Chapter 263 Calm Before the Storm

Location: Gunga Mountain Villa, Paranormal Liberation Front Assembly Hall Time: Two Weeks Ago

CLACK.

Tossing a black encrypted flash drive onto the center of the conference table, Hawks leaned back on his heels and tucked both hands into the pockets of his tan flight jacket.

Sitting at the tech station three seats down, Skeptic snatched the drive off the wood and jammed it straight into his laptop port.

"...You're three hours late, Hawks," Dabi drawled from the dark end of the table, resting his scarred chin on his palm while a tiny blue flame flickered across his knuckles. "...Did you get lost on the way back from the coast, or were you busy chatting with your buddies at the commission?"

"...Give a guy a break, Dabi," Hawks replied easily, shrugging his winged shoulders as he pulled out an empty chair and sat down backward on it. "...Do you have any idea how many security clearances I had to forge just to copy that file off Mera's private server? One wrong keystroke and the HPSC tech division would've locked down the whole building."

Across the room, Re-Destro adjusted the cuffs of his burgundy suit from his wheelchair, nodding toward the six overhead screens.

"...Put the footage up, Tomoyasu," Re-Destro ordered calmly. "...If America's Number One Hero truly clashed with Hero X in the Pacific yesterday, every commander at this table needs to see what happened."

CLICK.

Hitting a key on his console, Skeptic routed the leaked HPSC optical recording onto the main monitors.

Gathered around the long table, all nine lieutenants; Re-Destro, Skeptic, Trumpet, Geten, Dabi, Himiko Toga, Twice, Mr. Compress, and Spinner along with double-agent Pro Hero Slidin' Go, turned their heads toward the glowing screens.

On the silent satellite video, a thousand-meter-tall invincible avatar of Star and Stripe towered through the clouds above the ocean, grabbing six supersonic cruise missiles out of mid-air while ten silver stealth jets poured red laser fire into her palms.

"...Wait a second, what kind of Quirk is that?!" Spinner blurted out, leaning so far over the table his belt buckle scraped the wood. "...She's grabbing that laser like she has huge hands!"

"...That's Cathleen Bate's New Order," Trumpet muttered, his fingers tightening around the armrests of his chair as the invincible giant atmospheric figure drove the blazing spear of missiles and lasers straight down toward the tiny white speck floating fifty feet above the waves. "...Our intelligence bureau in Washington estimated her combined strike with the Air Force squadron carries enough kinetic yield to wipe an entire island off the map."

"Ooh, look how bright it is!" Toga chirped, leaning forward with her hands pressed against her cheeks. "Is he gonna dodge it? Is he gonna cut her in half?"

Nobody answered her.

On the screen, the blinding column of white-hot plasma and six kinetic warheads dropped right onto Kaito's head and instantly vanished.

No mushroom cloud rose from the water.

Zooming in tenfold, the HPSC optical camera showed Kaito plucking a single eight-by-eleven sheet of white notebook paper out of the empty air, crumpling it into a tiny ball with both hands, and tossing it over his shoulder into the sea.

PLOP.

Sitting near the middle of the table, Twice slapped both hands over his masked cheeks and screamed at the top of his lungs.

"He turned a nuke punch into trash!" Twice shrieked, before throwing his arms out and laughing wildly. "That's nothing, I could do that with a newspaper any day of the week!"

"...Play those last four seconds back at one-tenth speed, Skeptic," Geten said quietly from inside his thick winter parka.

Skeptic tapped his keyboard with trembling fingers, rewinding the clip frame by frame.

One frame showed six cruise missiles and a thousand-meter air giant about to vaporize the ocean; the very next frame showed a flat sheet of paper sitting between Kaito's fingers.

"... It's still the same," Skeptic whispered. "...He still folded the entire attack into a drawing and threw it away."

Slidin' Go grabbed a glass of ice water from the table and gulped it down in one go, his Adam's apple bobbing violently.

"...That's the strongest woman in the United States," Slidin' Go choked out, slamming the empty glass back down. "...If she couldn't even wrinkle his trousers with six military cruise missiles, what are we supposed to do when he shows up here?!"

"...Keep your voice down, you coward," Mr. Compress sighed, tapping the brim of his top hat with his cane, though his own shoulders were stiff. "...Panicking won't change anything."

At the head of the hall, Re-Destro stared silently at the paused image of Kaito signing flight helmets for the American pilots on the carrier deck.

'Even All Might in his prime would've had to brace his legs and throw a full-power punch to disperse an attack of that scale,' Re-Destro thought, dark purple stress marks creeping up his neck and across his forehead. 'This man didn't even take his left hand out of his pocket.'

"...Tomoyasu, Koku," Re-Destro said aloud, his deep voice cutting through the nervous murmurs around the table. "...Pull the reserve regiments from the northern prefectures and bring them directly to Gunga Mountain Villa tonight."

"...Sir?" Trumpet blinked in surprise. "...If we move that many liberation warriors into one compound, our supply lines will double in size."

"...I don't care about the cost," Re-Destro stated firmly, resting his heavy hands on the wheels of his chair. "...Double the subterranean bunker reinforcements and move thirty percent of our vanguard to guard the Jaku hospital perimeter. Until Grand Commander Shigaraki wakes from the Doctor's capsule, we do not provoke Hero X under any circumstances."

Watching the lieutenants nod grimly from across the table, Hawks kept a lazy, bored expression on his face while a single microscopic feather tucked inside his jacket pocket recorded every word of the conversation.

'Moving extra regiments into Gunga and Jaku, huh?' Hawks thought behind his tinted visor. 'Thanks for the assist, X... scaring the hell out of these guys just made my job ten times easier.'

--<>--

Location: Gunga Mountain Villa, East Wing Balcony Time: Present | 9:30 AM

PSSHHT.

Popping the tab on a cold can of black coffee, Hawks tossed a second can across the wooden balcony railing to Twice.

"Here ya go, Jin," Hawks said, leaning his back against the stone pillar and looking out over the pine forest surrounding the mountain estate. "Fresh from the vending machine down on level three."

"Aw, thanks a million, bird-boy! You're the best friend a guy could ask for!" Twice cheered, catching the can with both hands before jerking his head to the side and snarling. "I told you I only drink espresso with three sugars, you feathered jerk!"

Laughing softly, Hawks took a sip from his own can and watched a convoy of covered supply trucks rumble up the hidden road below the cliffside.

Over the past three weeks since showing the carrier spar to the council, Hawks had spent almost every afternoon hanging out with Jin Bubaigawara playing cards in the break room, complaining about Skeptic's attitude, and listening to the lonely villain ramble for hours.

'Out of everyone in this place, Jin's the only one who's actually a decent guy at heart,' Hawks thought, a quiet ache settling behind his ribs as he looked at Twice drinking through his mask. 'If I have to play the double spy in the dark to keep the peace, I've gotta see it through to the end... no matter how dirty my hands get.'

"Man, look at all those trucks," Hawks remarked casually, pointing his coffee can toward the courtyard below. "Skeptic's really working the logistics guys to the bone this week, huh?"

"Tell me about it!" Twice groaned, slumping down onto a wooden crate and kicking his legs out. "Ever since you showed them that video of Hero X turning the American lady's missiles into a spitball, Re-Destro's been completely paranoid! He made me measure the underground tunnels three times yesterday just in case we have to make a hundred thousand clones in five minutes!"

"...A hundred thousand clones under the villa?" Hawks asked lightly, raising an eyebrow behind his visor. "...How're they even fitting all these new squads inside the mountain without collapsing the roof?"

"Oh, they expanded the east cavern all the way under the ridge!" Twice chatted happily, waving his coffee can toward the back of the estate without a single trace of suspicion. "We've got fifty-four thousand guys bunking down there now, plus another forty thousand split between the regional assembly halls! And Dabi made me send three whole platoons down to Jaku General Hospital this morning to guard the Doctor's creepy basement lab!"

"Yeah? Why all the fuss at the hospital all of a sudden?" Hawks asked, taking another slow sip of coffee while thirty microscopic red feathers hidden inside the villa's air ducts quietly mapped the exact dimensions of the east cavern.

"Because the Doctor said Tomura's surgery is past the eighty-percent mark!" Twice whispered excitedly, leaning in close with a thumbs-up. "A few more weeks in the juice tank and he's gonna wake up ready to turn the whole country to dust! Though honestly, between you and me, Hawks... I still don't know how dust is supposed to beat a guy who can paint over the ocean."

CREAK.

Thirty feet away at the glass balcony doors, Dabi stepped halfway out into the morning air, his turquoise eyes narrowing as he looked back and forth between Hawks and Twice.

"...What are you two gossiping about out here?" Dabi asked coldly, smoke curling from the staples along his jaw.

"Nothing much, Dabi!" Twice called out cheerfully, waving his hand. "Just telling Hawks how annoying Skeptic's new patrol schedules are! Come have a coffee!"

"...Get inside, Twice. Compress is looking for you," Dabi ordered flatly, keeping his glare locked squarely on Hawks's face.

"Right away! Don't boss me around, patch-face!" Twice yelled, hopping off the crate and jogging past Dabi into the hallway.

Once the door clicked shut behind Twice, Dabi lingered on the threshold for five seconds, staring at Hawks in silence.

'He still doesn't trust me an inch,' Hawks noted internally, meeting Dabi's gaze with a relaxed, crooked smile. 'The only reason he hasn't torched me on the spot is because he inspected that body in the duffel bag and thinks I actually murdered Best Jeanist.'

Hawks still had no idea that Best Jeanist was alive and working in Tokyo under an alias, or that the corpse he'd already delivered to Dabi months ago and was in storage was a replica spawned by Hero X.

All Hawks knew was that the grim lie was holding his cover together long enough to finish the mission.

"...You're awfully quiet today, birdie," Dabi muttered, turning his back to walk inside. "...Keep poking your beak around the lower levels and you might get your wings singed."

"Hey, I'm just enjoying the mountain air," Hawks called back smoothly.

Waiting until Dabi's footsteps faded down the corridor, Hawks let out a slow breath through his nose and looked up at the clear sky toward Tokyo.

Earlier that morning, before flying back up to the mountain, he had intercepted Endeavor in the city and slipped him a highlighted copy of Destro's book right under the noses of Skeptic's surveillance drones.

'Skeptic's got ninety percent of his spy satellites pointed straight at the X Agency twenty-four hours a day because they're terrified of Hero X,' Hawks thought, crushing the empty aluminum can in his gloved hand. 'Because X is soaking up all the spotlight across the globe, nobody paid a lick of attention to a two-minute chat with Endeavor. Come on, Number One... read between the lines.'

--<>--

Location: Endeavor Agency, Tokyo - Private Training Gym Time: Present | 1:15 PM

SHHHHHHH.

Standing in the center of the reinforced concrete floor, Endeavor kept his eyes shut and pulled every ounce of his roaring flames straight back beneath his skin.

The orange fire around his face and shoulders vanished completely, turning his muscular arms a deep, bruised purple as the air three feet around his body shimmered and warped like desert glass.

TICK. TICK. TICK.

Down on the rubber mat by his boots, a heavy iron stopwatch ticked past twenty-two seconds.

Inside his chest, his heart hammered against his ribs like a piston, and the blood in his veins felt like boiling lead.

"Grah!" Endeavor grunted, throwing both palms forward as he hit his limit and released the trapped pressure.

BOOOOOOM!

A concentrated wave of white-hot thermal wind blasted across the gym, melting the outer layer of the heat-resistant target wall into glowing red slag.

PANT. PANT.

Leaning his hands on his knees for a moment, Endeavor let thick clouds of white steam roll off his shoulders before straightening his spine and picking up a towel from the bench.

"...Twenty-two seconds," Endeavor muttered to himself, wiping the sweat from his jaw and rubbing two fingers over the jagged scar running across his left eye. "...Doubled my time from Otheon, and the air-collapse barrier is finally stable enough to move in."

Ever since the High-End Nomu had carved that scar into his face last year.

The he had watched Hero X folded the humarise organization single handedly, he hadn't wasted a single hour of his free time.

Even if he hadn't had the chance to sit down with Hero X to go over the full cooling theory yet, his own decades of combat experience were slowly turning the Fire-Armor prototype into a real weapon.

CLACK.

Stepping out of the gym and walking down the private hallway to his office, Endeavor pushed the heavy mahogany doors open, stepped inside, and turned the deadbolt lock behind him.

Sitting right in the center of his desk was the thick hardcover copy of Destro's ideological biography, Meta Liberation War, that Hawks had shoved into his hands earlier that morning.

Walking over to his leather chair, Endeavor sat down, pulled a yellow legal pad and a black pen toward him, and flipped the book open.

'Hawks isn't the type to waste time handing out reading material while the commission has him on an undercover assignment,' Endeavor thought, narrowing his sharp blue eyes at the first highlighted page. 'He looked right at the cameras on the street corner and told me he wanted me to check the "second" one.'

Looking closely at the first paragraph marked in yellow highlighter, Endeavor skipped the first word, circled the second word with his pen, and wrote it down at the top of his legal pad.

Flipping to the next highlighted block three pages later, he circled the second word again.

SCRATCH. SCRATCH.

For the next twenty minutes, the only sound inside the quiet office was the rustle of turning paper and the steady scratch of Endeavor's pen.

With the highest record of solved criminal cases in Japanese history, Enji Todoroki didn't need a computer cipher to put the pieces together once he had the key.

Word by word, sentence by sentence, the hidden message took shape down the length of the yellow page:

Villains merged with Meta Liberation Army. Name is Paranormal Liberation Front. Over one hundred thousand members nationwide. Command fears Hero X after Pacific spar. Defenses and troop numbers doubled at Gunga Mountain Villa. Doctor Kyudai Garaki producing High-End Nomus inside Jaku General Hospital basement. Shigaraki awakening in four weeks.

SNAP!

The plastic barrel of the black pen cracked in half between Endeavor's thick fingers, spilling a drop of ink across the bottom of the pad.

Staring down at the words High-End Nomus and Jaku General Hospital, Endeavor felt a cold, ferocious heat rise from the pit of his stomach as the scar over his left eye throbbed.

"...A hospital," Endeavor growled low in his throat, small embers sparking along his mustache. "...That bastard who sent the creature to Kyushu has been hiding beneath a civilian hospital this entire time."

And because the villains were terrified of Hero X wiping them out the way he had dismantled Humarise, they were packing tens of thousands of fighters into Gunga Villa ahead of schedule.

Standing up abruptly from his desk, Endeavor folded the yellow legal sheet twice, tucked it securely into the inside pocket of his hero suit, and grabbed his coat off the rack.

He didn't pick up the phone or send an email that Skeptic's hackers might intercept.

Striding straight out of his office, the Number One Hero headed directly for the garage to drive to the Hero Public Safety Commission headquarters in person.

--<>--

Location: The X Agency, Tokyo - Back Office Time: Three Days Later | 3:30 PM

CLACK.

Placing a wooden bishop tile neatly onto the center square of the shogi board, Kaito leaned back on his floor cushion and reached for his cup of warm roasted barley tea.

Sitting cross-legged across the low cedar table, Mirai Sasaki stared down at the board for ten full seconds, a tiny bead of sweat forming near the edge of his glasses.

"...You just cut off my rook's retreat path while looking out the window, didn't you, X?" Mirai asked dryly, rubbing his chin with two fingers.

"Hey, I was just checking if that cloud over Shibuya looked like a dog," Kaito laughed easily, taking a sip of his tea. "Come on, Kudo, you can still slide your gold general up to block me. Unless you want to turn on Foresight and peek five minutes ahead?"

"...Using my Quirk to win a board game during our afternoon break goes against every principle I have," Mirai replied stiffly, though the corner of his mouth twitched upward as he moved his gold general forward. "...Besides, the last time I tried reading your future during a game of cards, all I saw was a drawing of a joker winking at me."

With the overseas construction contracts wrapped up for the week and the street crime rate across Tokyo and the surrounding three prefectures sitting at a flat zero percent because Kaito simply snapped any villains and troublemaker into a sidewalk doodle and mailed them to the nearest police box, the back office was completely quiet.

Over on the long leather sofa near the bookcase, Tsunagu Hakamada sat with his long legs crossed, tapping the end of a silver fountain pen against his bottom lip as he stared intensely at a leather-bound notebook in his lap.

Sitting next to him with her legs tucked under a throw blanket, Makoto took a sip of her iced coffee and peeked sideways at the page covered in neat, looping handwriting.

"...Alright, Miss Manager, listen to the revised second verse and tell me if the imagery carries enough weight," Tsunagu said seriously, clearing his throat behind his high denim collar.

Holding the notebook up like an opera script, the former Number Three Hero read aloud in a deep, dramatic baritone:

"🎵Loose threads of evil unravel in the night🎵

🎵Bound in twenty-one-ounce raw Japanese selvedge tight🎵

🎵No crease upon the fabric, no stain upon the seam🎵

🎵The tailor of justice stitches order to the dream!🎵"

Lowering the notebook an inch, Tsunagu looked over at Makoto with earnest, expectant eyes.

"Well?" Tsunagu asked. "Does it capture the same global presence as X's track?"

Bit her lip to keep from laughing into her straw, Makoto coughed politely into her fist and gave him an encouraging nod.

"...The metaphor is super on-brand, Tanaka," Makoto said warmly, pointing a finger at the third line on his pad. "...Though if you try fitting 'twenty-one-ounce raw Japanese selvedge' into a four-beat pop bar, the singer's gonna run out of breath before the bass drops. Maybe shorten it to 'heavy denim tight' so people can actually sing along?"

"...Shorten the fabric weight specification?" Tsunagu murmured, looking back down at his paper as if she'd just asked him to cut a vintage jacket with kitchen scissors. "...If I don't specify the ounce weight, the public might think I'm binding criminals with cheap fast-fashion polyester!"

"Tell you what, Tanaka, once you finish the lyrics, I'll book a studio band and we'll test it out on the office speakers," Kaito called over from the shogi table with a grin. "If we put a heavy rock guitar behind the selvedge line, I bet we can make it work."

"...A rock guitar," Tsunagu repeated thoughtfully, jotting a quick note in the margin of his pad. "...Yes, something with a sharp, rugged texture might suit raw denim quite well."

CLACK.

While Tsunagu went back to murmuring rhymes under his breath, Kaito slid his silver general across the shogi board, placing Mirai's king in checkmate.

"...And that's game three," Kaito said cheerfully. "Looks like you're buying the katsudon for dinner tonight, Kudo."

Mirai let out a quiet sigh, setting his captured tiles back onto the wooden tray.

"...I'm starting to suspect your Quirk edits the pieces on the board whenever I blink," Mirai muttered, right before the ceiling speakers above the glass tracking table chimed loudly.

BEEP!

[Pardon the interruption, Boss,] the smooth, bracketed voice of the building's AI, Eve, echoed across the quiet room. [We have just received a Priority-One encrypted transmission directly from the office of the Hero Public Safety Commission President.]

"..."

Stopping his pen mid-word, Tsunagu looked up from his notebook, while Makoto set her iced coffee down on the glass table.

"Put the details on the main screen, Eve," Kaito said, turning around on his floor cushion.

BZZZT.

A holographic notice stamped with the golden crest of the HPSC materialized above the tracking table.

[The Madam President has issued an mandatory emergency summons for 09:00 hours tomorrow morning at the HPSC Central Headquarters,] Eve announced clearly. [Attendance is restricted exclusively to the current Top Ten Pro Heroes on the Japanese Billboard Chart... with a special personal summons added for Hero X.]

Standing up from the sofa, Tsunagu walked over to the edge of the glass table, his eyes scanning the encrypted routing codes at the bottom of the notice.

"...The official Billboard Chart rankings aren't due for another month, yet everyone in the country already knows you're walking straight into the Top Ten," Tsunagu said quietly, his playful songwriting mood vanishing in an instant. "...For the Madam President to call all ten top heroes into the same room on twenty-four hours' notice... something massive just came across her desk."

Standing up beside the shogi table, Mirai adjusted his glasses, his sharp gaze locking onto the HPSC seal.

Picking up the wooden king tile from the center of the shogi board, Kaito tossed it lightly in his palm once before setting it back down on the wood with a crisp click.

CLACK.

"Tell the Madam President I'll be there at nine sharp, Eve," Kaito said, a calm, easy smile resting on his lips as he looked over at Makoto. "Looks like our quiet month is officially wrapping up."

--<>--

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