Chapter 104: Tag, You’re It

Summary: *Mission Impossible Music Plays*

Warning! Chapters 103-106 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any of them!

Chapter 104: Tag, You're It

Izumi tapped Illusionist on her shoulder, the thirty-year-old woman in a tuxedo-like magician's outfit-cum-leotard nodded silently and her fingers twitched. With that twitch, the hardlight illusion that had duplicated a blank wall went from a static fixture to a mobile form of optical cameo, even as the rest of the team carefully filed behind her. The group of four Humarise grunts coming in together was their best chance yet, and Izumi had silently used her cyberpathy to trigger a tiny glitch in the false door, disguised as a wall, as the group approached it.

To their credit, the group of terrorists checked their surroundings carefully before activating the hidden security panel, causing a section of wall inside the old warehouse to retract slightly inward and slide aside. With Illusionist making them all invisible, though, the terrorists didn't see them despite only being an arm length away. Better yet, the overall noise of the semi-active warehouse covered any possibility of their team being detected by sound. The three men and one women slipped into the hidden entrance once it fully open and, normally, it would have closed so quickly after them as to be impossible to follow. The very slight delay Izumi had caused, which wasn't quite enough to be truly out of place, was just long enough for the four infiltrators to slip in behind the quartet.

All of them did their best not to breathe sighs of relief as none of the group looked back, where they could have potentially noticed the slight visual distortion as the optical cameo failed to keep up with the team's rapid movements. Illusionist's Quirk was extremely useful, but every Quirk had its limitations. In Illusionist's case, it was an increasingly large lag in the image the faster you moved.

Take things slow and steady? You might as well be perfectly invisible from an extremely broad spectrum of light extending well into the infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths. Far more than the Mark I standard human eyeball could even detect. Move at a fast walk? There would be just enough visual distortion that someone sharp enough might notice. Try to run? There'd be a visible motion blur that would be extremely obvious in good light. Though it could still be missed somewhat easily in the dark.

Given the fast-walk that'd needed to perform to get through the secret door behind the terrorists, there would have been at least some visual distortion. Though the dim light of that part of the warehouse would have made it harder to pick out, there had still been a small risk. Thankfully, none of the group had even glanced back, despite the door taking slightly-longer-than-usual to slide closed. On the digital side, of course, Izumi had easily been able to edit the blur out in real time. So the security room had never had a chance to see a thing. Sadly, it would have been a tad too obvious to open the door with no one going through it. The annoyingly competent terrorist cell had used a physical pressure switch combined with the electronic sliding door in an effective-though-crude method to keep merely hacking the door from being enough to get in.

Honestly, she supposed they should have expected this level of paranoia from a group that had a hate-on for Quirks. They probably spent their sleepless nights thinking of all the way people with Quirks could screw them over or something. Well, whatever. Now they were past the outer security, and she'd already gotten a good feel for the layout of the building via the hacks she had slipped into the system. Sadly, there were lots of sections, including entire storerooms, where the cameras didn't cover. Which meant they were going to have to physically check them all for the bombs. Not to mention canvass the entire underground lair with Jirou's sonar and her own sensors to check for any extra hidden spaces.

Finally letting out the sigh she'd been holding in as the quartet they'd followed gained a safe distance from them, Izumi flashed a new set of directions on the team's HSN displays. Despite her relative lack of seniority, the fact she could mentally coordinate via messages on the team's HUDs meant Izumi was calling the shots inside the building. They'd worked out a system of physical cues that Jirou could give her to warn of anything she detected herself. But, otherwise, the group was radio silent and reliant on Izumi giving directions via their HSN-linked heads up displays. Unlike Mist Me on the other team, Illusionist couldn't cover sound, so it was the best working solution they'd been able to come up with on short notice.

Now, they all moved forward in as close to sync as they could manage with only a day to practice, to make it easier for Illusionist to keep the group covered. At Izumi's direction, the headed straight down to the bottom levels of the underground lair. It was the area with the most blank spots in security, so it made the logical place to start in Izumi's judgement. They could work their way back up from there…

... ...

Nearly five hours later a sweating Illusionist finally let their cameo drop for that last time, in a small office they'd hijacked three buildings over from the warehouse.

"Fuuuucccckkk, that was tense. And we didn't even find anything."

Ragdoll and Jirou, both equally strained looking, groaned their own agreement without the need for words. The four of them had searched the building from bottom to top, even including a couple of hidden rooms and the security office itself. There had been at least a dozen close calls where they'd nearly been run into, or run out of room to maneuver and hide in. Twice, they'd had to stop in security blind spots to let Illusionist mentally recover a bit. Once, Jirou had needed to create a decoy noise with her jacks by reaching past someone at the last second to make them switch directions.

Three times, Izumi had nearly missed physical security measures that would have given them away, for particularly secure rooms. Only cramming a bunch of advice from some breaking and entering experts in the last day having allowed her to spot them. The worst part, of course, was that it was exactly as Illusionist had said. They hadn't found a single trace of the bombs. Ragdoll spoke next, voice a bit hoarse from lack of use.

"Well, I got all 87 of the ones present at this base tagged, at least. And we know one place that the bombs aren't. Hopefully, the other team had better luck. If not, one of the people I tagged might still lead us to them."

True, of course. There was a reason this was a multilayered plan. It had still been an agonizingly tense five hours with no immediate reward, though. Well, they'd just have to check in at Might Tower, which they were using as a Central Hub for this operation, and find out what they'd learned from all this. What the other team had discovered, as well as what 2B might have gotten out of some of the offline systems Izumi had connected her to while in the base. 2B hadn't been reporting anything she found datamining the enemy as they went to Izumi, since it would have been a distraction when Izumi needed all her concentration. Though she would have at least alerted them if she'd found mention of the bombs. Meaning Izumi wasn't overly hopeful about that angle…

... ...

"So we came up empty at both sites."

Grimaces crossed faces and groans sounded through the room as the reduced group went over what they'd found. While everyone was being sent the data, it just wasn't practical to have twenty-five people chiming in on every detail. As such, only members from the scout teams, plus Gang Orca, Ryukyu, Miruko and Midnight were present. Even from the search teams, Hound Dog and Searchlight were out actively following scent trails that had left the second base. Reduced to just ten people, the group was a bit easier to manage, and the remainer of the various teams were getting in more training time together in the meantime.

Unfortunately, Miruko's blunt statement was entirely too accurate. The team led by Edgeshot hadn't had any better luck than Izumi's team. Less, really, since they hadn't had the ability to tag people quite as effectively as Ragdoll. Said Heroine was only minimally participating in the conversation herself, busy marking the movements of the people she was tracking on a digital display that was being repeated on a larger wall-map display for the rest of them. Izumi pointed out the only high note they currently had.

"We did get some information from the data mining 2B did. The bombs were at the base my team searched and were only moved two days ago. She's busy using every camera she can hack in the area to try and track any vehicles that could have moved them. They aren't, from the data we got, exactly small."

Ryukyu nodded acknowledgement of that, taking over the conversation next.

"True. And if anyone can find any or all of them that way it's 2B. Tokyo has a lot of traffic to track, even for her and even with so much shut down because of the Invasion, though."

That was, unfortunately, true. Tokyo might have taken a lot of damage during the Era of Chaos, descending at times into something of a near cyberpunk dystopia, but it remained the largest population center in Japan. Moreover, All Might hadn't built his tower here for no reason. It had, at the time he did so, been the area of the country in most desperate need of being forcefully straightened out. Under his influence, the city had revitalized and flourished, becoming one massive signal and representation of the Era of Peace he'd ushered in for Japan.

That didn't mean the police and military that guarded it had forgotten.

Quite the opposite, in point of fact. When the city had been slowly reclaimed and rebuilt, it had been fortified as well. During the period where no one was sure the new peace would last, a lot of defensive infrastructure had been put in place, and a lot of Hero agencies that were more willing to work with the police and military were encouraged to plant in the city. Moreover, due to the high amount of governmental infrastructure that remained anchored to the city, those defenses had been quietly maintained to a significant degree even as the peace stretched on.

The result was that it fared far better than it should have, given the sheer population density, during the early days of the Invasion. Even now, because of the governmental complexes here and dense population, it was among the first places that Izumi's RADS arrays were being deployed. Combined with the permanent presence of multiple Rift Rapid Response teams constantly deploying, and a significant chunk of Tokyo was functioning. Not at its normal levels of commerce, no. But at high enough levels to actually produce significant traffic on the roads again. Combined with the damage all over the city, which left gaps in camera coverage that wouldn't normally be there, even 2B was facing a bit of a nightmare slog to try and crunch enough data and piece it all together.

"I've got something interesting here. Interesting and fucking disturbing."

Surprisingly, it was Jirou that had spoken up. She'd clearly been feeling out of her depth enough among this group that she'd barely spoken, but now she was reaching forward to connect several points that had markers showing tracked Humarise members moving about. Her tracing on the map highlighted where her finger had been…and then she pointed at the rough area that was in the middle of the points she'd traced.

"The rebuilt Tokyo Dome. Guess what it's being used for right now?"

More than one person cursed as they realized what Jirou was alluding to. Miruko, not exactly shockingly, was the voice that was heard over the others.

"Fucking bastards! There are over 150,000 refugee civilians currently housed in that dome!"

Jirou's voice was grimly horrified as she pointed out what they were all now mentally reeling from the realization of.

"The vast, vast majority of whom have Quirks. Which means a stupidly high concentration of targets for their unstable Trigger. Exactly what they want for maximum impact. Who wants to bet as we get more of a picture of where they are moving, that there's a similar pattern around other major refugee areas?"

Even Miruko was looking pale and horrified as they all stared, quite the feat on her darkly tanned complexion. It took long moments for Gang Orca to speak into the abrupt void of sound.

"We can't be certain yet, but it makes too much sense. Resolution, SonicWave, Illusionist. I want you three to deploy to quietly search the area around the Dome now. We'll keep tracking from here, looking for more patterns. And I'm going to send a quiet word along to the international teams. If one cell is trying this, it's possible all of them are. Virtually every major city has mass refugee facilities right now, because of the Invasion. And SonicWave is right, they'd make perfect targets by the standards of these lunatics."

Nodding firmly, despite still being a little worn down, all three of those named were up and moving almost before he could finish giving the order…

... ...

All three of the scouts held perfectly still, tense. A tension that probably had something to do with the fact they were less than two meters from a bomb bigger than Jirou. It had taken an hour of searching through various underground passages, some of them old enough not to even be on modern maps, discovered only via Izumi's sensors or Jirou's sonar. But they had managed to find one of the locations that the Humarise terrorists were vanishing into. Part of a no-longer-stable subway system, the terrorists must have had one of their rare Quirked members open it up. Certainly, the vents that had been carved to push the high-pressure cloud of unstable, aerosolized Trigger out to a dozen places, post-detonation of the bomb, were new.

There were also three of the terrorists present, which was adding to the tension as Izumi ran every single scanner she had over the bomb. Finally, she sent a bug-out signal to the other two, and they veryyyy slowly and carefully backed away from the bomb and terrorists alike. They had to wait for a window where none of said terrorists were looking, to get back out the escape tunnel. They managed it with a little patience, and immediately made to break contact completely. Once in a relatively safe place, confirmed by Jirou, they connected back to the Might Tower central base via their HSN links. The moment Gang Orca picked up, Izumi spoke.

"We've found one of the bombs. I've just sent you the location, including video feed. I also got a good spectrometry scan of the explosives they're using. I highly recommend you start getting our backup and trusted JSDF people to sneak detection equipment onto the various JSDF vehicles moving about the city on patrol. With any luck, that will let us pin down all the bomb sites in a few hours. Unless you have any other orders, we'll circle the Dome doing the same thing and pinpointing exact entry vectors for any more of the bombs here."

There was a long few seconds of pause as Gang Orca processed that, then his voice came back strong.

"Agreed. Get moving on checking around the Dome, but don't get spotted. We'll work on getting a pattern established to cover the city with detectors, now that we know exactly what we're looking for."

The connection cut abruptly, and Izumi turned to Illusionist and Jirou.

"Well, let's get moving you two. The faster we find these, the less likely some assholes gets a chance to set them off."

Firm nods came from both women, despite their visible tiredness. Moments later, they were moving on to the next site that Ragdolls Quirk had noticed Humarise grunts grouping up at…

... ... ... ... ...

A/N: So, Humarise is a bit of a different beast than the LoV. Frankly, the movie that covered the events took Suspension of Disbelief out back, shot it, then pissed on the corpse. There is literally no plausible explanation for a WORLD Hero Association to call on only Japanese student heroes as a solution to a massive global terrorist threat. That's even more true with the military so active in this fic, so I threw that portion of it out entirely. Instead, I had them focus entirely on stopping their local Humarise Cell, while other governments and their heroes dealt with theirs. This is why the arc ended up pretty short, as removing the pure bullshit of a level that would disgust even the bull that it came out of paired down the content a lot.

A/N 2: I also, frankly, can't see how this should have been anything other than a stealth operation. That's just begging for the terrorist to do terrorist things and set off the bomb the moment you go into anime screaming-about-justice-while-ineffectively-punching-someone-who-will-get-up-two-seconds-later mode. Hence the lack of vicious bloody combat for the most part. We got enough of that from the LoV arc that just ended anyway.