Nature of Quirks Ficnap! General Kam asks about Villains

Happy ficnapping everyone! This time around I got u/sirgeneralcliche 's The Nature of Quirks Which is a crossover with the popular superhero anime My Hero Academia! This presented a unique challenge as I haven't seen it, and all my knowledge of it is scattered second hand retellings of cool parts from my young cousin.

So with that, and context clues from within the story itself, I wrote a filler episode stuffed with characters that will never come up again. As is tradition.

Note: If any of these characters seem familiar to readers of my other story, you should know that >!this is entirely intentional cause I'm an indulgent hackass who was desperate for ideas.!< Hope you enjoy it!

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General Kam

A quiet moment.

I found Deku sitting alone at a table in the station's dining room. It was technically the ‘night’ cycle right now, so aside from him, myself, and a cluster of people sat by the videogame consoles, the place was empty.

“Do you mind if I join you, Deku? I want to talk.”

The green and black hero looked up from the platter of crispy veggie snacks he'd been prodding at, a gentle smile on his uncovered face. “General Kam! Yes, please have a seat. What exactly do you want to chat about?”

I looked him dead in the eye. “Villains.”

The lines of his face tensed. “That's… kind of a complicated topic.”

“Simple ones are a rare luxury at the moment.”

The hero chuckled. “Yeah, I suppose that's true. Do you want to know about a specific villain you've heard about? Or just Villains in general.”

“I understand the principles behind quote-unquote villainy. What I want is the perspective of the man everyone says is the top hero.” After a moment I realized I hadn't actually answered his question. “Tell me about the last villain you encountered. Before you came here.”

He tilted his head at me for a moment, a skeptical look in his eye. Like he'd expected a question about something more specific.

“Uhhh, alright.” He scratched his head in thought. “The last villain I interacted with was Sundershock, from the Esoteric Order Of Neon.”

Right, all the names are going to be like that.

Deku continued. “Though I say villain. the Esoteric Order Of Neon kinda rides the line.”

I leaned in, my full attention on the human hero. “Tell me everything you know.”

“Sure!” He fished his primitive holopad out of his pocket and flicked through pictures of what looked like various heroes on a beach holiday. Eventually he stopped on an image of six completely armoured humans. They were gigantic, half again as large as the others around them, and they appeared to be… cooking? On small coal fires in halved barrels.

I looked back up at Deku, who seemed unperturbed by the surreal image.

“That’s them.” He pointed at the largest of them. His armour was dark blue, and every flat surface from the waist up was studded with analogue speakers joined together by bright yellow sine waves of light. “That specifically is Sundershock. He can manipulate the sound he creates to do a bunch of things. I’ve seen him make things like roaring engines totally silent, and amplify the tiniest sound into a destructive blast.”

“What is his quirk called?” I asked.

The hero shrugged. “I don’t know. None of them have ever felt the need to share the details. Almost nobody knows what any of them look like under those helmets either.”

Almost? Later.

“Hmm. Please continue.”

His finger shifted to the next figure. Next to Sundershock he looked comically slight. His armour was shining silver, with the smeared rainbow patina of platinum. Electric blue light poured from every gap in the exquisite plates, like they were barely containing a blue supergiant star. “That is Gammalance. He does a bunch of photokinesis related things. Hologram illusions, invisibility, and lasers that vary in strength between ‘causing severe sunburn’ and ‘Granite vapourizing’ are his go-to’s. We’re pretty sure there’s a radiation component to it as well. There are spikes of harmless background radiation in places where he’s used his powers, and he put ‘Gamma’ in his name so… ” He trailed off with a smile.

Deku’s growing enthusiasm for the subject was matched only by my growing dread. “So one human concussion warhead, and another who can fire capital ship strength energy attacks from his hands. Fantastic.” I rubbed at my eyes, already starting to regret this conversation. “Next you’ll tell me that one of them can just generate infinite soldiers for them, or something equally terrifying.” I added.

Deku was quiet for entirely too long. “Umm, well…”

My paws fell from my eyes. “No, please…”

His pointer finger moved to the next human in the line. Slight like Gammalance, the next figure’s suit was soft white, and gilded with elaborate gear motifs. “Tickspring can animate constructs with a touch. Up to about 200 at a time, as far as I can tell. They aren’t very smart though, and they’re only as tough as whatever they were made from. Empty suits of plate armour are the most common. They use them as cheap muscle, bogging us down so they can escape and stuff like that.”

“That’s a bit less terrifying, I suppose.” “Yeah, it’s kinda nice to fight goons I don’t need to pull my punches with!” He refocused on picture “Those two,” He pointed at a large figure who looked like he’d been buried alive in his suit, and another, smaller one, who was covered in soot and scorchmarks. “Are Stonewall and Slagwright. Slag can liquify and manipulate metals near him, and Stone can control dirt and rocks on a huge scale. ‘Mother Earth bends to my will’ As he likes to say.” He chuckled at his own slightly nasal impression of the villain.

The last figure in the photo was the strangest. It seemed like he had taken the ‘armour’ theme to the absolute extreme. He didn’t look like he was wearing armour like the rest of them. It looked like he was made of armour. All four of his traditional limbs looked obviously mechanical in a way the other’s didn’t, and he had combined that look with every medical adjacent childhood terror imaginable. His visor was an irregular mess of mixed sized lenses, all fixed forward and peering out from under a deep hood. Glowing vials of mysterious chemicals in several vibrant colours were strapped to his limbs and torso, alongside sets of primitive steel surgical tools, some of which I had seen in the Human Cruelty display in the capital’s museum.

Most unsettling of all was the extra limbs. A set of 12 tail thick mechanical tentacles sprouted from his back, their connection points concealed by the white and red cloak he wore. They hung about him like some kind of nightmareish Kolshian, the tip of each bristling with sharp blades, dextrous tendrils, or gleaming needles.

“And him?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

“That is Doctor Damage.” He said gravely.

“Oh good, a load of dangerous maniacs and one of them likes to play doctor.” I shivered, and tried to not imagine what those tools could do to unprepared combatants.

“He’s not playing. I’m not sure if he’s technically a doctor, but his quirk makes him probably one of the best healers in the world right now. He calls it Flensing.”

My translator struggled to put meaning to the word. “What does that mean?” I asked.

“Uhh…” He rubbed the back of his head, awkwardly stalling for time. “It basically means when you take a sharp knife and use it to slice fat away from muscle tissue.”

I stared at him. “Why do you have a word- You know what, I don’t want to know.” I shuddered again.

“He probably calls it that to provoke that exact reaction, to be honest. Basically he can disassemble any complex system into it’s base components and reassemble it at will. And he can do it really fast. Cars, computers, people, pretty much anything. The reassembling stage only seems to work properly if he actually understands how the thing works though. That’s why I think he might actually be a doctor.”

I thought back to battles past, the good soldiers I had seen taken by treatable wounds left untended because there wasn’t time. “That… Is a very powerful ability.” I said, still half lost in memory.

Deku nodded in agreement. “Honestly, he's the biggest reason the Order hasn't been chased down and captured. No one ever dies or gets seriously hurt when they pull something.”

That was the opening I was looking for. “And what kind of things do they pull? Heavy armour like that says armed combat to me.” Although, considering the wacky and colourful costumes I’d seen the heroes present on the station wearing that probably wasn’t a safe assumption anymore.

The green hero laughed and rotated his arm in its socket with a mildly pained grin. “Well, I can’t say any of them are shy about combat.” He said with unexpected fondness. “No, they’re mostly about stealing ‘treasure.’’ He held up his hands and curled both of his index fingers as he said that last word. A bizarre and alien gesture I had no idea the meaning of. I tilted my head in confusion at it, and he seemed to interpret that as ‘elaborate,’ so he did.

“Gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, art, jewelry, artifacts, sometimes just whole trucks of money.” He counted them off on his fingertips as he went. “Usually they target rich private collectors, banks, mining companies.They will target museums, if the backers are wealthy enough. Oh! Funny story! That’s how they ended up accidentally kidnapping the Dutch Princess!”

“I fail to see how kidnapping the children of leaders is funny.” His enthusiasm about this was odd. And infectious.

“They didn’t actually kidnap her. She stowed away in one of their cargo containers when they broke into the Van Gogh museum! I think it made them panic too. Less than ten minutes after the King contacted us about the paintings we got this video message.” He tapped at his phone, then turned the screen to me.

The video showed a young looking human woman in a white shirt and skirt with white bands wrapped around her head and wrist. She stood in a small rectangular green sports field, trying fruitlessly to swat at green and white blurs with a wire racket as they whipped past her. Eventually she gave up and called an exasperated “Timeout!” The camera panned to the other side of the sportsfield where Gammalance was standing. Wearing almost the exact same outfit as the princess over his armour. Only he had a pair of incredibly tiny shorts on instead of a skirt.

“Figures we’d get the only royal who’s lousy at tennis.” He purred. His pleasing tenor voice somehow both warm and the smuggest sounding I’d ever heard. He turned to the camera. “I’m sure you heroes have already received a worried message from the Orange-Nassau family about how their high value assets have gone missing. Did they even mention the Princess? Hmm? Either way, in 48 hours she will be returned safe and unharmed at the following coordinates.” Numbers flashed on the screen. “If you want the Van Gogh collection to be returned as well, bring 500 kilograms of gold bullion to the meeting point.” He somehow managed to bow sarcastically and the video ended. I looked back at Deku, a wide grin on his face.

“So, how’d it go?”

“They got away with about half the gold, and we got the paintings and the princess back.Plus a bunch of jewelry.”

“They gave you jewelry?”

“Not me, the princess. Slag and Stone make it out of the raw materials they steal. Then they sell it or give pieces away to bystanders they wrong. Can’t stay too mad at someone who smashes your car when they give you a necklace worth three times it’s value as an apology. And because there’s no way to tell who’s metals went into what jewelry, no one has a strong legal claim to it!”

I couldn’t help but feel a little amused as well. You didn’t get as far in the Space Corp as I did without knowing a few fun loopholes. But something was… off.

“I get the illegality of their actions, but none of that feels evil enough to be called Villainous.”

Deku shrugged and sagged back into his chair. “We’re trying to move past the whole Hero/Villain thing as a society, but sometimes it’s slow going. They don’t fit neatly into either category, but they do tend to piss off people who own news networks, so ‘Villains.’” He did the finger thing again.

I kept my head steady this time. “And yet you’re comfortable enough to picnic by the ocean with them.”

“That time, yeah. That was about a month before first contact, after Chitinphract attacked the city of Honolulu on the island of Hawaii. He’s a proper “Villain” Villain. He can mutate and control sea life, and is on a crusade to destroy all the coastal cities of the world. Usually he just rolls up, does a bunch of damage and hurts people, then we kick his ass and he runs back off to the ocean.”

“But this time was different?” I prompted. He nodded.

“Yeah. After we chased him out of Singapore he hadn’t been seen in a year or so. Then he attacked the tourist beaches of Honolulu with about a hundred of these giant crab-clam things.” He showed me a photo of a giant smooth rock with eight spiny insectoid legs and two giant claws. One of which was in the middle of throwing a car at a hero I didn’t recognize. On top of it’s rock-shell was a human figure in an ancient looking diving suit that was encrusted with awful marine life. “They were tough, and there were too many of them for us to handle.”

Ahhh

“So the Order was close by and extorted treasure out of you in exchange for help. That’s the kind predatory opportunism I expect from a villain.” I stated with a satisfied flick of my tail.

“Nah, they actually got there before we did! So fast that people online have been joking that Chitinphract deliberately ruined their vacation. Which is possible. He’s a real jerk. Anyway, once we’d driven him off again we were hurt, exhausted, and starving… ”

I didn’t like where this was going.

“And we were surrounded with literal tonnes of delicious crab meat. So, cookout.”

I put a paw to my stomach as the idea of eating some tillfish-looking oceanic horror sent it flip flopping about. “I guess it didn’t go to waste.” I said with all the diplomacy possible.

“No it did not!” He licked his lips subconsciously. Ugggh

Desperate to change the topic, I redirected my attention back to the speaker covered villain. “So why was Sundershock the last villain you saw before leaving? Did the Order attack the spaceport? Do they have some vested interest in seeing the exchange program fail?”

Deku shook his head. “No, to both of those.” He cast his eyes back and forth, checking for any prying ears before he leaned in over the table. I leaned in as well, listening keenly. He shot a glance over at the group playing videogames in the corner. Some blocky styled survival game from what I could see. “See the guy with the long golden hair? Next to that scone coloured venlil with the muscles?”

I didn’t know what a scone was, but the long golden hair was easy enough to spot. I nodded just slightly enough for Deku to see.

“That is Sundershock’s son.”

I went totally still.

Deku continued. “He approached me alone the day before launch. He told me the only reason he was allowing his son to go was because my daughter and I were going. That this station was the safest place in either system, and that he and the Order would help out while I was gone.”

“Do you think he was being genuine?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.

Deku nodded once. “He took his helmet off and promised. Eye to eye, Father to father.”

That made me reevaluate all those reverent claims about the man before me being the greatest of all heroes. The fact that a man who was, for all intents and purposes, his enemy; someone he had fought, and likely would fight again soon, had showed him that kind of trust…

The hero across from me didn’t seem to pick up on my revelation, and kept talking.

“He also said Doctor Damage would forgive the incident in Milan, which is great, cause he’s scary and carries a lot of needles around.”

I shook the tension out of my ears. “What happened?”

“We were fighting on a rooftop. He jumped up onto an AC unit to get the high ground, but I was right behind him with the St. Louis Smash. I usually aim for the head, but he’s way taller than me and higher up. He heard it coming, and tried to dodge to the side, not backwards. So… I heel kicked him right in the groin.” He finished with a sympathetic grimace.

I hissed and drew my legs in. “How bad was it?”

Deku’s grimace deepened. “He flew about thirty meters and threw up in his helmet before he could get back up.”

I relaxed my legs and sat back. “Stars I guess it’s good that he’s the forgiving type.”

“Yeah… getting his signature’s probably going to be a challenge.”

“His what?”

“Nothing! Anyway! Are there any other villains you want to know about? Anyone specific?”

I shook my head. “Seven is enough for now. I think I need a drink. Care to join me?”

Deku smiled and let out a sigh of relief. “Sure.”