Supervillain Idol System: My Sidekick Is A Yandere-Chapter 536: Resistance V1 (Part 8)

The questions didn’t stop until the sky outside shifted from black to a dull, washed-out gray.

By then, Don’s throat felt raw from repeating the same answers in slightly different configurations.

Times. Distances. Angles. What moved first. What fell last. Who went down where. Every response logged, cross-checked, and quietly compared against others in rooms he never saw.

He hadn’t signed anything until Miss Claire had been looped in.

That had earned him a few looks.

Not hostile. Just surprised. From people unused to being slowed down. But once her confirmation came through and the documents passed whatever invisible test she ran them through, Don finally put his name down. Once. Clean. No flourish.

After that, they were herded out.

The transport waiting on the pad was a heavy-lift carrier chopper, wide-bodied with twin rotors and a rear bay designed to move people, not comfort.

The ramp lowered with a hydraulic groanand the smell hit immediately. Fuel. Hot metal. Damp fabric. Blood that hadn’t fully dried yet.

Inside, red emergency lighting washed everything in a sick, low glow.

Bench seating ran along both sides of the bay, webbed harnesses hanging loose and twisted where people had been rushed in earlier. Don took a spot near the rear with Pyro beside him, Starboy across the aisle. The seats were narrow, rigid, and dug into muscle that hadn’t fully stopped shaking yet.

They clipped in anyway.

Around them sat the rest of the survivors from the tunnel operations. Some stared straight ahead, backs rigid, hands locked together. Others leaned forward with elbows on knees, heads bowed.

A few were asleep despite the noise, bodies slumped at awkward angles, exhaustion finally winning.

Two stretchers were locked into floor mounts near the front. The occupants didn’t move.

The ramp sealed shut—and the engines spun up, vibration bleeding through the deck and into bone as the chopper lifted.

No one spoke.

The silence held longer than Don expected.

It broke with a voice that didn’t belong to anyone confident enough to want attention.

"Uh... hey."

Heads turned.

The speaker was young. Late teens, maybe early twenties. Lanky, shoulders hunched inside a uniform that hadn’t been made for him, sleeves riding too high on his wrists. His face looked hollowed out, eyes red and unfocused like he hadn’t slept since before the operation.

He swallowed and tried again, gaze flicking between Don, Pyro, and Starboy.

"You guys are the ones who... who made it out, right?" he asked. "From the tunnels. And—you fought that... that thing."

Don recognized him.

He’d seen him before deployment. A trainee. Maybe provisional. Definitely not meant to be that far underground.

The young man’s voice shook as he finished, "How did you do it?"

The cabin shifted.

It was subtle, but Don felt it. Attention drawing inward like pressure equalizing. Word had traveled faster than any official statement. Even without footage, stories always filled the gaps.

Pyro noticed it too.

He leaned back slightly, one arm draped over the seat’s edge, mouth tugging into a faint smile despite the fatigue lining his face. Pride, unfiltered and human, slipped through before he could stop it.

Starboy didn’t move. He watched from across the aisle, arms folded, expression unreadable in the red light.

Don didn’t answer right away.

His eyes stayed on the young man for a moment longer, then drifted past him. Over bandaged arms. Bruised faces. Hands that wouldn’t stop trembling no matter how tightly they were clenched.

Pyro broke the silence.

"It wasn’t easy," he said, casual on the surface, voice rough underneath. He rolled one shoulder, wincing slightly. "A lot of pushing past pain. Fast reactions. Hitting hard when you get the opening."

He exhaled through his nose. "And honestly? That situation was way beyond what most of you were trained for. Hell, I’m a graduate and we weren’t drilled for disaster response at that class." He shook his head. "That was... something else."

A soft, broken sound came from farther down the bench.

A black kid sat there with his head lowered, elbows on his knees, fingers laced together so tight his knuckles looked pale even under the red lights. He hadn’t looked up once since boarding.

"They shoulda known," he muttered.

A few heads turned toward him.

He lifted his face just enough for them to hear him properly, eyes glassy, jaw tight like he was holding something back by force. "They shoulda known it wasn’t some rookie shit when the drones started dropping. Soon as that feed cut? That was the sign."

His voice cracked on the last word.

Another survivor scoffed quietly from the opposite side. "What if they did know?" someone asked. "What if it was already flagged and they just didn’t tell us?"

That did it.

The silence fractured.

Low voices bled into one another, theories stacking fast and ugly. Equipment failures. Delayed response times. Why extraction took so long. Why backup hadn’t arrived when it should have. Names of agencies came up, then acronyms, then quiet curses under breath.

Don didn’t join in.

He leaned back against the seat, one hand wrapped around the edge of the harness strap, fingers flexing slowly. He listened. Let the words pass through without catching on anything outward.

And beyond that—command decisions that didn’t line up. Gaps that shouldn’t exist if everyone had been operating on the same information.

He kept those thoughts to himself.

For now.

The chopper banked slightly, the red lights swaying as the engines adjusted—and the city crept into view through a narrow side window. Pale. Quiet. Unaware of how close it had come to being something else entirely.

Don closed his eyes for a second.

Not to sleep.

Just to breathe.

Once at SHQ, They didn’t linger over SHQ.

The carrier chopper peeled away toward other destinations as soon as the rear ramp dropped, and those flagged under different agencies were already being redirected by ground crews with clipped instructions and no patience for questions.

Don, Pyro, and Starboy moved with the SHQ line, boots hitting concrete still warm from exhaust, rotors thundering overhead—until distance finally dulled the noise.

The compound was alive in a way Don hadn’t seen before.

Floodlights burned despite the hour. Personnel moved in overlapping streams, agency colors mixed with UPSDF uniforms, rifles slung, tablets in hand. Vehicles rolled through checkpoints that hadn’t existed yesterday. Every few meters, someone was arguing. Not quietly.

"—you don’t get to shut us out like this—"

"—where is the director—"

"—we bled for this op—"

Don ignored it.

They were intercepted before they could reach the main hall. A pair of soldiers stepped in smoothly, motioning them toward the locker wing without raising their voices. No hostility. Just procedure.