Aizawa was out of his depth.
When Midoriya had observed earlier that his fighting style wasn't suited for use against groups, he wasn't wrong – in fact, he had hit the nail on the head in every single one of his observations. Aizawa may not have been a one-trick-pony, but it didn't change the fact that his Quirk simply wasn't good for the situation he found himself in. As a result of both his night patrols and the use of his Quirk in general, he already had dry eye on a good day, but extended use in any kind of combat only exacerbated the issue.
At the start of his encounter with the villains, he was able to keep his eyes open for thirty seconds, rendering as many villains as he could look at during that time temporarily Quirkless. Take into account his superior martial arts training and capture scarves, and for that short duration, Aizawa had the edge.
But then he started needing to blink more as the fight wore on. Despite his intense training to keep his eyes open for as long as he could to take advantage of his Quirk, what started as thirty seconds turned into twenty-six.
And then twenty-four.
Then twenty-one.
That intangible timer continued to shrink.
'But luckily…'
He attached his capture scarves to two nearby light poles and pulled, sending himself high into the air. Another pair of scarves around his neck were then sent downward, tangling the two villains he'd currently engaged around their torsos. Flying towards them, his boots met their chests in a satisfying crunch of fractured bone as his scarves reeled themselves in.
'Most of these goons I'm fighting seem to be far beyond their depths in their own rights.'
He took a few seconds to crouch on top of the bodies to recover his breath.
He needed to keep going. Now more than ever, he intended to fulfill his role as a hero. Having noticed Asui, Midoriya, and Mineta in hiding nearby only amplified his resolve. The three students may have thought themselves invisible, but any villain more observant than the grunts Aizawa now fought would notice them if he wasn't careful to keep their attention on him. He only hoped they wouldn't be foolish and try to interfere in his fight in some ill-advised attempt to lighten his load. No matter what it meant for himself, this was his job, and it was one he knew he had to perform alone.
It was then that the thin villain with the disembodied hands on his face started rushing towards him. Seeing as he was the one who had introduced his cronies at the start of this mess, there was no doubt that he was the ringleader.
"Final boss," Aizawa muttered.
He activated his Quirk and sent a scarf flying toward the enemy, but the man merely caught it and continued his advance. He was unusually fast, but not fast enough to indicate a speed-augmenting Quirk.
Which meant that whatever he wanted to do next would be in close quarters.
Or he'd discovered how Aizawa's Quirk worked from the sidelines.
Aizawa wouldn't wait to find out. Taking the offensive, he ran straight toward the villain at full speed. There was no retreat for either of them at this point.
A second before collision, he seized hold of the scarf that was still clutched in the villain's hands and pulled. Without hesitation, he followed it with a brutal elbow aimed straight toward the villain's gut. The fight would be over before it ever had a chance to begin.
Or at least, that's how things should've gone.
The next thing Aizawa felt was his elbow meeting not an unguarded abdomen, but the villain's palm. Peculiarly, he only felt four fingers engaged in the block, but that didn't matter right now.
What mattered was that he had to blink.
And he did.
And his hair fell.
"It took a while with all that jumping around you were doing," the villain started, "but I found your tell. It's your hair. When it falls, I know you're not using your Quirk anymore, and it seems you've been having to blink more often…"
A fifth finger was added to the block.
"So be careful… you might just fall apart. Wouldn't that suck?"
And then Aizawa felt agony.
The moment the fifth finger touched his skin, it felt like his arm was being drenched in acid. Set alight. Like… it was disintegrating from the points where those fingers touched his arm. With horror, he realized what the villain's Quirk was as his arm burned and flaked apart like old paint from the elbow.
Disintegration.
Despite the pain in his bloodshot eyes, Aizawa reactivated his Quirk and disengaged with a clean punch to the villain's stomach and a follow-up kick sent that both of them flying apart.
Aizawa's arm was destroyed and now hung limply by his side but as he stumbled up, he saw that the villain was still down. The only positive he could glean from this sudden turn was that at least his arm wasn't bleeding despite so much of it having been disintegrated away.
'Keep going Aizawa. None of this is going to matter if the students are killed because you can't keep fighting! It's illogical to think your role has changed because of your arm, now do your job and protect them!'
A villain with a sharp-toothed mouth for a hand appeared behind him, and Aizawa dodged the attack before kicking him in the head. Another villain with razor-sharp swords for nails tried slicing him alongside two other weapon-wielding villains, but he dodged them all as well before erasing their Quirks. They all stopped dead in their tracks a meter or two away, but the damage was done. He was surrounded.
But even if his body screamed of imminent collapse, and logic told him he was bound to lose, he would never surrender. He still had a job to do.
"That Quirk of yours really isn't suited for drawn-out fights, is it?" The ringleader continued.
Oh, so the villain was quick, durable, and more observant than he looked. Unhinged yet tactical in his every move – the most dangerous kind of villain should he escape to fight another day.
"Don't you think you're a little out of your depth here, Eraserhead? You're better at being a rogue than a warrior… you're always good at attacking out of stealth and doing a combo against a single enemy, not fighting them head-on," the villain continued. "Yet even knowing that, you didn't hesitate to pull all the aggro… just to put your students at ease."
Once again, Aizawa was forced to blink, and the three villains engaged.
With one hand he mummified the swords-for-nails villain with his scarves and spun him around to act as a shield against another villain who was swinging a sledgehammer towards his head. The villain only barely stopped himself but had no time to recover his momentum before Aizawa kicked the wrapped villain back into his ally, knocking them both out. He then dodged a villain with oversized arms and his leaping slam into the ground before delivering an incapacitating knee to his face and an elbow to the back of his head simultaneously.
He then spun around after reeling in his scarves to face the leader, his Quirk back on even as his breathing became more labored.
There was no underestimating him this time.
"Hey, look at you, you're still standing! You really are so cool!" The ringleader chuckled unsteadily. "Oh, but uh… by the way? I'm not the final boss."
The hair on Aizawa's neck prickled on end and he whirled, only to meet the black-skinned goliath the villain had brought along hovering right behind him. In that moment, if he hadn't known it before, one thing was now clear.
Eraserhead had lost long before the fight had even begun.
A massive palm reached towards him, and his final thoughts turned towards the hopes that he had done enough to save his kids.
Then there was only blood.
Despite the brief encounter Akiko and Jomei had with the female villain after landing in the downpour zone, things had been relatively quiet as they moved alongside Tokoyami towards the exit. In fact, despite the – in her opinion – pretty tight battle plan the three of them had formed, they hadn't encountered that many villains on their way out. Granted, Tokoyami needing to stay hidden in the alleyways did slow down their advance somewhat, but the lack of activity still stuck out to Akiko.
The only other villains they'd run into were two trios strewn about the zone in a seemingly random pattern, and those villains were all caught so off-guard by their quarries' competence that they really didn't put up much of a fight. Tokoyami and Dark Shadow's ambush tactics played a pivotal role in the small battles, but so too did Akiko and Jomei contribute just as much to incapacitating the villains as him – even while they were out in the open to draw the villains' attention. As a result, they'd been able to lean on Tokoyami's sheer power to overwhelm their foes before they could even try to call for help.
Not that they were complaining about Tokoyami being the powerhouse of their group. This was a 'do-or-die' scenario, not some training exercise at U.A. where trying to upstage one another was an unspoken secondary goal.
Of course, that relative peace was bound to end at some point.
"So…" Jomei idly started, "Do you think that we may have just lucked out?"
"What do you mean?" Akiko asked.
"I don't know… maybe we just scared them off, or we got dropped in the zone with the least villains. That's a possibility, right?"
Akiko shrugged. "I doubt it. I don't think the villains would make the oversight of spreading their forces too thin in one zone – even if they're splitting up into smaller teams anyway, by the looks of things."
"Fair enough," Jomei answered.
The flooded street they were working through finally came to an end, and just as Dark Shadow had instructed them, they continued to follow against the flow of the water towards the hidden drains elsewhere in the zone. They turned a corner onto another street, the edge of the all-encompassing dome that contained the downpour visible in the distance. Unfortunately, after a few more meters of progress, fate showed its hand.
Out of one of the many alleys down the new road, a villain emerged.
And then another two, then three, and still more followed until a large group had formed a short distance in front of the pair. The villains numbered no fewer than twelve, though their exact number was hard to discern from a distance.
Jomei pursed his lips. "Welp… that probably explains where the rest of them are."
"The rest of us, eh? So, you two's the brats who's been messin' with our friends, eh?" One of the villains barked. "We're gonna enjoy killin' you! Ain't that right boys?"
"Yeahh!"
"Let's do this!"
"Mama always told me bitches get stitches!"
"Your mama was an idiot."
Akiko shifted into a fighting stance. The villains may have had some semblance of unity between them but it was clear they didn't have much experience fighting alongside each other. More importantly, they were also still unaware of Tokoyami waiting in the shadows.
Akiko quickly decided that taking the initiative would be their best option. Jomei's hand glowed, and it became apparent to her that he'd come to the same conclusion.
"Jomei?" She started.
"I know. Take the fight to them, yeah?" He responded, the gases in his hand forming into a glowing pink ball. His newest technique.
"Right – and don't do anything stupid."
"Wouldn't dream of it." He smiled and prepared for an underhanded throw. "Brace!"
The Flashbang flew, and Akiko turned her head and shut her eyes. She knew Jomei's warning had been for Tokoyami more than herself, and she desperately hoped he had heeded the warning.
The ball skipped along the flooded street before it sank beneath the waterline, and the lead villain stared down at the bright sphere, unimpressed.
"Whaddya telling us to brace for?" He laughed. "What, are we supposed to be afraid of this piddly little-"
The Flashbang detonated, and as the leader and the rest of the villains howled in pain, Jomei didn't waste a moment.
"Now!"
"Dark Shadow!"
The sentient Quirk rushed out from within Tokoyami's shroud in an instant, bowling through three stunned villains and smashing an enormous palm into a fourth as it continued its advance, only stopping when the villain met a nearby building's wall.
The tattooed, blue-eyed, and shirtless villain grabbed ahold of two of Dark Shadow's fingers and managed to resist being crushed outright. "Funny thing about this whole deal… I can't feel any of this!" He laughed wickedly. "You'd have to beat me to a pulp to make me stop!"
"Yeah, don't care. Thanks for the invite though!" Dark Shadow responded, and its other arm balled into a fist. One overhead swing later and the villain was turned into an unconscious, human-sized nail in the concrete.
Immunity to pain didn't mean immunity to damage, after all.
"Dark Shadow four, villains zero! I'm the best!"
"Dark Shadow, return at once!" Tokoyami commanded.
The Quirk looked to its right and immediately began its retreat. Akiko and Jomei appeared, ready to take advantage of the villains' attention being focused on the shrinking silhouette that was Dark Shadow. Jomei engaged Light Speed once his inhuman ally was nearing its owner, and wound up close enough to their foes to engage before Akiko could join the fray.
A trio of Neon Beams popped into existence as Jomei leaped over a still-stunned group of villains, and every beam hit its mark, striking them all square in the head and knocking them out before he even landed.
"Alright…" Jomei whispered confidently.
"You think we're all so weak that an attack like that will take us out?" Another villain roared as he recovered, leaping through the air like a kangaroo with his leg aimed at Jomei.
He rolled right under the attack. "Not really! Flashbang's a stun!"
"No shit, dumbass!" The villain barked, and he began winding up a push kick when he landed.
"And while you're busy paying attention to me…" Jomei backflipped out of the attack's range.
"You can't see what's coming behind you!" Akiko shouted.
"Wait, wha-"
A whip of water cracked through the air and across the back of the villain's bovine skull, sending him flying past Jomei into a nearby streetlight. The pole rang with a resounding thung, and the villain moved no more.
Jomei threw a thumbs up Akiko's way. "Thanks for the assist!"
"No, I meant you!" Akiko continued.
"What?"
"Roll!"
He didn't question the order and rolled out of the way at Light Speed into an alleyway opposite to Tokoyami's – and only then did he notice the several villains that had recovered from his Flashbang charging towards the spot he'd been moments ago. At the same time the criminals turned their attention to Akiko she let her Quirk's grip on her liquid weapon go in favor of preparing a more decisive attack. It wouldn't be merciful to either herself or her foes, but it was better than drawing out the fight and giving the villains any second chances. Time was of the essence if she wanted to end the fight quickly.
'Alright Akiko, keep your arms loose and focus! You can do this!'
She held her hands out before her horizontally and started rolling her wrists, and the water all around her responded in kind, shimmering droplets lifting from the ground and coalescing into the makings of a wave. A shift of her stance and a grand, fluid motion of her arms leading into a push forward completed the preparation for the assault, and she cast it forth not a moment too soon.
The attack grew in size and magnitude as both it and Akiko assimilated more water into it, turning the small wave into a towering wall that stopped the villains dead in their tracks before they could reach her.
As the wave began to collapse in on itself, Akiko tightened her hands into fists and twisted, feeling her chest tighten as the water solidified, ice crackling as it formed a small glacier in the middle of the road. Her plan complete, Akiko let her grip go, leaving only the villains' heads poking out from within their confinement.
"Oh, c-come on! The hell did we sign up for? This is bullshit!" One of the villains complained.
"Get your foot off a' me!"
"Oh yeah, I'll do that right when I can feel my fuckin' legs again, asshat!"
As the void in the street created by Akiko's attack once again filled with water, the glacier's buoyancy led it to begin sliding harmlessly down the street – and Akiko only watched as the villains trapped inside bickered and squabbled all the while.
'Mission accomplished… I guess?'
Villains were a… mixed bunch, to be certain.
Tokoyami was the first of the trio to move again, leaving the seclusion of his alleyway when Jomei had turned off his Quirk. Akiko, meanwhile, merely stayed where she was.
"Well that was certainly an efficacious display of power, Takara."
"I could do better, though," Dark Shadow added.
"Disregard him."
"Right. But, yeah, I… guess it was," she exhaled. "Still took a lot out of me, though."
"Room for growth shall always remain," Tokoyami observed.
Jomei arrived alongside them. "True. But seriously though, Akiko, thanks for the assist… again. How are you holding up?"
She rubbed her crystal core. "I've been better, but I think I'm fine. Not near my limit yet – just wanted to get rid of those villains before they had a chance to coordinate… not that I think they would've ended up doing that anyway."
He nodded. "Gotcha. Tokoyami?"
"Dark Shadow is still ready for combat."
"Then we should keep moving."
"Right. There can't be that many more villains in this zone now that the big group is gone – unless they planned on sending more of their troops here than anywhere else, which is unlikely." Akiko added.
Jomei nodded an affirmative, and the trio set out in their advance together. A door in the distance glowed with a faint red sign that could've only been the exit, and the slight pain in Akiko's chest was forgotten. Cautious optimism took its place as she continued trudging through the slowly deepening water.
Although Jomei had always been concerned about her well-being, as he always tended to be… something about how he'd been somewhat more concerned than usual just stuck out to her. She stole a glance at him, but he was facing ahead, his expression rigid with determination, and she quickly turned her attention back to the road.
'Keep your head in the game, Akiko…'
She sped up her stride to keep up with her allies, and the glowing sign came slowly into view. It was small and hard to see, but it was the exit they'd been aiming to find. Just a couple dozen more meters and salvation would be theirs.
It was then that the water around her ankles tugged backward.
And it was too strong to merely be the zone's sparse drainage.
Next, the unrelenting downpour that'd persisted since before their arrival stopped suddenly, the pounding patter of raindrops giving way to an eerie hush. They looked up in wonder and saw that the rain hadn't stopped, but had been suspended in the air in a dome all around them.
"Akiko? Is this you?" Jomei asked.
"No… it isn't…" she responded cautiously.
Whatever was happening had to have been the work of a Quirk, but then the logical next question begged asking in the back of Akiko's mind.
"So who is?"
Tokoyami bristled. "Look closely above at the snare above us. It's moving."
Akiko squinted. He was right. The rainfall trapped by the dome was flowing backward… just like the water around their legs, which was rippling and churning in its rush elsewhere. Akiko followed the motion of the rain and the flooding underfoot and saw a whirlpool forming in the space they'd come from. It then became clear that the deluge of swirling water was centered around a small manhole cover.
Which now rumbled like a volcano about to erupt.
The plate cover jittered wildly around, steel ringing as some unseen pressure threatened its seal, and Akiko put the pieces together only moments too late.
A geyser erupted from below sending the lid flying skyward, and water spewed forth until the shape of a man became visible within. His body was entirely ice, devoid of expression save for the outline of a devilish grin. He roared and raised his arms, and the water that had started moving seemingly of its own accord raced towards him. The liquid heeded his call and pooled into a shell thousands of gallons thick around his body until he easily dwarfed a two-story house with his height.
"Hey!" The villain gurgled threateningly, "You missed a spot! Now DIE!"
His liquid arm launched towards the students with the speed of a water cannon, and Akiko was the first to snap out of her frozen state.
"Run!" she shouted.
"Understood!"
"Way ahead of you, Akiko!"
They bolted, adrenaline amplifying their speed just enough to reach an office building on the side of the road. The glass panes that once made up its first-story walls were shattered, and the students ran through before continuing their sprint towards a nearby counter. Vaulting over it, they crouched below the villains' potential line of sight just as quickly, though the cover did little to address the potentially fatal threat that was waiting for them down the street.
The rain returned in a crushing deluge outside, the villain's use of his Quirk seemingly at an end, and a sloshing of water was heard as the villain moved through it, coming closer by the second.
"Okay, so obvious statement time – we need a plan," Jomei stressed. "Tokoyami? Think Dark Shadow can take that guy out?"
Tokoyami bowed his head. "I'm afraid not."
"Okay, why not?"
"Even with the reduced illumination in this zone, there's still enough light to affect Dark Shadow's strength. Furthermore, despite you providing me warnings of when you're using your Quirk, my own hasn't escaped your attacks' light entirely unscathed. Dark Shadow has been growing weaker, even if it's been an imperceptible decline due to how powerful it'd been upon my first arrival here."
"Okay, so what do we have to work with?" Jomei leaned his head towards the sound of the incoming villain. "We don't have much time."
"Well, we know the villain's Quirk looks like it's to draw in and use water like an extension of his body, right?" Akiko prefaced.
"Yeah?"
"So we may not have brute force since Dark Shadow's getting weaker, but we do have numbers and maybe even knowledge on our side too. If the villain can use water as a part of his body, that's one thing, but that doesn't mean his Quirk's effects are immune to mine. More importantly, his Quirk doesn't mean he can keep track of all of us at once."
Tokoyami's brow furrowed. "So you've developed an avenue of attack, then?"
Akiko nodded. "Yeah, but it has to go perfectly so that no one gets hurt."
Jomei and Tokoyami shared a look.
The former nodded. "Then we're all ears."
'I think I just saw my life flash before my eyes!'
Denki ducked again, narrowly avoiding the literal stop sign the villain before him was wielding. As it flew by, and he realized he'd saved his face from becoming a pancake, Denki jumped backward and swung his steel rod in a wild arc to buy some time. Luckily, the villain didn't press the advantage he had and instead readjusted his grip on his makeshift weapon, his green-tank top clinging to his skin.
Come to think of it, Denki noted, a lot of the villains in the mountain zone were wearing tank tops – or at least, the ones outside the group from earlier were, anyway.
For now, though, he disregarded the observation.
What was more important right now was that he made the most of his weapon, which, as it turned out, worked really well with a Quirk that lets its user emit electricity without too many downsides. Granted, when he looked at Kyoka and Yaoyorozu and compared himself to them, he realized he was not much more useful than an infant flailing its arm around after grabbing ahold of whatever random thing it found on the ground, but still! He may not have been a prodigy, but he'd been using a simple steel rod better than some of the villains he'd fought had been using their Quirks.
So he was, tentatively, feeling a little good about his performance so far. Add on top of that fact that he and his companions were all completely unharmed, and their in-progress escape attempt was an absolute win, so far as he was concerned.
The villain before him swung his sign overhead like a battleaxe, and Denki jolted to respond.
None of his minor victories would matter if he died, after all.
In a fit of knee-jerk reflex, he stepped to the side while moving his steel rod above his head to block the attack. The electricity imbued within traveled through the villain's weapon, and the man shouted as he dropped the sign and turned his shocked hands into fists.
"Yeah, no, you're not punching me out, and I totally meant to do what I did just then!" Denki shouted, and he lashed out with his own weapon like a bat.
One totally-healthy mix of electricity and blunt force trauma across the villain's face later, and he was out like a light. Denki surveyed the battlefield around him for other opponents before planting his weapon into the ground to catch his breath and make a mental note.
'Ok, so that's like, eight down so far on my end of things? Good. Feeling a little dizzy from using my Quirk so much but still in fighting shape? Great!'
He nodded to himself and rose back to his full height. He pulled his weapon out of the ground and held it before him in both hands, admiring the item that'd given him just a slight edge over the villains that chose to mess with him.
"You know," he thought aloud, "I think I'm really getting the hang of thi-"
An uppercut to Denki's face interrupted his musings and sent him flying.
Holding on to consciousness, Denki pushed himself up on his arms with a groan when he finally stopped skidding along the ground. His latest assailant was, go figure, wearing a tiger-print tank top alongside a pair of sunglasses, green cargo pants, and an unwaveringly confident smile.
"Hey, hey, really shouldn't leave yourself open like that, bro!" he declared.
Denki saw the attempted curb stomp that followed coming a mile away. As fast as the attack had come out, though, Denki's reflexes countered, and he rolled out of harm's way before leaping back onto his feet and reaching for his weapon-
Which just so happened to have landed right next to his attacker when he was punched in the first place.
So he was unarmed and on the verge of going loopy with his Quirk.
Which left one option.
Turn tail and run.
Unfortunately, it looked like the villain was several steps ahead of Denki on the matter of tactics. The moment Denki kicked his heels around to begin sprinting towards his friends, the muscular – and surprisingly lithe – man grabbed him by the neck and locked him in a chokehold. Luckily, his arms didn't tighten.
Yet.
"And you really shouldn't turn your back on me, either!" The villain's grip strengthened slightly.
"Yeah, realizing that now!" Denki strained against the chokehold, but to no avail.
"Aw, what's the matter, bro? Wanna die in a hurry?"
Denki's struggles ceased. "Nope, not dying today, but guess what!?" His grip on his captors' arms tensed. "You're getting fried!"
He unleashed the strongest use of his Quirk he could manage without pushing himself past his limits, and with how the villain growled in pain, Denki thought his attack had worked. In the next instant, he realized the villain's grip hadn't loosened.
In fact, it had tightened a little more.
Which meant that this villain was immune to his Quirk.
"You know…" his captor growled, veins on his forehead bulging in rage, "I usually have a soft spot for electric-type Quirk users, but I'm not gonna lie… you're pissing me off. You think you can beat me and call for help? Well guess what, so long as I'm conscious, no signals are getting out anyway! Tank top gang rules!"
'Wait, so it's a gang!?' he thought, his mind loopy as he clung to the villain's arm.
But apparently, the villain was done playing around. His arms pressed against Denki's throat with murderous intent, and it took every ounce of remaining strength for Denki to keep from being choked out. Blackness crept into the corners of his vision and his fingers scrabbled for purchase on the arm that was crushing his windpipe.
Out of the corner of his eyes, consciousness fading, he spotted Kyoka through the haze of his vision.
"Uh, a little help!?" He wheezed through the pain, sure she hadn't heard him.
But Kyoka whirled around, brandishing her machete, and her face paled. "Damnit, Denki! Couldn't you just not need saving every five minutes?!"
"Don't you think that's exaggerating?!" He croaked, struggling for every breath.
"Not the time, Denki!"
She was right, he thought, his brain hazy and lightheaded. He was supposed to be a hero and instead he was essentially a hostage in front of two ladies. He was the literal antithesis of cool, right now.
The villain glared at Yaoyorozu and Kyoka, who stood surrounded by the bodies of his fallen allies. His grin never wavered, but the distraction caused his hold to loosen slightly and Denki gasped for breath. A vein on the villain's forehead bulged even harder. "You know, if I wasn't told to kill you brats, I'd probably give you all invites into the tank top gang… but seeing as you beat up my boys, consider yourselves way too uncool to join up. So once I'm done with this guy right here, you two are next!"
He looked down at Denki maliciously. "Any last words?"
The girls sent Denki a look, and now that he had been able to take a few life-saving gulps of air, he felt nothing but confidence.
"Yeah, actually," he started. "I'm kinda totally not into this 'being a hostage' thing, so…"
Without further warning, he elbowed the villain in the stomach with the last of his strength. His captor wheezed and his chokehold went slack enough for Denki to push out of his grip. As he rolled sideways to give his allies clear access to the villain, what happened next was as swift as it was decisive.
Kyoka followed up with a round of Heartbeat Fuzz, and the villain was stunned once more before he could move. Yaoyorozu then generated a lasso from her stomach and flung it around him, incapacitating him and removing what was hopefully the mountain zone's final threat from the fight.
Denki scrambled back to his feet, and Kyoka and Yaoyorozu held their weapons at the ready in case the villain tried anything. Despite being bound, the villain's grin didn't fade.
"Ha ha ha! Nice trick, but you three are still done for! It's like I said, you can't call for help as long as I'm awake! Tank top gang rules!" He howled.
"Yaoyorozu?" Denki asked.
"Hm?"
"Rod me."
She obliged, and a replica of his old weapon was in his hands not a few seconds later.
"Whatcha gonna do, bro? Knock me out?" The villain snickered.
He never saw the strike coming.
Denki sighed in relief as he cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. "Well that's one headache out of the way."
Kyoka scoffed. "Speak for yourself. You're giving me one just by us needing to babysit you."
"To be fair, that was the only time he was in genuine danger besides the canine villain a while back…" Yaoyorozu pointed out.
"Exactly! And besides, didn't I look cool when I elbowed that guy?" Denki followed up.
"You're exhausting…" Kyoka lamented.
"Yeah, well no more worries! That villain musta been the guy who was blocking all signals in and out, and he's unconscious, so leave the rest to me!" Denki put a hand up to his radio…
Which had shattered when he rolled out of harm's way.
"Uh…"
"You broke your radio, didn't you?" Yaoyorozu deadpanned.
"Maybe?! But it's fine though, you can make me another, right?!"
"Was it made with specific accommodations to run using your Quirk?"
"Yeah…"
"Then I'm afraid that unless you have an exact molecular blueprint on hand, I'll be unable to create a replacement," Yaoyorozu finished.
Denki deflated. "Which means that we're back to square one…"
Kyoka rolled her eyes. "No, it means that we're back to the original plan – keep rockin' it so we can get out of here alive. That last group was huge, so with any luck, we've dealt with the last of the groupies in this zone. We should be in the clear."
"In the clear? The pros still don't know that we're in danger!" Denki exclaimed.
"And you evidently don't know that Iida and Jomei are still out there. We have no way of knowing for sure, but one of them could have escaped by now to get word out to the pros on their own."
"Not an unlikely scenario," Yaoyorozu agreed, and she moved forward towards a nearby decline in the terrain. "Even still, we need to keep moving. It looks like we're near the end of the mountain zone, but we can't afford to slow down now. Even if we're all bound to be at our limits from constant combat at this point."
As she started down the descent, Denki and Kyoka shared a glance. The former nodded and threw a thumbs up, and the latter rolled her eyes before following after their ally. Denki took one last look at the battlefield behind them before sliding down the terrain to catch up with the pair.
They weren't out of the woods yet, but the end was finally in sight.
Akiko didn't consider herself a strategist. She knew that she could come up with plans for a fight no problem, as was necessary when her Quirk forced her to think outside the box, but she didn't consider herself a master tactician, by any means. A chaotic situation like this only exemplified the fact that, while she could think on her feet, it was the variability and unknowns of the Quirks she encountered that kept her from being absolutely certain in her planning. More to the point, if she was paired up with two strangers and not Tokoyami and Jomei, she probably could have come up with some plan to deal with the water-based villain, but right now, her knowledge of her friend's Quirk would be fundamental in the battle ahead.
That said, she didn't really consider herself a leader either.
She understood that she could easily work with her closest friends in a team scenario, sure, but she didn't know for certain if she could handle always having as many eyes on her as the role of a leader would require. She could handle her friends' attention, but a leader, by necessity, needed to be able to interact with and answer to so many people on the daily that she didn't think she could handle such a role. Not yet, anyway.
Even so… for now, for this fight alone, she would lead. Tokoyami and Jomei weren't strangers, and now wasn't the time to have a problem with leading when the plan they were about to execute was hers to begin with.
The giant villain's footsteps were audible swishing through the water as the three prepared to attack, and now the strides were closer than ever. Tokoyami was still in Akiko's line of sight, at the other end of the first floor so that he'd be behind the villain when he came into view - and so long as he'd run into no obstacles, Jomei would be hiding on the building's second floor by now.
Which meant that it was time to get started.
"Come on… come out and playyyy…" The villain warbled, but he received no response. "Rrrgh! You brats can't just hide forever, you hear me!?"
He lashed out with his armored shell, throwing a watery fist sideways into a nearby building, and he growled before roaring up to the sky in frustration.
And that was exactly the opportunity Akiko was waiting for.
'Now or never!'
She vaulted over her countertop refuge and ran forward, freezing the water underfoot as she went so she could skate towards her target more quickly. Not a few moments later she hopped off her makeshift slide and landed a few meters in front of the villain. He twitched and looked down, but the element of surprise was still on Akiko's side.
She put her hands forward and reached forth with her Quirk, and…
It was as she thought. The villain could use water as a second skin and attract it like a magnet, but that didn't mean he was immune to her Quirk in turn. She was able to hold him still – but also as expected, the villain was just as strong with his Quirk as she was with hers. Akiko felt herself slipping back and froze her feet in place, just managing to keep the villain subdued. Her chest throbbed and she knew she was forcing her Quirk to its limits, but she didn't need to hold him for long.
Just long enough to execute the plan.
"Jomei!"
"On it!"
He appeared in an instant, racing out the second-story window and into the air with a flashy mid-air twirl like he'd been dreaming of the moment he'd be able to use the move. As he twisted through the air he extended a palm and gripped his arm with his other hand, bracing for his own attack. Another instant later and a long Phosphor Beam surged into existence.
"What!?" The villain cried.
Steam flared into the air as the beam bored through the villain's Quirk, eventually hitting his icy body underneath. The attack knocked him out, and he was sent flying backward out of his now-deteriorating liquid armor.
"Dark Shadow!"
Dregs of bright neon still remained, but the sentient Quirk appeared all the same. Just as Jomei hit the ground, Dark Shadow intercepted the unconscious villain, catching him and hastily setting him down in an alleyway before returning to the refuge of Tokoyami's shroud. If the Quirk's weakness to light wasn't being called into question, the exposure to Jomei's likely meant it would be a short while before Dark Shadow would be effective again – meaning that the trio was now, essentially, down one member.
But the plan had worked. The villain was down, and no one was hurt.
That's what mattered.
Jomei appeared beside Akiko. "Well, that went pretty well. Good plan."
Akiko nodded. "Yeah… I guess it did. Thanks."
"No problem. You holding up okay?"
"Yeah. I'm feeling the stress on my Quirk, but no fractures. Fingers crossed that'll last. You?"
He threw a thumbs up. "Still got plenty of gas left. Lucky us, it'll probably be enough to make it out of the USJ and get help when we get out of here. Tokoyami?" He called.
The boy stalked toward them. "I am well enough. Dark Shadow will require a brief reprieve yet, but I am fit to continue moving. If we're all in need of saving our strength, we should keep moving and be rid of this inundated place." He tilted his head towards the exit.
Akiko and Jomei shared a nod, and the three students were off. Within moments they had crashed through the exit of the downpour zone, and into an almost shocking change in atmosphere.
Where the constant rainfall bombarded their ears, now all that was left were the sounds of battle ringing out in the distance wherever their classmates must have ended up. But with hair stuck to their faces and their costumes heavy with moisture, the sudden shift to a dry environment was a welcome relief.
And although they appreciated the chance to finally dry off, they didn't stop for a moment. They continued running with as much vigor as they could muster, and soon their breath grew heavier as they reached the edge of the mountain zone. The entrance to the USJ was still a distance and a long flight of stairs away, but the possibility that their mission would be a success was there, and it'd only be a minute or two longer before Jomei would be home free.
Or so they thought.
As the trio passed a pile of rocks near an outcropping of the mountain zone, the seemingly innocuous stone began to move. It rose up, higher and higher until it towered over them, and a villain made of stone soon stood forebodingly between them and their goal – just as tall as the water-based villain they'd just taken out, if not slightly taller.
Jomei skidded to a halt. "Come on, there's another one of these guys!?"
"Welp… it looks like my baby brother screwed up his job… idiot." He sighed. "Guess it's my job to clean up his mess now."
The giant began to move a massive palm forward, and the three students readied themselves for the desperate fight ahead – they needed to get Jomei out of the USJ.
"Cover your ears, now!"
Akiko started to look up. 'Is that…?'
The villain reeled as cannon fire hit him square in the chest, and he staggered backward, nearly falling. Akiko, Jomei, and Tokoyami covered their ears, and a moment later, another shot prevented the towering villain from recovering. Not a second later, he roared out in pain as amplified pulses of sound consumed him where he stood, and he clutched his stony ears in a desperate attempt to escape the bombardment.
And then a certain blond-haired boy soared off a nearby cliff, towards the villain.
"Stay away from my friends, you hear me?!" He roared.
He swung his steel rod with all the force he could muster, and with a satisfying crack, the villain's head snapped forward. As the boy rolled to break his fall, the villain teetered to the side for a few moments before he fell, unconscious.
A brief reprieve from the chaos followed, and for a few moments, nobody dared to even move.
"So…" Denki huffed, leaning on his rod. "Guess this means you haven't escaped to let U.A. know what's happening, huh? Not gonna lie… was kinda looking forward to that being a thing."
Jomei shook his head in disbelief. "Good to see you again, man. I was planning on getting out of here, but… this guy beat us to the punch."
"Then it's a good thing we were here then, huh?" Kyoka called as she descended a final decline, and Yaoyorozu followed soon after.
Akiko nodded. "Yeah. Are you guys okay?"
"Quite well," Yaoyorozu answered. "We're all sure to be at our utmost limits by now, but we're unharmed. I'm afraid that during our own venture, while we were able to take out the villain blocking signals in and out of the USJ, Kaminari's radio was destroyed in battle. We would have called for help otherwise."
"But we've still got Jomei – Iida too if that fog villain didn't warp him somewhere along with the rest of us," Kyoka pointed out.
"Right. Are you still fit to run long-distance?" Yaoyorozu asked.
"Yeah. I've been saving gas for Light Speed just for that, actually. That was our plan the second we all landed in the downpour zone."
Tokoyami stepped forward. "Then we shouldn't dawdle. The all-consuming jaws of villainy won't wait for us to catch our breath to snuff out our lives. Kaminari? Are you able to continue?"
Denki plucked his weapon out of the soil. "Yeah… ready to roll!"
"Then let's move," Jomei urged.
The newfound group of six did just that, all setting out with a common goal in mind. Fatigued though they all may have been, Akiko could feel that they were all determined to see things through to the end. They were some of U.A.'s finest students, and if any villains came between them and escape, they would learn exactly what 'plus ultra' truly meant.
It was then, as Akiko's features returned to normal, that a tentative flicker of hope blossomed in her chest. Now that they numbered six, it was possible that the worst of the crisis was finally over. They could very well be able to get through this whole incident without anyone getting killed.
With that realization, Akiko's crystal core flared a determined orange, and she felt her stride hasten as the sight of salvation grew nearer.
"Huh… heroes sure look weak when they're on the losing side of an encounter."
The ringleader's monster, having pinned Aizawa, slowly twisted his victim's arm backward, and with no effort, Aizawa's arm snapped like a twig. He let out a pained cry, but otherwise made no other movements. Goggles long gone, blood ran down his face from the smash his face had taken into the ground, and Aizawa counted himself lucky to even be alive right now.
That state probably wouldn't last much longer though.
"You can erase powers – it's a pretty annoying way to even things out, sure, but it's nothing impressive. When faced with real, physical power, you might as well be a Quirkless child playing pretend." the ringleader snickered.
As agonizing as it was to do, Aizawa forced his head up and snapped his neck around, activating his Quirk against the goliath on top of him.
All he earned in response was a palm smashing his other arm into splinters.
The hero's Quirk faded, and his newly shattered appendage fell limp. Then the monster gripped his head and slammed his face into the shattered pavement once again, Aizawa clinging to consciousness as long as he could.
'I'm sure of it… I erased this thing's Quirk… which means that he's super strong even without it…'
"By the way, Eraserhead, that right there? That's the bioengineered Nomu. The anti-Symbol of Peace… so it might be smart not to struggle too much. It's designed to be as strong as All Might, after all…" the villain continued.
'Of course it is…'
Before anything more could transpire, a brief burst of purple fog alerted Aizawa of a new arrival. The fog villain that had escaped him when he blinked for the first time had returned.
"Shigaraki Tomura…" he spoke.
"Kurogiri. Did you kill Thirteen?" Shigaraki asked.
"I'm afraid that there have been some… complications," Kurogiri began. "Among the students there were a few I was unable to disperse, and although the Pro Hero charged with protecting them was of no match to me, their combined forces held me at bay long enough for one of their number to escape. Regrettably, Thirteen remains unharmed."
Even through his pain, Aizawa felt the atmosphere around the lead villain grow cold. Shigaraki's fingers met his neck, and he began scratching violently against the scarred flesh there as the implications of Kurogiri's failure sank in.
Out of the corner of his eye, Aizawa picked up on movement in the distance. A group of six students – Nishimura, Takara, Yaoyorozu, Jiro, Kaminari, and Tokoyami – were moving quickly toward the entrance of the USJ. They paused when they caught onto the sight of him in danger, but one subtle look from him forced most of them to keep going. Takara lagged behind for a moment, but Nishimura dragged her along and up the stairs too before long.
Finally, Aizawa felt a flicker of hope burn in his chest. One of his students had escaped, another six were on their way to Thirteen and relative safety, and the probability of all his kids surviving this attack seemed only to be going up.
'The villains' attention isn't on them… that's all that matters.'
"Kurogiri…" Shigaraki rumbled, "You idiot. We planned this raid perfectly! We had all the party members we needed, all the goons to keep the brats busy, the initiative roll, we had everything in our hands… and you ruined it."
His scratching suddenly stopped. "If you weren't my ticket out of here, I'd atomize you, but… there's no way to win with dozens of pros coming. Game over, and back to the title screen… damnit, and I was looking forward to getting this quest done today. Let's go home."
Despite everything indicating that his students were about to be out of harm's way, Aizawa felt his blood run cold. If this Nomu was the anti-Symbol of Peace, and Shigaraki had expressed the desire to 'meet' All Might, then it was likely they'd come here to try and kill him. U.A. would tighten its security the moment this incident was done with, and All Might would likely be on his way right now, so why would the villains flee? This was their only shot.
If he hadn't lost so much blood, and wasn't in so much pain, he was sure he'd be able to come up with an answer. But as it stood, the reason escaped him.
Then he felt his heart skip a beat.
Midoriya, Asui, and Mineta – they were still behind him. They hadn't run. Forget that the villains were about to leave, Aizawa still had a mission to see through to the end.
Even if it killed him.
"But first… let's make sure the Symbol of Peace is broken," Shigaraki said, spotting the three students. "Let's kill his pride…"
Aizawa didn't hesitate.
And neither did the villain.
Shigaraki appeared in front of Asui, an arm outstretched and poised to render one of U.A.'s aspiring heroes into naught but blood and dust before any of her peers could even react.
But he paused at the last second.
"Eraserhead… you really are so cool…"
Blood dripped from his brow into his eyes, but through sheer force of will, Aizawa kept them open. He'd used his Quirk one more time and saved one more life.
Possibly the last time he ever would.
"But if you're going to be such a nuisance, I guess I've got no choice. Nomu?"
The abomination's grip on Aizawa's head tightened and his face was lifted up higher than before. This time there'd be no surviving what came next – but he harbored no regrets. He'd done what he had to do as a Pro Hero, and he knew that this was the most likely outcome when the Nomu had first pinned him.
He'd do it all over again in a heartbeat if he had to.
"End him."
And then came the sound of thunder from the entrance.
Everyone paused.
Maybe he wouldn't fail his kids, after all.
Maybe they'd all live to fight another day.
Authors Note: Welp. I expected this to be longer, but I cut a little bit of needless guff in the final Aizawa scene because I didn't feel like rehashing canon. Besides, it certainly will make subtle, interesting differences in what happens next, y'know? Anywho… ten brownie points to whoever catches the walking God of War reference in this chapter! Honestly, alongside a Tank Top Tiger + Doflamingo reference and more, this whole chapter was a bunch of dumb references in some form or another.
The water and earth bros were original, though. That said… yes, Denki is somewhat different than in canon here, but what oh what could that mean…? Nothing. Or something. Or maybe we'll just have to wait and see.
Or just you. I do have some plan behind all this, after all!