Hero Class Civil Warfare by RogueDruid (Icarius51)

Chapter 25: Interlude: The Observers (Part 3)

Day 2: 6 hours, 7 minutes (6:07 am, local time)

Aizawa stifled a groan as he stretched, sleeping bag half wrapped around him even as he stood and fiddled with the coffee machine. Around the room, the other teachers were dozing and resting, and on the screens only a few students were awake. There were the night guards for the hero base, and Bakugou walking around, preparing for the day.

On the villain side of things, most of them were resting, the cameras linked to their rooms shut off for privacy, while in the more open areas of their base only a few were present. Shinsou sat in the general kitchen area, going through his morning ritual and fiddling with his own coffee, while Midoriya was wandering around his 'trophy room,' adjusting plans and scrawling information on the walls to sort and organize thoughts.

His fairly self-absorbed rambling and muttering habit was... weird, but harmless. But it was, in all honesty, frightening to see it change into this sprawling madman-style expansion and scrawl of ideas. It took what Aizawa and many others had thought to be a mild habit and mutated it to some form of 'Prophet of the Damned' mad aesthetic.

Nedzu had already mentioned shifting and refining it to a far more self-contained format to make it more organized. Which implied that Nedzu wanted to tutor Midoriya. Which was... a frightening and yet all too interesting concept. Seeing Midoriya's massive potential being refined at the paws of the Principal would be interesting, especially when contrasted with All Might's seemingly reckless and naïve influence. Already Midoriya had heart, charisma, strength and intelligence, but it needed tempering.

This exercise was the first big step in that direction.

All Might kept close attention to the two teams going forth from the hero bases, cameras following their progress through the sewers. He was surprised that young Midoriya was staying back at this point. His own Civil War experiences had all been either finished in a single day or in the mists of heavy, prolonged conflict. Either sieges or open warfare in the streets. Seeing such a... slow war, was surprising. Oh, there was action, but it wasn't the hectic battle of panic and rage that usually appeared during such events.

No... this reminded him of some of the more dangerous villains in the world, particularly the ones he went up against when he was first starting out, before he had decided to permanently focus his efforts in Japan. Courtesan and their underground network in San Diego, or Heretic's 'counter church culture' in Utah, Katana and his cult of madmen in Inaba... All For One and his organizations.

All of them had been nightmares to face. From Katana's extremely skilled '7 Ronin,' each matching multiple heroes simultaneously in open combat, to the hell that was Heretic's '11th Plague' that turned several cities into apocalyptic wastelands of brainwashed maniacs.

It wasn't scale, but potency that made a villain. It was the issue that smaller and newer organizations, like the League of Villains, had. Plenty of villains joined in, ready to fight and prove themselves, but they were fairly weak individually and unable to fuse their strengths together.

Midoriya seemed to excel in negating such a weakness. Oh, there were still rough edges, timing being off between groups, skills not quite mastered being used hesitantly. But they made up for it with versatility. A team goes wrong? Send another to fix it. And where it mattered, where the teamwork clicked for the villains, it was inspiring. Young Kaibara and Awase were perfectly in-step with each other, and trusted each other with surprising depth. Monoma and Yaoyorozu were skilled and the copycat had picked up on the use of Creation with astonishing speed, even if perhaps without the same... delicate touch that Yaoyorozu employed.

And the skill and power of young Midoriya's core team. Him, Shinsou, Shouji, and Hatsume, together they were astonishing. Shouji Mezou was a powerhouse in his own right, but the force multipliers together with his ability to adjust physically to the gear made for him by Hatsume Mei, created a monster on the field. And that was discounting the surprisingly deep bond of... perhaps brotherhood, that Shinsou and Midoriya shared. Some of the conversations that All Might could hear over the speakers from the villain base spoke of deep consideration between the four villains. From Hatsume's enthusiastic and wild ideas to Shouji's calm and methodical opinions, Shinsou chiming in with hesitancy and caution, and the Kingpin's own systematic reactions and counters.