Chapter 196 - Martial Law 2/2

The alarm rang through the city, deafening and terrifying, shaking walls and rattling bodies.

Nearly fifteen helicopters flew overhead, blinding white spotlights sweeping through streets awash in blood and littered with torn human limbs.

Whole streets were destroyed, shops were burning, wounded civilians were dragging their bodies, stunned, through the remains of Tokyo.

Grim soldiers high in the sky watched the slaughter quietly.

Megaphones hanging from helicopters simultaneously broadcast the announcement.

"Martial law has been declared : proceed home and wait further instructions. Martial law has been declared : proceed..."

The heroes lifted their heads, stunned, rain streaming down their swollen faces.

Exhausted, groggy, wounded, they were in the midst of an evacuation.

They blinked, minds foggy, then kept working slowly.

Armed soldiers flooded the capital.

One group reached Tokyo's Central Bank.

They came face to face with villains, who, bags full of banknotes, were about to leave.

They stopped as soon as they saw the soldiers standing in a semicircle, guns drawn, waiting for them behind the glass doors.

"Get down !" shouted one of them, hooded, showing the ground with his. "I said get down !"

There were five villains ; one of them, a mixture of human and tiger, laughed gleefully, shaking his paws.

"Hey, buddy" he laughed. "No need to shake your-"

They had made the error of talking to them as they would Heroes.

The soldiers shot them down without mercy.

Doors burst in a glittering shower of shattered glass.

Throughout the city, the same commands were barked : any villains who'd tried to take advantage of the chaos were told to surrender immediately or they would be unceremoniously shot.

Within minutes, the troops had spread all over the city, evacuating civilians and clearing the worst-affected districts with brutal efficiency.

They took control of hospitals, schools, and every public building they could, setting up emergency rescue centers and sorting areas for those whose homes had been obliterated.

Recovery Girl ran from one patient to the next, her little syringe-shaped cane clicking rapidly on the floor.

"Over here !" called one of the military doctor.

She stopped and kissed a patient's forehead, a light sheen of sweat on her skin.

"This one is stabilized"

Chiyo, Quirk induced healing process barely started up, straightened and ran to the other end of the room, spreading kisses all around until spots grew in her vision field.

"You've done enough, thank you," another soldier told here, hand on her shoulder. "Now please sit down, ma'am"

Ma'am, not Recovery Girl.

Chiyo sat down on a chair, her old knees creaking.

Martial law had decreed that all heroes were relieved of their duties ; Heroes' licenses were worthless.

Heroes and civilians were all demoted to the same rank - she could tell by the fact that there were almost more civilians than Heroes in this emergency ward.

Under normal circumstances, Heroes would be given priority care in order to be sent back into battle immediately ; but not today.

Today's Heroes were nothing more than big kids in colorful costumes who had failed to protect civilians.

There was another round of gunfire.

Chiyo jerked.

None of the medics reacted.

They brought her a glass of water with some sugar and left her in a corner.

Farther into the city, one of the last standing Heroes carried a civilian to a quickly erected emergency area.

Swollen purple bags darkened his gaze.

His eyes were dull, his shoulders slumped under the weight of the body he was carrying, his eyebrows perpetually raised in a permanent state of shock.

A hand rested gently on his shoulder.

He paused.

"You are now relieved of your duties," a soldier told him quietly. "All Heroes are"

The Hero blinked slowly, as if waking from a long dream.

Dried blood covered his hair and temples. There were hard, dark lumps in his beard.

"Relieved" he muttered

His voice was quieter than a breath. The soldier leaned forward to hear. In a slow, pasty gesture, the Hero pointed to the wounded civilian on his back.

"Who'll take care of him ? He needs urgent care"

The soldier's eyes slid over to the civilian. His eyes stopped on the civilian's stomach, which was half hidden behind the Hero's shoulders.

He looked back up in his eyes.

"Give him to me ; I'll personally see that he gets all the care he needs"

The Hero smiled, but it was a smile that failed to reach his eyes.

He gently put the sleeping civilian in the soldier's arms.

"Thank you", he said, "Thank you very much"

With the same sensitivity a nurse would have for a senile patient, a second soldier took his arm.

The soldier supporting the wounded civilian waited until the Hero had turned the corner of the street.

Then he reverently laid the body against a wall, trying not to look at the corpse's ripped stomach, from which its intestines hung like tinsels over nothing.

*

Overhaul.

And now there was fucking Overhaul.

The second the first Nomu had exploded, the hairs on the back of Shoto's neck had stood up, his blood had boiled, lightning had crackled in his palm.

He'd stepped between him and his father with the certainty that the Nomus had become the least of their worries and that civilian lives were worth nothing to him ; he'd kill Overhaul and then, with the last crumbs of energy he hadd left, he'd take his father with him, willing or not, and run far, far away from Tokyo.

Then Jin Woo appeared and Shoto reacted instinctively, his instinct - a strange mixture of protective and murderous - taking over.

To tell the truth, he didn't stop his sword in time.

It was Jin Woo's shadows that had stepped in, discreet but nevertheless dangerous.

Shoto had seen how easily they'd stopped his icy sword ; he'd etched it in his mind.

Jin Woo, amused, had smiled as he met Shoto's gaze.

Shoto was exhausted, wounded, covered in blood, edgy, and bloodthirsty. He didn't smile back.

Slowly, he lowered his sword.

His eyes had immediately gone back to the dancing shadows on Jin Woo's skin, slowly merging with his flesh until they fully disappeared inside.

Shoto should have been happy - or at least relieved to see him.

The only thing on his mind was that Jin Woo was indeed extremely dangerous.

"Sung?", Endeavor asked. "What are you doing here ?"

"Martial law has just been declared," he said calmly. "Gunhee has taken control of the city"

His eyes fell on Overhaul.

"You must be the contractor, right ?"

Overhaul had stopped staring curiously at Shoto and turned his attention back to Jin Woo.

A gleam of amusement passed through his sullen gaze before it faded, stifled by the dullness of his eyes.

"Contractor ? I guess you can say that, yes"

Shoto shot him a sideways glare.

Enji - who had been watching him intently for some time - put his hand on his shoulder to calm him down.

"Do you have a license ?"

Overhaul, as if he'd expected to be asked, held out his card.

Shoto looked at his outstretched hand as if he was going to tear it yet he didn't move, his father's hand grounding him in reality.

Yellow eyes moved back to Shoto.

"I've heard a lot about you. My nephew is in your class"

The sentence obviously surprised Shoto.

"Nephew ?"

"Neito"

Shoto looked astonished.

Enji handed the card back to the newcomer.

"Thank you for coming, Mr. Chisaki," Endeavor replied diplomatically.

He did his best to compensate for his son's wildness, although neither Chisaki nor Jin Woo seemed to hold it against Shoto.

"Good", Jin Woo said while clapping. "Now that the introductions are done, let's get to work"

The four men exchanged looks.

Shoto was still watching Chisaki suspiciously.

Chisaki, for his part, cast a bored glance at the Nomus gathered around them, who stood at a safe distance and watched him warily.

"We just have to get rid of them, don't we ?"

Endeavor's feet were as hot as burning irons, turning the muddy ground to dry earth under his shoes.

"The civilians are in the shrine," he declared. "Let's finish and get them out"

"No need," Jin Woo said. "My men are getting throught it from the back. They'll take care of it"

He pointed with his chin at a helicopter circling above the shrine.

A wry smile lit up his face.

"Let's get to it, shall we ?"

Shoto looked at his father as a screaming, flying Nomu crashed into them at full speed, hoping to catch them off guard from above.

Flames flashed across Endeavor's skin, shadows darted across Jin Woo's skin, and Shoto bent his legs, sharingan whirling.

It was Chisaki who killed him, his ungloved fingers brushing the tip of the translucent wing as it passed over his head.

The Nomu exploded like a bomb of blood and organs, splattering the three of them.

Jin Woo blinked and disdainfully removed a piece of crushed flesh from his cheek.

"Charming," Jin Woo said evenly

"Ah, what a mess", said Chisaki, who hadn't been hit.

Shoto's arsenal was limited to mass destruction, yet even he wasn't able to commit such brutality.

The Nomus attacked in a single, compact, powerful wave.

No one spoke, and all threw themselves into the frenzy of battle.

Endeavor sent bolts of fire into the sky, charring the last flying Nomus.

Chisaki, almost bored, waited for the Nomus to pounce on him without moving ; blood bombs exploded like fireworks all around him.

Jin Woo stretched out his hands, and shadowy tentacles sprang from the ground, wrapping around the Nomus, brutally crushing them or dragging them to the ground, drowning them in pools of darkness - never to surface again.

Shoto flashed through the Nomus' ranks like lightning, a tantô in each hand, slicing ankle after ankle.

With a kick, he hurled them toward his father, who, predicting his movements, caught them and brutally charred them.

Soon, burnt corpses piled up around Endeavor like a pyre.

Shoto's eyes, between two slain Nomus, kept returning to Kurogiri, who stood on the roof of the tallest building, still releasing Nomus in waves.

Jin Woo, who had followed his gaze, came closer.

"Need express transport ?", he said.

And he pointed to the ground below them, where shadows swirled like a vortex.

"I'll kill him," Shoto warned, not willing to be reproached afterwards.

Jin Woo smiled.

"We'd be very grateful"

Shoto studied him quietly.

His eyes flicked back to his father ; he was too close to Chisaki.

A Nomu appeared discreetly behind him : the ice arrow hadn't finished materializing in Shoto's palm that shadow tentacles grabbed him by the throat and shoved him in the ground, drowning him in a puddle of darkness.

"Go or I'll go myself", said Jin Woo

Jin Woo had the luxury of being cool and refreshed as he had recently arrived ; he hadn't faced All for One, hadn't had to evacuate half a thousand civilians within a few minutes, hadn't seen all his efforts reduced to nothing as he watched, powerless, hundreds of those he'd bothered to save die.

Jin Woo didn't have to stand in the middle of a field littered with human corpses - corpses of innocents - and tell himself it was his fault.

But he had come to help.

Shoto should have been grateful.

Again, he couldn't help but feel that he was too dangerous to be left to his own devices.

Shoto took a resolute step forward and fell through the shadow portal.

The feeling was strange, as if he was being squeezed from all sides by cold, wet hands.

It lasted only a second.

He reappeared, crouched, behind Kurogiri, sharingan spinning wickedly in his eyes, pouring rain drowning any other sound around him.

Cold wrath seized him.

It was because of him that his efforts to save the civilians had been worthless.

It was because of him that even though he'd tried to help and save, he'd still ended up with more blood on his hands than his foes themselves had shed.

Far below, he saw Jin Woo open his hands wide, and suddenly all the Nomus covering the square fell into his shadows, as if sliding through quicksand.

A new portal swirled in the air, growing larger by the minute.

Shoto's chidori slammed from back to front across Kurogiri's metal chest.

The sound of a thousand birds chirping filled the air.

Kurogiri gasped, his smoky mouth opening as if he were actually able to spit blood or saliva.

Shoto leaned forward so that Kurogiri could hear him whispering into his ear, his red eyelids glittering maliciously.

"And that is because I couldn't get All for One"

At once, half a dozen bolts of lightning streaked across the sky before crashing down on Shoto and Kurogiri in a pillar of blinding yellow light.

The portal closed.

*

A/N :

Can't believe it's been one year (well, one year and twenty days) since I started posting this fic. 

I believed I would've finished in around ten months and at chapter 200 : and here I am wondering if I'll be able to finish before chapter 300...

Shit, I need a break (from life).

If you like the story and want to read ahead of schedule, go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you in the next update everyone !