Chapter 107: Montage
Summary: Time to take out the trash!
Chapter 107: Montage
Kyoka sighed in satisfaction as the last of the idiots she and her small team were here to take down fell to a Heartbeat Fuzz. The fool calling himself Bard and using some sort of lute as a support item, amplifying his songs about how great he was, had been incredibly annoying. Worse, since his Quirk allowed him to make people believe whatever he sang about, Baston the Bard had managed to take over the entirety of a remote village. He'd roped in a few others minor villains, like a fellow that could manifest a bow that fired black arrows that could penetrate armor, and another that claimed to be the half-dragon but looked more like a donkey.
None of them had been all that powerful, but Baston the Bard had specifically required that someone else with a Quirk that could counter his be sent in. Sadly, Kyoka qualified, as she could use her own soundwaves to zero the frequency that carried his Quirk. She supposed it had been sort of nice to get a chance to plan and lead a team of her own though, even a small one. Still, if she ended up with that surprisingly catchy song about how great he was stuck in her head, she was going to be pissed.
No one smites like Baston, or flies a kite like Baston. In a match of wits no one snarks like Baston, or cuts through sharks like Bas—
"FUCK! It's already stuck in my head! Get it out, get it out, get it out!"
Half of the team cleaning up the mess around her looked worried for her, the other half clearly had the song stuck in their heads just like she did, as they leveled nothing but looks of raw sympathy in her direction. Kyoka was so going to need to take up underaged drinking just for this. Memory erasure was a thing that alcohol could do, right? She'd have to ask her dad. He was great at forgetting anniversaries and birthday, maybe there was a trick to it…
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Katsuki was completely and utterly unsure how he'd ended up in this situation. He also wasn't entirely sure if it was a good thing, a bad thing, or just a confusing thing, as he watched the animated-clothes-in-the-shape-of-a-girl across from him somehow be the most expressive individual he'd ever met. Including even his own mother. If thankfully in very, very different ways.
"And then I just ZAPPED the bitch, you know! I mean, I'd stored up all that energy already, and she shot me with a disco ball. Well, not really a disco ball, but you know what I mean, you were there! What else was I supposed to do with all that excess light! I mean, I know it was probably a little excessive. The troops seemed super creeped out by how hard I hit her, after all. But she was a bad girl, right?"
Somehow, Katsuki was sure that Toru wasn't faking her obliviousness. Did she really not realize how much of a psychopath she seemed like when she giggled like crazy while lasering people? Sure, he knew that light overload apparently tickled for her. But the troops didn't, and even with full knowledge of why she was giggling, he could admit she was a little terrifying when she did it. Like some sort of horror movie villain in the shape of a teenage girl. Still, she'd also been insanely effective, as expected. They'd assigned her to his and Midnight's team specifically to deal with a mother-daughter pair of light emitting villains called DiscoDream and Photon Momma.
The two had honestly been quite powerful, and only two members of a larger family-based villain group that had popped up during the Invasion. Midnight had been given Toru as a near-perfect counter to the light emitting pair, while Katsuki himself had been sent as muscle against a little brother and cousin that could create light-shields and fly respectively. Midnight had been the team leader since, unlike most of these pop-up Villain Groups, this one actually hadn't done anything overly terrible. Their leader, Flourish, was a raving bitch. Even worse, she was a lawyer. But they'd mostly only taken over the decently sized port town in order to protect it during the Invasion. They'd just gotten a bit too…enthusiastic about doing so and declared it their new fiefdom. The control freak of a leader had even been rewriting all the local laws 'how they should be.' Like in proper legalese and everything.
Honestly, since Midnight had helped take them all intact, it was likely they'd get an offer to rebrand as militia somewhere else, once they'd had some therapy. Everyone was pretty sure they'd just snapped a bit under the strain of the whole Alien Invasion thing. Which…fair, honestly. With no prior criminal history and having saved a lot of people early on in the Invasion, it was pretty likely they could be turned into something useful.
Now, if only Katsuki could figure out how the operation had led to him having dinner at a café, with his teammate, in what he was pretty sure was a date? Maybe he needed to get some time with his own therapist. He did not at all feel ready for this…
... ...
"Fuck me! Why is this the most difficult villain I've dealt with in months! He's just supposed to be a counterfeiter!"
Miruko kicked out, bouncing off the GIANT FUCKING YEN COIN that had been flying at her. She kicked hard enough to force it off-vector, making it slam into an already wrecked building, even as she used the momentum to dash closer to The Yen Plunderer. Growling as she had to twist in mid-air to avoid a machine-gun-like stream of violently launched fake yen coins, she almost regretted not bringing any minions along. She'd thought this was a fantastic chance to get back into some solo work, having been chaffing more than a bit under all the namby-pamby teamwork crap she'd had to choke down.
"Fuck! What the shit is your damage, you psycho! I'm only going to beat you up a little!"
Unfortunately, while she was getting a good fight out of it, it was also an embarrassing as fuck one. This guy, while his Quirk was clearly powerful, hadn't been a major villain before the Invasion. He'd just been an irritatingly good counterfeiter that used his Quirk to cheat casinos and pay what he felt were fairer prices for coffee. Which…honestly, dude wasn't wrong that 700 yen for a coffee was a bit much. Fucking corporate bastard coffee chains that got people addicted by using double the caffeine of their competitors!
Wait. No! Not the point. Point being that this shouldn't have been such a hard fight! Nor was she supposed to have lost half her uniform and be bouncing around with her tits out! Why the hell hadn't she remembered that she had some emergency yen in the padding around her boobs?! Fucker had used his control of them to yank her around, and eventually her costume had ripped! Fuck, she was glad she was solo on this, and if anyone got cell footage of this mess she was going to crush their cellphones even if it got her yelled at again. Also, she might ask Minion 1 and Minion 2 if they could remake her costume with stronger seams. Those two brats were at least useful, for minions…
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Gunhead made a pleased noise as the newest version of his prosthetic proved itself useful once again, the wire-arrow mobility system allowing him to chase the villain Warpath despite the man's ability to leap rooftops. The man was the only one of their targets to escape the initial ambush, due to much greater durability than they'd known about. He'd immediately taken to the roof, which had let him slip away from most of the heroes. But that crazy Hatsume girl had built a mobility-system into the prosthetic he'd needed after loosing a hand in the Jaku Raid.
Not only did the prosthetic fire a wide range of more normal projectiles, but it also had five reusable arrows on wire that could embed in concrete or brick and pull him along said wire with a powerful motor, then somehow disengage. Combined with a bracing system in his new costume, it meant he could move across the rooftops just as fast as the fleeing villain. All while using carefully aimed special ammo shots to corral the bastard. Just a little bit more and…
Warpath screamed, hands going to his ears as he passed over an alley. Gunhead grinned, hearing the edge of the directional shout from Present Mic that had caught the bastard. Physical durability didn't do much good against something like sound, which is why Gunhead had been maneuvering the villain to cross over where Mic had set up. He rushed ahead, intent on putting the man down more firmly before he could recover. Hopefully, he wouldn't have to get lethal to do it. But if he did…well, this fucker was wanted for some nasty shit he'd gotten up to after taking over the local area. No murders, but more than a few things almost as bad, particularly regarding the local woman.
Gunhead hated pricks like him the most, and was going to enjoy making use of each of Miss Hatsume's 'mostly-non-lethal!' options until he found one that stuck…
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Camie was pretty sure that everyone from UA was nuts. Sure, most of them were the effective or fun sort of insane, but still. She was, more and more as she kept working with them, completely convinced they were universally off their rockers. Coco for Cocoa Puffs. Playing not just with less than a full deck, but with Uno cards at a poker table. Really, she could keep going, but the point that they were all a little…off. Dealing with them was like reaching into a box of cheerios and pulling out a fruit loop.
Which she was certain was how she found herself in her current situation.
She just really hoped their crazy wasn't infectious.
After all, she really didn't want to normalize using her illusions to simultaneously pretend to be four strippers, a bartender, and two bouncers. Honestly, if she wasn't so impressed with how the two Head Crazies that were Resolution and Keystone had figured out her power let her multitask to a stupid degree, she'd likely be a lot more annoyed about this. As it was, she could only be grateful. No one before them had realized that her ADHD was actually the result of her Quirk making alterations to her brain to allow it to handle complex illusions. She not only could, but just automatically did, handle dozens of streams of thought.
All the time.
She'd never realized it wasn't normal to do that, since she didn't have an outside point of reference. Once the two had explained it, and then helped her use some custom gear to automate some of her illusions so she had streams-of-thought free, then also helped her learn to manage them…well, she owed them a lot for that. She could look back on some of her behavior now and realize it was totally cringe. Like, her brain had been so crosswired she was pretty sure half the time she'd sounded like an entire group of druggies holding a baking contest that included 'special brownies.'
Still, what she was doing with her newly improved abilities wasn't exactly a dignified use of her powers. Even if she did know that she was technically protecting the real strippers she was impersonating from getting caught in the crossfire when things went down in a few minutes. After all, their targets had just walked in, and the hobo-looking sensei from UA, yet another crazy dude, was in position to shut down their Quirks. Any second now, she'd get the signal and this would be over.
At least she'd learned how to give a killer strip show, if she could ever find herself a proper boyfriend to use it on…
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A/N: I made a little game of 'spot the references' for my Patrons with the chapters. Sadly, most of them went completely unrecognized T-T.1) Baston is a reference to Gaston from Beauty and the Beast (someone did get that bit, thankfully). His minions contained references to 'Bard' from the 'The Hobbit' who killed Smaug with a Black Arrow, and the half-dragon that looked like a donkey was a reference to the dragon and donkey's kids from Shrek.2) The family of light-based villains Katsuki and Toru took on are based on New Wave from Worm. (Again, thankfully someone got that much at least)3) Miruko's villain was based of the Penny Plunderer from Batman. A silly villain responsible for the Giant Penny in the Batcave.4) Warpath is very very loosely based on Warpath from Marvel. Honestly, it was a weak reference I'm not surprised no one got.5) Camie's wasn't based on a single specific refence, though there are a number of nightclubs in DC and Marvel that I'd have accepted. Such as the Hellfire club.