CH 7

Disclaimer: Me no own BNHA or RvB, they belong to their respective owners

(I gotta fix a plot hole in the last chap because the Covenant invasion of Earth is actually right after the timescale I used and might interfere with something later on so here it is)

"Your Eminence!" A high ranking Sanghelios Guardsmen knelt before the Prophet of Truth. "One of our scouts reports major explosions near the human homeworld! The current armada surrounding the planet is losing ships by the dozen due to an unknown force. We predict it is an optimal time to strike!"

"Do the other commanders agree?"

"We have reviewed footage taken nearby, and we can say there is no threat posed towards us." The Sanghelios answered.

"Good, good. Go, prepare the ship! We get-" He was cut off by a rumble that shot through his ship. "What was that?" Another Sanghelios staggered through the door.

"Multiple nuclear devices are approaching our ships! They are much more powerful than the average humans', and are capable of breaching our defensive shields." He reported.

"Well then destroy whoever is attacking us. Simple, really." The Prophet turned away to begin preparations on the invasion of Earth.

"Eminence, we cannot determine the origin of these missiles. It appears there is a small target, invisible to our radars, that is shooting at us."

"Agh! Begin firing randomly. You are bound to hit something." The Prophet of Truth rolled his eyes.

In the end, they could not find the attacker. The Covenant armada was in ruins. They postponed the invasion of Earth. For now…

"Hey! Everybody! It's time for a new video!" Wash called. It was becoming sort of routine for them. They sat down. Watched the video. And then spent the next few hours talking about what the video could mean and finally used the rest of the day as they normally would (I didn't include the last two parts, but if anyone would like to see them, just let me know).

"Maine! What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Carolina stared at someone who had either killed, or attempted to kill, everyone she had known from Project Freelancer, someone who she believed could reform themself, working to kill a bunch of school children. They still had their voice-modulators on.

"He-hello?" A pink colored girl peeped out from behind a bush. York swung his rifle towards her, causing her to duck behind cover again.

"Golem-san, we really, really need your help." Another girl appeared, this time from a tree, and she had shoulder length brown hair and rosy cheeks. "Aizawa-sensei is really hurt! I don't know if he can make it to the hospital in time…" She pointed down to a bloody mass on the ground next to All Might.

"Why should I help you? My fight is with them." Carolina motioned towards the two Freelancers standing near Shigaraki. "The traitors."

"Hey Tex! I-' Church called, before being muted by Carolina. "The fuck was that for?" He asked on the radio.

"For your dumbass, we didn't actually betray you or anything!" Tex yelled from the bottom of the stairs.

"Wh-what about you?" Uraraka asked York, who shrugged in response.

"I'm not exactly a world class sprinter, and the hospital is pretty far from here. I probably won't make it." York shrugged. "Carolina, I'm sure you can-" As he turned to her, York realized Carolina was no longer standing there. She had jumped the stairs and was walking towards Tex.

"You know those two?" Shigaraki asked Tex.

"Of course dipshit." Tex snapped.

"You dare talk to me that way?" He eyed her.

"Whatever…" Tex grumbled. Tex turned back to the muscular man who was wrestling the giant, brutish villain. She rolled her shoulders and made to join the fight, but was stopped by a wall of ice. The Freelancer glanced sideways to see a boy with half red half white hair with his foot clamped to the ground with ice. Tex unholstered her pistol and shot a few rounds, which were blocked by another block of ice. Carolina jumped in, and threw a light jab at Tex, testing the waters to see if her opponent was still as strong as she remembered.

"And you, Tex. What do you think you're doing?" Carolina hissed.

"Listen, sweetheart. Unlike you, I don't got a place to stay, a place to work, or a job." Tex responded. Although she knew she was working with the villains, it felt natural to disagree with Carolina.

"Then we're one of the same. I lost my job and place quite recently too. But that isn't a reason to do whatever you're doing now."

"I know it isn't. But life is pretty bland, ain't it? Spicing it up ain't so bad, is it?" The tension between them grew more and more palpable until it felt like soup.

"Unmute me you stupid bitch!" Church yelled.

Maine shifted his weight from foot to foot. The reappearance of Carolina startled him. A fireball quickly brought him back to Earth, and he shrugged off a blow from the spiky-haired blonde standing in front of him. Maine had to give the little guy credit. The blow hurt pretty bad, but Maine had suffered worse. Kurogiri attempted to cut All Might in half again, but was disabled by York tackling him to the ground and knocking him out with an elbow to the back of the head. York made sure Kurogiri was out for the count before heading over to Eraserhead to administer first aid.

"Hey big guy! You're pretty tough! I'll still rip you to pieces, but I have to give you some credit." Bakugo shouted in a battle-frenzied state. As he powered up another burst of flames, Maine threw his Brute Shot like a Frisbee, aiming to incapacitate him with the blunt end. Bakugo used his attack to instead propel him into the air, and rained a flurry of explosions towards Maine. Maine ran under the explosions to retrieve his Brute Shot, which he then used to shield himself from the rest of the fire. Once Bakugo was out of steam, he shot his own volley, except he used special, quick hardening, paint filled grenades instead of lethal explosives. Bakugo used his explosive quirk to maneuver in the air and dodge the rounds.

Maine saw an opportunity with Bakugou distracted by the shells, and threw his Brute Shot once more. This time, its smoking muzzle struck the UA student full force in the stomach, sending him hurtling to the ground. Maine prepared to knock him out with a blow to the head, but All Might dashed in, pushing Bakugo away (who still landed hard on his back), and taking Maine's pulled punch. All Might prepared to strike back, but Tex, tearing her gaze from Carolina, jumped on his back. Maine took this opportunity to punch him, full force in the chest, causing All Might to fall backwards. However, Tex was still on top of him, and when All Might fell, she was crushed by 562 pounds (255 kilos) of raw muscle.

"Ouch! Shit, Maine, ya mind getting this guy off of me?" Tex groaned. All Might was kind enough to stand up by himself, and Tex painfully sat up. Before she could recover, Carolina kneed her hard in the back of the head, knocking her clean out. Maine backed away to accidentally walk into the Nomu, who was fighting All Might, causing it to stumble and letting All Might land a finishing blow, sending it flying out of the USJ. Soon it was just Shigaraki, Maine, and an unconscious Tex and Kurogiri that was left of the villain force.

However, Kurogiri recovered faster than anyone could anticipate, and he was soon back on his ghostly feet. Maine pulled Tex onto his shoulders and inched towards Shigaraki and Kurogiri.

"You cheated!" Shigaraki screeched. "You were supposed to have gotten weaker! The-there is no way you could have beat my Nomu!"

"What's the matter? Where'd your bravado go?" All Might breathed. He was running out of time with One for All and he had to wrap things up quickly.

"Y-you…"

"What are you waiting for? Attack me!" All Might taunted.

"If only He was here...if only we had more Nomus. We did nothing but scratch him!" Shigaraki fretted.

"Tomura, calm yourself. If you look closely, you can see he is clearly wounded by the Nomu. He isn't the only casualty either. You can see Eraserhead dying, right behind him!" Kurogiri told Shigaraki.

"Shoto-" All Might whipped around. Sure enough, Eraserhead was still bleeding out, even with York's best efforts. Using this lapse, Shigaraki struck out, attempting to disintegrate All Might with his quirk. He was intercepted mid-air by Carolina, tackling him out of the way.

"I don't know who you are, or what you're trying to do, but you will pay for what you're making Tex do." Carolina hissed into his ear. Shiragaki reached up and activated his quirk on Carolina's helmet, causing part of it to eject steam and display a warning message on the hud, but the reinforced titanium mold effectively negated the worst effects. They separated as they hit the ground, and Shigaraki scrambled back to Kurogiri's side. Carolina whipped out her pistol and shot Shigaraki in the hand, shoulder, and both legs, toppling him to the ground. However, Carolina realized she only fired three bullets.

"So they've finally arrived!" All Might painfully turned around and saw a group of heroes standing on top of the stairs.

"We're regrettably late." A short, mouse-like creature stood at the front of the crowd.

"Aaaah, they came...it's game over Kurogiri." Shigaraki muttered from the ground. A cowboy-esque hero pulled out a pistol with a ridiculously large box magazine and unloaded it at the paralyzed Shigaraki. Maine jumped in between and took all the hits with his Brute Shot, before returning fire. The grenades were sniped out of the air and they found each other at a standstill.

"Thirteen! Get the banditos!" The cowboy hero yelled.

"My pleasure!" Thirteen opened a vacuum and began pulling with all her might.

"For the time being, we've failed." Shigaraki said as Kurogiri opened a portal and pulled the villain leader after him. "But we'll get you next time, Symbol of Peace All Might." Maine pulled the unconscious Tex over his shoulder and struggled to the portal, but it closed before he could make it. With Thirteen's quirk still sucking, he slowly lost his footing as he felt pieces of armor getting stripped from his back. His foot finally slipped and he spiraled toward the black hole.

"F..." Maine mumbled. However, right before he hit the point of no return, he felt his armor burning. Slowly increasing in heat before he was literally made of flames. The pain shook him, and Maine fired a quick volley of grenades in all directions, the black hole scattering them, which caused Thirteen to lose focus and stop the black hole. The maelstrom of debris and dust filled the air, obscuring everyone's vision.

"Somebody! We need a medic over here!" York called from the smoke. He carried the limp form of Eraserhead in a fireman's carry and sprinted to the group of heroes. A fiery grenade punched through the smoke and almost made it to the group, but it was shot out of the air again. However, it exploded into molten fragments, and a wall of cement was raised to block the magma.

Carolina attempted to activate her infrared vision on her helmet, but Shigaraki's Decay had damaged some of her helmet's functions, so she was forced to wait for the dust to settle. As she tapped her foot in impatience, she realized the hulking mass of a man who was standing next to her was replaced by a frail person wearing a t- shirt ten sizes too big for him.

"Uh…"

"Thank you for the assist." The shriveled All Might said. "But please, don't talk about this form."

"Sure?" Carolina turned her head back, but a red-hot shell, barely missing, seared the side of her neck, causing her and All Might to double over and gasp from pain and shock respectively. The black undersuit had welded to her skin under the extreme heat, and it was beginning to cool. She could barely crane her neck to see who had fired the shot. Over the still unconscious Tex stood a flaming Maine, his armor fiery red, and his visor covered flames. A miniature human appeared next to him.

"A pleasure to meet you all. It has been a while, Agent Maine. A setback to be sure, but the Meta has returned. We will achieve our goal this time." Sigma told Maine. "I sense the Epsilon and Delta units nearby. Shall we recover them?"

"I shoulda seen this shit coming." Church cursed. "Uh you should run. Although with that neck it doesn't seem like you can, huh?"

"Shut...up…" Carolina growled.

"The Epsilon unit is the nearest to us." Sigma observed. "Come brother. Do not hesitate to join me." As Maine stomped towards Carolina, All Might stepped in front of him.

"I do not know who you are, stranger, but you will not harm a hero under my watch!"

Me? A hero? Carolina internally scoffed. Maine batted the weakened All Might aside and continued on his way. Carolina shot her Magnum, but the bullets melted in the air before they could reach Maine.

"Snap out of it!" She yelled. "Maine! Don't let the freak control you again!" As he reached towards her helmet, she could feel the air hum and increase in temperature. The concrete below his feet bubbled and melted. It was becoming unbearably hot-

Maine buckled back and clenched his shoulder. The cowboy hero had fired a shot that had made it to Maine's skin.

"Unfortunately for you, Bandito, my bullets are specially constructed to be extra resilient, being able to punch through any cover you might be hiding behind." He fired a few more shots, which caused Maine to back away from Carolina. As Maine prepared to return fire, a bullet ricocheted midair and shot through his back. "My quirk will see through any cowardly attempts to avoid my shots. Take it like a man!"

A few heroes split off from the group and cautiously approached Maine.

"He's like a bootleg Endeavor!" A large man in a red skin tight suit thought out loud.

"I'll be sure to punish him thoroughly for what he did to dear Aizawa." A purple haired woman wearing a dominatrix outfit licked her lips.

"This is an interesting new form, Meta." Sigma told him. "This is a perfect test opportunity. Do not let it go to waste." Maine growled, and his Brute Shot melted and cooled into a wicked, flaming halberd. His heated aura caused the two pro heroes to slowly step back. Midnight tore open one of her sleeves, and purple mist surrounded Maine.

"This should put you to sleep." She coughed from the smoke being released from the ashy ground. However, the purple mist evaporated from the heat.

He swung his halberd in a wide arc, nearly catching Midnight in the stomach. The attack barely missed, and it burned her thin bodysuit, nearly revealing her voluptuous breasts. She stiffly smirked and retreated.

A wall of cement rose behind the flaming freelancer, and collapsed on top of him. A large piece of rubble was picked up and thrown back at the heroes. The rest melted. The heroes, realizing they couldn't touch Maine, apart from Snipe, pulled back and tried to come up with a strategy. They also had some of their own problems.

"Aizawa-sensei! Wake up!" Midoriya shook his still teacher. The rest of the class was scattered around, either recovering from their fight or shell shocked at what just happened. Tokoyami was brooding, sitting under a burned out tree. Bakugo was yelling about how he should've won his fight against Maine at Shoto, who was observing Maine's fight with Snipe. All Might was hidden behind a newly made concrete wall, in order to keep his shriveled form safe.

"I don't think he's making it, kid." York said. Although he wasn't Freelancer's top medic, he considered himself quite good. Even he didn't see a way Eraserhead could pull through. He was bleeding heavily and had too many fractured bones.

"My my, what trouble you have gotten yourself into, Shota." An elderly lady waddled past them and looked sadly on his form. "I can only speed up the process. If it will end in death, it will end in death."

"Not now Oboro-kun…" Aizawa waved at the air and struggled to sit up. His hastily stitched wounds were torn open, much to York's protests, and he slowly turned his gaze towards Maine, who was standing as still as a sentry.

"Oboro…who?" Midoriya asked. The gaze of the heroes around them darkened at the name. Using his last remaining energy, Shoto Aizawa erased Maine's new quirk and died, his broken goggles falling off of his similarly broken face. "Aizawa-sensei…" The inheritor of One for All cried over his teacher's body. However, his sacrifice was not in vain. Maine was now devoid of fire, holding a disfigured and unusable weapon. The heroes, recognising this, regained their vigor and resumed their attacks. Maine was shot multiple times and took numerous beatings from fists, amplified sounds, and other weapons. Instead of moving out of the way of the attacks, he simply absorbed hit after hit, never moving. This puzzled the heroes, but they kept up the pressure, fearing his quirk would come back soon.

Their puzzlement was soon answered as Maine finally collapsed. He dropped to one knee and behind him was Tex, who was just getting up.

"The fuck just happened…" She rubbed her head. "Yo Maine. Maine…?" She finally noticed him on the ground next to her, bleeding from uncountable wounds.

"My-my bad." He grumbled. He had lived through worse, although he still couldn't move here. The heist incident resurfaced on his mind, but at least he didn't lose his voice again.

"You better have lost some weight since last time, big guy." Tex recalled their first meeting.

"Leave." Maine said. "Sigma might come back."

"Like hell I'll lose everything to that smokey bastard again." Tex snorted. She heaved him over his shoulder, before realizing an entire legion of heroes was watching them.

"Ah, to be youthful." Midnight sighed. "What will one do if the other dies? It makes me want to find out…"

Tex quickly scanned the area. She noticed York and Carolina were both out of the fight, the former tending to the latter's wounds. Needing a distraction to cover their escape, she grabbed two cylinders from her belt. The black clad Freelancer chucked them as hard as she could. As she figured, the one with the ridiculously sized pistol shot the first projectile out of the air. It exploded and masked the second's entrance. The grenade clinked next to Snipe's foot and-

It exploded, just not with the usual fireball. In her rush, she had thrown a flashbang and a grenade, instead of double grenades. It worked well enough, blinding all the heroes, who had looked directly at the distraction and got the full effect of the flashbang. Tex heaved Maine over her shoulder and disappeared into the rubble of a mock city nearby. A few of the more hot-blooded heroes gave chase, but quickly lost the two in the fake storm.

"Well what do we have here?"

"Ah shit." Carolina muttered. She had finally pried the sticky remains of the undersuit from her neck, and was greeted by at least a dozen heroes all peering at her.

"Ah shit indeed." Church agreed.

"For a second there, I thought the Meta was totally fucked." Tucker said.

"He's way too tough for that. Remember when you literally stabbed him with an alien laser sword, and that was right after Sarge shot him point blank." Grif reminded him. At the same time, a loud crash and a hard knock rang through the room. "Wait, was that in the kitchen? Oh fuck-" They cautiously approached the source of the sound, and found a somewhat familiar face snoring on the ground. It was the hero who had apparently died in the show they had just watched.

"Well what do-" Wash started, but Tucker cut him off.

"Dude. That's cliche as fuck."

A/N Hey! I'm not dead. I'm just really lazy. And loaded with work. :( it's Winter Break and I have exams in January, so I've been having to work my ass off for them. Maybe the chapters won't come out at the abysmal rate of 1 chapter per 4 months, but they'll definitely be coming slower than before.