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CHAPTER START---
Standing atop Humarise Headquarters, Flect Turn gazes down at the city below.
A thin green fog lingers on the streets as emergency services and some Pro Heroes desperately try to contain the situation.
Collecting the bodies, wading through the death and stench of decay in the air while trying to make sense of this tragedy.
All the while Flect Turn stares down at them with indifference to their pain, their suffering. Yet he is filled with jubilation at his brand of righteous justice being carried out.
"They've had an entire day, yet most cities are still in a similarly dismal state. They're more lost and hopeless than I expected."
"The attack worked," his sister says, standing behind him, reading from her tablet. "People are scared, lost, confused. Infrastructure has broken down, and supply chains are in pieces. Almost everything is going exactly as planned. It's beautiful."Flect Turn smiles. "Then the first stage is complete. Now comes the quiet. Is the second strain of Trigger ready?"
"Yes, but transporting it has become more tedious, time-consuming."
"As expected, they raised the security around their facilities. Fine, I'll think of something else if needed."
"Is there a particular timetable stage two needs to be initiated by?" she asks.
"No, stage two has already begun," he gestures to the lingering cloud of Trigger above the massive river in the middle of the city. "Adding more was only to accelerate and deepen the effect. But this is already enough to cause panic over those resources."
"Good, so the plan was a success," she says. "Now we simply wait for the air to clear and prepare for the next assault."
"Well, it being a success is obvious, but everything that comes after depends on what you were talking about earlier."
"Earlier?"
"You mentioned that there were some things that didn't go as planned. What were they?"
"Oh," she looks down at her tablet. "It's only been 24 hours, so more bodies are being found, but the United Nations projects 2.8 billion deaths from our attack. Lower than our projected 3.7 billion." ℟𝘈Ν∅ΒĘṢ
"2.8 billion," Flect Turn hisses. "A measly 2.8 billion?!"
"Some of the abominations caught onto our plan beforehand," she says. "They alerted the nations of their water facilities being tampered with. Some listened, others didn't, and managed to shut down their infrastructure and evacuate major cities in time."
"That's surprising. How are they that organized or quick to respond to information?"
"They weren't."
He turned around to look at her, leaning his back against the railing.
"The major cities didn't exactly 'shut down' their infrastructure. They haphazardly evacuated and had whatever Pro Heroes were nearby destroy them. They destroyed massive water pump facilities on an…educated guess."
"Educated guess? A leak on our side?"
"Competence on their side."
"I see. Anything else?"
"The world is saddened, but, not as chaotic as we expected, they're rallying."
"Rallying? Around what?"
---Horizon's Secret Panacea Storage Depot, Japan…
Stepping out of a Warp Gate made of dark purple mist, Phantom Thief sees Horizon sitting on a couch with a few floating monitors in front of him.
His right was leaning against the back of the couch, supporting his head while he idly read the constant updates from all around the world, while his left hand was shrouded with dense blue liquid energy.
His connection to an R-Room allowed him to remotely fill the storage depot's massive containers with specially modified Panacea from his comfortable spot.
Phantom Thief takes off his mask, and as Neito Monoma walks over to the large fridge in this lounge area and gets a drink.
After getting a soda, he looks back at Horizon, who taps the side of his visor, signaling that he's on the phone.
Monoma nods and moves to sit on the other side of the couch. For the first time since the attack began, he gets to take a break.
"What did you say to me?" Horizon asks, and Monoma sees him sit up slightly. "What do you mean your 'National Interests'? Is that a bad joke?"
'A politician, they can't be that smart to piss of the person the entire world is pooling resources into right now,' Monoma thinks as he takes out his phone and checks the Hero Course 3rd Year group chat.
"How about this for a 'National Interest'? If you don't get me what I need, I'll come over there and rip your spine out, without my Quirk. Then your country will have to find a new president in the middle of this global crisis. You have ten minutes."
Horizon ends the call and leans back on the couch.
"So, who was that?"
"President of Elkara," Horizon says. "He secured a few samples of the undiluted Trigger, but is holding them for national use."
"For a weapon?"
"No, but their country is a little island, so small that they fear any cure or antibody made from it will be distributed to them at a low priority."
"Makes sense. Bigger countries would politic their way into getting it first."
"Doesn't matter who gets it first, his country can't refine it so getting it last is better than not at all," Horizon says. "Why are you here anyway? The next shipment isn't done yet."
"I know, but I just finished up in Mexico City, and I need a break. They've been running me ragged."
"I told you your value would skyrocket after the operation."
"Yeah, but I didn't think getting Warp Gate implanted and a global crisis would happen within a month of each other."
"Better you than me, but think of the upside. Your pay will be a lot higher now that you're the third most valuable Quirk user in the world."
Monoma chuckles. "True. Can't have a United Nations Global Response Team without a way to get around the globe."
After relaxing in silence for a moment, Monoma gets a message and leans forward.
Extending his hand to the middle of the room, he releases a dark purple mist from his skin and controls it to form a wall of gas at the far end of the room.
"Thanks for the Warp Gate," Cellophane says after stepping out of the Warp Gate. He looks around to see there they are before removing his visor. "Juzo called a few minutes ago. He should be done at The Pentagon pretty soon."
Monoma just gives him a thumbs up, then leans back, closing his eyes and trying to relax as the Warp Gate dissipates.
After Sero grabs a bottle of water from the fridge, then takes one of the empty seats and also tries to relax, not having a moment to breathe since this entire incident began.
"Since you're not freaking out, am I right to assume your dad is fine?" Horizon asks.
"Yeah, he's fine," Sero says. "He lives far enough from Oslo that he wouldn't have known anything was wrong if not for the UA Sports Festival."
"That only leaves the other billion and a half people to think about."
Monoma grimaces. "Definitely don't envy your job."
"I get that a lot. But Sero, what about the whole Yui Kodai thing?"
"Uh…unresolved."
"What do you mean unresolved?" Monoma asks. "You're actually thinking about breaking up?"
"Well, I'll be moving to America in a few months and she'll still be in UA studying until next March, so…maybe."
"You do know you'll never get a girl that hot again, right?"
"That's not true, I've—" Sero cuts himself off. "I could totally get another hot girlfriend, especially since I'll be joining that new response division."
"Surprised you even got in, figured they could just have extra tape on standby," Monoma grumbles.
"I have skills that are useful for other things. I'll mostly be in the advance recon department with Shinso."
"It also helps that he's globally recognized," Horizon says. "The response team can send people into nations without permission, if those people are from that nation. But if members of what was Team Horizon shows before getting permission—"
"They'll let it go because of reputation," Monoma says. "If you tell them I was a member of your team, do I get a raise?"
Horizon turns to him. "Raise to what? You're already the best paid member."
"Until you join."
"I believe you mean, 'if', I join."
Monoma rolls his eyes, then gets a notification on his phone which prompts him to create another Warp Gate.
This time Mudman walks out, holding a stack of papers.
"I'm rethinking this whole leadership thing," he says whole handing Sero the stack of papers. He takes off his visor and goes to get a drink and bowl of cereal, sitting at the small table nearby and having a quick meal.
Monoma looks between Sero, Juzo, and Horizon, seeing them all silently relaxing.
Well, he and Sero were relaxing, Horizon was reading intel on his screen and Juzo was already sending new orders on his phone.
He then looks at the stack of papers, then at them once more.
'Am I insane, or are they being too casual about the greatest tragedy in this history of…ever,' Monoma thinks.
"So, uh, what's with the papers?" Monoma asks.
Juzo shrugs, "list of suspects they want me to look at, survivors from the Trigger attack."
"Then shouldn't we be questioning them or something?"
"Waste of time," Horizon says. "That's just a list of everyone who survived the attack. But they only survived getting gassed because it targets the active Quirk gene. They're Quirkless."
"So that's how it works…but, that means the person behind this is likely Quirkless too, right?"
"Yeah, but it's not one of them," Sero says. "If you're smart enough to pull this off, you don't put yourself on such a short list. The entire world is will throw every telepathy, lie detector, or interrogation Quirk at you. That's just asking to get put down."
"So the United Nations is wasting time having those people get interrogated," Juzo says. "Shinso is informing us of their progress since he's helping with that. But they've got hundreds of people to screen, mostly on the older side, since Quirks are more common as generations progress."
"And we aren't telling them this because?"
"Because the entire world is working together on this," Sero says. "Which means it's easy for them to spy on the investigation. The longer they get intel that we aren't using, the better for us. The person we're looking for is rich, well connected, and Quirkless."
"That only leaves a handful of people. Rounding up all the Quirkless people in the world shouldn't be that hard, right?"
"It's not a Quirkless person," Juzo says.
"But, you guys just said they're Quirkless."
"On paper, yeah. But if you're going to do this, you don't want to be one of the obvious suspects, even if there are a few million of you. So, they're definitely lying about having a Quirk."
"Which means they're one of the surviving billions, much harder to find," Monoma says. "So, what do we do?"
"Wait for the next attack?" Sero asks.
"Nah, they won't likely have a next attack," Juzo says. "They hit the entire world at once. That was a once-in-history chance. Now water stations are much more heavily defended. They showed their hand with the plane tactic because Horizon would have detected any of the bombs they used in some countries.
Not to mention the modified version of The Panacea he's making to wake up the people who are in critical comas after having his healing ability save them from their Quirk and brain overloading on Trigger.
But this isn't really a disease. Unless we modify the genes of everyone on the planet, we can't become immune to Trigger. Right?"
"If they have a Quirk, Trigger will work. It latches onto the same genetic trigger as Quirks, hence the name."
Hearing Horizon's explanation, Juzo nods. "So a vaccine is impossible, and even if it were possible, they'd just make a new version anyway. So it's only a matter of time before they launch an attack, but we don't know how they will."
"How many people died in that last attack?" Horizon asks. "Official numbers, the real ones from The Pentagon, not what's on the news."
"2.8 billion," Juzo says. "They wipe out almost a third of the planet. Relatively speaking, it's as if the black plague hit in ten minutes."
"What would push you to kill nearly 3 billion people?" Horizon asks.
"Money," Sero says.
"Nope, financial systems are all stalled right now. Wealth won't matter for a while since everything is frozen, not to mention logistics and monetary systems won't work until major cities are either repopulated or the governments station people there again.
Most of the world's systems were stationed in major cities, especially capital cities. Not to mention all the money they threw around in bribes just to get this attack set up. They don't need the money, and you don't do something so chaotic for greed."
"Political control?" Sero says.
"To keep it, no. Most politicians are under fire right now for allowing this to happen. Only America and Japan have a good standing with their people, mostly because of Star and I. Well, mostly because of me."
"So maybe the person wants to be president of one of the other nations," Sero says. "They don't have to launch a second attack if they want to discredit a current leader and take his spot. They then run a 'Security First' campaign and slowly become a dictator."
"Not a bad idea," Juzo says as he refills his bowl. "But, you don't attack every country to do that. You keep it as local as possible, and you especially don't want Horizon or Star hunting you down for this to work. The only job that would make sense is United Nations Secretary General, but she doesn't have anyone fighting for her job. Heck, she barely wants it half the time with all these new global threats showing up.
"So money and control are out of the picture. They also don't care about how the world views them, so any positive fame is out. And they don't care about life," Horizon says. "So it's either infamy in legacy, or—"
"They're a cultist who believes in their vision," Sero says. "But if that's true, they won't leave the job unfinished. There will be a second attack."
"Not necessarily," Juzo says. "If they're a cultist, they think Quirks are a mistake, a mockery of their god's work in creating humans. They already hit the top few hundred most populated cities. Anything else just wouldn't be efficient enough.
And wouldn't set as big of an example. Drama is part of it, and after this, nothing will have enough shock factor to be worth doing. So, the next move will be more subtle. But still impactful enough to affect the entire world. For only the Quirkless to survive it."
"Water," Horizon says. "Call The Pentagon, tell them to have their chemists create a neutralizing agent and spread it in every major fresh water source. That must be the second phase of their plan."
"We should keep this quiet," Sero says. "Maybe they'll send people to do this part of the job. Catching one of them could finally give us a lead."
"I doubt they're that dumb. But, I think if we look for sudden inconsistencies in family trees, they'll be found. We just need some time," Horizon says before getting up. "Monoma, let's go."
"Where are we going?"
"Western Europe's command center, I need to talk to the President of Elkara…"
END CHAPTER---