Chapter 264 - 263: High Level Decision

Location: HPSC Central Headquarters, Tokyo - Underground Conference Room

CLACK.

Dropping his smartphone into the plastic security bin held out by a uniformed commission guard, Crust sighed and rubbed the back of his thick neck.

"Taking our agency radios and phones at the door?" Crust asked, glancing around the windowless concrete chamber as he walked toward the long mahogany table. "Man, the Madam President wasn't kidding about a total communications blackout today."

Sitting near the middle of the left row with his wooden helmet resting on his forearms, Kamui Woods nodded grimly.

"...When the summons came through last night, my regional director told me not to even log the trip into my patrol calendar," Kamui Woods said, gesturing toward the heavy steel blast doors sealing the entrance behind them. "...Whatever we're here to talk about, the commission doesn't want a single byte of data floating through the airwaves."

Down at the far end of the table, seventy-two-year-old Yoroi Musha stroked his long white beard and clicked his tongue in annoyance.

"...If the situation is so urgent, why are we sitting on our hands waiting around?" Yoroi Musha grumbled, tapping his armored gauntlet against the wood. "...It's nearly nine o'clock, and eight of the Top Ten are already in our chairs."

"Washy-wash!" Wash chimed in from his custom-built wide seat, spinning his laundry-dial eyes in a slow circle as he looked at the two empty leather chairs near the front of the table. "Washy... Hawks and Jeanist aren't here yet!"

Sitting across from Yoroi Musha in her red qipao dress, Ryukyu rested her chin on her interlaced fingers and looked toward the front podium.

"...Everyone knows Best Jeanist has been missing in action since the autumn," Ryukyu said quietly, a frown creasing her brow. "...And Hawks has been flying solo on secret commission errands for weeks. Still, there's a third empty chair set out right next to All Might."

Seated near the head of the table in his baggy yellow pinstriped suit, Toshinori Yagi offered Ryukyu and Edgeshot a polite, reassuring smile, though he kept his mouth shut about who that extra chair belonged to.

Beside Toshinori, Endeavor sat with his broad arms crossed tightly over his chest, staring straight ahead at the blank projection wall while the low orange flames along his beard flickered in silence.

Having driven to this building three days ago to hand-deliver the cipher he'd pulled out of Hawks's book, the Number One Hero already knew every ugly detail written inside the folders sitting on Yokumiru Mera's podium.

THUD.

Two seats down from Endeavor, Mirko kicked both of her white metal-plated boots straight up onto the edge of the mahogany table, leaning back on the rear legs of her chair with a loud, amused snort.

"...Oh, come on, don't tell me you guys haven't figured out who that last chair is for," Mirko laughed, wiggling her long rabbit ears as she looked around at the confused veterans. "...Who else in Japan is big enough to get a personal seat at the Top Ten table before the new Billboard rankings even come out?"

Edgeshot's narrow eyes flickered above his ninja mask, his gaze shifting from the empty chair back to Mirko.

"...Hero X," Edgeshot murmured.

"Bingo, paper-boy!" Mirko grinned fiercely, slamming her fist into her open palm. "The Madam President called in the guy who's currently making the rest of our agencies look like part-time neighborhood watches!"

Yoroi Musha scoffed beneath his mustache, shifting his heavy shoulder armor.

"...I won't deny what the boy did during the Humarise crisis last month was extraordinary," Yoroi Musha said gruffly. "...Neutralizing twenty-five chemical weapons across the globe saved millions of lives. Still, defusing stationary bombs with a spatial Quirk is completely different from open combat against an army."

Hearing the old samurai say that, Mirko threw her head back and howled with laughter so loud that Yokumiru Mera nearly dropped his coffee thermos up at the podium.

"Bwahaha! Stationary bombs?!" Mirko barked, slapping her thigh as she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. "Yo, old man, have you been living under a rock all month, or did the commission forget to send you the memo about the Pacific Ocean?"

Crust blinked, leaning forward over the table with genuine curiosity.

"...Wait a minute, Mirko," Crust said, pointing a thick finger at her. "...Are you talking about those rumors from three weeks ago? One of my sidekicks heard from a coast guard captain that the US Navy locked down three hundred miles of ocean for a private exhibition match."

"...It wasn't a rumor, I was standing five hundred feet away on the flight deck of the USS Ronald Reagan watching the whole thing with my own two eyes!" Mirko bragged, sitting up straight and gesturing wildly with both hands. "...America's Number One, Star and Stripe herself, flew out over the water with ten brand-new stealth fighter jets backing her up!"

Kamui Woods sat bolt upright in his chair, while Ryukyu and Edgeshot leaned in closer.

"...Cathleen Bate fought Hero X?" Edgeshot asked, his calm voice dropping in surprise. "...With her full Air Force squadron?"

"...Full squadron, full lasers, zero holding back!" Mirko said, her golden eyes practically glowing as she replayed the fight in her head. "...First she tried suffocating him in a hundred-meter vacuum, and he didn't even blink. Then he snapped his fingers once and turned her and all ten fighter jets into a flat comic-book drawing sliding across the ocean waves!"

"...He turned ten military jets into a drawing on the water?" Kamui Woods repeated, his voice cracking slightly.

"...Wait till you hear the ending!" Mirko grinned, holding her hands wide apart. "...When he let her back into the sky, she got so fired up she used New Order to make a thousand-meter-tall giant out of solid air, grabbed six supersonic cruise missiles launched from a Navy submarine, and combined them with ten jet lasers into one giant spear!"

Around the mahogany table, Crust, Yoroi Musha, Kamui Woods, and Ryukyu stared at her in dead silence.

"...Six supersonic cruise missiles?" Crust whispered, his jaw dropping open. "...How the heck did Hero X survive an impact like that without tearing up the whole coastline?!"

Mirko leaned her elbows on the table and raised her right hand, miming a casual finger snap.

"...He didn't dodge it, nor block it," Mirko said, her grin turning sharp. "...He kept his left hand tucked inside his pants pocket, snapped his right fingers once, and turned the giant, the lasers, and all six missiles into a single sheet of notebook paper! Then he crumpled it up into a little paper ball and tossed it into the sea!"

For three full seconds, nobody at the table made a sound except for the low hum of the underground air conditioner.

Yoroi Musha stared blankly at Mirko, his hand frozen halfway to his beard.

"...Surely you're exaggerating, Rumi," Ryukyu breathed, looking past Mirko toward the head of the table. "...All Might, you were on the carrier too, weren't you? Was Cathleen's strike really that strong?"

Looking down at his thin, bony hands resting on the wood, Toshinori Yagi let out a slow breath and nodded seriously.

"...Mirko isn't exaggerating a single word, Ryukyu," Toshinori confirmed quietly, his deep voice carrying to every corner of the room. "...The kinetic force Cathleen packed into that final spear was easily on par with my own United States of Smash at the peak of my career... and Hero X folded it into a piece of scrap paper in less than a millisecond."

Crust slowly leaned back into his leather seat, letting out a long, shaky whistle as he looked at the empty chair beside All Might.

"...Good lord," Crust muttered, wiping a hand down his face. "...I'm just glad a guy like that is wearing a hero license instead of working for the other side."

Before anyone else could speak, a sharp, crisp sound echoed straight out of the solid concrete wall to the left of the front podium.

SNAP.

Every single hero at the table sat up straight, their eyes locking onto the wall as the gray paint rippled like liquid water.

Step. Step.

Stepping smoothly out of the flat concrete wall as if he were walking through an open curtain, Kaito brushed an imaginary speck of dust off his white suit lapel.

Right behind him, Tsunagu Hakamada stepped out of the fading spatial ripple in a dark gray business suit, holding a black leather briefcase neatly in both gloved hands under his new identity as Tanaka.

"Morning, everyone," Kaito called out cheerfully, offering a casual two-finger wave to the room. "Hope the traffic upstairs wasn't too bad."

Mirko let out a loud bark of laughter, pointing a finger at him from her tilted chair.

"...Look at this guy, walking out of a concrete wall after everyone else is already sitting down!" Mirko teased, grinning from ear to ear. "...What, did you wait in the hallway just so you could make a big entrance like the main character in a comic book, X?"

Kaito chuckled warmly, pulling out the empty leather chair beside Toshinori while pointing a thumb up at the digital clock mounted above the blast doors.

"Check the clock, Mirko... It's eight fifty-eight," Kaito joked back, sitting down and crossing one leg comfortably over his knee. "I'm actually two minutes early. You guys just showed up way ahead of schedule."

"Good to see you, Hero X," Toshinori said with a warm smile, nodding both to Kaito and to Tsunagu, who stood quietly behind Kaito's right shoulder like a dutiful executive secretary.

Across the table, Crust immediately stood up from his chair, leaning over the mahogany surface with his massive right hand stretched out and his eyes shining with emotion.

"...It's an absolute honor to finally meet you face-to-face, Hero X!" Crust boomed, his voice thick with genuine admiration. "...I'm Crust! During the Humarise crisis last month, I was stationed at the Osaka grid waiting for the end when your music dropped out of the sky! What you did for the world that night was the single greatest rescue in hero history!"

Smiling easily, Kaito leaned forward and shook the Shield Hero's hand with a firm, friendly grip.

"Thanks, Crust. Though I heard you and your sidekicks cleared three whole city blocks in Osaka in less than six minutes," Kaito replied warmly. "That kind of evacuation speed is no joke."

Crust's face lit up bright red with pride as he sat back down, while Wash bounced excitedly in his seat next to him.

"Washy-wash! Nice to meet you, X!" Wash cheered, waving a soapy glove.

"Pleasure's all mine, Wash," Kaito laughed, nodding politely down the row toward Kamui Woods, Edgeshot, and Yoroi Musha. "Kamui, Edgeshot, Yoroi Musha glad to finally put faces to the names. And Ryukyu, I hope the cleanup in Paris didn't keep you away from home too long."

"...The French police actually put a glass frame over the chalk drawing you left on the plaza cobblestone," Ryukyu said with a soft chuckle, shaking her head. "...They're already charging tourists five euros just to take pictures next to it."

"Wait, seriously?" Kaito grinned. "I should start asking the French ministry for a royalty cut."

Even Endeavor glanced over from the other side of Toshinori and gave Kaito a single, gruff nod of respect, which Kaito returned with an easy smile.

As the friendly greetings settled down, Kamui Woods glanced past Kaito toward the two remaining empty chairs at the table, his expression turning somber again.

"...Seeing everyone gathered like this really drives home that Hawks and Best Jeanist aren't here," Kamui Woods said quietly.

Crust's big smile faded, and he looked up toward the HPSC Madam President standing at the podium.

"...Madam President, now that we're all behind closed doors, can you give us an update on Jeanist?" Crust asked, his voice full of genuine worry for his colleague. "...It's been months since he vanished after Kamino. Have the police or the commission intelligence units found any trace of his body yet?"

"..." Best Jeanist.

Sitting in front of him, Kaito bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling, reaching back casually to tap two fingers against the briefcase in Tsunagu's hands.

"How does it feel?" Kaito joked softly.

Up at the front podium, the HPSC Madam President kept her face completely straight, avoiding Tsunagu's eyes as she answered Crust.

"...The Best Jeanist case remains under classified commission jurisdiction, Crust," the Madam President stated smoothly. "...However, the whereabouts of our missing heroes tie directly into the emergency that brought you all here today."

Resting both hands on the edges of the wooden podium, the older woman looked directly at Kaito.

"...Before we open the intelligence files, Hero X, I must ask a favor of you on behalf of the commission," the Madam President said seriously. "...The enemy we are facing today possesses a top-tier cyber-intelligence officer who monitors domestic satellite feeds, power grids, and fiber-optic lines across Japan."

Beside her, Yokumiru Mera held up a thumb drive with tired, bloodshot eyes.

"...Even in this subterranean bunker, we cannot risk a one-in-a-million chance of an audio vibration or digital signal leaking out to their servers," Mera explained hoarsely. "...Could you isolate this conference room inside your two-dimensional space until the briefing concludes?"

Looking around at the curious faces of the Top Ten heroes, Kaito raised his right hand above the mahogany table with a relaxed smile.

"Sure thing, Madam President that takes zero effort on my end," Kaito said easily, lining up his thumb and middle finger. "Nobody freak out if your hands look a little flat for the next twenty minutes."

SNAP.

At the crisp sound of his fingers, a vibrant wave of neon blue, magenta, and gold geometric lines burst outward from Kaito's chair, sweeping across the gray concrete walls from floor to ceiling.

WHOOSH!

In less than half a second, the heavy three-dimensional bunker vanished completely.

--<>--

"...Whoa! What the heck?!" Crust yelped, jumping halfway out of his chair as he stared down at his own massive forearms.

The entire underground room along with the mahogany table, the podium, and every single person inside it, had transformed into a bright, stylized two-dimensional pop-art canvas floating against a shifting background of geometric comic panels.

Thick black ink outlines traced the edges of Crust's hero suit, and halftone shading dots rippled across his knuckles whenever he moved his fingers.

"...My armor has no weight at all!" Yoroi Musha gasped, lifting his gauntleted hand up to his face and turning it back and forth in sheer amazement. "...We're flat as painted scrolls, yet I can still breathe and speak normally!"

"Washy! I'm a cartoon bubble!" Wash laughed, his round metal body bouncing effortlessly across the flat ink line of his chair like an animated mascot.

Up at the podium, Yokumiru Mera stared down at the commission tablet in his hands, his exhausted eyes going wide behind his glasses.

"...Every external radio frequency, GPS ping, and electrical current outside these four walls just dropped to zero," Mera whispered, tapping the screen in disbelief. "...Even the HPSC mainframes thirty feet above our heads can't detect that this room exists anymore."

Even the Madam President looked down at her flat, ink-shaded suit jacket for a second, marveling at the sheer absurdity of a Quirk that could turn a government bunker into a private pocket universe with a single finger snap.

Sitting with her boots still propped on the table, Mirko grinned at Crust's bewildered face, while Endeavor, Ryukyu, Edgeshot, and Toshinori who had all seen Kaito's tricks earlier waited calmly for the newcomers to settle down.

"All right, the room's completely soundproofed from the rest of the planet," Kaito said, resting his elbows on the comic-shaded table. "What've you got for us, Mera?"

Shaking himself out of his daze, Mera plugged his thumb drive into the isolated projector console and hit the display key.

BZZZT.

A giant, two-dimensional map of Japan appeared in the air above the table, covered in dozens of glowing red markers and translated lines of text from Endeavor's yellow legal pad.

"...Three days ago, we received a coded breakthrough from Hawks, who has been operating undercover inside the League of Villains under direct commission orders," the Madam President announced, her voice cutting removes all traces of earlier awe as the atmosphere turned dead serious.

Kamui Woods and Crust both gasped softly at the mention of Hawks's secret mission.

"...Hawks has been inside the League this whole time?!" Kamui Woods asked, gripping the edge of the table.

"...He risked his life every single day to get us these coordinates," Endeavor rumbled, standing up from his chair and pointing a gloved hand at the red markers covering the map. "...Listen closely, all of you. The League of Villains isn't a small gang of thugs hiding in back alleys anymore. They merged with the Meta Liberation Army under Re-Destro and formed what they call the Paranormal Liberation Front."

Mera tapped a key, bringing up a list of organizational branches and headcounts.

"...According to Hawks's cipher, their combined force across Japan exceeds one hundred thousand combatants," Mera stated grimly. "...Worse still, they have active infiltrators inside the hero network itself including Pro Hero Slidin' Go, who has been leaking regional patrol routes straight to their high command."

"Slidin' Go?!" Crust roared, slamming his flat fist onto the table so hard a comic-style 'BAM!' graphic briefly popped into the air beside his knuckles. "That two-faced bastard! I shared a patrol sector with him last winter!"

"...Keep your temper in check, Crust," Edgeshot advised calmly, though his own eyes were sharp and cold as he scanned the numbers. "...One hundred thousand fighters hidden among the civilian population would normally be impossible to root out at once. How are they organized?"

"...That's where we caught our biggest break," Endeavor said, glancing briefly at Kaito before looking back at the map. "...Three weeks ago, Hawks showed their nine lieutenants the recording of Hero X's spar against Star and Stripe in the Pacific."

Mirko's ears perked up, a wicked grin spreading across her face.

"...Oh yeah? How'd those rats like watching the paper ball trick?" Mirko asked.

"...It scared their leadership out of their minds," Endeavor replied bluntly. "...Re-Destro panicked at the thought of Hero X hunting them down one by one. Instead of keeping their armies spread out across the prefectures, he ordered fifty-four thousand of their core fighters to gather inside a single fortified mountain compound Gunga Mountain Villa while another forty thousand are grouped in regional assembly halls."

Sitting comfortably in his chair, Kaito rested his chin in his palm, listening closely as Mera pulled up the satellite blueprints of Gunga Villa and a large city hospital.

'Back in my first life, I stopped watching the anime right after the Overhaul arc and only heard rough manga spoilers about a huge war later on,' Kaito thought, his eyes tracing the underground tunnel diagrams on the screen.

"...While fifty-four thousand fighters are massed at Gunga Villa, their true trump card is located here," Mera continued, zooming in on the subterranean blueprint of Jaku General Hospital. "...Beneath the civilian wards, All For One's personal physician, Doctor Kyudai Garaki, is operating a massive laboratory where he manufactures High-End Nomus."

Endeavor's jaw tightened, his hand instinctively brushing the jagged scar over his left eye.

"...And inside the deepest chamber of that lab, Tomura Shigaraki is currently submerged in a modification capsule," Endeavor stated, his voice dropping to a low growl. "...Hawks confirmed the surgery is past eighty percent. In less than four weeks, Shigaraki wakes up with a body and power designed to tear this country to pieces."

Beside Kaito, Toshinori clenched both fists tightly against his knees, his hollow cheeks drawing in as he stared at the hospital diagram.

'All For One poured everything into twisting Shimura's grandson into a weapon,' Toshinori thought, a heavy ache pressing against his chest. 'We have to stop that capsule before it opens.'

"...Because they pulled their main forces into Gunga Villa and Jaku Hospital out of fear of Hero X, they've handed us the chance to wipe out their entire organization in a single morning," Edgeshot said, stepping up beside the map display. "...We split our forces into two simultaneous assault divisions, the Hospital Raid Team to seize Doctor Garaki and Shigaraki in his sleep, and the Villa Raid Team to surround and crush their fifty-four thousand fighters and nine lieutenants at dawn."

"...When do we move out?" Yoroi Musha asked, his hand resting firmly on the hilt of his weapon.

"...In three weeks, as soon as we quietly pull our trusted pro agencies into position without tipping off Slidin' Go or their hackers," the Madam President answered.

Down near the end of the podium, a senior HPSC tactical officer flipped through a thick binder of hero registries and raised his hand nervously.

"...Madam President, even if we mobilize every trusted Pro Hero on the active roster, fifty-four thousand enemies at Gunga Villa still outnumbers our vanguard nearly twenty to one," the tactical officer said, adjusting his glasses. "...Should I issue draft orders to U.A. High School and Shiketsu High School to mobilize their provisional-license first-year students for rear-guard evacuation and communication support?"

Before the Madam President or Mera could answer, Kaito raised two fingers lazily into the air from his seat.

"Yeah, let's go ahead and cross the high schools off that list right now," Kaito said, his casual, relaxed voice cutting cleanly across the pop-art room.

Every single head around the table turned toward him.

Leaning back against his chair with his hands resting loosely on the armrests, Kaito looked straight at the tactical officer with a calm, even expression.

"During the Humarise operation last month, the World Heroes Association wanted to put teenagers on the front lines too, and I told them the exact same thing," Kaito stated simply. "High school kids belong in classrooms, not in the middle of a warzone against a hundred thousand cultists and bio-engineered monsters."

"...B-but sir, the sheer manpower gap at Gunga Villa—" the officer stammered, pointing at the numbers on the chart.

"You're counting heads like I'm not sitting right here in the room," Kaito interrupted smoothly, offering the man a mild, reassuring smile. "Leave the kids at school. Between the pros at this table and my agency, we've got more than enough firepower to sweep both the hospital and the mountain before breakfast."

Sitting to Kaito's left, Endeavor let out a low, rumbling breath and nodded firmly.

"...Hero X is right," Endeavor declared, glaring at the tactical officer until the man stepped back. "...The day Japan's top heroes have to hide behind fifteen-year-old students to fight a war is the day we should all turn in our licenses."

"Hell yeah!" Mirko barked, slamming her boot down off the table with a fierce grin. "Leave the brats in the dorms! Between X, Endeavor, and the rest of us, fifty thousand extras are just a warm-up!"

"...I agree completely," Crust chimed in, thumping his chest with his fist. "...Let the adults handle the dirty work!"

Looking over at Kaito with deep gratitude in his sunken blue eyes, Toshinori gave a quiet nod, relieved beyond words that Midoriya, Bakugo, and the rest of his students wouldn't be marched onto a battlefield.

Up at the podium, the Madam President closed the student registry binder and set it aside without hesitation.

"...Then it is decided," the Madam President declared, looking out over the flat, colorful figures of Japan's strongest defenders. "...No students will be drafted. Three weeks from today, the Pro Heroes of Japan will launch a simultaneous strike on Jaku Hospital and Gunga Mountain Villa and end the Paranormal Liberation Front in a single day."

--<>--

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