Chapter 74: Invasion
Summary: Where canon bends over and kisses it's butt cheeks goodbye for good.
Chapter 74: Invasion
Sakamata Kugo, better known to the rest of the world as Gang Orca, was uneasy. He had, in fact, been uneasy since one of his young Work Studies students from UA had approached him with a theory about the Mass Missing Persons case they were working. Keystone was an incredibly intelligent young woman, one whose power he was also growing to respect. Both of which were reasons he'd listened carefully to the outlandish theory she'd presented him, then acted to bring it to the attention of others. There was, unfortunately, something about that theory had bothered him. It had bothered him immensely. Enough to take his time and put all the other Yokohama agencies on alert before investigating the clue she'd given them. He wasn't even quite sure what it was that bothered him, save perhaps that Endeavor's mad science comment had rung a little too true. This whole affair felt off in a way, like they were dipping their fins blindly into murky shallows while something bigger lurked in the depths.
His unease only grew, now that they were closing in on the wreckage of the Kamino fight. The entire area had been cordoned off as unsafe, and repair work had so far been concentrated on the surrounding buildings. It's not like anyone needed the block of warehouses that had been the site of All for One's death, after all. Stabilizing the handful of damaged skyscrapers and massive apartment blocks nearby had clearly been a more critical priority in the months following the attack. Yet, it was strange for someplace so deep into one of the most population-dense cities of Japan to set his instincts as on edge as they were now.
He tried to tell himself it was because of his own involvement in the previous affair here, of how helpless he'd felt before the powers involved in the Kamino Incident. Yet…he knew that was wrong. No, something else was wrong here. Something that was raising the hackles of the predator within him. A screaming instinct and an itch in his fin that was telling him to get out. Gritting his teeth, he addressed one of the two sidekicks he'd brought all the way in with him.
"Rocco. Send the entire agency to Alert Red. Something is very wrong here." He hesitated, but his instincts were being very insistent this time. "Flash an HSN message to the rest of Yokohama, too. Yellow alert to all agencies. My personal authority."
Rocco might normally have balked at that order. But the man was a River Otter Heteromorph, and he seemed even more on edge than Gang Orca himself. Instead of protesting, he nodded jerkily and sent the message. Sent it so fast, in fact, that Sakamata suspected Rocco had already had it prepared before he'd issued the order. Damn. It wasn't just him then. His second sidekick seemed like he wanted to protest. But Damien Diamond wasn't a heteromorph. His Quirk, Pressure Wave, made him a fantastic fit for the agency, no question. But he lacked the instincts that tended to come with advanced heteromorphic Quirks like his own and Rocco's. Thankfully, the man had worked with Gang Orca for years and choked back whatever protest he'd half-formed. If his boss said something was wrong, it probably was.
They neared Ground Zero, the ruined warehouse there All for One had died. The site was dead. Completely devoid of even any animal life from the feel of it. But the heavy presence that lingered in the very air here might explain that. Instead of splitting up to search the surroundings, Sakamata made the snap decision to keep the three of them together. The former Nomu warehouse was too much of a ruin to hide anything, so they approached the warehouse just to the east of the site first. All three of them tensed as Gang Orca casually forced the door…then sighed as they spotted nothing inside. They entered and did a quick sweep just to be sure, then exited and headed for the next warehouse.
That one, two, proved empty, though there were tracks inside that none of them could identify. Still, two down, a half a dozen or so to go just for this epicenter, then a more ordinary search pattern as they spiraled outward. Only the warehouses here had much chance of hiding any major operation without the locals noticing. Feeling a bit better, Gang Orca moved them on to the next. This time, the door didn't budge when he tried to force it. Frowning, knowing that all of these warehouses had been ordered abandoned, he tensed and prepared to try again with more of his considerable strength behind the attempt.
He never got the chance as the walls to either side of the entrance exploded in a surge of violence, and claws reached for him out of the dark…
... ...
The nice thing about the nights Izumi and Momo stayed at their safehouse, instead of the Yaoyorozu Manor or Midoriya apartment, was that they got to make their way to UA without the unnecessary folderol of an armored car and bodyguards. Well…without the bodyguards, at least. Technically, the non-descript 2B-driven van they used was just as heavily armored as the sedans the Yaoyorozu family bodyguards used. It was a lot more pedestrian looking, to better blend in with the upscale warehouses their workshop-cum-safehouse was located among, but just as well protected. The real improvement was privacy. With no other people to be mindful of as they cuddled, or more, on their commute into UA, the ride was much more relaxed. It was, generally, a nice quiet and intimate time that the two of them enjoyed as the start of their day. Though today they were talking business, rather than having fun.
"So, they are planning to start canvassing the suspect areas today? Sucks that it took a few days to set the cooperation up and get all those maps stitched together. If they find anything, you won't be on hand to help them figure out what the QE drain was all about."
Momo scowled.
"I know. I pointed that out and suggested they call UA and request me for an extra day. But, since I'm a First-Year Work Study, Gang Orca shot the idea down. Even had the gall to tell me to focus on my education, as if I'm not basically done with the entire year's work already. It's not even a Heroics day!"
Izumi wanted to chuckle as Momo's scowl turned into a pout, but she did understand the frustration. While they were allowed a certain number of Work Studies hours, they also had to put in the required number of hours on the UA campus. It had taken Momo's entire set of previous Work Study days to run down enough data to prove the plausibility of her theory about Quirk Energy fields being involved in the Mass Missing Persons case. The time required had been understandable, really, given that the entire idea was pretty far out there. Even putting together a reliable map and timeline of QE fields had involved calling a dozen labs, institutes and research universities. Momo had been able to be present for the decision to follow up on her lead, at least. To argue her case, as it were. But now they were due back for another day of regular classes at UA.
"At least they said they'd call you in, as an official technical consultant, if they found anything that woul—"
"Warning: Dimensional Breach Detected!"
Izumi blinked as an emergency alert she'd never heard of rapped out from the Civilian 2B shell that acted as a 'driver' for the van. It wasn't even a fully mobile shell, just a facsimile. But it did house a small portion of 2B to run both itself and the van while they were using it. Meaning it was tied into the YoRHa emergency alerts that were part of 2B's base code.
"Warning: Additional Dimensional Breach Detected!"
"Warning: Many Additional Dimensional Breaches Detected!"
"What the fuck? 2B what does that mean?!"
Izumi summoned a proper sensor probe, even as Momo began armoring up, reflexively reacting to the unknown by preparing for the worst. 2B's voice was disbelieving as she answered from the newly formed probe.
"That's not possible! It's an extremely old alert. Meant to trigger if another event like the original breach between dimensions that caused White Chlorination Syndrome occurred. The signature is wrong, smaller and more uniform, but there are more of them. Two large ones and hundreds of smaller—"
"HSN: Alert! Omega Alert Issued for Yokohama City."
"HSN: Alert! Omega Alert Issued for Osaka City."
"HSN: Alert! Omega Alert Issued for Japan. All citizens to shelter in place."
All three of them stared in horror as all of the Van's displays, set to stream news, were abruptly replaced with HSN feeds from Yokohama and Osaka, where what could only be described as 5-story-tall Portals were disgorging hundreds of things. Some looked relatively normal, if you could call giant flying turtle-things normal. Others looked malformed and grotesque, lumbering with disconcerting gaits that could only remind one of a horror movie. Many were attacking what had to be heroes, others were simply swarming past the attempts to contain them, elemental attacks flying everywhere.
Abruptly. All noise ceased. For just seven heartbeats, the world seemed to freeze. Time itself seemed to stand still as a feeling of something greater surrounded them. A voice that only 2B recognized whispered into the quiet. Yet for all that it was a whisper, the words were clear as ringing crystal to all three of them. They etched into their minds, into their very souls in a way that made them abruptly aware they had souls. Disconcerting yet enrapturing. The words spoken, yet not. In a place between heartbeats and eyeblinks that wasn't quite real, yet couldn't be anything but.
"I hope you prepared them enough, Little Spark. It's going to be a rough ride…"
As time began to move again, the world seemed to take a deep breath. Then, heralded by a shuddering stutter of half-unreal disquiet, Air Raid sirens not heard since North Korea was 'liberated' by a villain saner than its ruler nearly a hundred and fifty years ago began to wail across the city. Less than two seconds later, a monster smashed down onto the hood of their armored van. The vehicle shrieked with the sound of bending and tearing metal. The world lurched, the van's armor barely holding, and then Izumi and Momo were lunging for the doors…
... ...
Izumi not-so-quietly cursed as she dove out of the van, grateful its armor had kept it from being crushed with them in it. She sent her UA Uniform to her inventory, suppressing her momentary embarrassment as she was left completely nude midair, in full view of the street. There was a reason she didn't normally do 'quick changes' like this, and the bare second of delay between putting something in to inventory and being able to take something else out was that reason. Given the situation, she brutally suppressed the instinct to cover up and summoned her new Hero Costume to replace the uniform.
It was luck, more than anything, that she had the prototype of the redesign she and Ryukyu were working on with her. But it was luck she was grateful for as the new suit covered her body. The redesign had moved her away from the frills and skirt that gave her the 'battle maid' appearance Ryukyu had commented on. Instead, while it retained the black and white coloration and intricate scroll work of 2B's battle dress, the costume had been stripped down to a thick leotard, thigh-high boots, and elbow-length gloves. The current result was somewhere between Miruko's costume and 2B's original look, though subtly armored better than either.
The leotard left her ass feeling awfully exposed, and she'd kept arguing for at least a modesty skirt of some sort that would cover her when she wasn't jumping around, but Ryukyu and Momo had both shot it down. Physically, her skin was bullet proof and didn't need the coverage of a non-vital area. The materials her uniform was made out of were slash and bullet proof themselves, but didn't really add that much to her base durability in truth. More practically, Izumi's combat style was highly mobile and the skirt would really only offer a chance to get snagged on something, while Izumi ended up flashing everyone her butt cheeks anyway. Even marketability wise, something forming her persona properly with Ryukyu was making her consider, Izumi's ass was fantastic and sex sells. So Izumi had lost the argument completely. So far, at least.
Absolutely none of which was all that relevant at the moment, as Izumi landed in a three-point stance, with Virtuous Contract drawn, and stared down the monster that had tried to stomp their transport. She dropped deeply into Hypercognition mode, using the virtual stoppage of time in her perceptions to try to make sense of what she was seeing. The creature was some sort of horrifying-looking chimera. It stood of four long, claw-footed legs, with a birdlike body about the size of a horse sitting atop them. Given it had a beak, was heavily feathered, and had vibrant colors like those of a tropical bird, the end result looked like someone had cross-bred a horse, cassowary, and parrot.
Which sounded ridiculous but looked terrifying. Particularly as those talons might have failed to penetrate the armor of the van…but they were carving into concrete with horrifying ease as the creature turned to face them. Choosing to activate Assault Mode for its speed, agility, and physical resistance, Izumi diverted her attention elsewhere as she waited for the transformation to complete. The creature got a once over and quick breakdown of possible weaknesses, but it was currently looking like it was moving through molasses due to Hypercognition. The fact it was visibly moving at all this deep into Hypercognition wasn't exactly a good sign, since it meant the thing was stupidly fast on top of its size and strength. But it wasn't fast enough, which gave Izumi time to shift her focus from it to properly analyzing the larger situation.
Her digital other half, with her usual paranoia, had long suborned every camera on the route between their safehouse and UA, and they both slipped into those cameras now. Twin grimaces on oh-so-similar faces expressed a grim reality as the duo quickly found a half dozen more of the bird-horrors. Backtracking them to their source wasn't possible without active hacking they didn't have time for, but 2B had split off to dive into the streaming data of the internet, looking for how widespread the attack was.
Horrifyingly wide, was the answer that came back. There were at least a dozen other points of conflict with various monsters in Shizuoka alone, and all indications were that it was much worse in Yokohama and Osaka. The answer to where the monsters were coming from was also quickly answered by active HSN streams that were already showing fights against wildly varied monsters elsewhere. One hero had eyes on the source, a significantly smaller replica of the giant portals they'd seen on the HSN streams coming from Osaka and Yokohama. Some sort of lizardmen armed with spears and spitting various elemental attacks were pouring from the smaller Portal even as the Hero desperately tried to contain them.
Was this the League of Villains at work? Replicating some sort of animalistic Nomu, then warping them to various places? No. She wouldn't put it past them, but it wouldn't explain the Dimensional Breach alarm that was part of 2B's core programming. More to the point, 2B had already pushed a memory to her, the memory of the only other time she'd heard that voice that seemed to freeze time. Back in the void, before she'd become Izumi's Quirk.
As ridiculous as it was, the only logical conclusion Izumi and 2B could come to was that this was an invasion. An invasion by extra-dimensional aliens. Or, well extra-dimensional being that didn't seem to include humans, at least. If they were aliens or not might still be up for technical debate. Not that it mattered right in this moment. For now, what mattered was that there were literally millions of innocents in direct line of fire for an invasion of unknown origin and scale. So, step one, containment…
No.
Wait.
That wasn't quite right. They'd literally just trained for this. Well, not for this, but for something like it. The first step was…communication and organization. And thanks to their foresight, even if it hadn't been intended for this crazy bullshit, she had the means to get those to all-important balls rolling.
Tapping into the HSN Hub at UA was child's play, dumping her and 2B's initial assessment into it only took another tenth of a second of real time. Broadcasting the information about the portals and the one…no three locations she had for open portals took only a moment more. Creating sub-channels for each city she could quickly identify as under assault, force-connecting all of the heroes in those cities to the new nets, then mentally typing a broadcast she was too deep in Hypercognition to speak in an understandable fashion. It almost took too long. Her broadcast went out even as she was forced to actually move, the Horse-Parrot-Cassowary monstrosity having turned and taken a swipe at her.
"This is Resolution to all Heroes in the cities of Yokohama, Osaka, Hamamatsu, Nara, and Shizuoka. Your cities are under attack via extra-dimensional portals, created and sustained by unknown methods. Picture of active portal attached. Find the portals and create cordons around them until a method to disable them is found. Initiate evacuation of any area containing an active portal. Resolution Out."
Even as the broadcast went out, Virtuous Contract bit deep into the taloned leg that had tried to take her head off. To Izumi's astonishment, the leg wasn't completely severed, but the strike did disable the leg. The monster let out an unholy, shrill, squawk of pain…then had its head blasted to one side via Fist of Momo. That attack had, just as disturbingly, not killed the creature, though it appeared stunned. Taking full advantage of that fact, Izumi went airborne and came down in a falling strike, with Virtuous Contract piercing the creature's skull. It still didn't die with the blade in its brain. It did thankfully die when she sent a pulse of telekinetic power down the blade and into its brain, practically liquifying said brain in its skull. At least they weren't some sort of undead then, she supposed. Which might actually make them less fundamentally disturbing than Nomu, come to think of it.
Before she could do more than extract her blade to follow Momo, who was already intercepting the next of the Bird Monsters, another broadcast came over the HSN. Over the newly established Shizuoka Invasion subchannel.
"This is Dean Nedzu. I am taking command of all Heroes in Shizuoka. Protect civilians and create containment cordons around portals in your current locations, until receiving specific instructions."
Choosing to bypass the Birdy that Momo was busy turning to paste, Izumi swapped out Virtuous Contract with Virtuous Dignity. The spear had far greater penetration power and cored right into the main body of the monster she targeted next, just before it could snap its beak shut on a helpless civilian. Her momentum staggered the creature back, saving the woman's life, and a pulse of telekinetic power through the spear liquified its organs a moment later, causing the life to flicker out from its eyes. Even as she sought out the next monster, a priority subchannel opened on her personal Scouter. Nedzu's voice was sharp and focused as he rapped out orders.
"Resolution, Keystone, the two of you are heading to the nearest portal. Don't stop for the monsters, I'm bringing up another team behind you for them. Figure out how to shut them down. That is your highest priority, even over civilian lives. It will save more people in the long run. Sending location."
Izumi grit her teeth, even as she sent an acknowledgement in response to the location ping. Hating the action, but knowing he was right, she shifted targets even as she saw Momo doing the same thing. Both of them were silent as they raced past more monsters, leaving all-too-many victims to potential death. Keystone, at least, was able to create a railgun and fire on the move, knocking several of the Bird monsters out along the way. Izumi deployed a Missile Pod behind them to do the same thing, hoping to at least buy the civilians on the street time to get off said street. The buildings might protect them at least somewhat, given the size of these particular monsters.
The six blocks they covered seem to last an eternity, not least because there were far more monsters of smaller and slower types than the Birdies as they closed with the portal. By the time they reached it, seeing the 4-meter-tall rip in space disgorging a constant stream of different monsters, Momo had been forced to switch to a gatling gun with HE rounds to clear their path. There were no living civilians here, only corpses being fed on by various monsters, and both of them began taking fire from a group of organized-looking, four-armed, albino gorillas. The Gorillas were all wearing robes, holding staffs, and chanting. Every few seconds, a spear of elemental power fired up like flak from one of them, and they were rotating who fired in such a way that there was a near-constant stream of anti-air fire.
Momo was the one taking that fire, since she had been using Float, whereas Izumi had only been super-jumping along the street. But that meant Izumi had her own problems trying to dance through and counter the attacks shot her way by whatever was nearby every time she landed. Knowing they were here for information more than fighting, Izumi put her trust in her dodging and weaving girlfriend to take the heat from the larger mob. Instead of moving closer to the portal now that it was in sight, she angled her next jump to land on an empty rooftop with a good view of said portal.
The Missile Pod she'd left behind had already run out of Ammo, with 2B suiciding it for one last save when it did. With 2B freed up, she summoned up the most advanced Recon Pod in her arsenal, feeling 2B immediately powering up all of its sensors and pointing them at the portal. Izumi let her handle that part, as she pulled a hardlight gatling gun of her own and defended them from some winged creatures that looked suspiciously like some sort of Gargoyle. The nasty little things were numerous, but not very tough, and she was able to keep the small swarm of them away without difficulty as 2B ran analysis. Long, tense minutes passed, and Izumi had to up her game with violent bursts of telekinesis as the flying assault was added to by meter-tall humanoids with clawed hands and feet climbing over the building roof. Only her speed let her keep up with the assault, and her energy reserves were dropping faster than she was happy with. Telekinesis, in particular, was expensive to use like this, which was one of several reasons she rarely did it. She was just debating summoning her CFU to help stem the loss of energy when 2B finished her analysis.
"This Portal is unstable! It's drawing in ambient QE to sustain itself and fluctuating several dozen centimeters in size second-to-second. I theorize it will collapse if it is either denied sufficient QE to remain open, or if it's overloaded with outside QE it can't process. Throwing an empty CFU battery set to drain into the Portal, with its safeties off, is the most efficient means I can see to test."
Izumi blinked, considered for a moment, then nodded. Her CFU batteries were designed to absorb concentrated QE as it flowed into them. The safeties were meant to both prevent them from draining people that came into direct physical contact with them, and to limit them to a safe absorption speed so they didn't overload. If the Portals were concentrating QE, throwing one into it would destabilize its ambient absorption. Then, when the CFU overloaded, it would explode all that QE back out in a massive spike. If what 2B said was true, that might throw the Portal off kilter enough to collapse. Though the results might plausibly be…explosive.
Willing to try, Izumi dismissed the Recon Pod and deployed a Gatling Pod in its place. 2B, realizing what she wanted easily, took over their anti-air efforts even as Izumi went airborne herself with a jump, summoning her CFU as she did. It formed around her at the apex of her jump, roaring to life even as Izumi analyzed her options. Momo had been busy. Three quarters of the Gorillas were down, with the rest hunkered behind a hulking, rocky monster that was absorbing Momo's HE Gatling fire without seeming to care about the damage. Despite that, it couldn't move to go after her and protect the Gorillas at the same time, and Momo hosing down anything else that tried to come through the portal. She was still being forced to dodge attacks from things that were already through, but their combined efforts had depleted the mob, particularly of anything that could fly. Momo was still taking hits despite that, but the telltales Izumi had that linked directly to her girlfriend's armor said she was fine for now. The armor itself was battered, but nothing had gotten through to Momo. Yet.
It appeared the vast majority of the enemy that had any ranged or flight ability had focused on them already, getting thinned out drastically. Something their enemy was going to pay for now, unable to react as Izumi flashed forward toward the portal, summoning an empty CFU battery to hand. Sending Momo a warning to pull back, Izumi launched the battery at the rip in space, then banked and accelerated hard to get clear of whatever was about to happen.
For long seconds, the answer was 'nothing.' But then, in the video being streamed from 2B's Pod, the portal visibly went crazy, flickering and warping. There was a horrible noise, like the very fabric of the world had hit a record scratch, the sound vibrating in Izumi's bones, and the portal imploded. Everything within 300 meters, be it monster, metal, concrete, or corpse, simply ceased to exist between eyeblinks. Izumi came to a halt midair, looking back at the perfectly spherical crater the size of several sports fields.
"Oh. Well. It worked? But that might not be a very good solution…"
A choked sound of mixed amusement and disbelief came from her private link to Momo at that comment. It had been silent until now, neither of them needing verbal communication to work together after years of partnership in disaster zones, but Momo's voice spoke a moment later, dry and a bit strained.
"No, Izumi. I rather think we need something a bit less violent. Some of the portals are near housing complexes that might still have people in them."
Gulping as she realized there might still have been people hiding in a few of the buildings that had been in that sphere, despite the monsters having broken into all of them, Izumi did her best to push her rising gorge at the thought down. Hesitantly, she opened the link to Nedzu, who didn't waste time in giving her new orders.
"Good. That's one down. Sending you another location. Please try to find a less volatile solution to this one. A clean-up team will take care of the remaining monsters as soon as it can get there. Be aware, JSDF is now coordinating with us."
Wincing, despite the lack of condemnation in Nedzu's voice, Izumi sent a silent acknowledgement to the next set of location coordinates…
... ... ... ... ... ...
A/N 1: Wohoo! Time for the hopefully-no-one-strangles-me reveal! I've made it fairly clear in the past that I'm not a fan of My Hero Academia's later content. That, in point of fact, I pretty much hate everything past the Eri/Overhaul arc. The Cultural Festival and Joint Training arcs are fine, but they are barely more than filler, really. Everything after that? Trash. Utter trash. The MLA/PLA arcs were nonsense, the Dark Hero arc was worse, the Star and Stripe arc was...pointless, and the Final War arc feels like the writer never expected to get that far and was desperate to come up with an ending.
Thus, it shouldn't be too much of a shock (I've repeatedly said that the Eri/Overhaul arc was going to be the last big arc that really followed canon) that we're launching into Full Story Divergence with this release. I've spent a lot of time over the last 200,000 words slowly shifting and restructuring the world. A few of the major factions (MLA and LoV) will still exist and continue to cause problems in the future. But their roles are going to shift drastically in response to...well...the events of these two chapters. Events I've been hinting heavily at but which I have no idea if anyone predicted the actual result accurately. Give yourself a cookie if you did. You earned it.
A/N 2 : No one expects the interdimensional invasion! Or, well, maybe some of you did. A lot of people thought I was bringing Nier content in, only I'm not really. The content introduced here is a little bit Nier-inspired, but only to keep it consistent with the established narrative of how Quirks came about. In truth, the Divergence here is much more heavily inspired by other works/entire genres. Oh, in order to keep the narrative of how the two worlds are related, there's some Neir bits woven in. But, for the most part, this was actually inspired by Invasion Gate fiction. Common in LitRPG, but also not exactly unknown in other media. The Burning Crusade invasions in Warcraft, for example. Or even certain DnD settings. My version is an amalgamation, rather than specifically from one place. Though several of the monsters were inspired by the Dungeon and Dragons 3.5 Monster Manual. Which I happen to have a copy of. No need to entirely reinvent the wheel, even if the monsters won't be identical so much as 'based on.'