Useless ice statue

[Horrible things can happen to you, the origin of which is very often collective.] -???

-*-*-

I materialized inside a seemingly empty room.

Darkness was assaulting every corner of the room, not even a speck of light could be seen.

A few minutes earlier, I received my current geographical position through a coded message in our even more coded line.

AFO, also known by very few as All For One was quite paranoiac and secretive. It is no wonder that he lived more than 90 years, restlessly fighting against generation after generation of heroes trained to kill him.

I won't lie, it is quite good as it means that by working with him I don't have to be too much worried about our alliance being known. Although it doesn't mean that I trusted him.

The old fossil could be waiting for the perfect opportunity to kill me and stole my current work. That's exactly why I am even more prepared to kill him if I am forced to.

However, he surely won't try anything funny for now. I am way too unpredictable in his eyes. Knowing him, he prefers to have anything in his grasp before moving himself.

Earlier, I called him to see the monsters, he and Kyudai Garaki were making as I asked a few days ago to observe them.

Surprisingly, they accepted. It sounded fishy... however I am sure that they surely won't do anything which could endanger our current alliance.

A few seconds after my appearance through the vents, the lights on the ceiling were switched on, letting the bright white light flooding the area.

The darkness was replaced by rows of large tubes in which several humanoid creatures could be seen floating in a green liquid.

I approached one and observed more precisely.

The figure seemed like a man, however, he seemed to be deprived of any facial features.

His skin which seemed to be slowly taking a darker bluish color, from his stomach to the rest of his body was littered with small to giant scars. Surely the results of experimentation were done on him.

The voice which interrupted my train of thought came to confirm my hypothesis.

"The organ transplantation was a success. However, the sudden increase of a certain toxin in his body changed the color of his skin, from the zone of the concerned organ to the rest of the body."

I did not need to turn around to identify the person speaking to me.

"It had received several other quirks, boosting his fighting strength to the level of a pro-hero in the top 10, I believe."

I lightly knocked on the glass, eying the creature closely. The other monsters were not as developed as his one. It seemed almost ready to wake up.

"I highly doubt that Dr. Garaki." I replied, my attention finally leaving the giant tube.

"The pro-heroes in the top 10 are not weak like the rest of heroes. You shouldn't underestimate them like that. It never did any good to anybody to do so."

A frown visibly made its way to his face as if disagreeing with me. He obviously did not have anything to counter and abandoned the idea to prove that I was wrong.

Or at least that what he wanted to make me believe.

The cleverly but not clever enough hidden smirk on his ugly face was seen by your truly and it increased my earlier assumption.

'They are preparing something.' I thought looking at what could potentially happen right now.

Very few things could really harm me.

In the middle of their very important project, they would never try to use these kinds of weapons and attacks.

"Let's go to my laboratory, what we agreed to give you is there." He said, walking back toward the upper floors.

I silently followed him.

I did not care about his documents as I already hacked through the database of their servers and directly picked thanks to Eve, the useful data.

Obviously, to conserve my facade, I would have to mimic being excited to finally have some interesting information.

Not that I was not, for sure. However, what I directly took is way more interesting than the few things they are okay to disclose.

As we made finally arrived at the laboratory, in which hundreds of papers were scattered on the floor, which corresponded to the little crazy scientist image, a loud song was heard before a glass shattering song echoed in our ears.

Then, some kind of bestial howl was heard before Garaki began to panic.

"How is it possible? It was not supposed to awake now!"

Man. He is a pretty good actor. Well, 'good' if you remove your sense of sight and hearing.

Was it the idea of AFO? To make me fight one of their creatures to gauge my combat power? Either way, I would have fallen in it if I could not feel Garaki's heart not beating as fast as it should have.

"Quick! Protect me from its attacks while I activate the chip inside him to control his movements!" He asked me, running to one of his computers and faking to search for a solution.

The Nomu which was running toward me on all four suddenly vanished from the hundred meters in front of me to reappear just above me.

The clawed hand with purple fur falling toward me at a frightening speed.

I simply let it fall through me, much to its confusion.

It seems to understand that something was wrong, but it was way too late.

A shame that these puppets seem to lose their mind. A true fighter would have reacted way earlier than that.

Thus, my hand touched him before he could move anywhere else.

Almost immediately, his whole torso froze.

It was not encased in ice. No. It 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘻𝘦.

-50°C was the temperature I made his body reach in mere seconds.

With some train, I eventually learned to give my temperature to something or in this case... someone.

As expected, the liquids completely froze, transforming his chest into a useless frozen sculpture.

The sound of the heavy corpse meeting the ground made Garaki turn around.

When he saw the Nomu on the floor while I was standing perfectly fine above it, his eyes threatened to jump out of their socket.

While he was looking at the scene, too shocked to comprehend, I took the file from the nearby desk. The same one he earlier made his way to.

"Told you so. These puppets are certainly not at the level of top heroes."

With my voice seeped through his brain, I vanish from the lab, venting my way out.

'It may not be strong enough to kill the top heroes, but the students will surely have a hard time beating these. I wonder how well these future 'heroes' will do against these.'

Floating a thousand meters above the ground, in the middle of what I identified as a cumulonimbus, I was reflecting on my future actions.

'I still have to find the lacking factor to the formula. Otherwise, Eve can't synthesize the final product... Hugh. It is such a pain. I will think about that later... I first have to tease a certain blonde bomb.'