Golden Eagle cruised almost serenely under the blazing sun, taking no notice of the freezing winds on his face. After all, his suit was specially designed to monitor his vitals and keep him perfectly comfortable even at twenty kilometres above ground level.
The sea of clouds swept beneath him as he kept his focus on his visor. It wouldn’t be long now.
Air whistled against his aerodynamic helmet as the ex-fighter pilot tilted his body, racing back to the Earth. The weightlessness in his body felt almost nostalgic. After all, it had been many years since he had flown like this.
The building below him still looked like a needle at this height, although it was coming into view rapidly. Miles Cooper tilted his metallic wings back, plunging even faster towards the only man-made object in the entire stretch of forest. With the sun behind him, nobody would see him coming even in broad daylight.
A new wave of heat pressed from behind. Miles widened his eyes in shock at the familiar roar of rocket engines.
Okay, so he wasn’t as stealthy as he thought.
G-forces slammed into the hero as he swerved sharply, narrowly avoiding machine gun fire. Miles spun around, catching a glimpse of four fighter jets circling the building like vultures. One of them even came close enough for him to recognise the ugly scar on the pilot’s right eye.
Miles growled to himself; it was those assholes who tried to kill him that night. How the hell did they get their hands on F-16 jets?
The thruster on his jetpack roared in tandem with his adrenaline, propelling him towards the clouds again. The planes followed closely, carelessly firing their guns at him. Miles spun erratically in the air as cannon fire rang all around him.
“Oh, bother!” He tucked his legs into a forward roll as his thruster changed its direction, pushing him at a sharp angle towards the closest jet instead. Miles flipped over the right wing and clung to the plane’s windshield.
Green lit his irises as his mind connected with the fighter jet controls and shut everything down. There was just enough time for him to catch the pilot’s shocked expression before he leapt off the plane, watching it glide back to the Earth.
One down, three to go.
A warning flashed on his visor. Miles gritted his teeth and skewed right, narrowly avoiding a stray missile. The heat-seeking projectile turned back towards him, accompanied by several more. He feinted left before curving to the right again.
“Woah!” Golden Eagle flinched as two missiles collided in front of him.
The shockwave sent him tumbling in the air like a ragdoll, but his suit quickly released intermittent blasts of air to bring him out of a tailspin. It didn’t take long before Miles burst through the black smoke cloud again like a metallic angel.
He weaved in between two fighter jets before tucking his legs in again and flipping over one of them.
Sure enough, the next two missiles smashed into the plane, causing it to spin uncontrollably into the jet beside it. Another deafening explosion rang behind Miles, but he was already on the move.
For better or worse, his last pursuer wasn’t trying to shoot him down. The pilot, however, looked like he was waiting for an opening to somehow run Miles over with a plane.
Golden Eagle swooped close to the ground, diving into the forest to hide from the jet. But it simply covered the land with machine gunfire to force him out again. He soared towards Ion Heroes Tower, but the pilot was skilled enough to simply glide outside the building.
Miles circled the building in frustration, trying to buy more time to come up with a plan.
If he simply landed on the roof, he’d be blown to kingdom come before he could take another step. Sure, that would destroy the booster machine as well, but he wasn’t exactly keen on sacrificing himself just yet.
And although he was more agile than the huge jet, escaping was not an option since he was trying to get into the building in the first place. Mentally shutting the plane controls down was out of the question too, since the jet was staying out of his technopathic range.
Dammit, he was running out of options quickly.
The hero hovered in mid-air instead, watching the fighter jet continue flying towards him. At its speed, he wouldn’t have time to disable its controls before it crashed into him. The pilot seemed to have come to the same conclusion as well, because it increased its speed sharply when Miles came into view.
Miles straightened his body and charged towards the nine-tonne metal, as though he would be anything more than a fly on the windshield if he crashed into it.
But that wasn’t his plan.
His body flailed as his wingsuit detached itself from the jetpack. Miles plummeted towards the ground in an uncontrolled free fall while his wings continued hurtling towards the F-16 plane. The nanomatter flattened itself against the plane’s nose with an anticlimactic splat.
Miles’ mind worked furiously, focusing his technopathy into his wingless jetpack. His heart pounded. Theoretically, he was close enough to control his jetpack, which could, in turn, remotely control his wings. But this was only something he had come up with on paper; he’d never gotten the chance to try it in real life.
A green glow burned furiously in his irises again. The nano suit had completely dissolved into the plane’s circuits by now, and there was enough matter to completely command it. He smirked, feeling his mind indirectly connect with the electronics in a daisy chain of signals. This battle was already won.
Golden Eagle spread out his body to slow his descent while simultaneously controlling the plane to catch him. Cold glass met his belly soon enough, and he took the pleasure of flashing a sadistic grin at the enraged pilot snarling back at him in frustration.
“Toll the hell’s bells, arsehole.”
Miles leapt from the plane and summoned his wingsuit back into his jetpack, letting the momentum carry the plane into the building. After all, it was already too late to correct the fighter jet’s collision course.
Metal bloomed from his sides just as another explosion shook the air. He soared upwards with a performative twirl before diving towards the sizzling hole in the building created by the crashed plane. Miles smirked from behind his helmet.
Hell yeah. Old man’s still got his skills—
Something cracked in the air, and his thruster fizzled out all of a sudden. Panic gripped the man as his descent began to slow uncontrollably. Miles craned his body to the side, aiming for the closer roof instead.
More gunshots cracked the air as his flight path began to wobble. He turned back in horror, staring at the few bullet holes in his wings.
Shit, shit, shit! I won’t make it down safely!
Miles pulled hard, abandoning his wings for a parachute. He yelled as the building’s rooftop rushed towards him, praying that the mere fifty-metre drop would not break his legs on impact.
Pain stung his knees as the man hit the ground and tumbled with the momentum. He panted, releasing his parachute before the wind dragged him away with it. Miles massaged his legs gingerly. The fall had hurt all buggery, but at least he didn’t feel any injuries.
A slow clap caught his attention as he looked up again. Miles narrowed his eyes in apprehension.
“Well played, Golden Eagle.” Yamato Gouma walked towards him with a sniper rifle in his hands. “That was some spectacular flying.”
Miles glanced at the unguarded booster machine behind Yamato, where an unfamiliar bald man in a lab coat was kneeling and tending to it. He staggered to his feet, but Yamato quickly pointed the rifle at him again.
“Uh, uh, uh. Not so fast.” There was a cunning glint in Yamato’s eyes. “You’re like a cockroach; you’ve lived longer than you deserved. I guess only I can kill you myself.”
Miles kept still, eyeing his foe cautiously.
“No sudden movements, old friend.” Yamato narrowed his eyes, training the rifle on Miles’ forehead. “I have some questions for you.”
~ ~ ~
Kusanagi wasn’t hard to find, especially when all the security measures in Cooper Industries had already been deactivated.
Zero Hero grappled to the top of the stairs, landing smoothly at the entrance of Miles’ personal laboratory. The door was left open, and the lab looked the same as before. Well, except for the huge machine sitting in the centre of the room.
The main quirk-amplifying machine— or so Hiro assumed— looked like a semi-circular support pillar made of glass. Faint lines of red electricity ran along its surface, seemingly entering the multiple wires connected to the ceiling and the huge computer monitor in front of the machine. It somehow reminded him of veins pumping blood out of a heart.
Hiro turned off Reconnaissance mode and approached the figure in the machine.
“Kiko!” he yelled, firing a grappling hook at her waist and dragging the unsuspecting woman out of the machine. “You need to stop!”
“No!” The woman scrambled to her feet in shock, pushing Hiro away. “What the hell are you doing here? Leave me alone!”
Kiko was draped in a sleek, silver-black metallic suit this time. Thin, pulsating green lines ran all over her body, intersecting occasionally and ending at her eye holes, which were glowing a dark red.
“Kiko, you have to listen to me,” Hiro pleaded desperately. “I know what you’re trying to do, but Amplus is flawed. You’ll kill millions if you go through with your plan!”
“A small price to pay for the extinction of quirks,” Kiko muttered, pushing away the man. “Great things cannot be achieved without sacrifice.”
Hiro rushed forward, grabbing the woman by the waist and flinging her away from the machine again.
“Those aren’t your words!” he yelled, standing in front of the machine. “What happened to the Kiko who wanted to be a hero? What happened to the girl I loved?!”
“She’s dead!” Kiko lunged towards him and slammed him across the room. “She died, and you weren’t there!”
Hiro’s eyes widened behind his helmet as he rolled to the side. An armoured fist slammed down less than a second later, cracking the ground where his head was.
“I won’t let you stop me.” Kiko dragged the man’s legs from under him and flung him against the wall. “This is for the good of people like us. The weak… the underprivileged… This is for all of us!”
Hiro coughed. Kiko was a lot stronger than the last time he remembered. Was this new suit increasing her physical capabilities like his own suit was?
He charged towards her again. No time to think. Even if Miles and Kanna had already disabled the booster machines, the main machine was probably still powerful enough on its own to spread the quirk-destruction wave over the whole of Japan. He couldn’t let it finish analysing her quirk data.
“Argh, fuck off!” Kiko growled in frustration as Hiro tackled her away from the machine. “Stop being so… clingy!”
A glint of steel flashed before Hiro’s eyes. Time seemed to slow down as he leaned away from the Karambit slashing the air. Zero Hero swung his hand forward, generating a shield right before Kusanagi pulled out a pistol.
Bullets ricocheted a few times before the woman yanked the shield from Hiro. She quickly aimed her gun at his abdomen, but a solid kick knocked the weapon out of her hand. Kiko caught another incoming fist and tucked it under her leg.
Hiro struggled against the grappling arm bar, trying to twist his hand free. A strangled gasp tore from his mouth as Kiko’s other arm crushed his throat, squeezing it tighter by the second. He focused his mind, generating another weapon.
With a final lurch of energy, the man swung his leg up and smashed the hammer attached to his feet into Kiko’s elbow. Sure enough, the woman let go of his neck. Hiro took the chance to twist his body away from her—
Searing pain shot through his arm, accompanied by a sickening crunching sound.
Hiro screamed, clutching his forearm where Kusanagi had fractured it. A powerful kick slammed into his chest less than a second later, flinging him a few metres away.
His vision blurred as nausea kicked in. Kiko was back in the machine again. C’mon, Hiro… Move, dammit! Move!
He staggered to his feet, only to fall again. “Kiko… don’t—”
“Quirk data fully processed. Generating amplification pulse. Estimated time of completion: Two minutes.”
Hiro tore his eyes away from the flashing computer screen, panting heavily.
Well, shit.155Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN4NBUBFZLr
and then Add to home screen.