My Hero Automata

Chapter 53: Waves in More than Just the Ocean

Summary: Aftermath and Arguments...

Chapter 53: Waves in More than Just the Ocean

Despite Izumi's distress call to Nedzu...it was the Oki Mariner that reached the destruction and wreckage of the fight first. It was followed not by heroes, but by a series of Coast Guard and JMSDF Naval Vessels that had responded to Nedzu passing on that Mayday. Just to add more bad news to their night, they had quickly discovered the reason for the nearly forty-five minute delay before any help arrived. Specifically, the JMSDF had suffered its own series of attacks from a wave of water-borne Nomu. Much like all branches of the JSDF, the Marine Self Defense Force was a somewhat-reduced entity compared to the pre-quirk era. But it wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, toothless. Its nearest vessels had successfully fought off the Nomu wave with only moderate damage, but the fighting and the damage had kept them from being able to respond. The vessels that did eventually get there to support the Oki Mariner and survivors, had needed to come from significantly farther away.

That attack also, unfortunately, represented another major departure from All for One's previous methods. The man had previously relied on infiltration of the government at nearly all levels to prevent their acting against him. For him to actually attack them was a massive escalation that even the assaults on the various Hero Academies had not prepared anyone for. Villains, as a general rule, weren't stupid enough to engage the world's militaries. No matter how powerful your Quirk, having to protect yourself from gunships, smart bombs, and special forces teams was usually not on any Villain group's list of desires. It was, in fact, a significant portion of the reason that most Villains made their lairs in cities, rather than some remote underground bunker in the mountains. Very few militaries were willing to shell their own cities to kill a Villain, which was ninety percent of the reason the Hero profession even existed. Heroes were the step that could be taken between police action and full scale military engagement. A needed half-way point between the two that the entire world had settled on to resolve the escalation of danger Quirked Criminals represented.

Suffice it to say that the Powers that Be in the Japanese Government were...not quite panicking, but something close. They were leaning on Nedzu, All Might, and the HPSC all three to get answers to why there was suddenly a Villain Group in Japan willing to hit SDF forces just to delay their response. The fact that there had been, despite Selkie's best efforts, seven dead Coast Guard personnel, and a dozen more dead from the JMSDF's own engagement, meant the Government was no longer willing to be put off. They were demanding action and answers now. Which was...not good. Mostly as it was causing them to slowly become aware of just how badly the previous, pre-All Might, government had been compromised by a Supervillain. One that was, apparently, still alive.

All of which, unfortunately, explained the JSDF checkpoint that Momo and Izumi had needed to pass through just to get to school. UA was, after all, not just a Heroics University. It was also the premier high-security education environment for children of many high-profile members of the Japanese government. It was only the fact that UA had thus far proven able to defend itself to a level superior to most military bases that had allowed Nedzu to retain control of the school and keep it open. Even so, he hadn't been able to avoid the sudden JSDF presence and the escalation it represented. The population was uneasy, and crime rates were beginning to soar, despite the Hero community responding fairly well overall. So far, at least. There were unsettling murmurs building among the less...stalwart members of the Hero community that it might be time to 'retire' a bit earlier than they'd expected.

Thankfully, despite the loss of the Coast Guard sailors, UA hadn't lost any of their own in the fight with the Kaiju Nomu. There had been a number of fairly serious injuries, but all of the students and staff had gotten out alive. And none of the other Terrain Camps had been hit. Less thankfully, that last detail did tell those in the know exactly why that particular group had been targeted, even if that most definitely wasn't something they were sharing with the Powers that Be yet. That little detail, plus the fact that the government wasn't exactly happy about the idea of two hero students apparently having ready access to military-grade heavy ordinance, had caused Nedzu to very politely ask Momo and Izumi to lay low for the remainer of the summer break. Frankly, given their own emotional exhaustion after the fact, they'd been okay with doing just that. They'd retreated into their workshop-cum-safehouse and worked on several projects in the unexpected downtime.