From Bad to Worse

Aurdel steeled himself as he walked along the surface of the Chariot of Fire, the plates and undersuit of his armor stressing underneath the high pressure of the water inside the trench. He knew that his MJOLNIR could take it, after all it had been pressure tested ever since the early stages of development. But going this far down and for this long, with repeated exposure to such high pressures… Even outside of combat, his suit was being pushed to its absolute limit.

Five days had passed since he’d left in the submarine, and in that time Aurdel had managed to arrive at the ship, use his IFF codes to get close enough to the ship to dock and board and then begin his repairs from the very moment that he stepped on board. And to say that he had a lot of work ahead of him would be… an absolute understatement. Starting with the bridge and then working through the other main systems, he found everything in a state of almost complete disarray. Water had flooded bulkheads, destroyed circuits and fried information infrastructure all across the entirety of the ship. But some of the absolute cases of damage had to be to the ships weapons and fire control units. Many of the guns had suffered damage when the Chariot of Fire re-entered the atmosphere, the extreme heat causing cases of warping and misalignment. Then when the very hot exterior of the ship hit the water and started to sink, it caused a number of the weapons to experience thermal shock and stress fractures. This was only made worse by the fact that he’d left the onboard autotargetting computer on. And so when submarines eventually came to investigate the disturbance, they were blown out of the water and the resulting gunfire almost totally destroyed some of the gunports.

Aurdel stepped into the airlock, shutting it and beginning the cycling process.“Sir, our air squadrons have begun the naval intercept of the Chinese invasion fleet. They have encountered some resistance from hostile combat air patrol but it’s not nearly at the level that they were expecting.”

Aurdel sighed beneath his helmet, exhausted. Repairing the ship was taking far longer than he would have preferred. Even with Overhaul in his toolbelt it wasn’t as simple as just reconstructing the ship underneath the ocean. Many of the sensitive parts still had to be realigned, networks needed to be recreated and re-initialized and the ships systems needed to be restored entirely. Something of that magnitude was tough enough even with an army of engineers and an AI guiding the process, let alone for one man who had his mind split between handiwork and a strategic meeting. “How many fighters have been visually identified by our force?”

“Their CAP line, so far, has consisted of twelve J-45D fighters and seven JV/STOL- 32 interceptors. Nearly all of them have been targeted and destroyed by the escorting air squadron. Mostly by one pilot, I might add.”

A prickle went up his back, something wasn’t right. “What about the rest of their aircraft? That fleet has one of China’s carriers, so they should be able to field many more.”

“Three more J-45Ds were able to take off from their carrier before one of our pilots struck the carrier with their ordnance, destroying the elevators and preventing them from launching any more aircraft. Additionally four more JV/STOL-32s launched from the landing ships, however they apparently have not made any effort to launch any more than that. We should be able to completely wipe out the detachment within the next half an hour.” The advisor reported on this happily, but Aurdel couldn’t muster the same energy.

On the ship he walked out of the airlock as it finished cycling, tapping the side of his helmet. The aircraft deployed to support this supposed landing were too few in number, in fact they were too few to even put up a proper fight against their air squadrons. What was going on? The class of Chinese carrier they were seeing could carry around fifty aircraft on average, but less than half of that number were accounted for. Even the landing ships should have been able to support the fight with more aircraft, being able to carry around three of those jumpjets each. Something else was going on here… “Contact our high power radar stations and inform them that they’re looking for stealth aircraft at high altitude, tell them to search the northwest, northeast and southwest. Scramble our remaining air squadrons for interception.”

“Sir?”

“Do it!” The advisors began to run around, issuing orders. He leaned on the table. “I never would have expected them to dedicate so many valuable assets to a simple diversion. Sending so many men to their deaths just to distract our attention and allow strategic bombers to attack the country so brazenly… Only a mad man could have come up with this kind of plan.”

“All air worthy squadrons have scrambled. Golem Squadron will be leading the interception efforts in the north, Mage will be leading the interception in the south.” The ground began to shake slightly, as the impacts of explosions far off in the distance began to be felt. “Naval interception squadrons are pulling back, they’re reporting winchester on ammunition. Eight of the nine landing ships have been completely destroyed, the remaining two are crippled. All of the escorting frigates and destroyers have also been sunk, however the carrier and a cruiser are still steaming forward though crippled. Should our pilots rearm and refuel to finish off the fleet.”

Sacrificing a fleet of ships for a manual bombing run… Why? “No, tell them to withdraw. Those ships are only still moving forward as part of a bluff and are likely going to retreat as soon as our squadrons do. Once they’ve withdrawn back to their bases I wanted them back in hardened hangars.”

He tapped the table, a minute passed by. “Golem has located the enemy! Two squadrons of stealth bombers are holding position at high altitude, they’re being escorted by a single squadron of next generation fighters. Mage is reporting contact with only a single aircraft, a fighter we don’t have any information on.”

An unknown aircraft flying by itself… They were being pushed into some kind of set up, but what? The distant rumbling of explosions drew closer. “Order is to shoot down all hostile aircraft.”

“Yes sir, ordering to shoot down all.” The unknown fighter had to be some kind of superplane, there was no other way for him to explain why a pilot would be bold enough to fly into enemy territory alone. And If that were the case it was likely he was condemning an entire squadron to death by having them fight this unknown fighter. He-

One of the officers suddenly shouted. “Sir, we’ve finally made contact with the American fleet!

“What’s their status?”

“Badly damaged, they were ambushed by Chinese naval interceptors while passing by Taiwan. Most of their surface ships have been sunk, only their carrier and a handful of landing ships managed to get away.”

“Damnit. Have they given us a reason for why they dropped out of contact?”

“During the battle their vessels were hit by an EMP, so all communication and many of their information systems were cut. It made them easy prey for anti-ship missiles. The smaller vessels literally had to dive in the way to protect the carrier.” An EMP weapon, it was just like he’s suspected. That’s why he’d ordered those faraday cages to be set up. “There’s something else sir, the point of origin for the EMP seemed to be an unknown aircraft. A fighter.”

“Is it the same one that we’re encountering now?”

“We’re not sure, but they also said that the aircraft was transmitting some kind of coded message at the time. They’ve only managed to crack one word inside of it though, ‘Scalar.’”

Scalar… “Tell them to write the message down on a piece of paper so it isn’t lost, I want it-” He paused, his mind having lagged a moment upon hearing the word.

“Sir?”

He looked the man dead in the face, “Did you say scalar?!”

“Y-Yes sir, it’s a math term. For a-”

“Sir, we’ve lost contact with all of Golem and most of Mage squadron!”

Aurdel shouted his orders out, “Get them to write that message down, now!” He turned, “Tell all squadrons in the air to land immediately, and send orders to ALCON now to activate Faraday countermeasures!”

“Sir?!”

“DO IT!” The men in the room scrambled to carry out his orders, shouting at their stations. Aurdel’s hands were trembling. Hearing the word ‘Scalar’ associated with an EMP weapon… It was like coming face to face with the devil himself. A droning electric hum soon came to life as the faraday cages built around the command room buzzed to life, an effective barrier designed to protect electronics in case of an EMP attack. There were hundreds of these built hurriedly around the country, set up in strategic important areas and around warehouses full of important military equipment. But the sound of explosions soon overpowered the electric hum, as bunker busting bombs fell on top of the building and punched holes through the layers of reinforced concrete, steel mesh and wiring. Then, the faraday cage turned off. “Fuck.”

Midoriya stared at the explosions going off far away in the distance, this time they were directed towards the military centers. He hoped Mr. Aurdel was alright… “Jiro, have you found anyone else?”

“It’s getting kind of muddied with these explosions, but this building should be clear. No one is trapped under the rubble over here.”

“Let's move onto the next block then. If there’s anyone still trapped in a destroyed building we need to find them quickly, they’re reaching the limit of how long they can survive while trapped.”

“Right!” They moved together as a class, scouting through areas of the outlying city that had been destroyed during the initial bombing. Much of the area had been searched by Heroes in the previous days, but they were searching because they absolutely didn’t want anyone to be left to die under the rubble. It was up to them to save as many lives as possible.

“Ida, do a search of the streets. Find out which ones are blocked off or badly damaged.”

“Leave it to me,” Ida sprinted away, rocketing down the street.

“Bakugo, Uraraka, Tokoyami, get up into the sky and look for the buildings that have taken the most damage. We want to prioritize searching for the worst ones first.”

Uraraka gave a thumbs up, “You got it!” The three of them lifted up into the air, Bakugo remaining silent as he blasted upwards.

“Everyone else needs to split up and start looking. If you think you found someone under the rubble, call out so we can come over and help you. Don’t try to free them by yourself, the weather has made conditions much worse and the rubble much more unstable”

“We’re on it!” The rest of the class then split up, with most working alone or in pairs to work more effectively. Midoriya went alone, doing so since it provided him with some much needed quiet time he needed to think.

So as he looked he began to just… think. About everything. To him it seemed like his world was constantly changing dramatically, and no matter what he did he was always pulled towards something big. Once upon a time he was just a young boy going to a school and watching on the news as Heroes saved the innocent. Seeing those Heroes made him want to become a Hero too, but when he found out that he didn’t have a quirk that dream suddenly became what felt like a distant impossibility. And so for years he despaired, not entirely letting go of his dream but accepting that more likely than not he would never be able to achieve it. But then one day, through what felt like a miracle, he met his personal idol, the Hero he looked up to. All Might. And even though he was rejected at first, he was able to earn his recognition and was given his chance to become a Hero. He’d taken that chance, and then ran with it as far as his body would carry him. He trained, applied to UA, went to school day after day, took part in battles against Villains… But now it all felt so far away. Like a distant memory that was about to be lost, he clung on to those moments to keep them from being overwhelmed and gone forever. He couldn’t help but wonder if anyone else felt that way.

Midoriya searched through the rubble, making sure to listen closely to try and hear if anyone was speaking, breathing or tapping on pieces of the concrete. Listening for such a quiet sound wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t made any easier by the sound of the fighting off in the distance. But he needed to put all his effort into it, saving someone isn’t something that can be done idly. For a moment, he looked towards the sky again. The clouds were starting to roll in again, and the first flurries of what was likely to be another snow storm began to fall. A fresh layer began coating itself over the shattered remnants of the city. Seeing it happen was somewhat frightening, the fact that something so terrible could happen and the world would simply continue on as if nothing had ever happened. But in a weird sort of way, it was also… comforting. If that was the right word to use. One could take it to mean that just like the world, they too would be able to go back to their normal lives once all this was over. His only concern was that there might be something too devastating to recover or walk away from. And if that were the case… Well, he wasn’t sure what any of them would do.

Jiro had her earphone jacks stuck into the ground, listening to small movements and noises. “I think there’s someone over here!” She called out to the rest of them, Midoriya ran over to help.

“Where exactly?”

“Right over… There!” She pointed to the section of the rubble, and Midoriya hurried over. Carefully he began to remove pieces of rubble from the pile, taking away concrete and limestone in such a manner that it didn’t disturb the remains of the building surrounding them. Soon enough other members from his class rushed over to help him, moving the rubble to spots that were cleared and out of the way.

After around five minutes they managed to reach a pocket under the rubble. “I see someone!” The first thing he saw was a body, a young adult man. But when he removed another piece of rubble, and nudged the man, he saw someone else. “Melissa?!”

“Deku…?” She turned her head, looking up towards him. Her eyes had a hard time adjusting to the new level of light after having been trapped for so long. She coughed, obviously dehydrated. After pushing off the last pieces of rubble and pulling her out he pulled out his canteen with warm water and held it up to her lips, allowing her to finally have something to drink. He made sure not to give too much though, that way she didn’t suffer from refeeding syndrome.

Once her throat seemed like it was well enough to speak, he asked the question. “Melissa, what are you doing here?”

“I was on my way to UA to escape some men that were looking for me when the missiles hit the city. James was supposed to escort me there, but now he’s gone. He shielded me from the rubble when the building collapsed.”

He shook his head, “Looking for you? Why?”

“I-Island was attacked months ago by some military group, and they kidnapped my father.” I-Island had been attacked?!” His friends managed to get me off the island afterwards and sent me to Japan to hide. I didn’t want to go to UA at the time because I didn’t want you to get you and Uncle All Might involved, but when a group of soldiers attacked the apartment I was staying in I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Why didn’t we hear about I-Island being attacked?”

“The news was quashed to keep coverage about it from causing public panic, though I doubt that matters now.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s right.” He looked down with a sigh, examining her body. Some of her clothes had been destroyed by the rubble, the rest being soaked with melted snow and covered with dust. Additionally she had a number of bruises and cuts all over her body, with some showing early stages of infection. She would need to receive some medical attention quickly. He turned his head, “Todoroki, can you clean, disinfect and bandage Melissa’s wounds? I don’t want them to be completely infected by the time we head back.”

“Yeah.” Todoroki walked over, pulling off a few of the tubes that were on his belt. The first thing he did was pour water onto the injured areas, cleaning them from dirt and debris. Then he poured rubbing alcohol to disinfect the wounds, with Melissa gritting her teeth due to the pan. Lastly he wrapped up the open wounds, covering them with gauze to keep them clean for when they would hand her off to Recovery Girl.

“Alright, one of us will carry you back to UA while the rest of us keep searching. You should-”

“Quiet!” Jiro said, raising a hand. Both her jacks were stuck into the ground. “That battle… It’s getting closer to us. I can hear the sounds of fighter jets now

“We should get to shelter,” Todoroki said, “Otherwise we might end up buried underneath a building too.”

“But we can’t leave yet!” Midoriya countered, “We only just got to this block. There might be people still trapped underneath the rubble, and if that’s the case then I want to help them.”

“We can’t help them if we’re dead.” He had a point, they needed to consider their own safety too.

“Alright. Melissa, I’ll-” He was offering his hand to pull up Melissa when the ground suddenly began to shake.

“What the heck is going on?!” Kaminari shouted, bracing against the wall.

“Get away from there!” Sero pulled them away from the damaged building with his tape, narrowly avoiding large chunks of the above floors that were now falling. They all moved out onto the relatively clear street, wanting to avoid getting caught in the collapse of any of the buildings.

“Is it an earthquake?”

“It can’t be, we would have gotten a warning about it before we even left.”

Soon the sound of the distant explosions began to be overpowered, as a large droning sound started to be heard off in the distance. “Are those foghorns?” Kirishima asked, looking off towards the distance.

“Those planes are still getting closer!” Jiro shouted. They could see the jets now, with a pair being chased by one much larger aircraft. One of the two pilots ejected as the sky began to visibly darken behind them.

“Does anybody-?!” Kaminari was starting to say something when he was cut off mid-sentence, the foghorns stopping and being replaced by a much louder shrieking sound. Then off in the distance a near blinding light pulsed, a wave of blue energy coming their way.

“Everybody get down!” Midoriya shouted at the top of his lungs, then used Blackwhip to pull everybody into cover. The wave of energy hit a few seconds later, striking with immense force. He watched as the remaining standing buildings were struck by the wave, with some practically disintegrating into smaller chunks of rubble while others were completely blown over. The pilot who’d ejected from his plane was sent flying over them, his parachute having caught an immense amount of speed and carrying him further than he’d anticipated. It was like being hit by the combined force of a hurricane. A few seconds passed, and eventually the energy was gone. An unnerving silence filled the air as Midoriya released everyone.

“What… was that?” Kirishima asked, stunned. Most of them couldn’t find the words to speak about the immense display over power they’d just seen. .

“Was that a nuke?” Todoroki asked.

Midoriya shook his head, “It can’t have been, otherwise I don’t think any of us would still be alive.” He stood up from the ground, “Whatever it was, it was incredibly powerful.”

He looked around. “Hey, Kaminari. You can get up now.” Jiro walked over, crouching down next to him. “You’re going to freeze if you keep lying there, get up.” She nudged him. No response. “Hey, I said get up!” Panicked, she rolled him over. They were shocked to find him with a completely blank expression on his face, not even blinking in response.

“Is he…”

Todoroki walked over, crouching down and putting two fingers to the artery on Kaminari’s neck. “He’s not dead, he still has a pulse.”

“Then what’s going on? Why’s he like this?” Jiro asked.

“I don’t know.”

Midoriya pulled out his phone. “If we don’t know what’s going on, then we should all go back to the school to get help. I’ll call and…” His voice trailed off as he stared at his phone, pushing the power button. But it wouldn’t turn on. “Did my phone’s battery die? It couldn’t have, I was charging it up until we’d left.”

Everyone began to pull out their phones to check. “Hey, mine’s dead too.”

“And mine!”

There was a stir as they realized that all their phones had suddenly all died. “Is it because of that blast?”

If the blast had shut off all electricity, then that would make it… “An EMP.” Midoriya muttered the words, closing his eyes for a moment. Things just kept getting worse. “If our phones don’t work, then we won’t be able to contact each other if we get separated. And if we get separated then we won’t be able to do any of our work. Let's find that pilot that ejected and get back to the school.”

Up From the Dust

“-sure that this is going to work? You’ve tried resetting the electronics five times already, and it hasn’t worked.” Aurdel could feel the men in the room fiddling with wires and switches on his back, they’d been trying to reset the system's fuses.

“Of course I don’t, he’s the one that made this thing! Not even the army or private sector has humanoid robots this advanced, the fact that it even exists is just a testament to why we need him.”

“I say we forget about it and-“ The American attaché was saying something when Aurdel finally sat upright, “Oh, would you look at that. Snow White is finally awake.”

“It took you all long enough,” he stood up, looking around the room. “I want a status report, now.”

“Uhh… Right. Yes sir,” one of the men cleared his throat, “Just as you suspected would happen, the Chinese army has used an EMP weapon against us. The same kind that was used to disable the American fleet. It knocked out almost everything we have here in the command center, including you.”

He shook his head, “It was more than just an EMP, it was a scalar weapon.” He stretched his leg and articulated his arms, recalibrating each motions so they were properly in sync again. Something felt wrong though. “And before you say it, yes. I know that none of you know what a Scalar weapon is. In fact, no one should know. But one way or another the Chinese have managed to either get their hands on a scalar bomb or they have someone in their employ with a quirk capable of producing the same results.”

“Then would you mind telling us what the hell a Scalar weapon is? Because it sure sounds like you know.” The American attaché dusted off his jacket, having been covered in bits of debris from when bombs landed on the facility.

Knowing the weapons potential and its own history in his world, Aurdel was hesitant to share what he knew. Especially in the presence of the American attaché. But he didn’t have much of a choice. “I’m sure you all know who Nikola Tesla is, the Serbian in-“

“Serbian-American.”

“…Serbian-American inventor. You should also know all the things that he’s credited with inventing and improving over the span of his life. What you need to understand though is that public knowledge of what Tesla invented only scrapes the surface of what he actually researched, experimented on and accomplished.” He paced around the room, “When Tesla died in 1943 the US government used the Office of Alien Property Custodian to seize all of Tesla’s property, research notes and manuscripts. From there the wartime government began extensive testing using all the inventions they’d taken alongside, including the many still untested ideas and theories Tesla had written down. The first VTOL aircraft death rays, zero point energy, particle weapons, weather manipulation… The list goes on. Publicly the US denied that anything ever came out of these experiments, but in truth they’d gained decades of valuable research in a matter of a handful of years. That’s why they dragged their feet to declassify and release any of Tesla’s files, and when they did people who knew the man noticed that hundreds of pages of manuscripts, designs documents, diagrams and other things were missing. No official explanation was ever given.”

“Let me get this straight, you think the Chinese have some kind of super weapon based on a bunch of pseudoscience conspiracy theory bullcrap from the twentieth century?”

“To you Tesla’s work may just sound like ‘conspiracy theory bullcrap,’ but for the modern world it laid the foundation for many things. Especially in my world. Because where I’m from, nearly every theory and idea he postulated was eventually proven true, whether it be by human hand or alien hands.” He made a sound, like he was clearing his throat. Again something felt off. “During the mid to late twenty third century humanity had colonized its home solar system, and with ambitions of growth it soon began to look for ways to shorten the travel time between planets and throughout space. The one feasible way of doing so was to either create an engine capable of pushing a vessel faster than light, or a device that could create and harness large scale wormholes to create shorter lanes of travel between two points in space. Doing either would require an immense amount of energy to be released, so scientists began turning over every stone to find ways to achieve that level of energy. Eventually they came across Tesla’s notes and settled on something better: zero point energy and scalar waves. And so with his publicly available notes they assembled what they called the ‘NT-Scalar Drive.’ When implemented correctly they believed that the device would not only be capable of powering itself, but also all things surrounding it through a seemingly endless access to zero point energy. But building something so theoretically powerful on the backs of old and incomplete research had its risks, and the men and women who built this drive learned first hand just what it was capable of when done improperly.” He began to pace around, “When the time came to test the device they went to a space station above one of Jupiter’s colonized moons. Upon activation the particle accelerator fired and created a wormhole as desired, and subsequently it was fired again to create a miniature black hole that would pull in the particles on the other side and allow the zero point energy to be harvested in the form of scalar waves. However scalar waves by definition cannot be directed, and as such within less than twenty minutes those same scalar waves caused a cascading effect of particles to rush in through the wormhole and destroy the quantum fields inside the device. The subsequent collapse of the black hole and wormhole left the particles and immense amount of gathered energy with nowhere else to go, resulting in a displaced mass scale atomic annihilation of tremendous force that obliterated almost the entire station and fried more than half of all electronics on the moon it was orbiting. The United Earth Government seized the device and all its relevant research, using it to begin a weapons program.”

“So it’s an EMP weapon that can cause physical damage at the epicenter, what’s the big deal about-”

“I’m not finished,” he put up a finger to silence the man, stopping his pacing. “While under military direction they tried to turn it into something similar to what you described, as an airburst EMP weapon that could be deployed against hardened structures that would be more effective but less powerful than nuclear weapons. Once completed they took it to one of Saturn’s moon Triton, built a number of facilities that were actively being powered across the surface of the moon and then test fired the weapon. Every piece of electronics on Triton was fried, and even some that were only in orbit around the moon too. Their initial success also turned into an absolute failure as Triton’s core soon began to rapidly heat, causing its surface to fracture through catastrophic seismic activity that left the moon partially shattered. All colonization efforts to Saturn or any of its satellites were then forcibly halted to cover up the incident, with the public ‘scientific’ explanation as to what happened on Triton being an as of then yet unseen seismic phenomenon associated with celestial bodies traveling in retrograde orbits. The weapons program was then canceled and the only thing to walk away from it semi-unhindered was the revised research notes, those that would eventually lay the groundwork for humanity’s first mostly safe and practical FTL drive, the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine. The slipspace drive.”

There were murmurs in the room, “Then, you’re saying that the Chinese could destroy the planet with their new weapon?”

“If used frequently enough and at high enough levels? Yes, it could. But now with the hindsight of the Chinese possessing such a weapon, it’s likely that irreparable damage has already been done even before today.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Before I didn’t have any explanation for the decline in temperatures the earth was experiencing over the years, or the random occurrences of ozone depletion. Now I can safely say that the Chinese are responsible, with the testing of their new weapon atomically annihilating sections of ozone and depositing quantities of exotic matter that can’t normally be detected in the atmosphere. More likely than not, they were also responsible for that massive earthquake in Iraq that preceded the Iranian invasion.”

“Are you sure?”

“As far fetched as it all sounds, it’s my only explanation.” Aurdel grabbed his jacket off of the table, having been taken off when they’d been trying to restart the robotic body. “But now that I’ve explained what just happened, I want all of you to get back to work. Give me a report on what we still have.”

“Sir,” one of the advisors stepped forward, “Most of the faraday cages worked as expected, though some took damage from Chinese bombing. Our larger bases and facilities are mostly still operational, with the equipment they have in storage still operational. However almost everything that was outside of a cage, or was unshielded, when the attack hit has been fried. That includes a number of our armored vehicles, aircraft, electronically controlled artillery, coastal defenses, anti-aircraft defenses and naval vessels. Additionally, nearly all of our communications network has been destroyed so we’ve been forced to use runners to get messages across to our defenses. To top it off, any personnel with an electricity related quirk have been left completely comatose.” Communications were down, that meant the transmitter in the back of his head didn’t actually have enough reach to send or receive anything. That also meant…

“Have the Chinese made landfall?”

“Yes, there was a fleet of Chinese ships that launched from Vladivostok that we weren’t unable to detect. Chinese troops disembarked in the northern half of the country roughly an hour after the EMP attack, and they’ve been pushing south ever since. We’ve scrambled every unit we could to respond and hold them back until we could reorganize.”

Things had gone to hell. “I want the cities that are expected to be close to the frontlines to have FOBs set up as quickly as possible, and have any surviving armored units from the western shore pull east to hold positions at those bases. I also want all aircraft capable of performing ground attack missions to be prepped and to sortie ASAP, the poor bastards holding off the Chinese right now are going to need everything they can get.” He began walking towards the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To get something before I go to the frontlines. If communications are down then it means I’m not getting live updates, and if I’m not getting live updates then I can't make the correct decisions.” He stopped at the door, “Not to mention I don’t know if we’re going to be getting my ship anymore, because I’m not the actual Aurdel.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!” The American attaché shouted.

“I was controlling this robotic body through my neural lace, it would stimulate my neural pathways and remotely send them here. But if all communications are down… then that means I shouldn’t be receiving anything.”

“Please, just explain it simply.”

“Communications are down, so the real Aurdel can’t be transmitting his thoughts. Which means that my brain got fried through the electronic feedback when the EMP it, making a permanent copy here. And if that’s the case then that means that the real me is either dead, lobotomised, comatose or just barely avoided having a total brain hemorrhage. No matter what the outcome was, I can’t afford to sit here to wait and see.”

Walking back to the campus from the outlying city took Midoriya and the others just under three hours, the opposite trip having only taken them around an hour before this most recent disaster. Many of the streets that had been cleared of rubble from the initial bombing at the beginning of the war were once more filled with rubble, as many of the buildings that had survived the bombing with damaged were now completely shattered to pieces. He wasn’t sure about the casualties, as after a long discussion they’d made the decision to leave the further rescuing until after they’d regrouped at UA and gotten a bearing on things. He did suspect though that there would be even less survivors to rescue this time though, as the damage was just so extensive that it was hard to believe even in a reinforced building the average civilian could survive this.. But when he finally got back to the UA campus… It was an untenable scene.

The devastation that had racked the city seemed to have spread into the campus, with large open holes torn through the grounds and a number of the buildings that’d been hastily set up to receive refugees having collapsed. Tents that had been previously set up were also completely torn to shreds, with the only ones that managed to survive having collapsed inward and nearly sent flying away. He looked around, watching as people worked hurriedly to clean up the rubble so new structures could be set up. “Good, all of you made it safely out of the city.”

Midoriya turned, “Mr. Aizawa, are you alright?”

There were bandages wrapped around his head, soaked with dried blood. “I’m fine, I just happened to take a chunk of concrete to the head while I tried to help a group of refugees out.”

“We didn’t come out completely unscathed,” Jiro said, carrying Kaminari on her back. “Kaminari hasn’t said anything or moved an inch since that last hit.”

“He’s not the only one. Anyone with an electricity based quirk that was inside of the effective area of that blast is comatose, so we have entire rows of unconscious people in one of the bunkers that we’re trying to care for. There’s more than a few students among them.” He scratched the back of his head, nudging the bandages a little since they were probably uncomfortable to have on. “By the way, who are those other two you’re carrying with you?”

“The man is a pilot that ejected right before the blast hit, we brought him here since he seems to be in bad shape. The girl’s name is Melissa, she’s a friend of All Might.”

“Friend of All Might?” He looked at her, “Not what I would have expected, but whatever. You can leave them with Recovery Girl for now. But you drop them off, I want some of you to go help Power Loader, Spartan, Hatsume and Yaoyorozu restore power.”

“Mr. Aurdel is here again?!”

“Yeah, he came back from that military headquarters to grab a few things. But when he saw that we were having trouble he stayed to help us out. It’s probably also going to be anyone’s last chance to talk with him for a while since he’s heading for the frontlines.”

The frontlines… “Alright.” After talking with Mr. AIzawa, the class split up. Midoriya, Jiro and Kirishima walked towards the medical section on the campus, while the others went to help around the campus in any way they could. As they walked he poked his head into a number of buildings to try and find Recovery Girl, but all he saw were rows of men, women and children lying in their beds with sheets pulled over their heads.

Eventually they did find Recovery Girl. “Ah, I’m glad to see at least you kids are alright. It’s been nothing but bad news for a while.”

“What happened? I saw all those beds…”

She looked down, “My ability to induce healing isn’t the end all be all of medicine, many of the people you saw were those that needed life support to stay alive. But when that blast happened… All the machines went out at the same time. I couldn’t do much to save them. The same thing has likely happened at hospitals all across the country.” She looked back up, “But what can I do to help you?”

“We have a few people with injuries that we need to drop off.”

“Of course, there are a few open beds over there. Just lay them down and I’ll get to them.” They listened to what she said, laying them down.

“You guys… You can get going without me, I’m gonna wait here with Kaminari a little bit,” Jiro said, “Just in case he wakes up.”

Not wanting to make the situation awkward, they did as she asked and left without her. “Midoriya, I’m going to go check on Bakugo. I don’t know what might be going through his head, but it wouldn’t be good if he did something.”

After that Kirishima left and Midoriya was alone again. So he walked towards the old dorm building, staring at the snow falling from the sky. That same feeling that he was being pulled towards the center of something big was cropping up again, seeing all this destruction around him and the hardships it was causing for everyone. A part of him wished that he didn’t need to become directly involved, that he would be allowed to simply live his life as things eventually settled down and were rebuilt. But another part of him wanted to become involved, to help fix things.

“...the fissile material to even keep something like this running?”

“It doesn’t matter how I got it. The only thing that does matter is that now you have an unrestricted flow of power, and that even if they detonate that weapon again all you’ll have to do is just replace the transformer unit and the relevant wiring.”

“I should be concerned, because you’re leaving a radiological threat on school property!”

“What’s going on?” When Midoriya finally made it over to the dorms, he found Power Loader and the robot Mr. Aurdel controlled having an argument.

Power Loader turned towards him, “I was going to start a bunch of generators to provide power to the campus when your teacher informed me that they wouldn’t be needed, because he’s apparently had a fusion reactor buried next to your dorm building ever since he started teaching here.”

“There was a what?!” His heart felt like it was going to stop, hearing something so absurd.

“Technically there have always been two fusion reactors on campus, the one in my Pelican and the one on the back of my armor. I just never brought it up because I didn’t want anyone touching either of them and messing something up. More specifically, I don’t think Hatsume and nuclear reactors would mix well.”

Hatsume stood nearby, her outfit covered in a mix of soot and mechanical grease. “I think we’d be a perfect fit! In fact, there are a few of my babies that could-”

“Not going to happen.” Mr. Aurdel looked over, “Midoriya, could you help me with something?”

He snapped out of it, “R-Right!”

“Grab those coils of wires and start unraveling them, then come with me.” Midoriya grabbed the large coil, pulling it off the plastic case and then starting to feed it as he walked with Mr. Aurdel. The two of them walked into the dorm building, the cable snaking behind them as they passed through. The building that had become unoccupied when the war began were now bustling with activity, with local emergency responders and military officials now crowding its halls. The large table in the center of the main room was crowded with laptops and men sitting at them, typing to do something he wasn’t sure of. Crates of food, ammunition and other supplies lined the hallways, replacing the small bits of furniture and decoration that stood in their place.

But eventually they came to Mr. Aurdel’s room, finding the door wedged open and in even more of a messy state than he’d ever seen before. “What happened here?”

“There were a few things that I needed to find before I left, I didn’t exactly have the time to be orderly with my search.” He held out his hand, Midoriya handed him the end of the wire roll. Mr. Aurdel then plugged it into a splitter, connecting it to a computer. “With communications down all across the country I’m setting this place up as the new hub until the end of the war, it’ll be vital if we’re going to push the Chinese out.”

“Oh,” Midoriya lowered his head, not sure what he was expecting.

“Midoriya.”

“Yes?”

“There’s something more important that I need to ask of you,” his attention peaked and he looked back up, “In a few hours, a messenger is going to come with an encoded message on a piece of paper. When that happens I want you to take that paper and make sure that, no matter what, someone completely decodes that message.”

“Can’t you stay to decode it?”

“If I stay any longer to wait for that message, I risk things falling apart at the front. Coming back here to gather things has likely already risked some serious consequences at the front, and I don’t want things to get any worse than they are.”

“Do you know what’s in the message?”

“No, I don’t. But judging by the limited knowledge I do have of it, it’s possible that it could be the key to ending the war with as little bloodshed as possible.” An end to the war… “Can I count on you?”

“You can count on me.”