Three days had elapsed since the kidnapping and rescue of (Y/N). Three days since the image of UA had been wiped from the forefronts of hero society in the student's mind, three days since the first step in the League's plan had been acted upon, and three days given to heroes to take preventative measures and go on the defense.

They took this opportunity, and responded with an exceptional amount of efficient and effective effort.

In the period of 72 hours, heroes had made sure that every verifiable plan of the League's had been challenged and put to a standstill.

Increased surveillance around (Y/N)'s neighborhood made it virtually impossible for any members of the association to get close, detailed logs of where people were at what time decreased the chances they had of being able to craft successful disguises, and a thorough examination of all civil servants in the vicinity had been conducted in order to see if any of them were conspiring with the League -- five of them were found to be affiliated with the group, and were promptly interrogated then jailed.

The proposition was called H.A.P.P.I.E.R. (The Hero Association's Peacekeeping Plan for Intelligent and Emotional Response), dedicated to making sure that the general well-being of (Y/N) (L/N) and the environment around them remained adequate so that the League could no longer use the student for their ploys.

Admittedly, there were areas that could use some work in H.A.P.P.I.E.R., such as the fact that they were unable to gather enough information from the League's henchmen to make any moves, lest they wanted to compromise the safety of the child and the unobtrusive nature of their plans, but the methods taken were rather exceptional, given that it was so early in the process.

The heroes may not have realized it, but to the League, the preventative measures that were taken already proved to be more than effective.

From a villain's perspective, heroes made their best effort in thwarting their plans, and succeeded, accounting for nearly all the casualties they would have to take care of in the future, and all the added obstacles that now stood in their way, such as increased security and surveillance catered to precise regulations. Less people were willing to be paid off as well, as the threat that heroes imposed on those who were found to be working actively with the League was that the perpetrators in question would get no chance at bail when convicted, and would subsequently be sentenced to prison for a number of years.

The League was in hot water.

But what seemed to be the bigger problem was not active police force searching for their base, nor the scrutinizing demand from the public for them to be brought to justice, but the impatient hands the villain organization was in, and, as a result, the inherent lack of understanding their leader had of the situation.

A certain blue-haired villain never really had a knack for composure, nor empathy for those that worked underneath him.

So, in recognizing that little to no progress had been made on the League's behalf in the span of three days, Shigaraki was growing restless. He had previously made it a habit to scratch his neck or chew on his fingernails when stressed, and lately, the tips of his nails were frayed and the skin over his nape and collar was raw, reddened by irritation and unnatural peeling.

"Why hasn't any work been done?" Tomura growled, angrily picking at young scabs that formed above his shoulder blades, "We need to get work done if we want our plan to work. I thought I gave you orders." The room fell silent as the group internally sighed at another of their leader's tantrums -- the third one today. Dabi was the first one to shut him down, growing tired of Shigaraki's incessant complaints.

"Look, handsy," Dabi sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and furrowing his eyebrows, "I don't know if you've noticed, since your head is clearly up your ass, but there ain't exactly much we can do, given the current circumstances. Working on the Nomu's, that we can do. Scoping out vendors and doing shady business in alleys, no. We ain't looking to be reckless and get our faces blown off by a machine gun in the middle of 4th Avenue because we were caught by some minor sidekick."

"And the logs! The logs are so annoying too!" Toga whined, slashing at the air with a knife, "With the security, I can't pretend to be someone else anymore! It sucks! I haven't had blood in so long! I want blood! I wanna be someone else already! It's annoying! Stupid! Ugh!"

"Well maybe if you stopped screaming, we would get somewhere!" Tomura exclaimed, angrily turning towards the girl.

"I can't do anything though!" the blonde shrieked, hopping off her barstool and rushing towards the blue-haired male, "C'mon! Can you figure something out? If you can't figure something out, I can make you figure something out!" Before she could plunge her dagger into Shigaraki's torso, a portal appeared in front of her arm, teleporting the limb away from the League's leader.

"He's trying, Toga." Kurogiri piped up from behind the bar, where he stopped cleaning whiskey glasses to put an end to the quarrel. "We all are. We have to realize that before we start making rash decisions. Waging war on ourselves isn't going to get us anywhere."

He retracted the black mist when Toga lowered her arm and begrudgingly returned to her stool.

"Also, I think it's a great idea to formulate a new plan, Tomura, seeing that our options are limited," Kurogiri mentioned, "We need to adapt and overcome if we want to see the end of things." The blue-haired male groaned, bringing a hand up to claw at his neck before turning his head the other direction to think in silence.

The atmosphere in the tavern was tense as an unsettling quietness befell the League. With nobody taking the initiative to speak before Shigaraki found the right notion to get a conversation going, the rest of the members were left to sit and stare awkwardly at each other, with the exception of Kurogiri, who busied himself with chores behind the bar counter.

"What options do we have?" Tomura's voice pierced the quietude. He pulled out picture cards from his back pocket, then slammed them on the table in front of him, his nails digging holes into the wood with the force he was exerting onto the surface. He picked up more than half of the photos, most headshots of minor villains that were working under the Vanguard Action Squad, and some of ordinary civilians.

"Our policemen? Gone." He crushed three of them, forcefully crumpling the papers in his fist, then watching as they disintegrated in his hand.

"Our potential pay-offs? Gone." Seven more turned to dust.

"All those we could draw blood from? Gone." The rest that remained in-hand were promptly disposed of. The League's leader growled as his nails raked down the sides of his neck, leaving small trails of blood in their wake. He was infuriated by such a turnout.

Several League members noticed this and attempted to intervene in order to prevent things from spiraling out of control.

"But there has to be a way to get close. There has to be a way to continue," Spinner commented, crossing his arms as he regarded Shigaraki, "We dealt with the UA becoming a boarding school and all the security measures there -- why can't we think of a way to get past this?"

"And with our traitor bluff, don't you think that we have the upper hand, psychologically?" Dabi continued, cautiously explaining his perspective, "There's nothing more persuading in manipulation than paranoia and distrust." Tomura grunted, hesitantly taking the distractors into consideration, as Dabi and Spinner had hoped.

"Might I add," Kurogiri interjected, "It would also be in your best interest to target someone else other than (Y/N). Perhaps another, close enough to the student to inflict some damage from the inside. We have to do very little if corruption begins from within."

"All of our civil servants have been rooted out, though," Dabi responded, "There's nothing that can be of use now to get us over security."

"Heroes have successfully found out our civil servants, that I will admit. But our entire worker base? No." Kurogiri gestured to the small pile of cards that remained on the long table in front of Shigaraki. "There are still a lot of useful tools in that stack of cards."

This notion seemed to trigger something in Tomura's mind. His eyes widened as he remembered something the League had planted a while back, something that had to do with one of the cards, though the memory was fuzzy.

He paused to process the thought, gathering information from the depths of his hippocampus, then hurriedly filed through the remaining pictures that were sprawled on the bar until he came across the one he wanted. Shigaraki held it up to the light, examining the information on the back of the card with a jittery anticipation.

As his eyes scanned through the text, his dried lips started to curl upwards, the skin stretched upon them cracking and bleeding, revealing pink, tender flesh that laid beneath the layer of dead cells. Wicked joy filled his organs as he started to chuckle. Soon enough, laughs were nearly beaten out of his chest by his lungs as his body quivered, under the pressure of magnanimous amounts of pure ecstasy and glee.

"Kurogiri," Tomura said, his voice a much higher pitch due to his happiness. The bartender turned to his leader, careful not to overreact.

"Mhm?" The blue-haired male showed him the photo, flipping the card so that his co-conspirator could see.

"We have a partner that works for Appleni Animations, don't we?"

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ugghh i want to have an early, fixed schedule for updating so bad :((

i usually update around 8:30 pm EST (about rn, actually) -- would you guys prefer me updating about 11 hours earlier, around 9:00-9:30 am EST? this way my bad work ethic can also be fixed LOL

thank you sm for all your continued support <3 <3 ! love y'all mwah mwah