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The HPSC had always wanted more control, they had been the ones to pull Japan out of the dark age of quirks, they were the ones that turned heroes from wild vigilantes who caused more damage than they were worth into well trained idols that protected society, they were the ones keeping the peace and order others relied upon in their everyday lives and yet they still faced push back.
Some came from individuals believing they knew what was best for the world, some from organisations wanting to pretend the world was better than it really was. Still HPSC pushed forward looking for a better way to Shepard Society.
That is what lead to the creation of Project Manikin
Kaina Tsutumi - the marksman hero "Lady Nagant" had been a test, a hero directly controlled by the HPSC, able to work in both the limelight and in the shadows depending on what the world needed and much to the HPSC's surprise it had been a resounding success
She was able to speak directly to the public in a way the HPSC couldn't helping set the agenda for Society in a way the Commission wanted
She was able to silently deal with factions which might upset the peace
The only question that remained was how they could improve upon this idea.
Chapter 1 - Mission: Start
The rain poured down cutting down to her bones. She hated the rain; it only made her job harder at the best of times and it definitely wasn’t going to help with her current mood.
“This is a bad idea.” Nagant muttered as she stared down at the warehouse though her scope.
“I understand your hesitation Crosshair but Ghost is highly skilled and this type of operation is his expertise.” The president's voice came through her comms with that textbook coldness that she had grown accustomed to, she knew it wasn’t her place to question the HPSC but this was reckless.
“Sir, you know how things can go wrong in the field, Ghost has no experience of real-world ops, to send him in alone is dangerous.”
“Ghost’s simulation scores are exemplary and his abilities are the best suited to the situation, we can’t afford to tip them off that we are shadowing this group, but we need that evidence.”
“Still sir, with no backup.” She began to protest before she was cut off by a bang coming through her ear piece.
“Focus of the mission Crosshair.” The presidents voice cut like a knife. “Might I remind you that we sent you to observe and deal with any problems that might arise, if any complications do appear, you are to alert Ghost so he can move to avoid combat. If your worried about things going wrong, then I’d advise you give this mission your full attention.”
Nagant had to bite down on her tongue in order to not call the president a dick. Still, he had a point, there was nothing her complaining could do now, the mission was a go and Ghost was just about to enter the warehouse, the best she could do was try to keep this op clean.
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Izuku had listened to Crosshair’s and the Presidents spat over the comms as he got into position. He understood her stance, she was an experienced field operative and knew that these situations could go wrong quickly but that didn’t make her lack of faith in his abilities hurt any less. He wanted for his first mission to go well, he wanted to prove himself to everyone that his years of training hadn’t been a waste. Shaking his head as he took a breath, he put those thoughts aside, he had more important things to focus on.
Taking one final moment to make sure that he was ready, Izuku checked his equipment. His combat knife sat in its holster strapped to his left thigh, his lock pick set laid in a hidden pocket in his combat suit. Said suit was form fitting and designed to make little sound when moving, focusing on stealth and not on defence with only a few hardened plates that wouldn’t affect his movement. That suited him just fine, this mission was about getting in and out unnoticed. Once he made sure everything was in order Izuku placed on his mask. It was made of carbon Fibre, sculpted to his face, covering the bottom half fully, with a built in respirator and a microphone that linked to his radio. It also had the option to connect goggles that were also shaped to his face and allowed him to have night vision, something he would definitely be using tonight.
He was ready.
“Ghost to all, heading in, over.”
“Confirmed Ghost, mission is live. Good luck in there.” Crosshair’s voice was low but strangely comforting, standing in direct opposition to her tone a few moments earlier.
As he entered the warehouse through one of the back entrances, he was met with a pitch-black room. The storm was still thundering down outside, crashing into the metal roof like the drums marching off to war, covering any sounds he or anyone else made.
As Izuku turned on his night vision goggles he was met by multiple shipping containers stacked on top of each other and as he looked to the left, he saw the sight repeat as the numerous shipping containers created a wall of steal with the occasional opening beckoning him to enter their labyrinth that seemed to fill the warehouse.
“Ghost the imports and export logs will be kept in the main office, probably where you'll find the evidence we need. It’s to your North East, far side of the building from you. I see light but no contacts, still procced with caution.”
“Affirm Crosshair, going radio silent. Over”
As Izuku made his way through the maze he tried to listen for signs of life but the pounding of rain made that next to impossible. He couldn’t help it when his heart began to race, adrenalin flooding his system putting his body on high alert. As he carried on down the path, the steal walls seemed endless and any light that did sneak its way in to the warehouse made shadows dance in the corners of his eyes only causing his nerves to grow. So distracted by his internal struggle, he failed to notice the soda can that had been left on the floor before his foot had kicked it into one of the walls in the distance.
The sound metal colliding with metal rang out.
“What was that.” A gruff voice echoed through the labyrinth coming from around a corner that Izuku had been heading towards.
He had to act quickly, he rushed to the end of the corridor and placed himself on the corner just as the man came around it. Acting with practiced easy that came from his years of training, Izuku grabbed onto the man’s arm and pulled him closer as he covered his mouth making sure he didn’t call out. Once he was sure the man wouldn’t be able to alert anyone else, Izuku activated his quirk and watched as the man’s body went limp and his eyelids drop down. He lowered the now asleep man down to the ground carefully making sure that he didn’t fall down against the shipping containers as he sat him against the wall.
His quirk wasn’t anything flashy, Neurocognitive deficit, allowed him to directly interact with a targets mind while he was in physical contact with them. This is what had made him a suitable candidate for the HPSC’s program, they saw the benefit of having an operative who could put you to sleep in one punch or make you forget you had ever seen them, the kind of operative that could get in and out of places without anybody being wiser.
After checking down the path that the man had come from, looking to see anyone else had been alerted by the noise that he had made, Izuku whispered “One contact down, unconscious, over.”
“Affirm, mission is still a go.” The president’s voice rang in his ears.
As he continued through the maze he saw the main office above him, the light from the room cascading down from the window looking upon the containers below. He switched off his night vision as he made his way over to the metal steps that connected the main floor to the office. Carefully his ascended, making sure that his steps didn’t make to much noise as they came in contact with each step.
Much to Izuku’s relief, nobody seemed to be in the office and he could get in without any issue, the room itself was pretty unremarkable, if you discount the overwhelming smell of cigarettes, with the main focus seeming to be the computer desk which sat in the middle of the room and large filing cabinets that covered the back wall. As he looked around the room, he saw multiple shipping manifests and in voice orders but nothing that looked particularly out of place, still he knew that operations like this could look innocent on the surface yet hide much darker secrets underneath. Knowing that time was not on his side, Izuku quickly made his way over to the desk and inserted a USB that the HPSC had given him, from what they had explained to him it would be able to bypass any security and copy any data that lied on the system automatically, that would allow him the time to look for any physical evidence.
Trusting the tech to do its job, he then turned his attention to the filing cabinets behind him, with a hard yank he pulled on the handle only to be met with a resistance and a clanging sound. It was locked. “Typical” he quietly muttered to himself, quickly Izuku reached into one of the many pockets that covered his combat suit and pulled out a small black case and with trained ease he grabbed his lock pick and tension bar and went to work on the lock.
He was able to get into the cabinet almost comically quick, a testament to the effectiveness of HPSC training and his years of study, scouring through the files as fast as fast as he could while still looking for anything incriminating.
“Ghost, behind you!” Crosshair’s voice bellowed in his ears; he had been so focused on looking for the documents he failed to notices the sounds of steps ascending the metal staircase.
Izuku span and quickly ran towards the door hoping to catch whoever approached off-guard, unfortunately the man in question was already standing in the door way with a gun pointed at him. Panic flooded his brain; the man was to far away for Izuku’s quirk to affect him and with the gun already pointed at him, he wouldn’t even have time to try and grab the man. His only option was to close the distance, his mission depended on it. In a fit of desperation Izuku dove across the room hoping to quickly tackle the man, anything to put this situation back in his advantage.
As he sailed through the air he watched as the barrel flashed, pain shooting through his stomach, it didn’t matter, his mission was to still take this man down and no matter what he wasn’t going to fail. More pain, this time from his shoulder as he grabbed the man’s arm which held the gun. He quickly activated his quirk but to his fear it felt of, usually when Izuku interacted with another person’s mind it felt heavy, like having someone’s entire bodyweight pressing down upon his brain, but this time it was so light that he almost missed the sensation.
It didn’t matter, whatever was causing this change in his quirk could be figured out later, instead Izuku fell back on his years of training and pushed like he had a thousand times before, willing the man mind to go to sleep. That’s when his saw the man’s eyes had gone wide, multiple blood vessels had popped making them into crimson orbs, a waterfall of blood now poured from the man’s nose, down his chin and onto his white shirt.
Izuku pulled back as fast as he could, pain shooting from his shoulder and guts. Both him and the man fell to the floor, staring directly at each other, landing in the pools of blood that were now forming below them. As Izuku gazed at the crimson orbs that laid before him, he realised that there was nothing going on behind them.
“Ghost, report. Multiple contacts heading your way. Abort, repeat, Abort.”
Crosshair’s voice sounded so distant, Izuku wanted to respond but he was so tired and his voice didn’t seem to want to respond. He felt his eye lids get heavy as black spots started to fill his vision but despite it all the crimson orbs still watched him with their unfeeling glaze, he wanted it all to go away, he just wanted to sleep.
The only thing keeping him from giving in to what his body demanded for were the bangs that echoed throughout the warehouse. Then every thing went quiet as crosshair entered the room, her lips were moving but everything that came out of them was muffled. As the void took him, he was just able to make out her words.
“Let’s get you out of here, little ghost.”
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Crosshair had made her way through the warehouse with easy, something had gone wrong. The gun shots had alerted her and everyone else in the area of that and when Ghost didn't respond she was left with no choice but to go in and try and find him. She had taken out multiple targets as she made her way into the building, just thankful that her quirk allowed her create lenses over her eyes that gave her both thermal vision and night vision depending on what she needed, it really gave her the advantage when fighting in the dark. The smell of Iron attacked her as she entered the office and what she saw made her want to hurl. Two bodies laid across the ground unmoving, both had pools of blood that were growing underneath them slowly merging into one. She quickly made her way over the first body, they weren’t her priority, as she knelt down to check on ghost finding his pulse getting weaker by each passing moment.
“Crosshair to Command, ETA for those Medics.”
As soon as she had heard the first gun shot, she had called for medical assistance, if they’d been unnecessary, it would have been on her but she knew from experience how deadly gun shots could be and how every moment could mean the difference between life and death. Right now, she was glad she had trusted her intuition.
“ETA 2 minutes.”
Nagant wanted to curse, 2 minutes felt like an eternity given the situation but it couldn’t be helped and no amount of complaining from her would change that, what she could do was make sure Ghost was seen to as fast as possible. Carefully she lifted Ghost’s limp body into her arms, making sure not to jostle him too much. The child that she held was almost as cold and as white as snow, clearly shock was setting in, they had to act fast.
“Let’s get you out of here, little ghost.”
As she turned to exit the now blood-soaked office, the silence that had come over the room was shattered. A whisper that rang out like the gun shots which had filled the space not a few seconds prior came from the child in her arms, one word that made her world pause.
“Mission.”
The single word made her want to scream. Even as this boy was bleeding out in her arms, he was still focused on this stupid mission, for a moment she almost wanted to laugh at the sheer absurdity of boy’s dedication to it but that thought washed away almost as soon as it came into her head. Instead, she realised it wasn’t really the boy talking right now, no, it was the HPSC. The years of training, of conditioning, of breaking them down so that they could be put back together stronger, it was speaking to her, using the child before her as a puppet, demanding that the mission be completed no matter the cost.
She thought back on her own life, her days as ‘the marksman hero - Lady Nagant’, her nights when the HPSC called her in to eliminate a target that threatened society as the deadly operative – Crosshair. How many times had she pushed herself passed her limits just to live up to the HPSC’s standards, how many times had she just ignored the pain for the sake of the mission. She had stopped questioning it years ago, she had told herself that it was necessary, that it was right. Those thoughts still whispered in her head but as she looked down at Ghost, she found herself believing them less and less.
The sirens calling out over the storm pulled her out of head and she quickly realised that the needed to get Ghost down to the ambulances that had just arrived. She turned and yanked the USB out of the computer before heading out of the office, the boy had asked her to complete the mission and despite her thoughts on the matter it was the least she could do for letting him get hurt this badly.
As she got out of the warehouse, she saw two medics running towards her, they were quick to get to work and didn’t question why a pro hero and a young boy were in a warehouse, late at night, covered in blood and with the kid having multiple guns shot wounds. Nagant wasn’t sure if was due to the fact that they were being professional and choosing to focus on the clearly life threating injures in front of them or if the HPSC had somehow convinced them that it wasn’t their place to know, neither thought brought her to much comfort but she was at least grateful that she didn’t have to explain the shit show in that warehouse.