight movement in his periphery showed him that one such hero shook off his stupor and stepped forward, but a firm hand to his shoulder from Eel Boy (as well as an even firmer shake of his head) kept him begrudgingly in place. Then, Izuku spotted a field reporter and cameraman on the sidewalk near him. In his hands was an opportunity to deal yet another blow to the Commission, and he gladly took it.
The reporter was brought back down to Earth upon his approach and quickly got herself together. Rather than wait for her to speak, Izuku motioned to the cameraman. "You rolling?"
When the cameraman nodded, Izuku gave a piercing glare to the lens before thumbing over to Unbreakable's beaten form. "That jackass's bones are made of tungsten, not titanium. His natural enemy is a decent pair of pliers. If this is supposed to be one of the Commission's best and brightest that they trained themselves, then maybe their dissolution was long overdue."
On that emphatic note, Beacon blasted off once again.
"That infernal, mangy, supercilious vermin! I should have had him gunned down in the street like a dog years ago when I had the chance!"
The HPSC headquarters was experiencing a chaotic shitstorm which, admittedly, had been a running theme of late. Nowhere else was that more evident than in Madame President's newly repaired office where the bandaged woman in question was seething in front of her computer. She suspected that the sudden virus that ravaged their private network was Nezu's doing, but the wave of bots posting classified information about Hawks only confirmed it. The blasted rodent compromised their network and then struck before they had the capacity to suppress the leaks. She'd acknowledge how clever of a play it was if she wasn't absolutely livid.
And that wasn't even the only thing drawing her fury, as evidenced by the shattered screen of the television monitor lying defeated on her floor. She got a front-row seat for her traitorous No. 1 hero and the newest candidate for the bane of her existence, Izuku Midoriya, fighting a Nomu in Fukuoka. Wasn't All For One dead? Was Tomura Shigaraki still in possession of them after he turned on him? Questions for later; what mattered at the moment was Midoriya embarrassing one of her Paragons with a single blow, and to add insult to injury, he directly lambasted her to the entire country after doing so.
"If this is supposed to be one of the Commission's best and brightest that they trained themselves, then maybe their dissolution was long overdue."
These were the words that brought her fist to the screen. Oh, how she yearned to wring that boy's skinny, little neck. She usually counted down the days until she would have Nezu's taxidermied body in a display case in her home, but now, she'd prepare a cozy spot on her mantle for that boy's head-
"Madame President!" a breathless, disheveled Junji Mishima called as he nearly burst into the room.
"Mishima, unless a Boeing has struck Azabudai Hills, I will have you drawn and quartered for barging into my office!" she spat with such corrosive venom that Mishima physically ducked to spare his head.
"It's, uh," he sputtered, summoning up the will to say what he needed to before he lost his nerve entirely, "It's even worse than that, Madame President."
"What the fuck could be worse than that, Mishima?" she heatedly pressed, now at the bare end of her patience.
Mishima cautiously stepped into the office and shakily held up a tablet once he reached her desk. Huffing through her mouth because her nose was still packed with gauze and in a splint, she angrily tapped the screen to play whatever video Mishima felt was so urgent as to bring to her attention immediately.
"My dearest viewers, welcome to another installment of the dastardly activities of Gentle Criminal!"