(triple upload tonight maybe ill go for 4)
**North Atlantic Ocean - 500 Miles East of Newfoundland - 2:47 AM**
The night was clear, stars visible in darkness, and the temperature hovering just above freezing. No other vessels were visible on radar within twenty miles, and Freeze's tracking showed the POLAR submarine exactly where projections had predicted, maintaining course and speed toward the intercept point.
Suguro stood on the deck, wearing insulated tactical gear designed for the environment, watching the horizon while mentally reviewing the operations timeline one final time. Behind him, the rest of the surface team prepared their equipment.
Victor Fries was an imposing figure even in an environment designed for him, his cryogenic suit's bulk made him nearly seven feet tall, and the cold that radiated from him turned moisture in the air to visible frost. His helmet's red goggles glowed faintly in the darkness, and his voice through the suit's speaker system carried its characteristic mechanical distortion.
Rhea Cerva AKA Killer Frost, emerged from below deck, her ice-white hair flowing in the wind, and her blue-tinged skin seeming to glow faintly in the darkness. She wore minimal clothing despite the cold, her Quirk meant she was most comfortable in freezing temperatures.
She moved close to Victor and Suguro, her expression showing excitement mixed with professional focus. "Submarine's on schedule. Twelve more minutes, Ivy and Waylon are in position underwater."
"Excellent." Suguro checked his own equipment and mainly, the carefully prepared doses of memory-modification fear toxin in a secure case.
Ryan Eckston AKA Captain Cold was the final member of the surface team, a man in his thirties with the professional bearing of someone who'd seen extensive combat. His Quirk produced focused beams of intense cold, different from Victor's area effect. He wore tactical gear augmented with specialized equipment for projecting and controlling his cold beams.
"I still think this plan is insane," Ryan said, checking his own gear with practiced efficiency. "But I've followed Victor into worse situations, and the Crane kid here seems to know what he's doing, even if he is ridiculously young for this level of operation."
"Age is irrelevant " Victor said, a note of protective defense in his voice "Don't mistake youth for incapability."
"Not mistaking anything," Ryan said, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "No offense intended."
Suguro actually smiled slightly at Victor's defense, a rare expression for him, triggered by recognition that his mentor still viewed him as someone worth protecting. "None taken."
Eight minutes till intercept.
Below the surface, approximately one thousand feet down in water that would kill normal humans within minutes, Ivy and Waylon Jones waited in the darkness.
For Ivy, the environment was alien but easily manageable. The pressure at this depth would have crushed normal human tissue, but her plant-based biology distributed the stress differently, and her body adapted in real-time to the extreme conditions.
Next to her, Waylon Jones was in his element more literally than Ivy. His crocodilian Quirk had evolved for exactly this kind of environment: deep water, cold temperatures, sustained submersion. His eyes, adapted for murky water hunting, could actually see in the darkness easily and his lungs could hold breath for hours if necessary.
"Submarine's getting close," Waylon's voice came through the specialized underwater communication device, expensive equipment Victor had provided, designed for extreme depth.
Ivy's botanical sense suddenly sharpened, the submarine was close now, "Sixty seconds," came Suguro's voice through the comm system, calm and analytical. "Surface team is preparing icewall deployment. Ivy, begin positioning your kelp."
"My pleasure Crane."
The submarine passed almost directly over them, massive dark shape blotting out what little light existed at this depth. Ivy waited, counting seconds, feeling the vessel's movement through the water.
Then, from far above, she felt it, the sudden dramatic temperature drop as the surface team deployed their Quirks. The water above them was freezing, ice forming at impossible speed, crystalline structure spreading through the ocean like infection.
Victor, Rhea, and Ryan were creating their icewall.
On the surface, the effect was dramatic and beautiful in its terrifying efficiency.
Victor stood at the bow of their vessel with his niece and bodyguard, all with both arms extended, channeling their Quirks at maximum output.
Ice formed from his position outward, spreading across the ocean's surface in branching patterns like a living thing. Not just surface ice, the wall was going down hundreds of feet, creating a solid mass of crystallized water that grew larger with each second.
Together, the three of them created something in minutes that would naturally take centuries, positioned directly in the submarine's path.
Suguro watched through thermal imaging goggles into the ocean, "Submarine has reduced speed; they're going to emergency stop."
"Keep going," Victor told his team, strained from the massive power output. "We need it large enough that they can't just go around quickly."
The iceberg continued growing, a massive presence that glowed faintly in the moonlight. Its underwater portion extended even deeper.
Suguro announced. "The submarine has stopped. Ivy, you're clear to engage."
Below, Ivy saw submarine slow to nearly a stop,
*Now*.
Her consciousness flooded through the kelp network, activating every modified vine simultaneously. They moved with speed, shooting through the water like hunting snakes, converging on the submarine from every angle.
The kelp wrapped around the submarine's hull "target is secured," Ivy reported, her voice showing strain from controlling so much biological mass simultaneously. "Beginning ascent."
The submarine began rising.
Inside the vessel, alarms screamed. "What the hell is happening?" The captain's voice echoed through the submarine's intercom. "Engineering, report! Why are we surfacing?"
"We're not surfacing, sir, we're being pulled! Something has hold of the hull and it's dragging us up!"
"That's impossible! There's nothing out here that could—"
The submarine thumped.
Outside the sub Killer Croc riding a kelp up to the sub found the hatch and attached the biological magnet gun and the hatch lost pressure and game loose, after removing it he then destroyed the rest of it and the sub began to flood.
"Sub is breached" Waylon said as he let go right before the sub reached the surface.
For a moment, it was airborne, thousands of tons of steel lifted clear of the water by Ivy's kelp network pushing with coordinated force. Then it crashed back down, impacting the surface with a massive splash, rolling slightly as it settled into floating position.
The surface team boarded the submarine through Waylon's breach pointt. The upper compartments were flooding, water ankle-deep and rising, emergency lighting casting everything in red that made the scene feel even more surreal.
Victor moved first, his cryogenic presence turning the flooded water to ice within seconds of contact. The crew members who did attempt to approach quickly retreated when they saw Victor's massive form, the cold radiating from him visible as frost clouds in the air, his red goggles glowing like a demon's eyes, none of them were equipped or trained to fight supervillains.
Suguro moved through the submarine's corridors with Rhea and Ryan beside him, following the vessel's layout he'd memorized during planning. The diamond cargo would be in the main hold, secured in reinforced containers. The chemical compounds Victor wanted would be in refrigerated storage. The prototype missile launcher would be in specialized weapons storage the most secure area of the submarine.
They encountered a security officer a young man, maybe mid-twenties, with a pistol drawn but shaking hands that betrayed his terror. He was blocking the corridor to the cargo hold, trying to look brave and failing completely.
"move," Suguro said calmly, his voice carrying no particular emotion.
"I… I can't let you—" The security officer's voice cracked, his fear obvious.
Mr Freeze took a single step forward, his massive presence filling the corridor, The security officer took one look at him and threw his gun aside, pressing himself against the wall with hands raised.
"Smart choice," Ryan said, as the group moved past him freezing him in the flooding water.
They reached the cargo hold and found exactly what the POLAR intelligence they paid for had promised: twenty reinforced containers, each marked with POLAR's corporate seal, each containing uncut diamonds, 400 million in total, just as promised.
Waylon, who had entered the submarine a few minutes later rejoined the surface team and the next twelve minutes passed with clockwork efficiency. Waylon hauled containers to the surface with his enormous strength, passing them up through the breach to where Rhea and Basil received them and secured them on their vessel. \
Suguro located the refrigerated storage and extracted the chemical compounds Victor wanted, specialized cryo-protective agents, experimental hypothermia treatments, compounds designed to preserve tissue in extreme cold. He handled them carefully, knowing they represented Victor's hope for potentially curing Nora, understanding that for his mentor, these compounds were more valuable than all the diamonds combined.
The prototype missile launcher was harder to extract, it was secured in a specialized compartment, designed to prevent unauthorized access, with locks and security systems that required time to bypass.
20 minutes after breaching, they had everything secured.
"Final phase," Suguro announced. "Everyone sweep the sub and converge on the mess hall bring everyone there."
The submarine's crew, 20 people total, were now huddled together with the mixture of fear and freezing temperatures. They ranged from the captain in his fifties to young engineers, all of them looking at the approaching villains with expressions that showed they expected to die.
"Hold out your arms." Crane ordered.
He moved through the crew systematically, injecting each one with the modified variant he'd prepared, within seconds, the crew members eyes became unfocused, their expressions confused, their memories of the last hour beginning to degrade and be replaced by the suggested imagery Suguro had engineered into the chemical.
"You were attacked by something from the deep," Suguro said, his voice taking on hypnotic quality, speaking directly to their compromised consciousness. "A creature, massive, powerful, terrifying. Tentacles or claws, you couldn't be sure. It grabbed your submarine, dragged you to the surface, breached your hull. You fought to survive, managed to surface and call for help, but the cargo was lost. It was lost in the chaos and flooding"
He repeated the suggestion to each crew member, reinforcing the false memory, ensuring it would stick as their minds processed the chemical influence over the next several hours. By the time they recovered fully, they'd genuinely believe they'd encountered a sea creature, and their testimony would be consistent because he'd given them all the same suggestion.
"We're done," Suguro announced to his team. "get to the surface vessel, then dissolve the ice. We need to be gone before rescue arrives."
"Ivy, release the kelp network," Suguro commanded.
Far below, Ivy let her modified vines detach from the submarine's hull, felt them drift away into the deep water where they'd eventually die and decompose naturally. She began her ascent back to the surface.
Langstrom, who had been silently observing their surrondings also returned to the ship.
"heist complete"