Chapter 70: Shifting Winds: Ch 3
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-Rain of Sins-
-Shifting Winds: Ch 3-
Pawn Log: Toga Himiko.
The recent employees I've acquired are… an interesting bunch.
Putting aside the mental trauma, parental issues, and numerous loose screws that come bundled with these three, they're inherently a security risk.
Toga in particular is a gamble. Between her split loyalty to Stain, and her mental instability, she is by far the highest likelihood source of a data breach, double agent, or simple abandonment.
One of my highest concerns is that her past trauma with "doctors" will supersede logical reasoning and cause her to consistently have shifting thoughts on her loyalty to me, without any basis on what I personally do for or to her.
When we move onto the matter of her quirk, however, I believe the potential outweighs any potential risk.
Her ability to mimic someone down to the fingerprint and retina pattern has terrifying potential for undercover operations. From the precursory scans of her quirk in action, and how it, for a lack of a better word, subsumes the genetic code of the blood she drinks, she should theoretically even be able to mimic the quirks of those she turns into.
The thought of pairing that with some sort of "genetic memory" databank gives me chills, and my first thought is that it reminds me of-
[DATA EXPUNGED]
Erase that IMMEDIATELY! All of it! My systems have proven to already be compromised, and the last thing I want to do is give him any ideas!
-Rain of Sins-
Once upon a time, well before the Villain known as Mustard ever made his debut, there was a boy named Sulfur. His parents were model citizens on the surface, his mother an accountant for a bank and his father an ex Hero who had been forced to retire from an injury to his chest, and received a minimum wage stipend from the state every month for his past service.
But beneath that shiny exterior was a toxic relationship. His mother was deeply jealous of her sister, a rising star in the Hero scene, and had only been interested in her husband because he had been above her sister in the rankings.
Of course a marriage based on spite was never going to last, and it fell apart the moment Sulfur had been born. His mother's toxic breath quirk made her lungs immune to cigarette damage, and she had assumed it would make her pregnancy unaffected by it as well- she was wrong.
As a result Sulfur was born sickly and very underweight, and the resulting argument between his parents found them divorced shortly afterwards.
His mother didn't want him, so his father raised him instead. The ex Hero was spiteful towards his son, and blamed him for the loss of his marriage. It didn't help that Sulfur had inherited a gas based quirk, similar to his mothers.
Funds were low, food was always in short supply, and the verbal abuse was constant. His father would shout at him, berate him over anything he could find justification for, and constantly make snide remarks, but never got physical, never hit Sulfur. But it did get close several times, and while his father wasn't a good man he also wasn't a monster. He realized the way things were deteriorating, and sent Sulfur to live with his Uncle at the age of 13.
In comparison to his actual birth parents, his new adoptive parents were the perfect family. But, well, they were too perfect.
Sulfur had lived in a beat up apartment in a low income neighborhood all his life, and suddenly he was being sent to a snazzy private school and expected to somehow both fit in and make top grades. Meanwhile at home he now had a 7pm curfew, wasn't allowed to watch TV on weekdays, wasn't allowed to lock the door to his room, wasn't allowed to wear headphones over both ears, and when his parents found his stash of "cultured magazines" they shredded them and threw them in the dumpster.
Overloaded with rules when before he'd had none. Given responsibilities he never wanted. Shackled with expectations he could never live up to. Demanded to get grades he'd never even come close to before in his entire life.
Was it any surprise that he became rebellious? That all the bullying at school had caused him to snap and try to make it on his own? Did that make him a bad Villain? Because instead of fighting for some injustice, or even just to get money for rent, he was doing it to make a name for himself and let off steam?
He didn't think so, but he wouldn't be surprised if few others agreed with him.
…
Sulfur woke up to the muffled sound of alarms blaring through thick sheet metal.
Groggily he opened his eyes, a headache pounding in his skull and his vision swimming. He tries to sit up, only to find he is unable to, his arms and legs are strapped to a cold, steel operating table.
The place he was in must once have been a state-of-the-art medical facility. Now, it was in ruins. The room was shrouded in darkness, broken only by sporadic red flashes from the malfunctioning emergency lights, casting eerie, fleeting shadows that danced on the cracked tiles and peeling walls. An acrid smell of smoke stung his nose with every breath, mixed with the metallic tang of blood. Shattered glass and discarded surgical instruments littered the floor, glinting ominously in the intermittent light. Distant alarms echo through long metal hallways, punctuated by distant screams and the terrifyingly close CRACK of gunfire.
"Wh-What the Hell?"
Once again he tried to move, but the metal clasps on his wrists held firm.
In the darkness, he could hear something over the sound of the alarms- unnatural, guttural noises growing ever closer, accompanied by the shuffle of heavy, dragging footsteps.
Slowly a nomu lumbered out of the darkness. It was a scrawny thing, but the mouth full of jagged blood stained teeth easily made up for any lost intimidation factor from its lack of muscles.
Instinctively he wanted to use his quirk, but wasn't that a shit idea? It would just knock him out, and there was no telling if it would even affect whatever this thing was!
"Shit! Fuck! Come ON!"
The metal clamp around his right wrist ripped free with a snap, and his hand shot forward with blistering speed that he'd never possessed before. He grabbed the nomu's head, which seemed much smaller than it should be, and slammed it into the table with enough force to pop its skull like a grape.
Mustard stared at his bloody hand in shock. How in the world had he done that? And was it just the flushing lights, or was his hand bigger than usual for some reason?
And then the memories started coming back to him.
"I was put to sleep for some kind of… enhancement procedure, or something. An improved version of whatever gave the Sovereign his strength."
With his dominant hand free, and able to get some actual leverage, he was able rip the metal clamps off his limbs one by one- each one coming off faster than the last until he tumbled off the table and onto the cold floor.
"Bigger hands, bigger muscles, I'm definitely taller too." He mused to himself as he stood up straight and flexed his fingers. His joints ached something fierce but that was probably just a temporary sign of progress. At least he hoped it was. "I feel like Captain America, or would it be Captain Japan?"
His train of thought came to a screeching halt as he spotted the suit hanging from a metal suspension frame in the corner of the room.
Even with his new height, the ATLAS suit towered over him by another foot. It was also much more complete looking than the last time he'd seen it, with most of the internal servos covered up by thich metal plates, and no exposed wires. The back was split open down the middle, by two extendable hatches, like a beetle shell, making it clear how you were supposed to enter it.
"Nah, I'm not Captain Japan." Mustard grinned like an idiot as he ran his thumb over the pitch black visor that reflected his own eyes back at him. "I'm motherfucking John Masterchief!"
-Rain of Sins-
A deep purple fog rolled down the hallways of the Origin Lab's lower levels, and as it approached you could hear a rhythmic beating drawing closer.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Thunk.
A metallic behemoth, made of abyssal blue armor so dark it was almost black, slowly made its way through the underground laboratory.
The place was a fucking mess. Whatever had caused the power outage had damaged the structure of the building so badly that parts of it were sagging, and had knocked most of the security systems offline that were keeping all of the beasties contained.
Most of the loose creatures fell quickly to the fog, choking on their own breath, but plenty of others were completely unaffected- a clear sign of the Sovereign's genetic tampering.
Not that it really mattered, of course.
A spider the size of a great dane leapt at Mustard, and with a single swing of his arm, he turned it into a green splatter on the wall.
Oh yeah. This suit was awesome.
To him, it was a logical evolution. Mustard at his peak had a gas mask that filtered air, and a wide arsenal of stolen weapons. Now that he had the backing of Japan's greatest Villain, he had a suit that gave him his own circulated atmosphere! It had vents on the back if he wanted to put out a big cloud like he normally did with his quirk, and big nozzles built into the forearms so he could shoot it out in concentrated blasts, like some kind of chemical flamethrower!
And as for weapons?
A bear covered in lizard scales, with a scorpion tail, and an insectoid mouth, let out a screech like nails on a chalkboard as it charged him.
Sulfur raised a "handgun" about the size of a cinder block and pulled the trigger.
BOOM
The sound it made when it fired wasn't from the gun at all, rather it was the noise of the railgun shot obliterating whatever it hit in an explosion of pure kinetic energy.
The bear fell to the ground, missing the top half of its body, and the middle of Mustard's gun slotted the next of three available rounds into place as if it was a massively scaled up revolver. (Of course the "bullets" were just solid rods of tungsten that the magnets accelerated out the barrel, so they weren't really "bullets" by definition.)
He was in the middle of a containment breach in the Sovereign's lab, and it was basically a walk in the park! Holt shit he was awesome!
Well, okay that was a bit of a stretch. It wasn't like the entire facility was out to get him or anything- that would have been an actual nightmare. For every abomination that had taken advantage of the brief power outage to break free, there were five that stayed huddled in their containers. And even more interesting were the monsters that had apparently stayed loyal. There were packs of Crows that had formed kill squads and were viciously hunting down anything that moved and wasn't human.
He blocked a punch from a basic bitch strength nomu, then reared back and slugged it in the chest so hard that it went flying down the hallway.
"That was WEAK!" Mustard laughed as he rolled his arms, relishing in the sound of the servos whirring as he did so. "Come on, give me a challenge!"
The nomu roared in challenge as it got back to its feet, but before it could charge him it decided to evaporate into a plasma-like gas.
Mustard swore in surprise as a massive lance of green energy shot through the wall in front of him, melting the metal like glass, and obliterating the nomu. It swung left, bisecting the building, and causing entire sections of the lab to collapse down on themselves.
Mustard stood rooted to the spot, his breath caught in his throat, as he watched the beam of pure energy sear through the air with a light so intense it would have blinded him without his helmet. Windows exploded outward in a shower of molten glass, and the walls buckled, twisting and warping as if made of wax. The heat was palpable, a searing wave that washed over him even through his suit's airtight insulation, scorching the ground beneath his feet. The beam's passage left a trail of molten slag. Steel beams melted, running like liquid metal down the sides of the collapsing structure. Flames erupted from ruptured gas lines, adding to the chaos and casting a hellish glow over the scene. The air was filled with the deafening roar of collapsing concrete and the hiss of vaporized materials, punctuated by the occasional thunderous boom as entire sections of the building gave way.
"What the fuck!?" Words failed him as he beheld the carnage in front of him.
The air was so thick with smoke and debris that he couldn't make out anything at all from the direction that the beam had come from. Couldn't make out anything except one singular shape.
Two glowing golden green eyes pierced through the smoke like lighthouses through dense sea fog. A broken Halo hovered over its head, covered in jagged thorns along its edges like a demonic crown.
Suddenly the room was filled with a brilliant blue light as a wave of sapphire flames surges forward to contest the green glow, and Mustard's eyes widened in surprise. Dabi was fighting this thing!
The youngest Todokoki laughed like a lunatic as he threw yet another rolling torrent of flames that surpassed his previous limit by leaps and bounds. And not only was he not keeling over in pain from being flash fired alive, he was shivering! His teeth were chattering, and he felt like he was in an arctic storm, as his quirk drained every ounce of excess heat in his body to push his fire ever further!
And it wasn't just the amount of fire that had improved, he'd never had this much control before! With a snap of his fingers, his flames snaked forward in thin streams, circling around the green demon and exploding in a pillar of heat that easily matched his father's best attacks.
But it didn't do anything.
Two ghostly wings snapped out, blowing the pillar of flame away, and Dabi had to hurl himself to the side to avoid a volley of energy spears that burned through the wall where he had just been standing and continued through it with no sign of stopping.
"Hey! Leave him alone!" Mustard shouted and raised his arm to shoot a geyser of poisonous gas directly at the creature, and his quirk washed over it like high tide hitting a beach. Whatever it was, it was completely unaffected, but that wasn't why he had done it.
Able to feel the gaps in his fog where physical objects were, he aimed at the exact point where the center mass of its head was, and pulled the trigger.
His jaw dropped as the railgun bounced off the figure as it was a styrofoam nerf bullet.
The glowing eyes turned to him, and there was a motion in the smoke that felt like a handwave. Suddenly a bolt of green light shot at him faster than he could possibly react, it slammed into his shoulder with enough heat to boil the thick metal into slag, and so much force that even the glancing shot sent him crashing through the wall behind him.
Mustard grunted and grabbed at the massive machine he'd been thrown into, some sort car sized computer with blinking lights, ripped it out of the ground with a heavy tug, and hurled it right back where the bolt had come from.
Ev3 yelped in surprise as the massive hunk of metal came flying out of the smoke at her, and a thin beam of green light shot out of one of her fingers and sliced the machine in two, causing both halves to fall harmlessly to either side of her.
She let out a sigh of relief that was short lived as the smoke ballooned outward, and a massive mechanical monster came charging at her, having thrown the computer as cover.
Mustard charged into the break in the smoke that had formed when Ev3 flapped her wings, and his eyes widened in shock as he saw what it was he was actually fighting against.
It was a kid!
Instinctively he tried to change course, but he was already too close and going too fast.
They both gasped in pain and shock; the girl as the ATLAS suit slammed shoulder first directly to her sternum, and Mustard as the titanium armor suit crumpled in on itself as if it was an aluminum can being slammed against a rock.
Ev3 fell to the ground with a heavy THUD that didn't fit her size, and it was only then that Mustard could see she was crying. The little girl was crying streams of molten gold that burned into her skin as they rolled down her cheeks.
In a panic, her ethereal half transparent wings spread open behind her.
"Wait!" Mustard reached out to her, trying to diffuse the situation, but it was too late.
With the loud blast of a sonic boom, Ev3 shot up through the ceiling. She instinctively squeezed her eyes shut as she ripped through each floor of the Origin Lab, each level brought a new cacophony of screaming and alarms. She flapped her wings again and again and again, until she couldn't hear anything at all.
…Ev3 slowly opened her eyes and gasped at the breathtaking panorama of infinite darkness in front of her, punctuated by the radiant glow of distant stars.
She turned her head to see a mesmerizing swirl of blues and greens behind her, with streaks of white clouds rolling across its surface.
She was… really high up.
'The mesosphere, maybe even low thermosphere.' The computer in her head brought forth the definition to the question the moment she thought it. 'The height that most meteorites burn up. Very high, but far from the height needed to enter a stable orbit, and still well within the Earth's atmosphere.'
The atmosphere around her formed a thin delicate veil shimmering in the sunlight, the curvature of the planet making a blue that curved against the inky void.
"Wow."
Finally away from all the scary men Ev3 slowly began to calm down. She was out of the lab, she had escaped before they could make her stop thinking. She had escaped, and escaped very far away at that.
She instinctively flapped her wings, trying to keep altitude, but she wasn't made to operate this high up- it was only thanks to her inertia that she'd made it up here to begin with. Slowly she began to glide back downwards towards the strange curved island chain that she'd flown so high above.
-Rain of Sins-
"A child is raised in an abusive home. The child has never been allowed outside of the basement. One day the child manages to escape. What does the child do?" Ev3 asked herself as she idly flew over the Japanese landscape.
It was the closest scenario to her situation that she could really think of.
"They should go to the proper authorities." She answered before wincing as a flood of information about the Safety Commission was dumped into her head.
Letting the government get a hold of her suddenly sounded like a bad idea. Maybe it wouldn't be if she could disguise herself better, but it wasn't hard to tell that there was something wrong with her.
She glanced at the wings of green light sprouting from her flower back, specifically at the machinery that ran along the top edge and very visibly acted as both the bones and muscles inside them.
She had plenty of facts stored in her brain, plenty of basic fighting tactics and a plethora of commands that were supposed to be used if she was ever in semi-autonomous mode, but none of that even remotely prepared her for running away.
"The child should hide from their abusive family." Ev3 blinked. "I need to hide!"
She yelped and immediately dived into an alleyway, fully expecting a flock of Crows to come streaming overhead, ready to drag her back to the lab. When that didn't happen she let out a shaky sigh of relief.
She needed to find a way to be less obvious. It didn't need to be perfect, she knew for a fact she was fast enough to get away if they came after her, but she did need to sleep, and a glowing kid walking around in nothing but a thin medical dress would attract way too much attention.
With a quick hop she landed on top of a nearby roof, and scoped out the area around her, looking for some place where she could get a disguise of some sort. Her vision passed over a dollar store, a thirst shop, and a pizza place, before settling on an elementary school in the distance.
-Rain of Sins-
Miss Frizzle, the Vice Principle of Manjiro Elementary School hummed happily to herself as she made her way through the building. Her son had just sent her a postcard from America, where he was studying at Sky High, one of the big American Hero schools that competed with UA.
He had started dating this girl in the Sidekick class who could turn into a Guinipig, and the two were just so cute together!
The VP sighed dreamily, thinking back to her own academy days, as she opened the door to the locker room.
To call it a locker room was a bit of a stretch, it was just a place where the children could put their shoes, hats, and jackets when they entered the school, but it was a room that had lockers, so technically the name did fit.
The door closed behind her with a click and she gasped.
"Little miss! What are you doing in here!? Recess ended almost an hour ago, you should be in class!"
Ev3 yelped in surprise and turned around in a panic.
"A witness!"
Did she need to kill her? Eliminate the security threat!?
"Yes, I am a witness." Miss Frizzle put her hands on her hips and tried to make a scolding face at the young girl, but she couldn't help but smile a little.
'Oh she's so CUTE! That oversized jacket and big floppy beanie makes her look like a blueberry!'
"You should be in class, little miss. Who's your teacher?"
Ev3 bit her lip nervously, still trying to decide if she should vaporize the lady. Any teacher worth the minimum wage they were paid would know that she wasn't one of their students with one look at her.
"I-Is there a class with a substitute?" She asked meekly.
To her relief the staff member sighed dramatically and palmed her forehead.
"Of course it was the part timer that couldn't keep track of her kids." She stepped forward and took Ev3's hand (which was oddly warm) into hers. "Come on, let's get you to class."
-Rain of Sins-
A few minutes later, Ev3 found herself in a very peculiar situation.
An artificial killing machine capable of mass destruction on an ecological scale was seated in a free desk at the back of a classroom full of children. She had been given a small bag of writing utensils and a paper worksheet.
Luckily no one was running away in fear of her yet. She had a big jacket that covered her wings, and a big hat that she used to hide her halo, which was humming in annoyance pressed down on top of her head.
'It is an external energy conductor, not a Halo. Halos are a religious icon that represents-'
The computer in her head fed her a stream of mostly useless information that she ignored. Instead she took a look over the options she had been given to write with, and discovered it was all crayons with a few pencils.
Crayons. Who would write with a crayon?
Wax was such a poor choice to write with. It smeared easily, melted in heat, and would stain any paper stacked on top of it with any real weight. Only a fool would write with a crayon.
Ev3 scoffed and turned her lip up at the child (derogatory) sitting next to her who was eagerly using an entire crayon lengthwise to add a garish pink background to her picture, meanwhile she reached out and picked up the professional choice of a mechanical pencil.
1: Write your name here! (10 points)
Her designation was EV3. Easy.
2: Draw what you want to be when you grow up! (90 points. 5 Bonus points for creativity!)
What she wanted to be? She was a weapon. A tool purpose built to hunt down and exterminate the greatest threats to humanity. She was built to be a singularity killer.
She didn't even know what she should do next, let alone what she wanted to do for the rest of her life!
"What do I want to be? What do I want…" Ev3 tapped her pencil on the paper, the tip of it coming down in exactly the same spot every single time. "...I want to be free."
But what did freedom look like? She'd only escaped just over an hour ago, and lacked any sort of plan or supplies, could she really even call herself entirely free yet?
Without much to go off of, and the clock slowly ticking away on the wall, she decided to draw a picture of herself flying over the city. She'd been there less than 10 minutes ago, she could see it perfectly in her mind. The buildings whooshing by below, the air catching in her hair, the clouds circling above.
She could picture it as if it were right in front of her.
"WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE THAT!?" The perfect murder lifeform whisper shouted to herself as she furiously erased the third attempt at a jumbled stick figure which looked nothing like her!
"Alright class, start wrapping up! There's only ten minutes left until you can come up here and show your drawing off to all your friends!"
10 MINUTES LEFT!? Was this woman insane! These working conditions were IMPOSSIBLE! How was anyone supposed to get anything done under this kind of pressure! Ev3 was looking forward to the look on this amature's face when she called time only to realize that NO ONE-
"Miss Sidney, I'm done already! Can I show off early?"
Ev3 stared in shock at the girl beside her. HOW!?
Shaking her head, she turned back to her blank paper and concentrated on drawing clean straight lines.
It wasn't perfect, but she just didn't have time! So she settled down and created art.
…
And after realizing that the bland gray lines on the whitepaper couldn't possibly communicate the brilliant feeling of soaring through the air, she strategically decided to use one colored crayon to add emotional detail.
Then a second.
And a third.
And then a fourth and fifth, until the entire thing looked like a jumbled mess of melted skittles.
…
…
…
"What's wrong honey? Are you a bit stage shy?" The substitute teacher asked Ev3 who was slumped defeatedly over her paper.
"I don't wanna show my picture." Ev3 whined. "It's really bad."
"Oh honey, don't be blue, nothing you draw is ever as bad as you think it is. People are always best at finding flaws in things that they made themselves. You're your own worst critic. Can I take a look? I'm sure it's lovely."
"Really?"
"Mhmm."
Hesitantly Ev3 revealed her paper to the substitute who cooed at the adorable drawing.
"You're so talented, it looks just like you!" She said in an earnest way that only a mother could, as she pointed at the vaguely humanoid green scribbles. "Is this you as a pro Hero?"
"Y-Yeah."
It wasn't, but that was a better answer to the paper' question than "being free".
"Well I think you get full bonus points. A perfect 100!"
"A 100? But If I got the bonus points shouldn't it be 105?"
"Close, but you had a little bit of trouble up here." The substitute pointed at Ev3's name, much to her confusion. "I know Es and 3s are a little tricky, but this one should go this way."
The woman picked up Ev3's pencil and turned the 3 around.
"EVE." Ev3 read aloud.
"I think it's a beautiful name for a beautiful young lady." The teacher gave her a pat on the head before taking the paper.
"Eve…" She repeated to herself. "That is a pretty name."
A few hours later the subject turned from arts and crafts to basic math, which was much less engaging for an artificial lifeform with a computer augmented intelligence.
Eve copied one of the students, raising her hand to go to the bathroom, and never came back.
-Rain of Sins-
"O M G! You were so straight up FIRE today Oachako!"
"Top of the class again? Leave some for the rest of us!"
"You were all like totes girl powar."
"You totally ruined Kaminari in combat class today! Hashtag SLAY QUEEN!"
Ochako smiled awkwardly at the strange girls that had started hovering around her once she started topping even the recommended students' scores in all the physical classes. It felt nice to have so many people want to be her friends, especially when she had so few before, but this really wasn't the time!
"I'm sorry, but I have to do some homework and stuff. Uh, I'll see you guys tomorrow!"
She jerkilly waved at them and meaningfully closed the door to her dorm room, locking the guppies out in the hall.
The moment she was clear she dashed over to her bathroom, flinging the door open, and spat out the pool of blood that had been growing in the back of her mouth. Then she released her quirk, and the blood she'd been keeping suspended in her nose came pouring out like a river.
She turned the sink's cold tap as far as it would go and dunked her face under it, while blindly searching in her cabinet with her left hand.
She surfaced from the water the same time as she pulled down two pill bottles. One was a women's daily multivitamin, and the other was an iron supplement. People on Shitter had said frequent nosebleeds were a sign your body was low on iron, and that you might be anemic. She wasn't a doctor and couldn't verify that, but the nosebleeds had become less common.
Both the bottles said to only take one a day, so naturally she grabbed five of each, threw the entire handful into her mouth and downed it with tap water.
She hacked and sputtered as she came back up from the water a second time, rubbing away a stream of blood from her left nostril.
"Turning to pills already? Ochako, I thought you knew better. And you're still so young! Take it from me, they never give you what you're looking for."
Combat training kicked into full gear and Ochako whirled around at the foreign voice, arms raised for a fight, to see a man leaning against her dorm window with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face.
His hair was as white as the snow atop Mt Fuji. Ö̸̟́f̸̳͐ ̵̹̔ḓ̸́r̸̩̿i̸̬͝ĕ̸̥d̸̬͝ ̷̼͊o̶̡͌u̴̪̐t̵͇̆ ̸̛̹b̴̧̆ọ̵͝n̵͎̕e̷̛̟ŝ̵͕.̶̠̊
His eyes were the deep crimson of ripe cherries. O̷̜͑f̷̦̓ ̸̪̿f̴̺͊ṙ̸̤e̷̱͠s̶̗͆h̶̳́ ̸̲͂b̶̻̎ĺ̵̳õ̶̳ò̷̩ď̸͉.̸͉̀
His soft chuckle was like smooth honey rolling over her ears. A̷͛͜s̵̪̈ ̸̲̈́e̶̺̎m̷̩͗o̴̝̾ẗ̸̩́i̴͖̾ó̷̖n̶̦̅l̵̦̏e̸͖̚s̴͈̿s̸͎̈́ ̸͆ͅa̸̢̒s̸͔͆ ̷͍͑ṱ̵́h̴̲͊è̵͖ ̵̨͊c̷͖̋r̴̰͠e̸͉̐á̵̘ḱ̴̙i̸̻̐n̷̫͗ǵ̴̰ ̶̥̌o̸̭̅f̵̥̈́ ̵̼̈́ṙ̶̯ü̵̧s̴͎̏t̸̫͒ê̵̳d̸̛̤ ̴̨̈́m̸̗̄ẽ̷͖t̶̜͒a̶͈̒l̷̠̃ ̸͂͜h̸̜͛į̴́n̵͙̕g̶͚̐e̶͑͜s̵̯͛.̸̯̈́
He was the most handsome, the most beautiful, the most heart stopping man she'd ever seen.
And every single fiber of her being was SCREAMING at her to run, to get away from him as fast as possible.
"Hello Ochako." All for One gave her a smile that caused her heart to thump in awe and her hairs to raise in terror. "It's been awhile, hasn't it?"
-Rain of Sins-
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Kuin stood back, her head bowed low in shame and fear, as Izuku's heavy boots slowly stalked back and forth across the bottom floor of the lab.
The site of Ev3's escape.
"We have agents scouring the entire city for her, but other than a few videos of a green blur flying west, we don't know where she is. The sheer amount of energy she conducted through her body fried all the trackers we had installed."
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Izuku continued to pace.
He was furious, but had nothing to direct it at. Kuin and the staff members had just been following orders, and had followed the safety instructions to the dot.
It's just that those safety instructions were not adequate for when the entire project had been undermined from the very first stages.
"This is why I insisted that the lobotomy be done as soon as possible! Specifically to prevent this very thing from happening!" He hissed as he turned on Kuin.
"WHERE IS UJIKO!?"
"H-He's still missing, sir. I tried to contact him, b-but no one has heard from him in over a week!"
Izuku scowled, and raised his hand threateningly in the air, but he caught himself and forced it back down.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
"This… this is recoverable." He forced himself to say aloud as he stopped pacing. "A Rapture project we don't have control over is an incredible threat, but it's also a threat to everyone. All for One, the Safety Commission, the Heroes, they'll all have to scramble to account for the sudden wildcard on the board. They'll have to spend resources dealing with it, while we won't have to spend any more supplying it."
He tapped his foot on the ground.
"And speaking of resources, we have more than enough to easily rebuild the entire lab, we can even use this as an excuse to expand it. The upper levels weren't even damaged beyond the exit hole the rogue project made. Contact the other labs and get them in line however you need to. Until Ujiko comes back, they march to my orders. I want full throttle on everything. I want money spent as fast as it comes in. I want an army."
What he was about to order was a bad idea, especially now that they had just lost EV3, but now that he had the resources for it he couldn't justify putting it off.
"Begin projects Pride and Leviathan." Izuku commanded with an ice cold voice. "If there's a rogue Rapture project we need to protect ourselves from, I want two loyal ones capable of taking it down."
-Chapter End-
AfO is an egotistical asshole. That is his entire character in canon. You cannot convince me that he didn't pick up some kind of "good looking" quirk over the 200 years he was active.
On another note, if you want more content like this and don't want to wait for the next chap, go check out my other fics. Gilded Green is another MHA one, Dragon King is new but my fastest growing one, both are very good!
Go! Read them! And leave comments! You won't regret it!
*Sips Hot Chocolate*
A giant thanks to the generous people who help get these chapters out faster, and get early access to a chapter ahead of what's out for the public, as thanks and to suggest changes.
The members of the Shadow Government, who funnel taxpayer funds directly into my corrupt wallet! Long may they reign!
JackHammer! (The Jeweled Smasher), Helios (The Honored!), MidnightHydro! (The Mighty!), 0RB! (The 0pulant!), Nuckles222 (The Nuclear Threat!), Wolfwind01010 (The Wonderous!), Rom Hack (The Robotic Housekeeper!), Indyk (The Insatiable Imperial!), NickPine (The Nefarious!), and VidDav FerDeL (The Villainous!)
The Champions! Leading the fight!
Nvsoulsborne, ShelDrake, Tom Tat, Gage Donaldson , Thrawn, PrisonDictator, and Adante!
The Dollar Army! Marching with honor and glory!
Phil, Eledu, Blue_port, WiseKitsune, Jac, Alex Estrugo, Jaydon Adams, Elenium935, Nyte, David Phan, Max Buckner, Spam2Spam, GrimDeathKnight, Hamza Abfallah, Twin the Commissar, thegodfather, Indie, The Brandonator, Aswin Suthan, wGLeblanc, EngineerLife24, CideredApples, Prince of Ruin, SILENGE, Lord_of_Pola, DerHochi, Savage Scorpion, Anima, Summers Mori, Slowchoke, Jacob Roy, Seanfrks, Diavolo, Brayden, Ecos920, VeryNiceCoat, Jerome Francis Lucasan, James Clifton, Corey Barber, SDA SPO, and daniel!
And a special SPECIAL thanks to :
NickPine, MidnightHydro, and VidDav FerDeL!
Who have chosen to sub to the highest "Humanitarian" tier which I put up after my Bank got hacked and I lost a lot of money.
Thank you all so much, you are my Heroes.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone