Chapter 106: Debriefing and New Plans

Summary: Wrapping up the Humarise arc! As well as a bit of foreshadowing for the future of the story!

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

Chapter 106: Debriefing and New Plans

Nedzu looked pleased with the world, or at least with them, as he sat at the head of the small, informal 'command' group again. The meeting was between the same handful that had started off the operation against Humarise, their purpose to debrief after the operation. They'd passed on everything they'd done as a series of reports already, of course. All of which for once had gone remarkably to plan. A nice change from the usual, that. Now, it was Nedzu's turn to provide information in return.

"Excellent! Highly excellent, everyone! Better yet, I can also forward quite a bit of thanks to all of you from the international teams. All Humarise cells have now been disabled, in part due to the information you were able to pass on quickly, which helped locate bombs based on the patterns and scans you discovered and made. Of all international operations, only one wasn't a complete success, with a single bomb going off. Even that one was thankfully contained by a Force Field Quirk that kept the affected area down to less than a city block."

Everyone around the table winced, something which caused Nedzu to nod.

"Yes. It was still bad, causing quite a bit of damage and some eighty-seven deaths, but it was far better than it could have been. Better yet, the French Heroes and Military were on top of the issue and the Rift Bubble that predictably sprung up afterward has been contained as well. Though it is now the largest currently known bubble and the forces in Paris are still fighting to close it properly."

More winces. That was exactly what they'd been afraid would happen if the bombs went off. Not just the immediate and horrible loss of life, but that it would open the way for immense Rift Bubbles. If 87 Quirks going super-critical all at once, expelling all the power of the owners simultaneously, was enough to make a Rift of unprecedented size? Then 100,000 people would have basically opened the door for an army, right at the heart of a major population. Due to the targeting of refugee areas, that had been the estimated average size of the groups that would have been affected even just in the initial bomb dispersal. Let alone when the airborne Trigger kept spreading from the detonation sites.

Since there had been seventy-five such sites in total, it would have meant the virtual certain loss of humankind to the Invaders. High Treason didn't even begin to describe what Humarise had attempted, and it wasn't like any of those that had been directly involved would avoid death sentences in any country that had them. Since Japan did, in fact, still have Capital Punishment, all of those they'd captured from the Tokyo cell would likely quickly be executed. After, of course, the telepaths ripped any useful information from them. Villains were rarely so sentenced. But these weren't Villains, they were terrorists. They faced a long drop from a short rope here in Japan, and similar fates in many other places.

"The Heroes and military of France are confident in their ability to close the Bubble in due time, possibly even gaining a chunk of Harvest Stone large enough to help with certain studies for their trouble. More to the point, a single partial failure out of roughly three hundred bombs is still an incredible accomplishment. The WHA has also, thankfully, located the cult leader of the organization and detained him. Flect Turn will be handed over to the telepaths to make sure there aren't any more lingering surprises, then promptly executed. His sentence has already been determined by an international War Crimes tribunal. Given he openly ranted about his plan, freely admitting to it, there wasn't much point in a drawn-out trial. Not under the wartime circumstances we currently face, at least."

Mixed expressions and sighs went around the table his time, causing Nedzu to perform his imitation of a smile. Heroes weren't a blood thirsty lot, for the most part. But none of those present thought Flect Turn's particular brand of batshit insanity was safe to leave lying around. Even in a prison. Some of them, including Izumi, were undoubtably a bit torn about the fates of the rank and file in Humarise. But their leaders…there was a certain grim acceptance there, at least.

"Our own operation, of course, went off without a hitch. We didn't even take any casualties this time! Which means that we won't need a serious amount of downtime before Clean Slate gets rolling onto its next target. Or series of targets, actually. As we aren't quite ready yet to take on the Meta Liberation Army, we'll be hitting several smaller groups in rapid sequence over the next couple of months. That, however, is for another briefing once we all come back together again. For now, everyone has four days off to enjoy themselves. Miss Midoriya, Miss Yaoyorozu, if you would stay behind for a few minutes, I believe we have a bit of other business to discuss."

The two of them nodded, even as everyone else cheered a bit, looking relieved at the idea of taking a few days off. While the Humarise mission had gone remarkably well, it had still been grueling, and very tense because of the stakes. Coming almost directly on the heels of the Nabu Island raid as it had meant that most of the original Clean Slate team were even more ragged than their loaners. And some of their loaners had been borrowed straight from the front lines themselves.

With only a few more bits of commentary and parting comments, everyone began to file out, leaving just the Dean, Momo and Izumi behind. Once they were alone, the Dean gestured to Izumi.

"You said you wanted to speak with me in your message. I assume it's about something more than the revisions to the shield-penetrator missile design you sent along at the same time? Very good work on that, by the way. Not that I expected any different. You two never disappoint and the design team has already gotten back to me with pleased thanks, as you solved two problems they were struggling with. Though, of course, you gave them a few more new ones along with the solutions."

Izumi and Momo both smiled wryly at that. The designs had been good for what they were, but they'd spotted some issues the original team hadn't. None of them were unsolvable, but it was going to take a rework of the basic missile body to accomplish it all. As they were intended for use in existing missile systems which Izumi and Momo didn't have the specs for, they'd had to leave the new issues they'd created for the original team to deal with. Though, as Nedzu had said, they'd also sent along some fixes for QE field attunement and provided a rather elegant solution for a precision targeting issue the original design had been struggling with. Still, that wasn't the topic of the moment, and Momo opened their pitch as planned.

"No. Thank you for the compliments, but that wasn't what we needed to talk about. Instead, what we have is a proposal for the future. A possible way to alter the current structure of the Hero and Military joint defense in order to rationalize for future needs. Right now, we are using a great many non-specialists to plug every hole. But Izumi came to grasp recently with just how long our war with the Empire of Zurrick is likely to be, if nothing dramatically changes. Something I suspect you've also spent some time thinking about."

Nedzu's expression had focused into the sort of intensity he only displayed when a truly challenging problem came along.

"I have, of course. There are considerable issues in the short and medium terms. But I suspect what you're thinking of is the medium to long term? I haven't been able to put as much time into thinking of a solution there as I'd like, with all the hats I'm wearing, as a human might put it. But some changes in curriculum are going to needed. Along with possibly greater long-term interconnection with the military, which I'm less than pleased about."

That was good. It meant that Izumi's idea, refined by Momo, might appeal to Nedzu more. It would prevent the need for full integration, at least on the defensive side. What the military eventually did on the offense was a different matter. But, then, that was what the military was really supposed to be for. Even Japan, for all that its forces were explicitly labeled as 'Self Defense Forces,' recognized that the military was really something you preferred to deploy over there. On someone else's territory, not your own. There was a reason few governments had settled on a police-state as a solution to the Villain problem and had adopted various Hero Systems instead. Deploying tanks and air strikes in and on your own cities was…less than ideal.

"You would be correct. What we've come up with is, in fact, a somewhat radical variation on the same sort of core system that was adopted when Heroes first came on the scene. And as happened then, so too now do we think that UA would be a good place to begin putting the new idea into practice. Not as a part of the Hero Course, but as new system entirely…"

Izumi had been accessing the central hologram and uploading their presentation as Momo had gotten the ball rolling. Now, a single word appeared as the first slide of that presentation began. Taking over from Momo, since this was her idea in the main, Izumi grinned with just a little excitement.

"Dean Nedzu, let me introduce you to what I hope will be the next evolution in how our world categories its defenders and organizes their efforts. I call them Guilds…"

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A/N 1: So, the more clever among you might be beginning to form a picture of where this is going from Izumi's last little idea drop there ;-). I'm actually going to have a poll sometime in the not too distant future (probably February?) regarding a specific bit of this story's future. Which will give patrons, at least, a say in EXACTLY how it works out, but the general gist is slowly shaping up and has been for a while...

A/N 2: Yep, you're probably already expecting this bit. Once per release, I remind people that there is Early Access content available On My Page.  Note that NONE of my works are paywalled permanently. If you don't feel like supporting me, that's just fine, it will end up here eventually :-). If you DO feel like supporting me, currently chapters 107-111 are available over on , adding another 15,000ish words to the fic! As well as similar amount of early access content for my other fics. All for just a single dollar a month! I'm not trying to be super greedy here, just trying to support the writing time I need to maintain several ongoing fics ;-).