Death

by tmb1112

What if the Quirk, Death, existed? A perfect Quirk for a villain, but what if the boy who manifested that power just wanted to be a hero? Enrolling in U.A. might not be enough, when all your Quirk can do is kill people.

247. Chapter 247

Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia

Chapter 247:

Past the northern boundaries of the Tokyo city limits, smoke poured out of a turned-over train car that was badly damaged during the derailment. "Careful now," Muoko said, standing just past the opening ripped in the train to make it easier to get an injured passenger out. "Careful. Okay, bring her over to Kameko. How much space is left in the Tortoise Fortress?" Muoko looked over her shoulder and asked her boyfriend.

"I'll go check and come back to you," Tomoki replied and then sprinted off faster than the other two who were carrying the passenger towards Kameko. He ran by them and towards his classmate whose body was at its largest size and had a large opening on the front of it in the shape of an open doorway. The edges of that doorway were softer than the rest of his thick brown shell, and Kameko had his arms outstretched and attached to the walls on the inside of his Tortoise Fortress. He was ready to close off the entranceway at any moment if the enemies were to charge at this position. "How much space?" Tomoki called into the shell.

"We should start moving these people to Adachi General. Some need immediate medical attention, and Kameko won't be able to move at full speed because of that," Ms. Anastasia spoke out from just inside the doorway to the vice-rep of Class 1 standing outside.

Kameko isn't very fast as it is, Tomoki thought in frustration to hear that. He looked inside though and saw a lot of injured people in there who Ms. Anastasia was helping. He moved out of the way to allow in the injured woman two of his other comrades from Class 2 brought in. "Then just wait another minute. I'll have everyone else who can fit come over here, then get going," Tomoki said. He turned his head to the right as he finished, looking out past train tracks and over the cement-covered ground to the field past it. As much smoke was rising from the derailed train, a lot more was rising from the forest where heroes had apparently gone to intercept the force of over a thousand that they could see now.

Eagle Eyes warned his students who he had arrived at this scene with that there were more still back behind the tree line and some who seemed to have sensory Quirks among them. Those villains were looking back towards him and examining the force that had come to stop them. Tarangla-sensei called over to Drivress who just sped back to their area to pick up some of the civilians who were uninjured and needed to get away from here. All-Terrain had his hands on the ground and was forcing up a protective wall around an area that Tarangla and many of the students were gathered in as they had brought most civilians who could walk over there. Not just people from the derailed train were in the area now though, as civilians had seen the Yutapu heroes and rushed towards them even though the heroes were calling out at them to go the other way.

The entire metropolitan area of Tokyo was under attack though. Villains had apparently spread throughout the city and were even causing chaos in the outskirts and suburbs. The lack of communication getting out from within Tokyo left the Shiketsu students and the heroes with them mostly in the dark as to the situation behind them, though they were trying to focus on one thing at a time and had to handle the problem to the north of Tokyo first. Three Spiders marched towards the city. An army of Anti-ANTs flew over the heads of a thousand villains moving the same direction. They were heavily armed. They held black rifles with large magazines in them, or thicker green ones with tubes on the top that glowed with the strange energy inside.

If any one of them has a Quirk that can disable Quirks. Or if someone has one that can counter Inasa a different way, putting up barriers that block wind or ceilings to do the same, Manzo thought as she stared north from the top of a train car that she stood on invisible to the world. Breathtaker held her breath and just scanned over the enemy line just as Eagle Eyes was doing on the next train car as the one she crouched on. I can get behind their lines and find any specific target who counters Inasa. It only takes one of them to stop him if they have the right kind of counter, but he could take on hundreds if that one counter is taken down. She stood up and jumped off of the train, landing lightly on the ground though still making a slight noise that caused Taiyuro to glance next to him as he helped an older man walk towards the main evacuation site.

Was that Manzo? Taiyuro wondered as no one stood where he just heard that landing. His head turned back to the north and then he sped up a bit and said to the old man, "Just a little farther." The student had the elderly man's left arm over his shoulders and had to crouch as he helped the man walk, but he picked up a little more to get weight off the citizen's legs and help them speed up to get out of there. Be careful out there. Inasa can handle this on his own, I think…

Porrolo Ven's yellow eyes looked off towards the north and the enemy army that was coming towards them. It's really, an army, he thought in full understanding that the description was no exaggeration. He looked past Dendo and Himazuri who were both hesitant to move forward but did not look to want to run back either when they had one more classmate who was going on ahead of them. Inasa, you really think- Porrolo cut off his doubtful thoughts. He's not being reckless. He knows there are dangers to fighting so many enemies with unknown Quirks. He knows he's not unbeatable. But, but is caution really enough? Porrolo tried to have faith in his strongest classmate, but Inasa was being oddly cautious about flying towards the villains.

"What is he doing?" A voice wondered behind Porrolo. He was standing near the evacuation area that All-Terrain was stabilizing and making more fortified each second. Porrolo had stayed behind instead of going with the first group to head off for Tokyo. They had taken some civilians who were ready to run or drive along with them, but not all of them were going to come back. Kimona had taken several of the students from Classes 1 and 2, as well as some younger students, to go help out in other areas under attack in the northern side of Tokyo. The lack of heroes around here due to them going to try and stall this army first had led to there being unprotected neighborhoods in the midst of a siege on the capital of Japan.

Porrolo turned his head and shifted his small black pupils in the middles of his yellow eyes over to a woman who wondered that in an annoyed voice. She had an elderly woman on her back and was holding that woman up by the knees. The civilian appeared nearly a hundred years old and had a large black horn sticking out the middle of her light-skinned face. Her eyes were squinted nearly shut, and her wrinkled arms were wrapped around the younger woman's neck and shaking as she held on. "You missed this one, by the way," the younger woman said, with a look towards the spiky-white-haired boy she was about to walk past.

The young woman was in her twenties. She turned back from Porrolo and looked into the distance at Inasa who was guarding the derailed train and had moved from the cement area onto the grassy field himself. He was nearly within striking distance of his enemies who were all focused on him but also looking past at the city they were moving towards. "He just flew all of you across the country, didn't he? Are you all stupid?" This person scolding Porrolo shook her head then crouched down and gently lowered the older woman to the ground. "Take her, would ya?"

"Huh?" Porrolo muttered. He was busy thinking about what she said. He did not know who this woman was, but she was making a lot of great points. Porrolo's eyes did not even shift back to her despite what the girl shorter than him but obviously older just said. Her words had made him focus over towards Inasa and wonder to himself if the reason Inasa was not rushing in was actually because of caution or if it had to do with how much wind he had already used to get them here. Is he just trying to recover?! I need to tell Dendo, Inasa could have been, bluffing- Porrolo's head turned to the right and he looked at the short woman who just walked past him and cracked her neck to either side as she did it.

Porrolo stared at the orange hair of this girl that was spiked up but short over the top of her head. She had a couple of spiked bangs out in front of her forehead, as well as out behind her head too. She had a piercing with a stud in on her left ear closer to him. She wore a black long-sleeved shirt and a baggy pair of green pants. Porrolo's eyes locked onto the left side of her face though. This woman in her mid-late twenties had a scar on her left cheek that he did not notice before. And there was a scar under her left eyebrow as well that cut up onto her forehead. His head snapped up suddenly and his jaw he was opening to ask her something dropped instead as she leapt up in the air and rose over fifty feet off the ground.

"What the hell?" Dendo wondered while spinning his head to the right and looking up at a figure soaring above them. "Hey- HEY!" He yelled towards that civilian coming from the train who a couple of other heroes shouted towards. "Idiot," he snapped under his breath. "Stupid, Lifebringer's Law," he muttered quickly while starting to jog forward again. He glanced over at Himazuri who hesitated herself with huge eyes while staring up at that arcing figure coming down ahead of them, "We have to get that civilian out of here."

"Y-Yeah," Himazuri agreed, nodding her head fast and running to keep up with Dendo. The two of them stared with wider eyes still though as the woman arcing through the air to come down near Inasa, suddenly shot forward straight instead of continuing her downwards arc. She shot ahead in a straight line then continued dropping, and she landed ahead of Inasa by thirty feet and a bit to his right as well.

Inasa's eyes had been focused along the whole line of his enemies. Both the caution he had of his enemies and his desire to catch his breath and recover from how much he pushed himself to get everyone to Tokyo were reasons why he was still standing there. He had moved closer to the army though to a point that no one else was as far up as him, and he was just about to shout back at Dendo and Himazuri to start getting out of there already. His bottom lip dropped though and his eyes snapped over to the figure who flew past him in a position standing straight up as she soared through the sky. She dropped out of the air lightly and landed on both feet ahead of him and to his right, then she spoke up while staring ahead towards the villain army that slowed down while attentions started to shift onto this person. "Yo."

"Wh- hey!" Inasa called out. "You can't be-"

"Gale Force," Maelstrom started. "You know how good your Quirk would be at evacuating civilians from Tokyo?" She wondered it with a tone of annoyance not hidden very well under the question. Her tone was scolding though not so much as just dismissive. "You go back there and handle evacuations. I'll take care of this."

"Wh-" Inasa did not make out a full word this time. He just blinked a few times in confusion at what this woman was telling him. "Who, are you?" He called out to her, taking a step forward and getting ready to run up and get past her. His right hand opened at his side as well and he brought wind down in front of her to yank her backwards, but the wind he tried to take her with suddenly pulled apart in all directions and made his eyes bulge that he lost control of it. His second foot never lifted.

"Oi Inasa! Get her back here," Dendo yelled towards his classmate who was not pulling that civilian away, and was instead letting her start walking towards an army of villains.

That army of villains slowed down though. Spiders stopped walking. AANTs came to stops above the heads of the soldiers who looked in so much confusion towards this one civilian not even wearing a costume to signify she was a hero. Some started laughing. Others gave her confused looks but smirked thinking of how dumb the civilians were to think they could win just because they may have been training under heroes.

"I have, this-" Inasa started towards the woman ahead of him. His tone was more confused and his heart was racing faster all of a sudden even though he had steadied it when he was facing down a force of a thousand or more.

Himazuri's heart rate was skyrocketing as she stared towards this woman who was inside of her Mindreading range. "Dendo," Himazuri gasped out, her legs shaking and stopping where she was. "That's…"

Dendo looked to his left and back at the girl behind him who had stopped. When he turned back, he was the only one facing south of all the heroes looking to the north instead. His eyes rose up. His feet stopped in place.

"You're a hero, Gale Force," Maelstrom said. She smiled herself while standing still and staring towards the villains who were all frozen as well. Most of them were lifting their heads up though. Inasa tensed up himself as the area around them started to darken. A line of shade had just passed over the derailed train behind them. It crossed the heroes in the south and slid along the ground rapidly to reach Dendo and Himazuri. It passed them and then went over the head of the woman who became shrouded in shade as well. Inasa lifted his head up and stared at the white clouds that were rolling overhead. The clouds were forming out of thin air, and they were rolling in like waves that got thicker each second, and darker too.

Every villain finally stopped moving as the shadow crossed the field and went over them. Villains inside of the Spiders looked out of the windshields and stared up at a graying and then blackening sky. Bbmmm… rmmmbblll… Out from those dark clouds above, thunder started rumbling.

"What is a hero's top priority?" The person who had landed in front of Inasa wondered to him. "It's saving people, right? So get into Tokyo, hero. Get in there and save people. So many need your help, and with your Quirk you can easily save thousands who no one else can." The woman ahead of Inasa grinned as she looked back and forth down the enemy forces. Villains were gulping. They were leaning backwards and gripping their sweaty hands tighter on their weapons.

"Who are you?!" Dendo yelled towards this person as he came up behind Inasa.

"Me? I'm just a regular Japanese citizen," she responded. Her voice rose louder, and she called out, "But my Quirk is better for fighting against these villains than yours are. The people of Tokyo need their heroes to get in there and save them. You go handle that, I can take these guys."

Wind started picking up around them. It was strong. It blew past the teenagers and caused the grass to swing back and forth. The trees behind the villains blew in the wind. Leaves flew off of them. The rising smoke swirled around, as the clouds above started to do the same. Instead of pushing any farther to the north, the clouds that were already there started to spin around as wind picked up in the area. Villains who were yelling at each other about who Gale Force was and what his feats were had been coordinating a counter. They had figured out the best of their comrades to counter him and were preparing a fight against that hero while still confident about their chances. Fear was setting in this time though. An army who had just fought their first battle against heroes and overwhelmed them easily, stared towards a single woman who faced them and smiled in a cocky way that seemed so threatening.

"Get your Trigger ready!"

"Charge your weapons!"

"Send the AANTs first!"

"Hey!" The pilot of one of the Spiders yelled from his chair to the weapons' systems' controllers at the front of the bridge. "Aim at her. Target her, NOW!"

"Charge the main cannons!"

"Is that, who I think it is?"

Cannons on the front of the Spiders aimed down and all pointed inwards towards this woman on the field who had seemed to summon the clouds above them. Dendo heard what that woman said to them about getting to Tokyo, but he hesitated while darting his gaze past her and to all the enemies targeting her now instead of Inasa. His eyes rose back up to the clouds above, and a lump rose in his own throat at the sight of the swirling dark clouds.

She wasn't on the train, Inasa thought while taking a step backwards himself.

"Shishikura senpai, told me something about that oil rig incident," Dendo started. Inasa had stepped backwards closer to him, and Himazuri just stepped forward to tell Dendo to run back with her.

Inasa was still staring ahead even as he took another step backwards. She's right. My Quirk is for saving lives. I only came out here, to save everyone else by stalling- winning! I, had planned on winning. But if her Quirk is better, I can save a lot of people. I need to! That's what I should be doing right now. She's right. This person, this… His head turned slightly to the side and he looked back at his green-haired friend who stared with huge eyes towards the figure who started walking towards the enemies again while still smirking as if she had full control of the situation, even as they all targeted her with everything they had.

"He said, the heroes knew that they were there before they even showed up. Because, the heroes knew a phrase about the Army of Death," Dendo said their name specifically. He confirmed what he was thinking to the other two already thinking it. He finished anyway though, "He told me that, 'They bring the storm.'"

The feet of the woman walking ahead of them swept off the ground. She rose up into the air while still standing straight up. It was like she just hovered up off the floor. The sky flashed and bolts of lightning shot out of the clouds and branched below over her head. She smirked even larger though and her head turned partially to the left. This person was pretty far ahead of them, but the wind was traveling quickly between them. Her mouth moved as they stared towards her half-turned face, and her words reached them a second later as they were carried on the wind over to the teenagers.

"I am the storm."

Maelstrom's eyes turned fully white and glowed bright as she snapped her head back forward. Her hands rose up at her sides. All of her fingers curled up, and spinning winds formed over the tops of them. She snapped both arms down at her sides, pointing her curled-up palms out in front of her as the spinning funnels of wind grew larger and larger. Air pressure shifted and got colder and hotter in different areas. Rain started to fall from above as more lightning cracked out of the thick black clouds. And Maelstrom swept her arms in front of her and crossed them, throwing the tornadoes from either arm to opposite sides. The bottoms of those tornadoes hit the ground while they were still growing and being injected with more wind to become stronger and stronger. This woman flew higher up in the air as wind pushed up underneath her feet. The spikes of her orange hair blew in the wind around her and she smiled wide down towards enemies who started firing up at her only for her to swerve around beams that she intentionally made them aim upwards so there was no risk of them hitting anything behind her.

She shot forward. Villains injected with Trigger. The AANTs flew forward and fired from their arms while aiming up into the sky as well. The Spiders started marching forward again, guns popping out all around them and firing upwards as their massive cannons did the same. Villains with flight Quirks flew up into the sky to intercept the soldier who just attacked them with her Weather Manipulation Quirk.

She swerved out of the way of a giant purple beam that fired into the sky at her. Maelstrom flew into the clouds above and rose her right arm up above her head as beams flew by her sides and missed because of how she had shrouded herself in the storm. Her right hand sparked as she flew there inside of the thunderstorm. Her whole body sparked, and then she swung that arm down and dropped a bolt of lightning onto the Spider that was in the middle of the three and the closest one to actually hitting her of the three initial blasts they fired from their main cannons.

The Spider wobbled around, red lights going off inside it and villains screaming out as the metal interior conducted the electricity throughout its body. Even villains on the outside of the Spider jumped away as the static electricity from being close to the giant robot was sparking and shocking them. Tornadoes ripped across the ground and villains put up walls or dug themselves away from them. They fired into the sky at the woman who came diving back down, sparking and spiraling inside a wind funnel she created that pulled black clouds down with her.

"We, should get to the city," Himazuri said.

The two taller boys in front of her finally looked back from the scene they were watching in awestruck silence. Himazuri shook her head around and then repeated more firmly and while backpedaling herself, "There's no time to sit around gawking! Let's go!" She spun and started sprinting back the way they had came. Zach told me about her. We don't need to worry! "We can let Maelstrom handle this. She's right! It's our job to go save the people inside Tokyo. Not, fighting villains."

That's their only job, Dendo thought to himself after spinning and running back after Himazuri. As he turned he saw Manzo appearing on the field and stumbling backwards, having gasped out at what she was seeing. Manzo spun around and started sprinting the same direction that Dendo was far on her right. He wanted to look over his shoulder again, but Himazuri had not looked back once yet and he knew she was right not to do so. They came. They really came to help us, even though we… We let him die. Of course they're still here though. That wouldn't stop them, Dendo reminded himself of it in a way like he was telling himself it was obvious. He thought of the final clip they watched at the end of the Siege of Wampajawa though. The remaining soldiers there with Zach who could barely stand, and yet who all were with him to keep on fighting even though it would mean they would most likely die. She was with him then. That woman back there, is much stronger than we are.

Inasa could not keep himself from looking back as much as his classmates could. He even backpedaled in a full run with his wind helping him stay up and not trip as he sprinted backwards like that. Is she, stronger than me? Inasa wondered in amazement. The confidence that woman had had was not faked, which he could tell since he had been trying to convince all of his own comrades that he was certain he could take on an army he was more nervous about than he had let on. He smiled wide while staring back into the insanity going on as one person took on an entire army. She's more experienced. More than me, and more than any of them! I'll do what she says, even though she's not a hero, because Zach trusted these people! He trusted her. I remember that! She made the world effects for him when he was interrogating the villains he caught. She made that "Rubble Funnel" when they injected with Trigger! And she blotted out the sun when he told her to. That was so intimidating right there, and, and she reminds me of him, Inasa realized why it was that he so easily trusted that she could handle this.

The woman who had walked towards that army looked much more like Zach did when he had marched towards the Subspace Devils outside of Desusuta. The intimidation she caused was far greater than Inasa could or had done himself. The villains actually looked afraid of her. And they were right to be, now that he could see what she was doing to them. His smile faltered for a second though as he watched dozens of beams fired at once in a volley into a spinning funnel of clouds that the woman yanked herself back into to avoid the attacks. Bullets were easily missing her and her winds were too strong for well-aimed attacks, but some of the enemies' technology was too strong for even fast winds to affect them.

Explosions of green energy went off in the sky. A huge wave of water rose up and collided with a wall of lava that rose on the other side. Blue lightning flew up from the ground and intercepted bolts coming from the sky. And bright flashes of red light came from on top of one of the Spiders, causing raindrops to change directions and glow red. All while hundreds of light-blue crystals came up out of the ground in front of the stalled Spider in the middle, with one giant crystal in the middle that had lots of other sharp ones protruding out of it and then more coming out of them. The ground underneath a tornado that Maelstrom had thrown first opened up, and the tornado broke apart a bit while sucking up chunks of earth that had just fallen apart into a vacuum below.

Using Trigger so early, huh? Maelstrom wondered while flying back and swerving around, trying to avoid dozens of attacks from different weapons and Quirks all at once. Guess I should get serious too then. "Maelstrom! Do you need any help? I know you said-"

"If I said I could handle it, then I can handle it," Maelstrom snapped back at the Support team in her ear. "I'm pulling Trig. Focus on everyone else who actually needs the help." Maelstrom reached into her back pocket and pulled out a black case that she popped open. She pulled out a needle and slid up her left shirt sleeve at the same time. Maelstrom pulled the plastic tip over the needle off with her teeth, then she injected the Trigger into her arm and pushed down on the top of the syringe.

"Are you sure? There are over a thousand of them-"

"Then, it's an even fight," Maelstrom spoke through grit teeth. She pulled out the needle from her arm and tossed it to the side. Her eyes glowed brighter white and the corners of her lips pulled higher up. The winds picked up speed and the Spiders stumbled around as more tornadoes started falling from the sky around the villain army. Any villains who had not used Trigger yet took out whatever Quirk-enhancing drugs they had and shot up. Maelstrom watched as all of those holding off to keep ready for a fight later on shot up to take this fight as seriously as possible. AANTs ignored her injection and flew at her without hesitation. The ground between her and the villains started crumbling and breaking apart, while more and more villains armed their Quirks and weapons and all started attacking at once. Lightning fell like rain out of her clouds that grew thicker and dropped closer to the ground, while fog rolled in and got pushed by winds lowering the visibility over the whole battlefield.

"COME ON THEN! YOU CAN'T TAKE ONE LITTLE GIRL?!" Maelstrom screamed through the storm with her voice amplified by winds that carried it through to the villains all around her. Her voice was sarcastic and her laughter echoed through the fog and into the ears of anxious villains. Some who had even injected with Trigger just spun their heads back and forth as they heard the voice carrying all around them, meaning she could be anywhere! They heard noises in the smokescreen, saw sparks in the clouds, and felt winds touching them that made them spin and fire off into where they thought their enemy might be, accidentally hitting each other instead.

Raylei scratched the back of her head from a cloaked Stealth Mega Jet flying 50,000 feet above the ground. The jumbo jet that had speeds of a smaller Super Jet and the cloaking capability of the Cloak 2.0 itself had six people on it still. The support center of the Army of Death was established in a jet hovering in place far above Tokyo. Raylei glanced to her right past Nuron who was speaking to someone else and then calling out louder to them and cursing as he lost contact with the soldier on the ground who had entered into a dead zone inside Tokyo. Raylei looked to La Brava who she spoke towards, "The situation outside of Adachi is, reportedly under control."

"She's so confident," Angie whispered in awe from the command center in the U.S. "And strong," she added, sighing in awe at the woman she wished she could meet in person one of these days.

Rampart rolled his eyes at his girlfriend sitting directly behind him. He glanced to his right at Rebel who sat in the middle seat of their set-up and on Angie's left. Rebel did not crack a smile at that sentiment that only members who had been there for a long time knew was not always a good way to describe the girl who had once been much more shy and unsure of her power when she joined the AoD. Rebel's lips were curled down though while his hands moved in a blur over his many keyboards, his eyes darting around at every monitor in front of him. Rampart got his own expression more serious and darted a look to his left instead, to the opposite side of their control center in Angie's basement. He looked over the couch to the huge television screen across that wall that had several different windows opened up on it with news reports from around the world displaying the global panic over the villain attack in Tokyo.

Rebel's expression was darker as he stared at his screen for many reasons. One, was because he had been around much longer than Rampart even. And despite the confidence in Maelstrom's tone and how strong she was, Rebel could only think of how quickly she had to use Trigger right there. She doesn't want us to have to redirect anyone else to her, because she knows how fucked the rest of the city is too. It's why she sent that kid to the city too instead of just going in and fighting with him. We don't have the numbers we once did. An injection of our reinforcements into the mix is only as powerful as the fear the villains feel about our arrival. Well, and our fucking strength. But not all those going in are the veterans of a thousand battles. Some are just as experienced or less than the heroes. These villains aren't the types to back away or give up just because our guys showed up. They knew they'd fight the Army sooner or later. I'm sure that little fucker Raijin prepared them for it.

Fuck. Alright girl, you've got this. I won't say a fucking word. But you better keep that army out of the city then. From what I'm seeing in there, they can't take a single extra villain into that mess.

---

The cannon sticking out of the Scorpion extended its full length in front of the behemoth's huge body. Both giant claws moved to the sides away from the cannon that glowed with dark blue light coming from the very back of it and inside of the metal body. It aimed towards Nerima and a hero being swarmed by dozens of AANTs all at the same time. All six of the giant black legs of the largest robot in the League's arsenal came to a stop. Three of them were planted straight through the roofs of buildings. Those legs had dragged through walls that broke easily as the strength of the robot was much greater than the structural soundness of those businesses and residences.

It's charging its main cannon! Endeavor spun and he slammed his right fist covered in flames into the torso of a robot flying at his back with a glowing green sword risen over its head in both metal hands. The silver robot's chest started glowing red as that flame-covered fist slammed into it, but the robot's body dented and the fist punched through and out its back as Endeavor fired out flames behind him and flew through the air to dodge ten different beams and bullets flying up at him all at once. He dodged while putting extra strength into the attack that broke through the drone only preparing to defend against heat and not expecting to be ripped through by the hero's strength alone.

Even in midair, Endeavor's physical strength was greater than most heroes. He did not have any foundation to plant his feet, but by firing out his flames from his back he gained enough force to rip through one of the AANTs. The problem was, that there were over a hundred of them in Nerima that had been waiting on the outskirts of an exterior district of Tokyo. Endeavor ripped his arm from the body of the AANT that started falling in front of him, but as he spun to two different robots behind him, the arms of the AANT he had punched through both reached around his sides and hugged him tight. Endeavor's eyes darted to the side behind the raging flames of his eyebrows that created a mask over the top half of his face. He saw the glow in the red eyes of the silver robot's face go dark, and he thought for a brief instant that the robot had attempted to trick him by only pretending to be destroyed.

He had seen the cores inside of other robots they had destroyed though. This one's was in the same location that he targeted intentionally, and it was no longer functional. Its arms moved though and wrapped tightly around him, and Endeavor snapped his gaze back through the army of rushing AANTs keeping him from getting to the Scorpion that Intanzo threatened him was going to destroy this entire district. Between all the smaller robots and the Scorpion, Intanzo floated in midair and tilted his head back smugly when Endeavor locked eyes with him for a second. The broken AANT was being controlled by Intanzo to wrap around the hero even after its core had been destroyed. Endeavor could see a brighter blue glow moving forward on the rings of the cannon that had extended out of the Scorpion and had ridges wrapping around it. The next ridge started to glow dimly already and was getting brighter by the instant.

"RAAA!" Endeavor yelled out. He flipped backwards, burning away the steel arms wrapping around him and melting the body of the AANT behind him. Two beams of red light and a silver fist that just rocketed towards him slammed into the melting body of the AANT that could not handle the sudden flare of heat directly into it. Its temperature-regulators were controlled by its central processor and thus were deactivated despite Intanzo using the robot as a weapon even after it had been destroyed. It was just scrap metal now, and Endeavor could destroy that with much more ease. He flipped halfway back then fired out jets of flames from below his soles, shooting in between flying robots too fast for them to spin inwards and swipe at him.

Several AANTs that were spinning and charging weapons or moving to get in his way, suddenly all yanked towards each other in one giant mangled wall of metal limbs and bodies. Intanzo put a wall in Endeavor's path and smirked, only for bright red flames to shoot through every crack and straight towards him in sharp flaming lines. Intanzo dropped out of the air and ripped up the roof of the building behind him. The ceiling folded upwards and into his path, and flaming lines cut through on different sections and ripped the roof apart. He turned his body in midair and brought an AANT to him faster than the robot was moving itself to get in his way and protect him already. As Endeavor flew up over the wall Intanzo initially used to block him, he aimed a fireball down at the enemy below only for that AANT to get in his way.

Todoroki Enji threw the fireball anyway. He was already charging a second one in his other hand, and he gripped into that ball of fire while flames continued to shoot off the backs of his legs and keep him flying up above Intanzo. He aimed over the head of the AANT while his first fireball exploded on it and did not damage the enemy robot. It did block that robot's vision for a second though. His right hand gripped a bolt of bright orange fire and he started swinging that arm down, only for his eyes to bulge at the sight of a human-shaped flying piece of rubble substitute hiding behind the AANT. Just as he had blocked that robot's eyes from seeing him for a second, Intanzo had used being blocked by that robot as well as the folded ceiling that he collected just below him, to create a fake that Endeavor aimed at and only now saw was not his enemy.

He could see his enemy. In his peripheral vision, he saw Intanzo rising up behind him with a wave of glass, rock, metal, and cement all lifting up with him. AANTs flew by on Endeavor's right and left sides, and Intanzo fired forward hundreds- thousands of small pieces of debris from ripped-apart walls and torn-up streets, to scrapped AANTs and vehicles, to the ceilings and floors of buildings all around them that ripped to pieces as he swung both arms forward at the hero.

Endeavor spun around fully and pointed his hands behind him. He fired out jets of flame at the debris flying too fast at him that it would cause him a lot of damage. By firing out flames back towards Intanzo too, he kept moving towards the Scorpion that he wanted to get over to before it could fire.

"AHHH!"

"ENDEAVOR! HELP!"

"PLEASE!"

Endeavor swung his hands down and spun his body. He fired as much flames as he could out at other debris rather than just what was coming for him. The wave was too large. The AANTs' attacks too dispersed. Walls were shredded by pieces of other walls moving too fast due to Intanzo's Quirk. Endeavor watched a man jump out of his car as it was in the middle of crushing while flying towards him. He tried to change trajectory that direction only to watch as a piece of glass cut through that man's throat and continued straight towards him too quickly for him to do a thing for that civilian.

All of the debris missing Endeavor acted like a boomerang and curved back around. It flew towards him from the other side, while pieces that were intentionally sent low at first to threaten civilians started curving up. AANTs charged attacks and fired green beams into the mix. Some of those beams slammed into pieces of desks and chunks of pavement as Endeavor was dodging. He could dodge most of the debris while keeping a hot enough aura around him to burn away the rest, and he could focus on the AANTs' attacks that were getting close to him, but the combination attacks that seemed unintentional and even accidental were too hard to predict. A balcony from someone's apartment flew by Endeavor and he did not even need to dodge it, but in the corner of his eyes he re-spotted a green beam that he was flying faster than so it would pass behind him. He had a hundred different areas on his mind with civilians in them and dangers to himself and to them, but he recognized quickly enough that the beam and balcony that themselves were not a danger, suddenly became one.

The green explosion that went off behind Endeavor caught part of his left side, but he had changed up his own flight at the very last moment as he recognized the potential for that beam to go off in a huge blast should it hit the balcony as he predicted it might. He swerved underneath the blast and into a position that would make it harder for Intanzo to see him through all the rubble for a moment. Endeavor's eyes snapped towards the Scorpion though, as the second-to-last ring of the cannon started glowing at full brightness to match when the ones behind it stopped getting any brighter. The final ridge protruding at the end of the cannon started glowing brighter and brighter blue. The Scorpion's legs planted down harder, and panels on each leg opened up with thick metal wires shooting down off them and anchoring into the ground for support.

"AHHHH!"

"WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!"

People were running out of their buildings and into the streets. The sky was full of swirling pieces of building and ground. The ground behind them crumbled and then rose up as if gravity had disappeared and acted in reverse. Some stumbled and fell down into sewers, others grabbed onto telephone poles and street lamps, screaming for their lives as those things shook and threatened to rip up into the air as well. Suddenly the tugs on most Matter all over the western edge of Nerima lost strength. Intanzo was flying upwards. He continued swirling debris around Endeavor, but many of the AANTs pulled up as well while others had flown in and attacked the hero who suddenly tried flying straight at the Scorpion.

Those AANTs predicted his movements easier as Endeavor got desperate. He was punched in the left cheek by a metal fist that drew blood from his lip, but he reached his left hand out and gripped it by the face and pushed down to keep flying towards the more dangerous robot. He got cut on the left leg in the back through his hamstring by a sharpened piece of rock that Intanzo focused on through the hail of rubble to lead Endeavor in the direction the hero was not slowing his flight towards. Intanzo grinned and tilted his head back more while flying higher, as AANTs slammed into Endeavor head-on in the moment that the hero flinched from being pierced through his leg. He slammed a huge chunk of pavement into Endeavor's back after he was punched and kicked back by three different AANTs all at once, and that stopped Endeavor's backwards momentum which allowed those AANTs to keep up to the man they just hit and slam into him again.

As those AANTs collided with Endeavor's front, three beams of green light slammed into the back of the pavement that was cracking behind Endeavor as he was punched and kneed deeper into it. One punch hit him in the nose, another his right shoulder, while a knee hit Endeavor in the point that his arms crossed in front of his chest for some protection. Even as he was hit twice hard, and once that he managed to block partially, his eyes stared past all three of these villainous robots and to the glowing blue cannon that was equally bright all along its length. The air around them was tinting blue as those bright lights grew brighter blue still but in a pulsing pattern that caused the Scorpion to shake. A green explosion burst through the wall that Endeavor was about to push flames into to try and shoot past these robots and try to get to that cannon in the last second.

He was engulfed in a massive green explosion from three attacks all going off at once. The AANTs in front of him were damaged and flew backwards. One of them maintained its altitude, while another sputtered its jets as it was trying to turn upright in its spiraling-out fall towards the ground. The third was torn apart by shrapnel of the pavement wall and burned on its inside to a point of no repair. Endeavor looked most similar to that robot, falling out of the air with a thick trail of blackish-green smoke coming off his body. His eyes were closed in the pain and the back of his costume was ripped up showing how bloody his back was. Blood came down the left corner of his lip and from both nostrils. His eyes squinted back open though and he opened his fists as he fell to push flames out of them. Endeavor's knees pulled towards his chest and he expelled fire from his legs as well, stopping his fall and keeping him hovering in midair.

"Now, Endeavor!" Intanzo yelled down. More AANTs shot away in self-preservation as was part of their code. Endeavor's eyes did not raise up to Intanzo, nor did they snap down to the terrified people screaming for their lives as the cannon on the giant six-legged robot outside of Nerima aimed down into their district. He stared straight towards that cannon itself. The man high above him bellowed down at the hero, "See the full technological might of the League of Villains. Scorpion! Level this city."

Intanzo ordered it, and Revulsion slammed his hand forward while gripping the firing lever. Other men and women on the bridge of the Scorpion stared towards the weapons-master with sweat covering their faces. They were anxious and hesitant, and even the pilot of the Scorpion sitting on a red comfortable chair in the middle of the room on a pedestal behind Revulsion tilted his head back with a look of semi-disgust on his face for the villain who took so much pleasure in this. Bullee leaned back in his chair though and just stared through the windshield into the city that their cannon fired towards. God have mercy on my soul, the pilot thought, his face scrunching up as he watched the beam fire into an area with millions of people in it.

"AHHAHAHAHAHA!" Revulsion just laughed while pushing the firing mechanism as far as he could forward then continuing to shove it as hard as it could. He laughed in pure glee as the beam fired out straight towards Endeavor. The end of the beam itself was five times as wide as Endeavor and three times as tall. They lost sight of the hero on the other side of the firing blue beam that grew so bright it was impossible to see anything ahead of them.

Endeavor's eyes shook while growing wider and wider from their squinted state. He tilted his body back and finally his eyes darted down at the civilians below him. The beam was going to pass straight through him and hit the ground somewhere a few blocks behind him. It was aimed somewhat downwards, and it was already passing people who he suspected it would still hit with its impact in a few seconds. Endeavor's arms did not even cross in front of him. There was no point in such an action. His eyes just darted down at the terrified people screaming for their lives. All of the debris around him was just falling with gravity as Intanzo saw no need to keep controlling it and just flew higher up in the air himself.

The end of the bright blue light came closer to Endeavor. It flew straight towards him. He had a second left at most, and his face just scrunched up in anger and defeat. Nowhere to run. No way he could save even a single person. And no chance of defeating Intanzo in this very last second while so many AANTs flew high above him between him and the leader of the Radians that would intercept any last ditch attack. He had no time for that. No time to even breathe after tilting his body upright. Had he not stopped himself from falling, he wondered if he could have lived an extra few seconds by hitting the ground. The beam would have passed over his fallen body and then exploded streets behind him. Then the explosion and the rubble flying this way would incinerate him and shred him to nothingness. It was the last thought he had… before his mind blanked, and his eyes darted slowly to the right at a flash of purple moving in his vision.

Endeavor's eyes shifted from the massive blue beam about to slam into him. He looked to his right at a flash of dark purple that passed by his side. A man flew by Endeavor and swung his right arm forward. And the left corner of this man's lips lifted up as Endeavor's eyes shifted onto his face. He saw those lips lift, just below the white mustache of the man whose palm slammed into an invisible wall in front of him. That palm pushed forward but was also angled so it was not straight up and perpendicular to the ground. It had an angle back outwards and up into the sky to the west. His left palm slammed forward into the same invisible wall that he just created, and then he pulled his right hand back while bouncing on nothingness, and he popped it forward again and then his left again as well. Like the slapping of a sumo wrestler into the chest of his opponent, the gray-haired man who flew in as a blur created a wall of Elasticity that grew so large that the beam pushing into it started to lose ground. At first it was pushing into the wall and into the palms of the man who kept smacking back forward, but the wall got stronger and started pushing back out the other direction from how it had first bulged even closer to Endeavor, so that the edge of that blue beam was only a meter away from him at its closest.

And then, it bounced back.

The end of the giant blue beam shot up into the sky over the top of the Scorpion. The cannon was dimming already and the beam sputtering to an end. The crew inside the bridge of the Scorpion snapped their heads up and watched as their beam flew back towards them but shot up high above the top of their vehicle. It flew so much farther than just above them. It shot diagonally into the sky and kept going and going, soaring higher than they could see… And then it exploded.

Intanzo spun his body and stared with huge eyes but his lips flat. Everyone in Nerima, as well as across most of Tokyo, stopped where they were for a moment and stared towards the bright blue flash of light. It exploded high up in the air and far from the city. White clouds in the sky around it pushed out in concentric circles. The sphere of blue light was enormous and the shockwave from it reached the city seconds after it shone. "BOOOOOoooo chhhh…" The shockwave was followed by loud wind flying by, but there was no damage done to a city nearly obliterated by such a blast.

"It seems I arrived at the perfect time," Tobita Danjuro remarked. His toes tapped down and he bounced lightly in the air in front of Endeavor and just to the hero's right. Gentle's head lifted up and he stared towards Intanzo who glared right back down at him only to start grinning after a moment.

"You…" Endeavor started. He recovered from his speechlessness. The instant of death he had thought was about to consume him did not come. In the seconds after as he saw that explosion that would have surely killed him as he had believed, only then did his life start to flash before his eyes. It was strange that it was the moment when he actually believed he might live that those thoughts came into his head. Rei, Shoto, Fuyumi, Natsuo… Touya. Endeavor flinched at the final thought that came into his head as he imagined family members whose faces flashed before his eyes. Then he shook away those thoughts and his eyes snapped up towards Intanzo as well when he saw where the man next to him was looking. "You can't be here," Endeavor said in a dark voice.

"Death has arrived!" Intanzo yelled down. The man with spiky black hair tilted his head back and chuckled while staring down at a city not yet destroyed. "Do you think it will make a difference? Your 'army' does not have a hundred men in it anymore. No, you don't even have sixty soldiers in your ranks, do you?" Intanzo wondered with a wealth of information that made Gentle's eyes narrow even while the rest of his expression shifted in a different way.

"How did you get here, so fast… That doesn't matter. Death, if you're here to help us," Endeavor's eyes shifted back towards Death when he heard what Intanzo shouted so he could check if that was true. They shifted back towards Intanzo though and he growled in a deep voice, "Then just this once, I'll-"

"I have no idea what the two of you are talking about," Gentle announced. His tone sounded mildly confused but more like he could not care less what either of them were saying. "I do not know what notion the two of you have that I am 'Death' of all people. I have no soldiers. Have you forgotten who I am already?!" Gentle rose his voice louder as he shouted the last part. People down on the streets and in their buildings stood back up straight. They came out from where they were cowering and stared towards a man in a costume he had last worn a long time ago. "Today marks the return, of the Gentle Criminal!" He bellowed, his voice amplified out of a speaker beneath his dark purple cloak. He wore white pants and had a brighter purple scarf wrapped around his neck. A scar cut over the bridge of his nose and underneath both of his eyes though it extended farther under his left than his right.

"And you uncouth villains," Gentle continued while looking up towards Intanzo and smiling confidently at him. "Who would do so much damage to this city…" Intanzo's head shifted. His eyes darted to the north then snapped back down onto Gentle even as others started glancing to the north as well and the black clouds in that direction that were getting thicker every second. "I cannot allow you to get away with such boorish acts of senseless violence! For the first time in two years, the Gentle Criminal has returned to deal with nefarious evil-doers who invade Tokyo today!"

Endeavor imagined the last time he had met this man. The person in front of him had been wearing a black costume, and the two of them had fought each other in Turbonya when his Anti-Death Task Force had ambushed the Army of Death. His attention shifted off of Gentle for a moment. His head turned on a swivel and he watched as did Gentle as they were surrounded on all sides by AANTs that lowered to their elevation. They flew at their level as well as below and above them. The Scorpion's guns other than its main cannon all spun and focused directly on Gentle and Endeavor. "Will you bounce back all of these attacks?" Intanzo called down to the Gentle Criminal who was surrounded on all sides by the League's robot army. Every direction an Elastic barrier could bounce these attacks back would be in the direction of civilians down on the ground who were staring up in disbelief and amazement at a man they had all seen recently on clips during Zach Sazaki's trial when the cameraman's helmet had been pointed at his own face.

"What attacks?" Gentle wondered back.

A flash of white light expelled from two blocks away behind Gentle. It expelled not in the shape of a dome exactly, but a curved dome-like oval that was targeted specifically to the west where Gentle was facing. The Targeted EMP was the most precise it would be for the rest of the day, as it was the first one that Whiteout expelled straight towards her boss whose voice she could no longer hear in their short-range communicators that kept them connected even though they could no longer hear their comrades up high above them. The Stealth Mega Jet was the second largest ship in the Army of Death's arsenal, and it was faster than the Cloak and thus able to arrive in Tokyo quicker. Although not everyone on the ground could hear the support team up on the jet though, the crew of the jet had drones flying around down in the mess of Tokyo, and one was flying towards a roof in Nerima after the E.M.P knocked out the other drone they had watching over Death's fight.

"Getting back visuals… now."

"Can we get audio?"

"Don't get any closer to them. Intanzo sees us he'll destroy the drone in a second. I need eyes on him," La Brava ordered her comrade who nodded back and then continued to hold the drone on standby, only moving its camera around a bit to check out the situation after Whiteout's attack.

"Wait a second…" Raylei's eyes narrowed on the screen showing the buckling legs of the giant Scorpion robot. Its head dipped. Its legs bent. Intanzo looked back towards it while all the AANTs dropped around him. His teeth were grinding in anger, for a second. Then the left corner of his lips closer to Endeavor and Gentle rose back up. The Scorpion's head turned back on. Lights turned on inside the machine that lifted its head, lifted its claws, and unbent its legs to rise back up to its full menacing height. "Fuck," Raylei muttered at the sight of it.

Their tech, their knowledge of our inner workings, Gentle glared towards Intanzo as the leader of the Radians smirked back towards him. Is there a spy in the Army? Or is Raijin just that formidable, that he has made the inferences on our numbers and designed the anti-EMP tech himself after learning of Turbonya? Gentle preferred to think of the second option. As bad as it was that they were up against an enemy that formidable, it would have been worse to imagine an enemy in the ranks of the soldiers he trusted.

Endeavor recognized the technology as well. He had been there in Turbonya when the Army of Death's vehicles turned back on after being knocked out by Whiteout's power. The AANTs were not turning back on like the Scorpion had though. "Looks like they were not able to adapt all of their robots," Endeavor remarked. His breathing came out ragged but getting calmer as he caught his breath in the pause that Death had given him. Unfortunately, the tech they have is more advanced than what us heroes and the city of Tokyo has itself. And that Whiteout's power gets less precise with each use of her Pulses. I don't need to tell you that getting our communications back on is vital to our victory. Knocking out all power in Tokyo is not an option here. There are other options though that you have, Endeavor's eyes shifted in a glare to the man on his side. "We cannot allow the Scorpion to fire a second volley."

The Scorpion's weapon systems turned back on and the turrets that had dropped their barrels down outside the ship's hard exterior rose back up. Targeting systems restored in the ship that the crew of were moving around quickly inside to reactivate the League's most powerful technological weapon. "Hurry it up!" Bullee yelled from where he stood in front of his seat now. "Get the missile defense systems online first! Then focus on offensive capabilities!" He yelled in rage towards villains working on the wrong systems right now.

"It's impressive, isn't it?" Intanzo wondered down to his enemies who he did not seem all too perturbed by even after the loss of the army of AANTs that were motionless littered across the neighborhoods below.

One woman with white hair made sure to remain out of Intanzo's line of sight, but she was quickly sprinting around to unmoving robots on the floor. Whiteout had to decommission them completely before her Temp-EMP would wear off, and just falling from a high height had not been enough to damage the very strong enemy robots.

"…The reactivation time of the ship's anti-E.M.P. generators, is almost as fast as the Army of Death's ships were reported to have," Intanzo continued to the hero and the vigilante next to him at a much lower height than he continued to float at. Endeavor hovered with flames coming out of his soles while Gentle tapped his shoes down in midair to remain where he was with the lightest little bumps. "The Anti-Death Task Force has been working on improving these systems to not be left in the dust next time. They're still far behind the systems that Virtucorp can produce, but the ADTF's designs were much easier to get a hold of. And much easier to adapt, and improve on ourselves."

Gentle sighed. Endeavor grit his teeth in annoyance. They both doubted that it was heroes in the ADTF who had betrayed them and led to this terrible situation. Both just assumed some kind of corruption at a higher level that was to be expected if the ADTF had been working on anti-EMP tech since the fight in Turbonya. Very quick work on their part though, Gentle had to admit to himself as this was top-of-the-line technology that they had invented to counteract Whiteout's Quirk specifically. Both the ADTF and the League of Villains producing similar tech already just showed the speed at which technological advancements were being made in a world where Quirk-adjusted materials and manufacturing were on a rapid rise.

"Why," Endeavor started. His voice was low and he was speaking privately to Gentle. His voice did not reach Intanzo who tilted his head back and glared down at the top hero who was ignoring him to instead speak only to his ally at this moment. Gentle gave Endeavor an odd look as well at how Endeavor had started. The hero grit his teeth that he was even going to ask, but he questioned in a dark and quiet voice, "Why haven't you fired missiles to destroy the rest of them? E.M.P.'s are too counter-productive, and you know it-"

"Hmph," Gentle scoffed at the hero's insinuation beside him. "I have 'missiles' to take down such beasts?" He wondered in regards to the Scorpion and the Spiders that were rampaging in and around Tokyo as well. They were machines that Endeavor had seen the power of from up close and knew needed the most powerful counters against them. Endeavor glared harder at Gentle for pretending like he did not know even while the two of them were just talking amongst themselves. Gentle's eyes snapped towards the Scorpion and he swept his left arm in front of him and angled upwards.

A hail of gunfire flew at him then bounced up towards Intanzo. Intanzo flew higher and brought both hands up himself. All of the bullets flying towards him curved and shot back down for Gentle who did a full three-sixty and swept his arms around all sides of him. "Bouncy Bubble," Gentle said in a casual and un-pressed tone as he created a sphere of Elasticity around him that protected himself and Endeavor on all sides. Endeavor glanced down at his flaming feet for a second and then grimaced but dropped the flames, falling to the bottom of the bubble instead and bouncing on it. Intanzo's lips curled down at the corners and he slowed down slamming those bullets repeatedly into the sphere of transparent rubbery air. Endeavor's flames would have burned out all the oxygen inside the bubble before long, but he just extended how much time they had in there.

"What kind of defense is that?" Gentle wondered skeptically. His voice bounced around Endeavor on all sides of him even though Gentle was up above him in the middle of the sphere and still bouncing in midair while glaring up towards Intanzo. His eyes shifted down under his gray eyebrows though and he looked at the confused hero who he spoke to, "The best defenses to stop villains are heroes and the, civilians like myself, who rise up to defend the common people. Not armies. Not weapons of mass destruction." Gentle glared back up towards Intanzo who rose a hand towards the Scorpion and then glanced around him before flashing Gentle a smirk that threatened all kinds of devastation.

It's not that they did not think of it, Endeavor thought. Of course it isn't. There is clear reason behind not just using military force to save the city. It can't be precedent. It can't be an example for countries to use to militarize again, to create weapons systems our people will start to support based on the idea of "security." Endeavor's eyes had widened while staring up at Gentle's back, but he looked beyond him and towards Intanzo again to start narrowing his eyes at the villain clearly about to try something on the public that they would have to stop. He could not as easily get his mind off of the man bouncing above him though, In this moment, in the middle of a fight to save Tokyo and millions of lives and stop the worst villains who started this entire Age of Villains… the Army of Death won't use any means necessary.

It's the opposite of what the rest of the world believes, Endeavor thought in understanding of his "enemies" who he had led the charge against for longer than anyone. They think the AoD go too far, that they would do anything to stop villains because they go beyond the law. In reality, they're more careful than anyone when it comes to fighting them. They're thinking about the future more than anyone while in the present, and they have a clear vision for that future being led by heroes and protected not by the kind of military force they have seen and used themselves. If this is the end, if today is where we decide what the world will be afterwards, then they don't want the city to be saved by Death. He's not here as Death. Because, he has to counteract what he did by showing everyone Wampajawa.

The battle I saw in Wampajawa was far beyond what happened at the League of Shadows' base. That was more of an evacuation for those groups who did not think they could beat the ADTF and AoD combined. They fought while fleeing, but it was a retreat from start to finish. The kind of military tech both sides in Wampajawa had, have led countries around the world to try and use them as examples for why they should put more in military budgets. Most legislatures pretend to accept that the video was forged, and therefore that military technology does not exist and is not out there. But they used their missiles on the ADTF- or, to stall the ADTF so that they could escape. Star-Spangled Man made a big deal out of it and has put them in a rough spot where any further use would show the feasibility and utility of having weapons like those.

Opposition forces against militarizing have been more powerful through this past week. I've heard arguments shut down instantly. In every country where people suggest it, others say that the video was fiction and not based in reality for them to shift their policies based on it. Endeavor took in a deep breath as he focused on fighting Intanzo and this Scorpion himself and with the "civilian" at his side. He pushed away thoughts of using the Army of Death's military-grade weapons that Death himself did not want to use. We're in a densely populated area. Those missiles are illegal. Endeavor scolded himself for considering it at all. And they should be. All of them who believe the video was true but agreed vocally with the court's ruling in its unreliability, they also disagree for a different reason. Because of what Zach Sazaki yelled at those villains. About how the world would not know war, how it would be a peaceful world that did not need to be like the hellscape that Gentle showed us.

That war only happened because the Army of Death militarized. Without that, the villains wouldn't have gathered so much stronger, together in forces massive enough to combat Death, with military that could only be meant to defend themselves from Death himself. The point can be made that when the good guys militarize, the bad guys get stronger too in order to fight them. So they would rather it just be heroes against villains. Everyone wants that, rather than having military technology reach a point globally where wars are capable of being fought again. Endeavor had enough background information and had thought enough about certain aspects of militarization himself, that he was able to figure out the reasoning from what Gentle just told him alone. Without acting like Death at all or sounding like he was making those points, he just suggested that any kind of defense other than it just being them fighting against villains would not have been the ideal counter to the villains.

And in that moment as he focused on Intanzo and thought up strategies for fighting against him and the Scorpion, Endeavor found himself fully accepting Sazaki's decision to hand Death off to someone else. It was not a conscious thought he had but a shift in his demeanor as Gentle became more of a comrade at his side whose opinion he took seriously and whose experience he respected. Endeavor had trusted Death. He came to believe that Death had the world's interested at heart, and that his soldiers only followed him because of that. Once he learned that Gentle was definitely the new Death, it had made his decision to resign from the ADTF that much harder. He had rewatched all of the old Gentle Criminal's videos online and gained a much darker outlook on the AoD, though his respect for Sazaki had been greater than his concern about Gentle at the time.

When the video came out of Gentle and Sazaki fighting together in Wampajawa, Endeavor questioned his quick judgement of Gentle's character. He had started to wonder why Gentle stopped wearing that purple cape that separated him from everyone else which he had thought was something important to the flashy villain. And now, he was fully prepared to fight alongside him against their mutual enemies who had them in a very precarious situation.

No hesitation to kill everyone here, Gentle thought. His thoughts were calm and his expression steady with the small smile on it as he looked up to Intanzo. All of the Matter he controls, and the guns on the Scorpion, are all threats to the people of Nerima in the next seconds. They're looking up this way.

"G-Gentle!"

"It's the Gentle Criminal, everyone!"

"YEAH! GENTLE!"

The corners of Gentle's lips curled up more. The anti-EMP systems in his speaker turned back on. "Worry not, dear citizens!" Gentle announced. His eyes shifted off of Intanzo, and he stated in a more intense voice with his eyes narrowing in intensity off to the west. "I will deal with this monstrosity!" His voice boomed out of the hidden speaker under his cloak. That speaker turned back on before the AANTs down on the ground that Intanzo was expecting to join back with him soon enough.

Before the AANTs could get back into the fight though, Gentle bounced off his Elastic foothold much harder. The toes of his feet curled over the front of it while he bent his knees. Endeavor slammed his hands back and shot out flames from his arms that rocketed him towards Intanzo. Gentle's announcement sounded to be directed at the citizens who had started calling out their savior's name, hoping to stroke his ego and have him save them. Endeavor was not the only one to watch all of Gentle's old videos. He was one of the most famous villains in the world, and he had just saved them all. His announcement matched his personality. The speaker he brought with him and attached such high-tech equipment to in order for it to work right after an E.M.P. made it even more believable that his shouting was just for the people of Tokyo who he wanted to know who saved them.

Endeavor heard Gentle tell him which of the enemies he was targeting though. As Intanzo had looked to the Scorpion and was about to order the crew inside to attack indiscriminately, Gentle shot towards the vehicle that targeted him specifically. "FIRE!" Bullee yelled down at Revulsion who had sweat on both sides of his face like the rest of the crew. Revulsion started laughing as he fired though, flipping switches and pressing buttons, while other villains around him targeted using manual controls contrasting the automatic targeting systems. A few of them aimed away from Gentle as he swerved around and bounced in the air to dodge bullets.

"Elasta-Armor," Gentle remarked. Bullets hit him and bounced back at the turrets. Not all of the bullets that bounced directly back at the Scorpion hit the same turrets that had fired them. Gentle noticed a few of the manual turrets aiming away from him and towards a nearby dorm building. Students of West Tokyo University were in their dorms and apartments, some out on the balconies they had run onto to yell support for Gentle and Endeavor, and others were sprinting away on the streets below that were clear of any villains or functioning AANTs. A few of the students saw as turrets spun around on their metal supports and aimed their direction, only for them to be lit up in the next seconds by bullets fired at Gentle who curved his own body to bounce them precisely at civilian-targeting turrets.

He did not have a great angle on every system that was posing a direct threat to the civilian population. He had to cover in Elasta-Armor because too many of the shots threatened people behind him if he were to just move out of the way. The main cannon was starting to glow blue again. His eyes darted to it as he flew by just over the surface of the sleek Scorpion. He dodged under its head that turned itself with both claws yanking in to grab him. Dozens of bullets bounced off of him. The hail of gunfire was so thick that it was hard to see, but he focused on the one turret that aimed towards a commercial shopping center off to his north. He threw a barrier ahead of him, as he was not going to reach the turret himself when a giant claw was swinging towards him from the opposite side of the Scorpion.

His eyes darted to that claw while his Gently Rebound was still traveling to a turret about to destroy itself. Gentle spun his body and slammed his left palm out in front of him to create a barrier. The right claw of the Scorpion had reached up over the top of its body, and then it suddenly extended out with a long black tube of some rubbery steel that gave it much more reach than it looked capable of. The claw shooting off the steel arm with a long rubbery but strong connector between it hit Gentle's Rebound while he was being shot on different sides. The claw pushed into his invisible barrier, and the end of it pushed the barrier so far inwards that it hit the man who crossed his arms fast to keep the blow from hitting his chest.

The air was pushed from his lungs and he flew backwards while flipping backwards a dozen times. He hit a window of a building to the north while upside-down and backwards. His back was covered in Elasticity, but the window was not strong enough for him to just bounced off of. The window shattered and he continued flying through the hallway separating a floor of apartments. Some of the doors were open and people had been talking to their neighbors while also looking out the hallway window instead of the windows in their own rooms. Most people he saw as he bounced off a wall with glass flying around him were college aged. A few screamed as glass shards hit them, and they pulled back into their rooms while screaming and bloodied.

Gentle flipped on the hall as he hit the ground again after bouncing off the wall. He left a Gentle Rebound on the floor, while the momentum took him back off the floor and threw him across the rest of the building to the opposite window. That window cracked as he slammed into it, but the cracked glass started bending outwards to the north, before rebounding back forward and down at the spot on the floor that Gentle slammed both hands into, doubling the Elasticity that he had already left there.

Hundreds of bullets fired towards him. Five bright yellow beams shot at the building as well. They were not from the main cannons but just shot out of open panels on the left side of the Scorpion and out its front that started turning more to face Gentle directly. The claws of both giant arms extended out towards the man flying out of the building. So even as Gentle shot as fast as he could off of barriers he threw around the air to block all those yellow beams, he had to worry about the claws as well. He bounced off one midair Rebound and flew right through a yellow beam before smacking a Double Rebound into the side of one claw to knock it into the other. The other claw that was missing him below where a controller thought he might dodge to, had flown past Gentle and was going to slam into the same apartment he knew not enough people had evacuated from.

The claw he knocked into the other one changed the second's trajectory enough to push it only into the corner of the building. It still ripped through two apartments though and screams rang out from inside. Many more bullets flew by Gentle and shattered windows. Screams filled the air around him, and Gentle slammed both arms down below him to drag the gunfire and attacks all up higher in the air. His teeth were grinding as he glared towards the Scorpion that seemed to have unlimited ammo. As he arced up through the air, Gentle turned his head slightly and he threw his right hand down at his side with three fingers extended from it.

"Already?" Raylei wondered darkly under her breath.

The support team darted their gazes over to the shortest woman amongst them who stood from her seat and reached down into a pouch at her side. The woman with a fake right eye did not hesitate at the signal she watched Gentle give her. La Brava's Quirk had gotten stronger, but direct contact was still necessary in most situations. With the use of Trigger though…

Endeavor and Intanzo spun their heads. Screaming people around Nerima fearing that Gentle would not be enough to stop the Scorpion, stared in shock towards the flaring pink sun that ignited high above the robotic monster. Gentle's eyes shot open full of anger as he glared down straight at the bridge of the Scorpion. The round glass that stretched around the head of the monster looked similar to that of the bridge of the Cloak. The black steel plating was strong, the weapons systems were powerful, but the people inside that vehicle did not have the same composure or wills of the soldiers of the Army of Death.

"FIRE! FIRE IT ALL!"

"Main cannon isn't finished-"

"JUST FIREEE!"

The cannon on the front of the Scorpion snapped up with only the first few rungs of it charged up. More ports all over the back of the Scorpion opened up with cannons on the inside extending out and then pointing towards the man in the air whose flare of pink simmered to an aura that raged around him. His clothes had a veil of bright pink around them, as did his head and arms and legs, while his cloak was ripped at the edges and had the pink aura flaring off of it like crazy as he shot down through the air so fast that he became nothing but a blur to most everyone watching him.

The crew trying to use manual targeting systems in the Scorpion yelled out in panic while trying to aim at him. The automatic sensors were just barely keeping up, but the physical limitations of the turrets and cannons had them reacting to the sensors slower. Bullets flew behind Gentle's feet as he shot through the air. A bright blue beam shot towards the man who spiraled down around it. The thick blue beam got a smaller pink spiral circling it in a downwards curve towards the front of the Scorpion. The beam was nowhere near the size it had been before, and Gentle dodged around it while flying down so he slammed into the front of the vehicle before the beam even stopped firing.

The speed he slammed into the front of the Scorpion just next to its cannon, meant that the steel on the inside around the start of the cannon could not hold him back. It was not the slick outer surface that the rest of the Scorpion had. Gentle saw the weak points just around the protruding main cannon that was able to snap up like that and aim around as it had been. The reason the smaller cannons pushed out of the holes that had formed on the Scorpion's shell was so that they would have better maneuverability, as they could not aim around from inside of the square-shaped holes on the hard surface that had no flexibility. Gentle ripped through the weak point of the robot, having seen where it was weakest while flying around it, mixed with his intensive knowledge of such powerful weaponized ships and the limits to how powerful they could be.

He tore straight through the weaker surrounding plating to the cannon. His right fist slammed out and his hand opened as he went by the side of the interior of the cannon. Two engineers who were underneath the bridge in the body of the Scorpion and maintaining its huge cannon spun to the man who flew between them and shoved his hand through their machinery. His fist that opened up gripped around wires that he tore out while kicking down on the ground below him. Gentle shot through the narrow hallway on the inside of the Scorpion that was illuminated in blinking red light now after he passed through.

"INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER- CHH-" Gentle smashed his fist through a speaker, then he bounced into a different wall and kicked a door opening out towards him, slamming it backwards into a villain who got thrown off his feet into the two villains behind him. All three were thrown through pipes that sprayed steam and hot water into the room and made the villains scream out in pain. Gentle cut right down an even more narrow hallway that filled with bright pink light. He shot towards the front right leg of the Scorpion, and he slammed down above where he knew the joint connecting it to the rest of the robot was. Interior turrets popped out of the wall and started shooting at his back when he flew by them.

His speed was too much. He smashed through the broken joint of the Scorpion and flew outside. Other turrets outside on the belly of the Scorpion turned inwards and started shooting at him. The crew on the bridge yelling about losing sight of him, then yelling about the intruder alerts, screamed about seeing him again as he flew up outside of the vehicle and up on its left side. Gentle bounced off barriers he formed in midair behind him, and he swept over the top of the Scorpion. He punched and kicked turrets all around him, then he kicked through a cannon glowing yellow that exploded in his face.

The caped vigilante spun around and spiraled out of the smoke then bounced down underneath bullets that flew at him from all sides. The top of his gray hair dropped just under bullets coming at him from his left and right, and those bullets hit each other in midair and spun out while Gentle bounced off the Scorpion's surface and towards the bridge. He did not rise to the glass though, but he smashed through the thinner neck of the robot connecting its body to the bridge. He passed through the middle and tore up machinery on the inside. Gentle punched and kicked to his sides, then he shot up through the floor of the bridge into a room full of villains who turned towards him and attacked…

Csshh- Bu-Du-Du-Du-Du- BRrrrRRR!

Gentle flew around the inside of the bridge and kept himself close to the windows. The villains who could have switched the targeting systems from automatic had all jumped out of their chairs to attack him. The windows were lit up from all sides as Gentle flew around the inside of the bridge. "Elasta-Armor," he covered himself again, though his eyes were glaring out of the bridge and into a part of the sky where a flare of fire just erupted near a husk of a building flying up into at him. Even as the bridge burst into flames around him, and villains screamed out at him while trying to deactivate their systems that were starting to turn off on their own anyway, his attention shifted onto an enemy out there who he had left to the top hero of Japan.

The most wanted villain in Japan should be defeated by its top hero. Then again, the Gentle Criminal would be the one to try and take that credit all to himself. He almost smirked. As he flew out of the Scorpion's destroyed bridge, and the vehicle wobbled around on its five remaining legs, his expression was just dark and fierce though. He started to fly towards Intanzo, then he stopped short.

Gentle froze in midair and his head snapped to the side. He saw it in his peripheral vision. The five legs of the Scorpion stopped shaking and moving around. All of them straightened out and two even lifted up then stomped down harder on the floor and imbedded deeper into the ground for stability. Gentle's eyes snapped to the massive leg half-leaning against a wall of a building while most of it was dropped flat along the street. A deep blue glow came out of the joint of that leg, and Gentle could see blue light coming from the joint as well where he had been forced out of quickly by the interior turrets. The joint was bent and Gentle had seen exposed wires inside that were sparking when he tore through, but some systems were functional enough apparently that the huge leg lifted back off the ground using more tech that Gentle recognized and hated that the League of Villains had gotten ahold of themselves.

Skeptic ground his teeth in annoyance while muttering under his breath, "Imbeciles."

He was not yet where he intended to be. The Rimujou Broadcasting Network's offices were at the top of the skyscraper he found himself behind the lobby counter of. There were a lot of offices between the first floor and the top of the building where the villain needed to get to in order to create the mass transmission with an overriding access to the radio towers that Raijin had disconnected from Heroally. He could not even connect from the first floor despite the building having the same WiFi, as he needed to get to Rimujou's server room that had a direct link to the radio tower atop the tall building. His tablet had started beeping though, and Skeptic stopped while halfway across the lobby of a building that had an underground route connecting it to a nearby evacuation center which meant that it would empty out quickly in scenarios of emergency.

Skeptic had the building free to himself. His bag was splayed out on the front counter and he had his laptop plugged in to the security monitors and receptionist computers in the lobby. Drone footage linked to his monitors on his private network that would not be blocked by Raijin during the battle. He ground his teeth in annoyance though while that blond-haired teen passed through his mind. Raijin should be dealing with this himself. I am busy too, you know? His aggravation shifted to the side as subconsciously he knew why Raijin was not dealing with this serious problem himself. As busy as Skeptic considered himself, he had figured that Raijin might be busy with Class A which was why he stopped himself to take care of this directly himself.

Skeptic put the Scorpion under remote control. The legs that were wobbling without the links to the bridge in its head that Gentle had destroyed, stabilized under the manual control of Skeptic who started shifting other systems of the already clunky robot onto automatic. The purpose of having a huge crew inside of the ship was because of how experimental it was and how much attention was needed for each of the separate systems. Automating the new vehicle that had never been created before was difficult, and it required entirely new coding to make it work. Even under manual control, the Scorpion could not move quickly. It could not run on its legs. But each step took it a hundred feet forward. And Skeptic marched the Scorpion into Nerima while changing the targets of all the malfunctioning weapons systems that he put under his own control.

His hands moved quickly across three different keyboards. Sweat formed on both sides of the black-haired man's face, but he smirked wide as he moved the Scorpion's legs, and changed the targets of its turrets, and charged back up all weapons' systems only aimed away from Gentle. He'll go in front of the bullets anyway. You idiots never had to target him. Skeptic aimed to different sides while marching farther into the populated area. He activated the semi-automated reloading mechanisms that refilled turrets that were low or out of ammo using the excess that they had stored around them. Some turrets' inner claws reached for extra magazines and grabbed at nothing as the storage areas were damaged or broken by Gentle's rampage through the ship.

Others filled back up with ammo and aimed at windows and buildings and people running on the street. Thermal readings through walls locked onto people cowering in their bathrooms and hiding under kitchen tables. Citizens sprinting away from the marching Scorpion looked back and screamed as turrets spun on the giant robot and pointed after them. Endeavor spun his head when he saw the Scorpion suddenly recovering out of nowhere and marching forward to threaten an even larger population. The instant he turned his head though, his gaze snapped back and he shot towards Intanzo who was whipping both arms to his right.

Endeavor shifted direction in midair. He pushed his arms to the right and bent his knees left, forcing the soles of his feet to point to the right as well so that he could fire off all the flames he had. The shockwave from breaking the sound barrier rippled through the air with the heat and flare of red light that pulsed off the hero. Every piece of Matter that Intanzo was in control of had been thrown in a moment of the hero's distraction towards a single apartment building. Endeavor flew that way so fast that he burned a massive hole in the wall of debris flying at the apartments. He spun around and his heat was felt by residents through their walls and windows, but they gawked in awe and appreciation outside as Endeavor burnt it all away with one of the largest attacks he could muster in a short time. "SNAP BURN!"

It was something he had seen his son use with the other half of his Quirk that was not inherited from his father. Shoto's use of 'Snap Freeze' had made his body so cold that Endeavor assisted warming his son after in the one time he had watched him use it. Endeavor felt his own skin burning as he expelled a sudden wave of his hottest fire out from the front of his body. He forced it out of his legs and arms, out his face that seared with his eyes squinting in the fire, and out of his torso where his fireproof costume could not even take the heat and started glowing red with pieces of fabric burning into ash and flying away in the wind. Steel melted and wood incinerated. Smaller debris was pushed back by the force at which that heat expelled from Endeavor, and most of it melted away too. Glass and pavement, plastic and cement, it all just flew into a heat shield that burned it all and pushed it back from the building that Intanzo had tried to level with it.

Intanzo barely looked at the building he threw all that rubble at though. As impressive as Endeavor's defense was, he did not just send flying all of the swirling rubble he had been using to fight the hero so that he could kill some more civilians. His attention shifted onto the Gentle Criminal as the Scorpion walked forward and aimed its weapons around the district. The initial firing of the Main Cannon had failed. Intanzo knew that the flaring pink aura around Gentle would not last forever. While it was still going though, he posed too much of a threat to the League's super weapon that was already in much disrepair because of him. He had to be stopped, and the weapon had to be allowed to show its true force and destructive capability.

"A shame," Gentle muttered under his breath. He flexed his left arm in such a way to open up a sliver of his costume and reveal his scarred skin underneath. The Scorpion aimed all around in front of him. Intanzo had distracted Endeavor and was now rushing at his back. A needle slid into his right hand from a hidden compartment on his right sleeve. He injected into the sliver of open sleeve of his dark purple costume. Intanzo flew forward twice as fast, then he slammed into a barrier behind Gentle that he had not even seen the vigilante create.

Tobita had not wanted to do it so early, nor did he want La Brava to help him so early, but the situation called for it. Intanzo even grinned a second after getting bounced backwards. Despite being stopped, he saw what Gentle did with his back turned to the most wanted villain in Japan. And Intanzo was pleased to see it. This seems like it will be a more drawn-out battle than initially thought, and yet minutes after his arrival, Death has pulled out all the stops.

Intanzo's smirk wiped from his face. His pleased thoughts cut off. Despite one of his most dangerous opponents using Trigger so early in the fight, he had blinked and nearly missed the sight of the man vanishing in a pink blur as he bounced off a dozen Elastic barriers he put behind him. His hands pushed into those barriers he was creating in a near constant stream, and he bounced himself in an angle directly below the front left leg of the Scorpion on its way to the street. Guns started firing in all directions and beams flew from the body of the Scorpion. Gentle landed underneath the robot's front left leg and planted several large barriers under his feet and above those barriers by using his hands and swinging down at them.

This was a man on Trigger who had also been hit by Triggered Love. In an instant he put down half a dozen Gently Rebounds that compiled on top of each other. Skeptic ground his teeth as he spotted the thermal trail of Gentle's movements that had also heated up even more than the Love had made him as his heart rate spiked from the drugs he injected with. He fired guns from the bottom of the Scorpion down at the man while pushing the leg down harder, shooting out metal spikes from the sides of the leg that anchored into the street around Gentle and shot chunks of pavement up into the air. As those black chunks of ground and gray pieces of sidewalk were still lifting, Gentle doubled the barriers of Elasticity he had created.

The leg of the Scorpion had been pushing down harder, but that was not in the villains' best interests once Gentle's Rebounds became more powerful. The extra force pushing down into the compiled Rebounds slingshotted back up in the air as the technological marvel lost the fight against the enhanced Quirk of its enemy. Skeptic's eyes bulged as despite his quick counter-efforts in reaction to Gentle's attack, the Scorpion was bounced up off that front left leg with such force that the middle two legs both lifted up off the ground as well.

Gentle had his feet pressed down into the rubbery floor below him. He put his hands up diagonally to either side and pushed into them with all the strength that La Brava gave him while he added extra Rebounds under his feet. The strength he used to push down worked similarly to how the Scorpion had just stomped so much harder, only Gentle did not have the kind of mass that the Scorpion did. So when he flew off the ground from the force of pushing down that hard, he shot like a rocket into the belly of the Scorpion. All the guns aimed down at him fired around the man and never into him as he flew straight up into the lifting underside of the Scorpion just about to reach the top of its arc.

Skeptic was still focused on the middle legs. Wires were coming out of them and anchors were shooting towards the ground, but Gentle slammed his right hand back and his left hand forward. "Infinite Rebound: Self-Inflicted!" Gentle bounced off his own barriers. He bounced off faster and faster, and each time he hit the one in front and behind him, he created another Gently Rebound onto the walls. The one at his back got just as strong as the one on his right that was amplified in strength a dozen times a second. "Aaannndd…" Gentle's voice vibrated as he bounced in a blur back and forth between his barriers. Intanzo's eyes were already huge but he threw as much mass as he could muster in a second towards Gentle. He tried to curve it around invisible barriers in the air, but Gentle had too many traps laying in wait that bounced away the objects that Intanzo tried to attack him with to stop whatever Gentle was about to do.

"OFFENSIVE REBOUND: THRUST!" Gentle slammed once more into the barriers at his back, but his hands started to curl in front of him this time. His feet pushed back into the barrier and the pink light around him flared specifically in his legs. His hands had been pointed forward while he bounced back and forth in his own Infinite Rebound there for a couple seconds. The belly of the Scorpion was falling back forward as the middle legs were slamming down, though Skeptic un-anchored it and tried to yank away as fast as he could. The mass of the Scorpion was too much to change it in mid-fall. Gentle curled his fingers into the barriers that had become one super-powerful one at his front, and he pushed off the combined ones on his back at the same time.

The barriers that had remained in place in the air moved as Gentle gripped them and shot forward holding his own Elasticized air. The Scorpion was coming back down hard, and it came down with force into the front of a barrier twenty times stronger than what had just lifted most of it off the ground just from bouncing one of its pointed feet. This barrier was centered in the middle of the robot. It had force moving upwards from behind the barrier and the mass coming down that pushed into the other side than where Gentle was grabbing and bent into the barrier as well, creating the same slingshot-effect but with momentum pushing the same way the slingshot was now primed to fire.

The back legs had no chance of staying down this time. Gentle released his arms and bounced back from the recoil of his own attack. He flew backwards flipping over and over before bouncing off an Elastic wall in midair and steadying himself. He turned himself over and bent his legs while everyone else was still just gawking up into the sky in disbelief at the sight of the Scorpion flying away from them. And they gawked even more as a pink blur shot up after that machine. Gentle was not finished with it yet and was not going to just let it fall somewhere, but he flew into the vehicle through holes he had already made.

Endeavor was flying back towards Intanzo and he punched a flying fireball at the villain that forced him back after Endeavor had seen Intanzo trying to stop Gentle from fighting the Scorpion. He spun his head though and then changed his flight while Intanzo was moving from him, and he reached up and tried to catch a villain flying his way. One of the crew of the Scorpion had been launched straight towards him. Endeavor reached his arms out, glaring at the figure but glad that Gentle had thrown him his way, only for the hero's fingers to slip off the man he tried to grab who was unconscious but bounced out of Endeavor's arms.

Endeavor did not fly down to catch the man he had missed. He did not fly around to catch any of the villains who came raining out of the sky as Gentle tossed them from the Scorpion. These villains dropped all the way to the ground or slammed into buildings, that they promptly bounced off of and away from. Endeavor turned his head and watched as one such villain flew by him without moving inside the Elastic shield that was protecting him from the drop. His eyes narrowed as he looked closely and could see a small dart still in one's neck.

"No way," an English major at WTU whispered while staring up to the west in disbelief.

The wonders of Quirk enhancers, Endeavor found himself staring up in amazement just like most people down below him. He hovered in the air with flames coming out of his soles just enough to keep him in place. And he stared towards a feat of power that he had to attribute to whatever drug that Gentle had injected himself with. The Army of Death incorporated technology and weapons from enemies they defeated all over the world. They built some of the strongest tech that the world has ever seen. It is not a stretch to imagine that they were able to blend the best versions of the Quirk enhancers that they destroyed. Making them clean enough that Sazaki had been able to inject twice, without killing himself… Though it seemed like most of them thought it would. I am sure it still poses its own risks, but Gentle is no hero. Those inherent risks that keep us from ever considering allowing heroes to accept it, mean nothing to a "vigilante" like him.

Gentle bounced around the left side of the Scorpion turning sideways in midair as he flew around it. He bounced off another barrier and shot through the air with an explosion of white air around where he hit off the sky. His movements created shockwaves as he bounced back and forth around the giant robot. The head of the Scorpion was dangling off, but the power inside it was still on. Cameras around the surface of the Scorpion tracked the fast-moving blur of pink that flew underneath its turning stomach. One of the huge black legs that was seemingly swinging out with no control over it, suddenly bent at the knee and swung in towards Gentle's side.

Gentle swung his right arm in front of his body. The glowing pink arm had an Elastic barrier around it. He created a wall of Elasticity on the end of his arm as it slammed into the giant leg of the Scorpion halfway down it below the knee. The leg pushed into his arm, but Gentle pushed his left hand behind him and created a Gently Rebound, then made two more behind it that the first one bent into. All three pushed back and his right arm pushed out harder into the leg that he angled up with his barriers. The tip of the leg bent high up and slammed into the bottom of the Scorpion. Joints were grinding and sparks flew at the weird bend that Gentle put in the leg that Skeptic was shocked to see did not send Gentle flying even in Gentle's ungrounded position this high in the air.

The leader of the Army of Death flipped himself around and then shot back up at the base of the Scorpion and the leg bouncing off it. Both of his arms slammed up into the leg and bounced it up harder, slamming the tip of the leg through the body of the massive robot. Turrets ripped off, black plating shredded, and Gentle bounced around the pieces and Elasticized them by tapping on them or throwing barriers from short distances. He kicked into rubbery pieces of machinery that lost Elastic barriers around them as he had only put ones meant to be temporary around them.

"No no NO!" Skeptic typed faster and faster. Sweat poured down his face as his eyes darted from one security angle to another. The security feeds of Rimujou had been replaced with the angles from cameras all over the Scorpion, and one by one they were all turning to nothing but static. Flashes of pink flew in front of cameras and then they cut off. Pieces of black rubble flew at the ship moving so fast that they tore through turrets and cameras, as well as the steel plating of the ship made from the same material.

Gentle swung his right arm in front of him and back behind the Scorpion that was tilting backwards and falling out of the air. Three huge Gently Rebounds went below the Scorpion's belly and two of its legs, and it bounced it back upwards and into a front-flip that sent it slamming right into a giant black leg. That leg had been ripped off by another one before being thrown towards it at five times the speed that the Scorpion as a whole was moving. The tip of the Scorpion's back right leg that was no longer connected to it at all pierced through the front of the vehicle and straight through its cannon and into the power source behind it. The Scorpion ripped open down the middle and a huge blue and red explosion rippled out across the entire vehicle.

The explosion turned purple as it ripped through the air in front of Gentle. Everyone staring up in the sky saw the man with a bright hot pink aura get basked in the explosive purple glow behind him. He was silhouetted by the explosion that blew the Scorpion into pieces as the leg continued tearing through the center of it. Plating peeled off and blew away to the sides. Another leg disconnected while turrets and cannons went haywire, breaking off and exploding themselves as chains of explosions moved through the body of the vehicle.

Not all of the villains had been tossed out by Gentle when he had been flying through it himself. One did come flying out of the purple explosion though. Revulsion's face was half-covered in burns. His clothes were on fire, and yet he swung both arms towards Gentle. Revulsion created huge red circles that pulsed out towards the vigilante who swung both arms down and bounced himself up above the top of the first bright red pulse circle flying across the sky.

Gentle kicked his legs back and shot towards the villain who whipped up his flaming right arm and unloaded an automatic pistol into the front of the vigilante who quickly re-coated himself in his Elasticity. His reaction time was impeccable, but focusing on protecting himself in the moment he had just sent himself flying so fast at the villain meant his arms were not raised for the punch he had initially planned on. Gentle collided with his enemy in midair, forcing the gasping man to drop his pistol. Revulsion threw both arms out in front of him though and grabbed onto Gentle's back, and he bit down for Gentle's neck to try and tear through the man's flesh with his naturally sharp teeth.

Revulsion's jaw bounced back and his arms flew to the sides of the bouncy man who slammed his left elbow forward and into Revulsion's solar plexus. Gentle's right hand snapped forward with a pink blur around it. He gripped onto the front of Revulsion's costume and on his dark collar, preventing the villain from being thrown across the sky- The Scorpion above Gentle suddenly flew down thrice as fast towards the head of the vigilante who thought he knew how fast it was falling and how much time he had. He covered Revulsion in an Elasticity armor while swinging his left hand up in the air. Gentle attempted to create a barrier above himself, but the mass of the Scorpion that was just swung down at him by some invisible force had too much mass behind it.

Intanzo pushed the Matter of the destroyed Scorpion around the sides of Gentle's tiny barrier and slammed it into a man whose own Elasta-Armor was pushed into his body. Gentle was squeezed while pushed out of the sky by a mass too large to be allowed to slam into the city below, even if he had bounced it in an angle to get it farther from the city. Then the push down on top of him weakened for a second, and Gentle took that second and swung both arms out to his sides while forcing out as many Elasticity barriers as he could. He created a space around himself, and then he bounced himself around inside of the rubble while swinging his arms and legs out as fast as he could towards every loose piece of debris near him.

Intanzo spiraled through the air and flew between thin lines of red that shot off of Endeavor's fingers. "Flashfire Fist: Hell Spider!" Endeavor swung both arms after Intanzo and cut through the air with flames so hot that they would rip through the villain's flesh if they touched him. Intanzo glared down at the hero who continued to use energy attacks on him and not matter that he could manipulate. Flames were energy, and he had just focused his control on the Scorpion that was too far from him for him to take control of anything else at the same time. So he had no control over the city around Endeavor at that moment, nor any matter up in the sky below him to help him create a barrier for even just a second to block him from Endeavor's view and get more distance between them. Endeavor did not give chase though as Intanzo was worried he would and keep the pressure on him so he could not recover.

Endeavor turned his head and he flew backwards away from Intanzo who he had forced even farther from Gentle with his last attack. Even as Intanzo had started controlling it himself, the Scorpion's main body was still mostly in one piece. It had stopped exploding on its plummet down into Gentle and the villain he had tossed aside while covered in Elasticity. And although it had been in many pieces, the largest piece was going to be the most dangerous if it fell on the city at terminal velocity. Endeavor flew westwards and readied his fists to throw fireballs and try to destroy some of the largest pieces of falling Scorpion, but Gentle was quicker. Endeavor noticed it at the same time as Intanzo as both of them had been focused on the other for a few seconds there and had lost focus on what Gentle was doing.

The villains who Gentle pulled out of the Scorpion were not the only things he covered in the excess of Elasticity he had at his Triggered disposal. Gentle bounced large pieces into other large pieces. He grabbed onto plated sections with sharp edges, and he created five barriers behind them before launching them into larger pieces that he ripped into smaller debris. His pink glow was fading and his teeth ground as he pulled with all his might to swing around the upper half of a leg that he then pushed into two barriers he created. He kicked off of the double barrier and bounced himself towards the largest remaining pieces that he just made smaller by cutting through them with that leg. Gentle swung his arms out. He grabbed onto the largest sections which were now both sizes that he could handle, and he Elasticized them.

The Gentle Criminal bounced around the sky as he was lowering just above the tops of buildings now. And he touched every single falling piece of the Scorpion, using his Quirk on all the smaller pieces he just created which made a larger surface area of Elasticity that he was creating. Despite having to use more Elasticity to cover them all in smaller forms, he could not suddenly create the kind of size Elastic barriers that he would have needed to if he tried to put them around the original largest pieces, even on Trigger. And even if he had managed it, those massive bouncy chunks of metal would have still been too dangerous to the city below. Gentle turned himself in midair and kicked the Gently Rebound he made below his boots. He bounced up high in the air and spun himself around while all the debris of the Scorpion hit the city below him. It bounced back up, then it fell again, and it bounced not as high, then it hit the ground and did little bounces before coming to quiet stops on streets and sidewalks and on top of buildings.

The Elasticity around all that rubble faded away, but they were no longer moving and no longer a threat to the city. The Scorpion lay in over a hundred pieces all over the western edge of Nerima and outside of the city. And Gentle dropped out of the air and came to a hovering stop twenty feet to Endeavor's right, with his gaze locked on Intanzo's as Endeavor shifted his own back to. "Are you not done taking out your own trash yet?" Gentle remarked to his ally he did not look towards. Endeavor did not show any sign of being impressed by the vigilante who just stopped that debris from crushing Nerima. If Gentle had not sent it flying so high up in the air in the first place, it would not have fallen like a meteor back to the surface anyway. Then again, it had been about to slaughter the citizens of Nerima when Gentle launched it into the sky, so that move had been necessary, and the people around them knew it too.

Endeavor did feel a mild annoyance that they all started cheering when what Gentle just stopped was of his own making, but even he had to admit in the back of his head that he had thought he was needed to rush back and destroy that debris himself. He had flown away from Intanzo who he could have continued pressuring when the villain was on the retreat, and he felt more annoyed at himself now for doubting the man to his left which gave Intanzo a moment to recover. Intanzo was flying lower down at their same altitude ahead of them so he was closer to a city he could manipulate to his whims. Even people closer to Intanzo were still cheering though, with yells of 'Gentle Criminal!' and 'GENTLE!' bellowing throughout the district.

Gentle basked in the cheers of the people screaming up in joy towards him. The beam that had almost destroyed their city, and now the robot that had fired that beam at them, had been stopped by this flashy man who they all knew loved the sound of this applause. "STOP INTANZO!" A voice yelled up towards their savior who they were starting to believe in.

"GO FOR IT GENTLE!"

"ENDEAVOR!"

"SAVE US!"

"Your wish is my command," Gentle remarked, his voice echoing out of his own speaker this time. He swung his right arm out to the side which waved around his dark purple cloak and revealed more of the brighter purple costume on underneath. Then that arm he swung to his right side swept slowly forward back in front of him. His hand opened up in his purple glove and he pointed his index finger towards Intanzo, both corners of his lips smirking up past the edges of his mustache. Gentle's gray eyebrows narrowed down over his cyan blue eyes that looked to intensify as he stared down Intanzo's dark green ones.

The shouts of the people of Tokyo started to quiet down as the hero, vigilante, and villain stared each other down. Intanzo's dark green eyes gained a low green glow to them. Buildings around them trembled and the ground started to shake. "You think…" Intanzo began. Endeavor's arms covered in fire and Gentle curled his fingers while bending his arms and pointing his hands different directions: one in front and one behind him. "…Them stopping the Scorpion means that you are safe?" Intanzo was not talking to the men in front of him, apparently.

His words were directed to the citizens below who stared up towards a man who terrified them to hear his voice. Hearing him speak to them directly sent a different kind of fear chilling their spines, and it made people start running again even with Gentle and Endeavor facing him. One of Intanzo's large black spikes of hair shadowed over his green eyes, but they glowed through his bangs and seemed to get brighter even as the green glow somehow got darker in shade. The most wanted man in Japan chuckled, his lips parting just a little and breath coming out in clear laughter right as he tilted his head back and glared down maniacally at the two staring at him who felt themselves tense up at that mad look on his tan face. The villain who they knew had scars on both arms from his wrists to his elbows that had been theorized to be self-inflicted, who had killed countless heroes and civilians alike, who led the most feared group of villains in the country not because of their numbers but because of the insanity of their members, showed off a look that matched the reputation of the Radians.

His true name was unknown. Where he came from was as mysterious. Intanzo's look mocked Gentle for using so much power right at the start. It was clear from a glance that he both knew that La Brava could only use her Love on him once, and that Gentle's Trigger was wearing off already having used so much so quickly to protect the city from the Scorpion. Gentle did not know if Intanzo had Quirk enhancers of his own. He did not know much about this villain, because his only information on him was what the heroes had. "Death and Endeavor at the same time. What a tragedy it would be for the world to lose its last line of defense in one fell swoop…"

"And yet," Intanzo's head pushed forward and he flew forward at full speed while screaming out. "THAT IS MY TRAGEDY TO MOLD!"

---

Selkie swam down a flooded road of the Koutou district away from Tokyo Bay. The street was getting more shallow with every kick of his legs behind him, but a harpoon of condensed water flew through the street's flooded surface then curved down at the hero who yanked his body to the side. One prong of the harpoon sliced through his left side, adding to the amount of blood in the water as Selkie winced but straightened back out and kept swimming.

"Selkie!" Sirius yelled towards her boss. Then she spun and dove out of the way of a villain that looked like a dolphin but three times the size and with surprisingly sharp teeth, as it dove out of the water up at her.

Banana Bou had his right hand down on one of the tears of the raft he had made, and a sidekick of his was trying to stop her boss's bleeding while he kept using his Quirk. Another sidekick next to Sirius jumped up and swung the metal baseball bat in their hands into the side of the dolphin villain's head. Blood and broken teeth flew out of the villain's mouth, and the hero grinned victoriously… for a moment. A trident with three sharp points flew up out from below the surface next to their retreating and deflating raft. The metal trident had a red glow on the back of the staff, and after two of the three prongs impaled Banana Bou's sidekick and threw him up in the air off the top of the raft, it pulled backwards with its homing function to bring it back to its user.

Sirius reached up and grabbed at the back of her comrade's shirt to hold him on the raft. She was pulled halfway over the side of the raft and screamed out as her arms slid up and she wrapped them under his shoulders instead. "Hold on!" She yelled, while her comrade coughed up blood from the point of the steel trident still stuck in his chest and the one sticking in his right side through some ribs. "AHhh- I've got you-" Sirius yelled it, but her legs slipped up the side of the raft losing air quickly, her upper body leaning towards the water.

"Hold-" Banana Bou gasped, his left hand reaching over at Sirius and grabbing her by one ankle, while his female sidekick helping stop his bleeding reached her own free hand over and grabbed Sirius by the other leg.

"He…lp," the man whose head was only above the surface now gasped out. His head tilted back and blood poured down from his lips, while the water all around him darkened too.

A man with a long blue tail like a merman's leapt out of the water while gripping the shaft of his trident. He yanked upwards while leaping out of the water. His muscular arms covered in orange scales glistened with the seawater as he ripped his trident from his enemy. A villain looking like a dolphin bit using a mouth with jagged and half-broken teeth into the bottom of the raft just below Banana Bou's right hand, digging into the hero's arm and biting almost all the way through it from below the raft. Selkie was swimming back, but he got hit by two more water harpoons too condensed and quick for him to dodge or for his rough skin to protect him from.

Sirius fell backwards as the man she was trying to pull back up had his chest ripped open by how hard the emerging merman pulled out his trident. That villain spun the trident above his head with water and blood splashing off of it to the sides. The raft was sinking, and Selkie looked up through blurring vision to the surface where his remaining comrades were being swarmed. The merman-like villain stopped spinning his trident and grabbed the shaft with his right hand, pulling back and aiming down at the light-blue-haired woman below him whose face turned pale at the sight of the blood-tipped weapon about to pierce through her.

Banana Bou's right hand was released from the mouth of the villain below his raft. The yellow boat he created kept sinking, but confusion rose within him that his enemy had let go instead of trying to bite all the way through his arm. Selkie also became confused underwater, as three enemies had been rushing at him in the corners of his blurry vision, but his eyes had stayed focused on the raft where he heard Sirius yell out in fear. Then, like several villains underwater already had been, three giant pink tentacles shot up over the surface and wrapped around the trident-wielding villain's head, torso, and legs.

The heroes who still could, gawked at the sight of a giant squid's tentacles wrapping around their enemy who started turning his head towards it but far too slowly. Those tentacles whipped across the street and into the wall of a building that had smoke pouring out of it. There was a fire inside even with the street outside and its first floor flooded. That fire became easier to see as the giant squid smashed the villain straight through the wall. He was stuck to the suction cups of the squid, so even after smashing through the wall he was not thrown from the tentacles that whipped back the other way and into a less damaged wall on Sirius' left that cracked but did not break down this time.

The water got rougher as the head of the giant squid emerged with its giant eye right in front of her. Sirius stared at that eye then darted her gaze around at the other tentacles that rose above the surface and had villains in them. The squid swung its tentacles and slammed villains into each other. It smashed them into walls and then released its suction cups and threw unconscious forms limply over the street's flooded surface where they skipped on the top of the water. A tentacle rose up and placed Selkie down on top of the raft, then that tentacle went below the raft before it could sink completely and rose it back fully above the surface. Other bodies of heroes from underwater were risen up and placed on the raft, but Sirius kept staring at that giant eye only a few meters in front of her off the edge of the boat.

"You," Sirius whispered. Those still conscious behind her heard her voice, but only Selkie understood as he let out a small chuckle in realization. After all, the two of them had seen this squid before.

Dongwu lifted up the tentacle that had the heroes on it, and he swam down the road more towards the shallows and an area he could leave them less in danger of other underwater villains he could sense rushing his way from the deep. His huge head turned and his body started to transform, his tentacles pulling back in while leaving the heroes behind in a safer area. The razor sharp teeth forming in his great white shark's jaw bared in fury towards his enemies who continued rushing straight towards him as he transformed. I wish we could have gotten here sooner. I take it all back.

The Army of Death member thought about how he had argued with Death for a minute when their leader instantly told them to change course for Tokyo. Back before the news broke, when Rebel intercepted the very first call to the police about Zach Sazaki killing Nikko Enri, Dongwu and some of the other members who had joined after Lifebringer left the Army had not been so quick to deny that it was possible. Death had turned them towards Tokyo without hesitation though. Those who knew the original Death had not believed a word the news or the heroes reporting what had happened were saying. And now here we are, still late to the fight, Dongwu thought. He was frustrated at himself more than anything as he snapped his shark jaws at his enemies then kicked his tail to either side and sped at the villains. But if I was in charge, we'd have been too late. We still might be… but I'll do what I can, to turn the tides of this war!

Farther inland than where Dongwu just joined in the fight against the submerged villains, a road to the north in the Besupin Ward was full of defeated heroes. Three more flew up on flying rings away from Majestic who gave them the power using his Quirk, Magic. The robed man with bright colors to his costume and his pointy hat flew up as well, while sending some of his grounded comrades up in the air to dodge the sheet of ice that just shot over the surface and buried other of their fallen comrades in it.

Majestic looked over the edge of his flying ring and grit his teeth in regret at the sight of their lost comrades. He spun back forward though and yelled out, "Get him!"

The hooded figure tilted his body back while rising up on a higher and higher spike of ice lifting in the middle of the road. Geten put both arms down at his sides and curled all of his fingers outwards. His face was shadowed under the blue hood with white fur all around it. His long light hair was hidden inside the blue coat that fell down to his feet. As he rose his arms at his sides, his fingers twitched while pushing away from his long sleeves, more of his pale wrists extending from the coat as he pushed ahead of him.

Huge pillars of ice shot out of the spike that stopped rising to hold at its current height. He stood at the top of the spike but with the very tip of it behind his back. Pushing his hands forward extended pillars of ice out from him, but the ends of the pillars were not flat. Sharp shards of ice wrapped around the round pillars and pulled out faster than the centers of them, and each of those pillars swerved around in midair after the flying rings, intercepting all three of the heroes Majestic was helping, and Majestic himself. Majestic gasped out as others yelled out in agony, the pillars slamming into them too fast for them to dodge and with sharp edges that dug through their costumes.

The heroes' momentums changed and they were pushed back down the road. Two of them were slammed to the sides and into the walls of buildings. Ice explosions looking like blooming flowers of ice crystals rippled out from the ends of the moving pillars and froze heroes directly to the walls. The other two were brought upwards then the pillars curved down as if Geten was going to slam them down into the pavement below, if he smashed through his own ice sheet first as he likely would at the speed he was pushing them. He suddenly pulled his arms inwards though and then released control of that ice instead, jumping up in the air and flipping backwards as the woman with whitish-blonde hair flew too fast between where he pulled the pillars in to stop her.

Mother Russia slammed her right fist into the ice behind where Geten just was. Her prosthetic smashed through the tip of the spike and blew ice in all directions around her arm. Her eyes were glaring up through the shards of ice and into the light eyes of the man with long hair whose hair fell out of his hood that came off when he was flipping away from her. Those eyes were as cold as the ice flying around them, but Mother Russia's were as well. The Flying Bear of Siberia gripped the ice below her fist using that same hand and swung herself upwards while Flying through the shards of ice at the man who swung his left arm to the side and made a wave of ice to the wall of the tall office building on that side of himself.

Geten slid down the slope of ice that formed below his legs. He pulled his upper body to the side and Mother Russia's right fist passed by his side. She turned quickly though and stopped all her momentum, then she turned left and right while flying back towards him, weaving away from the icicles that flew out of Geten's hands towards her. Each one of them was sharpest at the point and looked capable of impaling her, especially because she saw some of them hitting into solid material in her peripherals only for the dense ice spikes not to break on the collisions.

Mother Russia slammed her right fist down into the ice slide below her. She cracked it while Geten was sliding over the middle of the road and farther away from her. The ice bridge started collapsing and she punched pieces of ice to either side of her to create a path to Geten. The long-haired man slammed his right fist forward while falling, and Mother Russia slammed her own left fist back at him. He was wearing a big blue coat, but from the look of his face, she did not expect him to be all that strong physically.

Had it been a few months ago, her punch would have broken his knuckles and buckled his arm at the elbow. She would have opened up his defenses and then tackled him straight in his chest so she could dive to the ground and shove him through the pavement. Mother Russia's fist pushed into Geten's though and he ground his teeth at her while his eyes became more bloodshot. His right arm bulked with muscles and the force of their collision ripped apart his sleeve, showing the muscular arm below it that was covered in scars that looked like stitches along his joints. Mother Russia still had the speed behind her though, and she had the Quirk that gave her Flight and the ability to keep pushing into the arm while Geten had no foundation to use to push back against her.

She won and punched his arm down after a second of them clashing. Then she aimed downwards and flew into him, grabbing the man's coat with one hand and his neck with her other. She skydived into the ground. Mother Russia took note of his strength and measured that he would be able to survive this dive, probably. She imbedded Geten into the floor. The pavement cracked around them and rose up on their sides. Then a pair of hands grabbed Mother Russia by both her left wrist that was just above his coat she had tore through, and on her right wrist that had been on his neck. She let go with her left hand, pulling her elbow back and getting ready to slam down a second punch into the man's stomach as hard as she could, while she just tightened the grip of her right hand on Geten's neck.

"Freeze." Geten's eyes glared into her blue ones over her right arm that she gripped twice as hard at the sound of that command.

Her right arm stopped squeezing as much as she told it to though. Where Geten's hands were on her wrists froze instantly. Then her arms entirely. Everything above Geten turned into a glacier that spiked eighty feet up into the air. Huge ice spikes shot up diagonally so far that they hit the walls of buildings on both sides of the street that he had been shoved through. Geten let go of her wrists. He put his own hands up on the bottom of the ice cube, and he pushed while standing up with all his force. Mother Russia's arms snapped just below the elbows. Blood did not pour out of the left that had still been flesh and bone, though it did drip very slowly from where the cracked-off forearm stuck out of the ice.

Geten grabbed the giant ice creation with a frozen hero in it. He gripped into it tightly with his right hand, and he pulled back his left while flexing in a way that shredded the left coat sleeve as well and showed even more scarring on that arm than the other one. He had already been the strongest of the MLA before the experimentation that Re-Destro requested all of them undergo. Geten pulled back his left fist and glared through the translucent barrier of his ice into the frozen-open eyes of the Russian woman staring straight back at him. Then he slammed his left fist forward to shatter it all-

Geten's eyes darted to his right and he leaned his body backwards. His left arm missed the ice. He stepped his left leg back and then jumped up off his right foot as the huge man who just appeared ten feet from him had kept sprinting and tried stomping on the foot that he planted.

Evader ground her teeth in frustration. She had to stop using Targeted Ignorance on Geten who was about to break Mother Russia to pieces. Her Quirk could hide five people from five others, but she released it only on Oslope who was three times as large as either of the others in the Army of Death who were running at Geten, and the most likely one to get Geten to refocus on this new enemy appearing from invisibility. Oslope missed his stomp then missed his punch as well as he planted the leg he tried stomping on Geten's foot, and he twisted and swung as hard as he could towards the lifting enemy. Geten jumped backwards, exactly into the position that Vintage expected him to dodge to based on Oslope's attack pattern.

The sharpshooter and older man twice Oslope's age fired from his rifle. A dart slammed into Geten's neck, passing through his hair that waved around as he leapt backwards. Some strands even cut off as the dart passed through them. Geten's left hand snapped up instantly to his neck. The dart froze. It had already injected into him. Evader released her Quirk as holding it for too long would lower its power and tire her out, and they had a long battle ahead of them. "Nice shot," she said with a nod towards Vintage who tipped his baseball cap forward in a nod over to her.

The three of them had been invisible to Geten, but not to people who were watching from inside windows who looked out and saw the three normal-looking people standing there near the villain wobbling on his feet while grabbing at his neck. Geten was blinking over and over, then both eyes squeezed shut and he grit his teeth as hard as he could. Oslope turned his head and looked up towards a window right next to one that had been pierced by ice and broken at the workplace. "We're just Japanese citizens," Oslope called out at office workers he saw there.

Evader stepped towards Geten and spoke in a less conspicuous way, "This is our city you're attacking." Oslope closed his mouth as the way Evader was saying it sounded better. Her Japanese skill was more fluent too and she had a better accent to make her actually sound like she might have been from Japan, even though she had more of a Southeast Asian appearance. "And we won't let… Vintage! Another shot!" Evader shouted it past her enemy whose eyes both snapped open full of rage.

Geten glared straight at the arrogant woman who had been talking down to him thinking that he was about to collapse. Evader's eyes only now scanned over Geten's arms and the strange scars to them that suggested some kind of human experimentation, based on Evader's own experience with such scars. Geten turned sideways though, his body moving so fast that all three Army of Death members who attacked him went wide-eyed as the dart flew past Geten's side and broke on some ice behind him. His head turned sideways and his eyes darted into the corners back towards Vintage who leaned backwards then leapt back while firing twice more at the villain.

Vintage, Evader, and Oslope all disappeared. Oslope was running at Geten and had his right fist the size of Geten's head pulling back. Vintage fired another shot that became visible after it flew out of the barrel of the rifle he was holding. Geten slammed his arms down into the ground. All of his fingers curled into the floor. Darts flew over his hunched body. "Winter Bloom." His hands froze the floor, and spikes of ice shot out in all directions of him like flower petals that slammed into Oslope first, then Evader who was trying to run somewhere she could use her Quirk from safely. Vintage almost got away from the spreading petals, but the one closest to him suddenly had five vines of ice shoot off from it. Thorns spiked out of those ice shoots that flew all around him, and even as Vintage ducked so that his baseball cap flew off him, two thorns shot off the vine of ice he dodged and pierced through his left shoulder and gashed him across his left side.

"Ahhh!" Vintage's body started spinning out, but the ice thorn in his shoulder kept him from falling to the ground. That thorn pushed farther through his shoulder too and ripped the gash open even wider to the horror of Evader and Oslope who yelled towards their comrade in terror for him.

Geten blinked. His face covered in confusion. He was suddenly fifty feet off the ground. His hands had been ripped from the ice, and he spun his head and glared towards a hero with dark brown eyes and a burgundy costume covered in tubes that filled with air he forced into them using his Quirk, Whirlwind. The Shiketsu student faster than most of his classmates was slowest to head to Tokyo when Maelstrom had told him to, but he was also among the first to arrive and to get farther into the city than his classmates in the northern districts.

Inasa Yoarashi flew over the bodies of over a dozen defeated heroes. The three "Japanese citizens" who had attacked Geten were defeated and incapacitated as well. And the enemy he yanked off the ground using Whirlwind bared his teeth back Inasa's direction and swung both arms out to his sides. The corners of Geten's lips curled down and his eyes narrowed in intensity at the sight of this famous Shiketsu student. Famed to rival even the strongest students of U.A.'s Class A. Gale Force, the strongest student of Shiketsu High School, the star student and most promising new rookie from the "U.A. of the West." Inasa glared down his enemy and could not maintain a smile at the sight of all the damage he could see around him.

"Villain," Inasa's voice came out colder than usual. He forced winds at the connections of ice that Geten just shot out of his arms into the buildings to either side of him. Ice cracked, but thicker and denser ice formed behind the front sheets and became stronger while Inasa tried to break it. A platform of ice formed under Geten's feet, and then ice shot out of the front of that platform and straight at the young hero who pushed more wind into his enemy to force him back into the wall of ice behind him.

Geten's back slammed into the ice he made at his back. Then both of his hands pushed into that wall behind him. He pushed himself forward into a gale wind slamming harder and harder into him. The walls to his sides where his ice connected started to bend and creak, forcing Inasa's eyes to dart both directions and his wind to weaken for a second as Geten's ice was breaking the walls the harder he pushed into it. That second of weakening the wind allowed Geten to force out the ice behind his back and legs from that wall his hands were pushed into. The bridge of ice shooting out from the platform under his feet extended rapidly towards Inasa, while Geten shot forwards over it and swung both arms in front of his body. He crossed both arms and fired a dozen spikes of ice at the hero who flew up higher and swung his left arm down, forcing those spikes down into the street and away from the buildings on either side.

Inasa swinging his arm like that also broke the thinner bridge extending to him. Need to get out of the air, Geten thought. He did not smirk, even though he felt somewhat smug as the bridge was broken down and he himself sent down to the floor when Inasa redirected those ice spikes. Geten bent his knees on landing after a five story drop. The ice sheet he landed on cracked around his landing. Ice shards lifted up on his sides and then lifted much higher in strong gusts of wind, but Geten was not lifted off the ground this time. A wave of ice came up his legs and above his waist, and it shot over the ground, connecting to his ice sheet and racing him away from the strengthening winds Inasa made as his enemy had stuck himself to the floor to avoid being lifted up.

Geten swung his right arm to the side, and a wave of ice shot at a building but did not race up the walls. Instead, the end of the wave spiked out a dozen times and ripped through the walls and made people scream out from inside. "I'll save you!" Inasa yelled for the terrified civilians. I'm sorry, Maelstrom. Inasa apologized in his head to the woman who had sent him into Tokyo because of how great his Quirk would be at saving lives and evacuating people. He could not help himself from getting involved here, and now he was stuck in a fight against an enemy who he had expected to be strong but was even more difficult than he imagined initially.

Half of his winds flew into buildings that Geten was attacking and separated as he controlled them individually to save lives. Half of what remained pushed behind him to make him faster than Geten who he caught up to in a second, and the rest slammed down on the villain who saw him coming though and created a wave of ice that curled up above him and blocked him from sight for a split instant, in which he almost slipped away behind a frozen hero stuck in a giant spike he had created earlier. Geten curled his upper body around the spike and swung his right arm up which made Inasa yank his own body away using some of his Whirlwind to help him dodge in time from the long spear of ice that extended from Geten's arm and almost pierced through him. His body twisted right back and he shot himself down towards the villain rising up towards him rapidly, I have to stop this villain here!

---

Koichi fell on his butt. His hands and feet touched down on the cracked street covered in crumbled pieces of Cement. He scrambled back on his feet while Pop-Step dropped out of the air above him, yelling down, "Koichi!"

Her husband's head snapped up and he yelled, "Don't! Pop!" He used her old vigilante name unlike the girl who got more flustered than him and started rushing straight towards him when she saw him fall and skid on his hands that actually touched the ground for some reason.

Koichi already knew why his hands touched the floor though. It was something that made his stomach turn over as Bitchess smirked at the heroes who had started fighting back harder after the two Japanese vigilantes jumped in to help them out. A pitch black monster was marching forward behind the woman who had called it, and Koichi could not use his Quirk anymore. A second later, Pop-Step could not either as the Nomu looked up towards her through the oddly familiar tinted glasses on its face. Kazuho was still sixty feet off the ground when she felt Leap stop working. Her skip through the air failed her and her body started to flail, her arms swinging out as she lost the reduced gravity and lightness that she always felt when she would Leap through the air.

Instead, Pop fell like any brick would. She dropped out of the sky more above the villains than heroes who would have to rush forward to catch her and would get gunned down in the process. Bitchess taunted them and yelled out to increase their despair even more, "It might not be the strongest Nomu in the arsenal, but it did adapt to Eraser Head's DNA the best! EEHAHAHA!" Manika Esiri's taunt made Cementoss push his bloody blocky arms down on the ground at his sides, his rectangular head lifting up with dark shadows all over the top of it.

His body? Cementoss wondered in horror and rage at the thought of these villains finding and desecrating the corpse of his former colleague.

Koichi's look of dread and despair intensified even more. The thought of his old friend's death again mixed with what Bitchess shouted, and the sight of his falling wife who screamed out his name in terror, all at the same time, was too much. He got off his hands and scrambled forward, then sprinted straight towards the force of villains who were smirking and laughing at him as he ran straight towards the lot of them without caring for his own life. His eyes were only up on the girl who also had glowing rifles aimed up at her now as she could not dodge in her freefall.

"NO!" Mt. Lady yelled, her head turning from the street behind the cluster of injured heroes that the remaining ones capable of fighting were trying to protect in a besieged intersection. Mt. Lady was down on one knee but had one of the four streets blocked off, punching down at villains and capturing many even while blood poured out the back of her right leg from where Bitchess had pierced through all the way to the back of her kneecap.

Revellum flew down with his entire body spinning around and around like a drill. His feet slammed into the back of a Nomu that had wide eyes behind its goggles that were darting around at different heroes and enemies whose Quirks it was deactivating. Bitchess spun her head and her face twisted in fury at the sight of a casually-dressed figure who just attacked their Nomu. He flew down with such force that he knocked the Nomu onto its face for a second, all that Pop needed to Leap off the air and dodge away from beams of light flying up at her. Revellum's drop surprised other enemies aiming towards Koichi as well, and his Quirk started working at the same time allowing him to suddenly speed off to the right and then straight up the side of a building on that side, yelling more towards the middle of the road to ask if Pop was okay. Both of them and all the heroes and villains stared at this figure who had on a long-sleeved red shirt, gray sweatpants, and steel-toed "construction" boots that just took down the Nomu.

The figure glared straight into Bitchess 'N Cream's eyes when she turned in fury towards a figure she had seen smirking in her peripheral vision. The instant she locked eyes with him, she noticed the different between him and the young vigilantes who had attacked her forces and helped the heroes. This was not a Japanese person in front of her. He was a Caucasian male with dark eyes that had experience beyond the former vigilantes', as well as past many heroes who had no idea who this person was. "I'm a denizen of this fine city, and I'd like you to stop attacking it, Bitch." His voice was heavily accented to American, his hair was dark red like his irises that bored into hers and showed a confidence and intensity that told Bitchess where this man had come from and that the words coming out of his mouth were all lies.

"Death, huh? About time you showed up. Almost let us burn the city," Bitchess spoke condescendingly. Her head tilted back, her eyes filling with a similar cocky confidence as Revellum's as she spoke like she had seen them coming. She spoke as if the League of Villains had prepared for this eventuality, and Revellum did not doubt it but it did not lower his smirk either. He stood on top of the Nomu's back at the front of the largest force of villains around this intersection, far from the heroes who could help him fight her and her allies. Despite the cocky remark she made at this Army of Death soldier about how they had known Death would come which meant they had made preparations to counter them, Revellum looked unperturbed and just leapt up in the air as the arms of the Nomu swung up and its body flipped to try and grab the guy audaciously standing on it.

As Revellum jumped backwards and landed down in front of Cementoss and other heroes shocked to hear what Bitchess just said, he smirked more at the sight of someone flying down behind the force of villains behind Bitchess 'N Cream. Some of the villains in the back of that group spun their heads around and then turned fully and glared back darker at the new arrivals from Desusuta. Sky Smasher landed down in front of his allies. Cyn-Thia stepped up behind him on his right, while Kaleido started swinging his hands around in a strange pattern in the air which started creating a colorful pattern of translucent and gaseous but viscous substance that spun around and painted his body vibrantly.

"Relieve the others! Protect Tokyo!" Sky Smasher yelled. He flew off the ground and raced at the villains who fired or ran at the other heroes who sprinted forward below the leader who had led the defense of Desusuta. He pulled back his right fist and dodged a pulse of green light, then swerved back and slammed his fist into the face of the villain who fired.

"Pincer them!" Revellum yelled, and he flew back forward but this time flanked by the rest of the heroes behind him who rushed forward with him. Koichi shot back down the wall he had raced up but going diagonally into the middle of the crowd, and Pop-Step dove out of the air. Cementoss slammed his hands into the ground, but as the Cement started waving forward, he lost control over it. It crumbled again as the Nomu stood up- only for Revellum to dive away in mid-flight towards Bitchess and go between the legs of the Nomu instead. He slammed his palms into the ground behind the legs of the bio-weapon, and he kicked backwards into the back of the knees of the Nomu. His kick did not buckle its legs though, and its right foot just stumbled forward a foot, then its head snapped to the side and it kicked back with its left leg into Revellum's side.

The incognito AoD soldier doing poorly at hiding who he really was, flew himself away while being kicked which lessened the blow a bit as he moved with the momentum. The force still broke two ribs, but he just coughed while launching himself much higher, then he grinned while spinning and glaring back down at villains whose shots he dodged despite the pain in his chest. Been a while since we've had a good fight. Revellum cracked his neck to either side then dove back into the fray.

Across another district of the city, the largest villain inside of Tokyo's left foot was being pushed back. Gran Torino shot back around the side of the monster and yelled down towards the heroes pushing on the front of that foot and on the shin, "Move out of the way!" He shot down, but the leg kicking forward had too much force in it and sent Gran Torino spinning away just from the kick forward alone. Rhystorm and Ape Man tried leaping backwards and to the sides, but the leg was too massive.

Lady Lucky pressed her hands together. She separated all her fingers and closed her eyes. Work work work, she begged her Quirk, Luck. Her eyes were closed as she used it, so she did not see the debris flying so fast past her that it would have shredded her body. Her Quirk's field extended out around her too, and most heroes other than the ones who were closest to Gigantomachia and pushing against him were spared, as were civilians in the same direction of that kick who found giant pieces of rubble bouncing and rolling just next to them but sparing them completely.

"Go! Bakugo!" Uraraka swung down the hands of her classmate then ducked, allowing the Explosions that came out of Bakugo's feet to just propel his weightless body even faster down like a missile towards Gigantomachia's face. Bakugo pointed his hands ahead of him to either side of the wrinkle in Machia's thick brow.

The giant who just glared down and to his left at the sight of a man he recognized flying around him, lifted those all white eyes back up from Sorahiko to the face of the student in front of him, right as Bakugo fired Explosions into his eyes. "DIE!" Bakugo screamed while blowing up into another potential weak point of the giant. Instead of using flash grenades this time, Bakugo blew actual giant explosions just below the intensity that would shatter his final remaining gauntlets. Machia roared and brought his arms up, the wind from such movements sending Bakugo's weightless body spinning out and flying away so Uraraka had to re-weight him. Gran Torino had to pull away too as those arm swings up at such speeds nearly yanked him into Machia's body from the wind funnel created.

"He just keeps growing," Ledge muttered from where he stood in an abandoned intersection over twenty blocks away. A fight had just moved away from here, and his comrade had brought them over because of the amount of heroes here who could use his direct assistance. Ledge lowered his binoculars and turned to his left towards a red glow next to a melting ice chunk that had a hero inside of it. Ledge grimaced for a moment then stepped towards Jetflame, "Is she, already…"

"It hasn't been long," Jetflame said. He stared through the translucent barrier and into the eyes of a woman he had fought alongside many times, including from before he had joined the Army of Death. We'll get you another arm, Caterina.

Jetflame stood just next to the ice chunk he wanted to melt first. Fly-By was over helping out their injured comrades and giving Vintage emergency medical assistance. Gale Force had gone flying away after the villain he sent soaring but who had been firing giant spikes of ice back towards him without faltering in their battle. Some injured heroes on the street stared at these disguised figures who were organized and careful even as they helped each other and the heroes. Jetflame had on a flameproof purple wig that had long hair that curled back up at the bottom, he had on fireproof eyeliner and makeup too, and he was unrecognizable to anyone who might be looking for the former British hero. He did not hide the scar that cut across his face from cheek to cheek, though the makeup he put on to change his skin tone to be a bit more Asian than Caucasian did make that large facial scar fade some.

Jetflame looked away as he continued to thaw out Mother Russia. They were far enough from Gigantomachia that it was hard to see him over buildings which was why Ledge moved into the intersection to get a better look across the city. Jetflame also glanced to his left and right though in other directions where they were needed. Heroes need to win the fight against the most visibly powerful enemy. And, Zach always had a lot of faith in his classmates. I'll trust him.

"Evader," Jetflame called to his left at the woman whose ice he had blasted with some flames on his arrival just as Inasa was throwing Geten from the area. He saw her breaking free of the ice in his peripheral vision, and he wasted no time giving her an order, "Take Ledge and head south. Don't lose focus, and keep it together!" When he had arrived, his comrades were flustered and yelling towards Vintage in panic at the sight of how much blood was pouring from his shoulder wound. Fly-By had already stopped the bleeding and given their comrade morphine though, and Vintage was breathing heavily but leaning back in a relaxed way against a chunk of ice with is eyes half-closed. His appearance unnerved his friends a bit and even Jetflame looked away after glancing towards him for a second when Fly-By ran off to help out Oslope.

We just need to help out with evacuations and keeping civilian casualties to a minimum… Jetflame looked back right ahead of him and cracked a smile as he swore he saw a twitch of the face of the woman who had ice melting all around her body now. Jetflame's smile rose for another reason, as he thought, Until…

---

A cloud of steam in the shape of an elephant trampled over Kirishima and then swirled around him to reduce his visibility. A long bumpy tongue flew through the steam and wrapped around his body, and a fishing line flew down towards the top of his head aimed towards one of his Hardened red hair spikes. Kirishima leaned his head away as he saw the hook that had caught him earlier. The tongue that wrapped around his torso started thickening, water pumping down it and making it larger and tighten around him. Kirishima grabbed onto the tongue on the length of it that was pulling back towards the blue-skinned villain doing a combo move with his allies.

Kirishima grabbed tightly and stopped the water from pumping down the hollow tube of a tongue the villain had. The man gargled and gasped as the water reversed flow because he pushed too much to the end of his tongue, and now that there was a kink in the hose, it all sprayed backwards and into his own throat as he was gasping. The choking villain had no time to recover from choking on his own Quirk, as he was yanked off the ground and thrown towards a personal Spider droid that dodged quickly backwards with Duke Dread leaning back himself above the top of the legs at his control console. His look darkened though he kept grinning, even as he saw his ally that he dodged getting slammed into another villain up on the wall next to the gate. The man with the fishing line coming out of his left arm turned at the last second and tried to dodge, but he was slammed into by his ally who Kirishima threw with a strength that went beyond his Hardening Quirk.

The teenager's larger-than-average muscles were not Hardened at the moment, but he re-Hardened them right away after releasing the tongue that had unraveled from his waist. The steam had thinned from all his movement inside it and from just natural thinning. That made him an easier target for the blue waves of energy fired from Rembrance's hands, making Kirishima stumble backwards and shake his head around while putting his hands up to his ears.

"A Song to Die For!"

DooF DooF DooF! Bu-du-du-du-DUH! VROOOM VRAM! Dink- fweeee! Duke Dread swung his bass drum back down and hit the snare, then he strummed his guitar and banged on a triangle. He whipped his flute up to his mouth and played out one sharp tune, all of which was amplified by the Spider he had acquired from the League's scientists. The personal robot made his Quirk, Musically, even more powerful. The leader of the Jazz wearing epaulettes and a villain costume that looked like a marching band uniform, chuckled as he lowered the flute and stared into the dust around a crater in the Palace's garden just past the Main Gate. "All pointless," he remarked in a voice that was boosted by his speakers.

"Kirishi-" Tetsutetsu spun his head back forward and he slammed his right fist forward. "HAA!" His fist shone brighter and his Steel thickened. He pushed his legs down on the ground that his feet dug into as they sharpened and acted like a shovel straight into the concrete of the path he was on. "No chance! NO CHANCE!" Tetsutetsu roared out, his arm pushing forward harder as his whole body leaned ahead and upwards. The villain punching more down at him roared right back and extended his own arm into Tetsutetsu's fist.

Makani Taizo's eyes also darted over the teenage hero though and to the girl behind him who was next to an injured man down on his knees who she was trying to get up to his feet. Taizo looked her way because he thought for a second that Toyo was getting up and that might mean she would slip away from him while he was distracted. Toyo's legs he strained to stand on though were not responding as he wanted them to anymore, as there were broken bones in both. Makani did not care about how many bones of Toyo's he had broken, as long as Toyo's neck remained un-snapped. The brief distraction allowed for Tetsutetsu to push out harder though and he knocked aside the villain's arm, then punched his left fist forward into Makani's gut that was just in front of Tetsutetsu's own chin.

Makani's nine foot tall body hunched forward. Tetsutetsu followed through and punched away from himself. Blood came out of Taizo's stomach, as Tetsutetsu's Steel hand was sharp on the edges and ripped through his blue and red costume. The torso area of his costume not on Taizo's appendages was blue, but the area that Tetsutetsu had just punched was already much darker red from the deep gash that crossed over both of Taizo's pecs due to a laser beam that Toyo had fired from his right eye before.

The hulking villain hunched forward and staggered backwards. He pulled his arms inwards and grabbed at his stomach where he could still feel that fist lodged even after he had been knocked away from Real Steel. Tetsutetsu's strength compared to his good friend from Class A who he darted a look towards again now that Taizo had been knocked back. Tetsutetsu snapped his right arm back down to his side with his fist clenched furiously, an intense look over his face as his eyes darted all around the courtyard. Behind him and on her knees, Princess Aya stopped trying to drag Toyo up to his feet as her panting guard failed to stand, and she knew he must be too injured to escape with her. Aya knelt between where Toyo was down on his own knees with his head bowed, muttering at the girl in front of him to get behind him. She ignored him and protected him instead just as he had protected her since the attack started.

The rest of the Royal Guard who had not escaped with her father were dead. Her own guard and all of those who had protected the Iron Bridge past the Main Gate had fallen. They had bought time for the heroes though, and two heroes had arrived to protect her now that Toyo could no longer stand or even seem to get his head up to fire a beam from his right eye. A streak of her tears had dried over the scar on the right side of her face that Makani Taizo had left there a decade earlier. The girl with long straight orange hair stared with wide eyes at the silver back of the hero standing before her. His legs spread just past shoulder-width apart from each other. His elbows pulled down at his sides and his fists clenched in front of him. Tetsutetsu's head shifted back and forth. His eyes darted around the Jazz villains, up at Duke Dread on top of his twenty foot tall spider, to Taizo himself who stood back up from his hunched position and glared straight into Tetsutetsu's similarly enraged eyes.

Some of the Jazz villains noticed there was a lack of concern on Tetsutetsu's face when his eyes shifted past a crater that dust was settling inside of. "RRrrrr- HAA!" Kirishima slammed his right fist down into the ground under him. He had blood trickling down the left side of his skull. Cracks in his Hardening turned back soft then Hardened again and gave him a full set of Quirk armor. He smashed both fists down on the ground below him and shook his head around, his ears still ringing at full volume from the 'dink' on the triangle that Duke Dread had hit him with right in the middle of his Song to Die For. He was disoriented and had some blood coming out under the right side of his chest, on his right leg, and on his left arm too from just below his shoulder to where it dripped to his elbow. Should have gotten Unbreakable off in time. Stupid! Kirishima shook his head around and smashed his fists down once more, then he curled his fingers out into the floor and started pushing back up to his feet.

Jazz villains had seen Duke Dread kill many people before. A few hits on his snare drum could fill someone with holes better than a machine gun. The bass drum could send a grown man twice the size of Red Riot flying across a room and through a wall on the other side of it. Ears bled from sharp noises that rang out when directed straight at enemies. And the flute… well, Bushido Dansei members had seen or heard of how quickly Duke Dread had slit their old boss's throat when Ramurai questioned him. Ramurai had been their leader because of his strength, but Duke Dread had got his flute to his mouth and slit Ramurai's throat in an instant with it. Rembrance stared into the settling dust with his eyes huge like many other villains around him, while Duke Dread just narrowed his gaze darker at the sight of the kid getting back up again.

"RAAA! That was nothing!" Kirishima yelled. His elbows pulled down and his head pushed forward towards his enemies he shouted towards. Some blood trickled into his left eye but he just squinted it and kept glaring towards his enemies without showing that any of his injuries bothered him at all. "I won't let you win-"

"PRINCESS!" Taizo snapped his head back and roared so much louder than the teenager whose voice cut off. His eyes darted over to the monster of a man who groaned while his body grew to ten feet tall. His muscles popped with veins and his forehead veins pulsed as his entire body twitched. "Why?! WHY- Just- BE WIth mE prINCeSs! I don't- brrr-br-br-" Taizo shook his head around and blew through his lips. His lips vibrated and his head shook so rapidly it looked to blur. "I love you. I- I LOVE- YOU LOVE ME, too… You're mine. All mine."

Tetsutetsu felt chills down his spine as the man he had knocked back stared through him at a girl who he glanced at himself out the corners of his eyes. Tetsutetsu stepped to his left and moved directly in the path of Makani Taizo's eyes and Princess Aya's. "She doesn't belong to you," Tetsutetsu growled at the villain whose insanity he was only just starting to realize. He and Kirishima did not know the history between this villain and the Princess. They did not know the past that the Royal Guard or the Jazz did, so when they showed up they figured this might just be another villain but a much stronger one who Duke Dread had sent after the Princess. Makani's gaze locked on Tetsutetsu's and the purest rage that Tetsutetsu could imagine filled this enemy's eyes. He saw hatred directed straight onto him from a man he only just met, as if he had killed this man's family in front of him.

Steel surrounded Tetsutetsu's entire body. He clanked as his body reforged and stood strong between the girl and her injured Head Guard, and the beast standing nearly twice as tall as him that bared sharpening teeth that grew when his size did. "So close…" Taizo hissed. His body trembled and the ground under his huge feet cracked. The closer he got to his object of desire, of obsession, the angrier he was getting as he was kept away from her. "You're in my way." His voice was less shaky. His confusion as to the Princess' denials and rejections towards him shifted. "You're all in my way," his voice got lower and darker. He felt the wounds on his torso from both Toyo and Tetsutetsu now. Those two who were in front of him now had interrupted one too many times.

Something's seriously wrong with that guy, Kirishima's focus had to lock back on his own enemies. He saw the way that many of them darted looks towards this 'Taizo' though. There was no trust between them and the monster behind Kirishima who he was not finding himself very concerned about. He had started back-to-back with Tetsutetsu, but even though Taizo was now more between the two of them, Kirishima did not think that man was going to turn and attack him from behind anytime soon. Duke Dread's not telling him anything either. Kirishima knew he was in a bad position if that villain decided to attack him from behind. Duke Dread was not giving any orders to the beast though. He tried to think of the reasoning for it. He tried to analyze the situation and the ways that the other enemies were watching that Makani Taizo whose sole focus was the Princess. Then Kirishima just bit down and pushed those thoughts away.

Doesn't matter, he reminded himself. Analyzing, theorizing, planning out some strategy to fight these overwhelming odds and turning the tides on the fight? He frowned that he had even tried it. We just need to win. I'll take down as many as I can, and Tetsutetsu will do the same! The right corner of Kirishima's lips curled up, slightly. His teeth bared too hard though to show off a heroic or confident smile. A smile of any kind was too difficult to hold in the state he was in right now. I won't lose this fight. You never lost. Even in death, you saved us all. That's not a loss, Zach. I don't count it as one!

"Take him down already," Duke Dread ordered. He turned his head to either side and yelled down from his personal Spider, "Hear me? Go kill that fucking hero, now! You're wasting my time every second he's still breathing." Dread ground his teeth in annoyance and glanced up again at the palace he wanted to enter and start going through already. "My new house awaits. Don't you want to see what kind of luxury the royalty live in? So stop wasting time, and kill these heroes! Then we'll pillage and plunder to our hearts' contents."

"Sounds like a plan," Anchor growled. He rubbed his right forearm across the left corner of his lips and wiped some blood away. Then the leader of the Cazzo Chargers rolled his large muscular shoulders and motioned his head forward. Four others around him started running forward, while he himself jumped up thirty feet in the air.

Rembrance looked to his right and gave a special look at Flumblar. She nodded back at her old gang boss who she was still loyal to even though she more often stayed close to Duke Dread's side these days. Flumbar's lower body turned into a puddle of green slimy mush that sped across the floor and swerved around Kirishima's back to attack him from his blindspot. She was quicker than most of the Cazzo Chargers, though the largest of the four who Anchor sent forward was picking up dust and cracking the ground under every sprinted step at the teen. The larger man had tanner skin than his comrades and fully brown eyes that made it hard to see where he was focused exactly with no irises or pupils in them.

"Aim carefully," Dynara said in a low voice to her subordinates who each stood just over half the eight-foot tall woman's height. They both held up glowing green cannons that they had primed and were aiming between comrades straight at the hero who was being attacked all at once by the Jazz members who had gotten a good grasp on his Quirk by now. They had seen him fighting Sports Festivals and knew his Quirk already, but now they had watched him from up close and got the extra experience to feel confident in their attacks.

Some of Duke Dread's strongest and most composed comrades were by his side here. They knew what the prize for victory was. It was behind the heroes in their way right now. A palace full of riches beyond their wildest imaginations. The glory and pride of being the ones to ransack the Royal Palace of Japan that had never once been pillaged by villains. It was theirs for the taking. All they needed to do…

Was kill these heroes.

"UNBREAKABLE!" Kirishima roared out.

Flumbar stabbed into his back while a giant fist slammed into his face. The blade of the gooey woman behind him snapped and her arms vibrated painfully as she had thrust with all her might. The man who punched Kirishima in the face ripped up his own knuckles on the boy's Unbreakable nose that broke several of his fingers as well. The villain screamed in pain then kicked up into Kirishima's gut instead of his face, while the villain behind Kirishima turned both of her arms into green goo and wrapped them around the boy's face and over his mouth and nose this time.

Kirishima stood firm against a kick that made the large male villain in front of him stagger back and yell out in even more pain. Then he slammed his head backwards. His Hardened hair hit Flumbar in her face and made the woman fly off of him with her arms unwrapping from his face that she had just tried to cover up. Kirishima stomped his right foot down, and he ducked the swinging ropes from under the sleeve of another of the Cazzo Chargers who skid to a stop and tried to use a longer ranged attack. The other two jumped to either side to dodge instead of trying to attack, because Kirishima stepped his left foot forward and planted it deep in the ground and closer to his enemy who he punched his right fist into.

Kirishima's fist could be seen on the back of his enemy as he twisted his body and then threw all his weight into it. He sent his enemy flying off his fist and between the legs of Duke Dread's vehicle. Kirishima blew air out of his nostrils and bared his teeth, then he sprinted forward and dodged Anchor who fell where he was just standing. Anchor rose his head at the last second in surprise as that boy had not even looked up at him before sprinting forward. Anchor slammed his elbows into the ground and left a crater there, but his eyes widened more as he saw the Unbreakable armor surrounding the teenager was not wrapped around the backs of his knees or on his shoulder joints. The slight difference in thickness of his Hardening was hard to pinpoint until he dropped so close to that teen's back, but the hardest armor that Kirishima had surrounding him was not preventing him from moving quickly towards Duke Dread who pulled his head back with fury covering it as Red Riot charged straight at him.

"Shoot him!" Dynara yelled.

Two pulses of green light flew past the metal legs of the smaller Spider that started stepping back itself. Kirishima twisted his body in mid-sprint to the right. He dodged a beam of green light that flew past and made a man with ripped-up knuckles and Flumbar both scream and dive out of the way, only to be caught in the green explosion anyway. The other explosion that went off at the same time as that one, exploded directly on Kirishima's chest while he was leaning back forward and swinging his arms out. Both of his arms flew backwards behind him. His sprint stopped and his body leaned backwards, a mix of green and black smoke surrounding his upper half…

Then Kirishima snapped his body forward through the smoke with nothing more than scorch marks all over his torso and face. His teeth were still bared in anger and he just pushed his feet down harder into the skid marks they had just pushed back through. He leaned forward and sprinted at the front legs of Duke Dread's vehicle. "RAAAA!" Kirishima yelled out. His fists balled and he swung his arms out to the sides. Cracks on his Unbreakable armor re-Hardened inside of the smoke cloud which made it seem to the villains as if he had not been affected by the blast at all. He ignored the pain he did feel and just slammed those arms forward into the steel legs of the Spider that stumbled backwards and made the villain leader on top grab onto the controls for dear life and to not be thrown off.

"GET BACK!" A villain two feet taller than Kirishima lowered his shoulder while sprinting full speed into the boy's side. Kirishima turned at the last second to try and plant his feet down, but lifting one leg to turn like that put him in a bad position to be hit by that much force. He was thrown off the ground and once in the air, was too easy a target for Rembrance and Thea who hit him with bright blue light and a giant wooden hammer, sending him back the way he had charged from. As Kirishima hit the ground, the floor bent underneath him then waved back up as a dark-skinned villain with both hands on the ground, Quakle, adjusted his landing site and bounced Kirishima back up in the air when the teen was trying to recover.

More bullets and green pulses of light flew at where Kirishima was coming down this time. Kirishima spun himself in midair and crossed both arms, "Unbreakable!" He slammed down into the ground and created a smokescreen around himself that was added to by the many attacks flying his way.

"Enough of this," Duke Dread snarled. "If you want something done right, you do it yourself. You've all failed me. So I'm turning up the volume and taking care of this little shit myself." Duke Dread's Spider stepped forward, and steel panels on the legs and front of the vehicle opened up and downwards. Panels opened and flipped outwards, revealing speaker systems on the backs of them. Other speakers that were hidden by those panels too all protruded out the front of the personal Spider droid.

"W-Wait!"

"Let us move out of the way-"

"Look out!"

"MOVE!"

Dread reached forward next to one of the joysticks he used to move the vehicle around. He grabbed a knob on it while adjusting the microphone up on his costume that was connected to the machine wirelessly. "Alright kid," Duke Dread's voice boomed across the courtyard towards a boy sprinting out of the cloud of smoke only to see all his enemies frantically spinning and scrambling to move away from him. The closest enemies and the ones who had been running after him to keep up the momentum of attacks had been too slow and they had allowed Kirishima to dent the front of Duke Dread's vehicle, even preventing one of the panels from turning outwards a few seconds ago to show there was real damage done. Dread could see that blinking red light on his console screen showing him where the deactivated speakers were, and it only lessened his reluctance to attack while his allies were still in front of him. "ENJOY THE SHOW. MAXIMUM VOLUME: SONG TO DIE FOR!"

Tetsutetsu darted a look over towards his friend who stood directly in front of Duke Dread with a twenty meter gap between them. Kirishima was far enough from him that the attack should not reach over towards him and Taizo, or the Princess and her guard who knelt behind him. Taizo did not even seem to notice the risen volume coming from Duke Dread's machine which had caused Tetsutetsu to dart a nervous look over, as he had seen Dread's powerful attacks before which were apparently done at a lower volume and likely a lowered intensity to match.

Real Steel snapped his gaze back on Taizo as fast as he could. Oh shit- Tetsutetsu rose his arms and blocked the fist that just flew forward at his chest. He dug his heels down and pushed them harder into the ground when he started to skid back. Is he even stronger?! Tetsutetsu uncrossed his arms and punched his right fist forward. It had not hit yet when Taizo's next punch flew by his arm faster than Tetsutetsu was punching. Taizo punched Tetsutetsu in his left shoulder near his chest that hardened with more Steel in a thick plate. Tetsutetsu slammed his fist the rest of the way forward into his enemy's body, and Taizo's left fist flew down and hit him in the face. Harder?! Tetsutetsu's head that knocked back slammed back forward and he punched his own left fist this time into Taizo.

Tetsutetsu's Steel fist hit Taizo in the chest below the deep gash that was not bleeding as much anymore. His fist cut through clothing but did not rip skin this time, and Taizo punched faster back down at him while his eyes actually darted over Tetsutetsu's metal spiky hair and to the face of the Princess that yanked away at the desperate look in his eyes. Makani Taizo was getting faster. Tetsutetsu could see it and he tried to match the speed by punching faster himself, digging his feet down harder, and yelling out- A fist slammed into Tetsutetsu's face, and Steel cracked on his left cheek and above his left eye.

Tetsutetsu's body twisted to the side. He spun back and slammed his right arm up- only for Taizo's right fist and left fist to hit him four times in the face and chest before the hero could finish punching. Tetsutetsu's feet skid back far and he bent his knees to stop himself right in front of the Princess he saw coming up behind him. Tetsutetsu saw the ground ripping up to his right but could not spare a look towards his friend whose voice just roared out in agony. Taizo roared out at Tetsutetsu himself but hesitated in his sprint forward at the sight of Princess Aya behind Tetsutetsu. She put her arms out to either side to protect Toyo behind her who was shaking his scarred-up face and recovering his bearings at the feeling of dread growing inside him at how things were going.

Tetsutetsu sprinted back forward and threw a punch into Taizo's gut. He punched his other fist, and the first one again, and Taizo hunched his body forward as those fists were connecting. Taizo did not hunch forward because of pain in his gut though. The man grown over ten feet tall was six feet wide at the shoulders. His upper body ripped through his costume, and he started slamming his fists downwards instead of forwards into his enemy. Tetsutetsu's knees bent and his body leaned backwards as he had to punch up into his enemy bearing down over him. Taizo did not want Tetsutetsu to skid back into the Princess and potentially hurt her, so all of his punches were aimed downwards now through the hero towards the floor.

"SIR! PLEA- AHHH!"

BOOM BOOM BOOM! Dread slammed down on his bass drum and ripped a huge trench through the ground in front of his Spider's legs. Villains flew off to the sides and one who was too far in the middle of the trench got lifted off the ground and thrown through the outer wall of the Palace forty meters behind Kirishima. Du-du-du-do-tap-tap-tap-tatatata-tap! "STOP FUCKING BREAKING MY HOUSE!" Duke Dread screamed into his microphone, while his own attacks were ripping up the walls of his new Palace far behind the hero who was not being thrown into the air like his own allies who had gotten in his way.

FWweeeeEEEE! Duke Dread blew into his flute and made the air rip in half in a red line ahead of him. The line cut through the ground and the smoke, and right through Kirishima's Unbreakable on his right leg. Blood splashed out like it just had from the loud snare drum hits that had riddled the front of his body with cracks. The smoke cleared from some of the bass drum slams so Duke Dread could see his enemy, and Dread grit his teeth in anger as he watched the blood splashing out of Kirishima Harden against his body.

"UNBREAKABLE!" Kirishima screamed. Blood came down from both corners of his lips. Duke Dread twisted the knob on his Spider until it would not twist any farther. His allies who already moved out of the way or were crawling after being thrown to the sides moved as quick as they could to get even farther.

VRRRAAAAAAAAWWW! Dread swept his hand over the strings of his electric guitar. The air filled with shockwaves that hit Kirishima in a constant stream that skid his feet back half the distance to the Palace. Cracks covered his Unbreakable armor. Blood splashed out of a deep crack on his chest. His costume's extraneous pieces on his arms ripped off. Red fabric from his waist flew back in the wind. His hair chipped and some of the spikes flew away from the boy whose body leaned backwards… only for his right foot to stomp down forward through the next shockwave hitting him. His whole body re-spiked in all directions. His skin Hardened. Kirishima leaned his head forward and screamed out at his enemy who slammed down on his drums and blew into his flute again at maximum volume.

Blowing in the flute slashed huge deep gashes across the Palace courtyard. One sliced across Kirishima's stomach and ripped pieces of Hardened flesh away. Blood splashed out of his left shoulder where too many snare hits in a row had already cracked his skin and made it vulnerable for another tap to rip fully through him and out his back. Kirishima stomped his left foot forward next, his eyes locking on the speakers blaring so loud and firing attacks out at him via Duke Dread's Musically Quirk. "JUST DIE, RED RIOT!" Duke Dread yelled at his enemy who could not even feel any smug satisfaction at this villain knowing his hero name. His focus was solely on the legs of the Spider, metal legs that were looking more red as blood poured into his eyes, but legs that were getting closer with each stomp forward he made through his enemy's attacks.

They can't keep taking this, Toyo ground his teeth but leaned up more. He reached to the Princess and pushed her to the side and behind his left arm. Aya's eyes opened wide in surprise as Toyo leaned his head forward and made his one good eye glow bright red.

Taizo's arms were a flurry moving fast down into Tetsutetsu's crossed arms over his face. Those arms were denting deeper and deeper with each hit as Tetsutetsu's legs bent farther down into the sinking ground below him. The hero's teeth were clenched as hard as possible as he tried making his Steel even harder to sustain all of these attacks. Then Taizo's eyes darted up in an instant as he looked back at the Princess again, an action which just kept making his attacks stronger every time he did it. This time, he saw Toyo's face instead of the Princess's as he pushed her aside which made Aya face him instead of looking back at Taizo when he faced her. Taizo did not change the trajectory of his punch because of Toyo's glowing red eye. He punched towards the Head Royal Guard protecting the Princess, because he had taken her attention away from him for a second.

The punch of Taizo's fist was too fast. The wind that flew off of that enraged punch knocked Toyo's head back, right as he was firing. A laser beam of red light flew out of Toyo's face as he was socked by a fistful of air force that snapped his body back onto the ground that his back bounced off of. The red beam shot into the sky and slashed across it before fading after Toyo clenched his eye shut upon slamming into the ground. "Toyo!" Aya yelled out while spinning to her guard who groaned in pain and then started pushing himself back up again. "Are you okay?" She asked the man, making Taizo even angrier as he watched this happen.

"Where are you looking?" Tetsutetsu's voice came out as a deep growl, and then Taizo hunched forward again but in pain this time as Tetsutetsu stomped forward before slamming all his weight into that punch.

"RAA!" Taizo slammed his fist down into Tetsutetsu's face and chipped Steel on his nose. Blood came out of his nose, and Tetsutetsu just punched again instead of caring about blocking the next fist.

A flurry of silver arms punched into Taizo's torso and up under his chin. Taizo replied with a flurry of blows from his arms that were skin-colored but covered in bulging veins. His muscles vibrated and bulged as he sent a flurry of attacks down into the hero whose Steel armor was breaking easier now as Taizo grew more powerful by the second in this close proximity to the target of all his desire. And yet as he slammed his fists harder and faster into Tetsutetsu, the blood that was coming out of the hero's cracks started to turn less red. The iron in Tetsutetsu's blood spread. His blood became more metallic. His blood lost a red color and turned silver instead, coming out of the cracks in his armor but filling them as well and hardening to make his armor even stronger.

"HAAAA!" Tetsutetsu screamed as he picked up the speed in his own punches while silver blood splashed backwards away from his body. The reddish-silver blood flew behind him, and some of it splashed onto Princess Aya's face right over the scar that Makani Taizo had put there ten years ago. The Princess pulled her head back and stared at the Steel back of the hero before her in utter shock at the sight of him. He was leaning backwards and fighting an enemy twice his size, and he screamed as loud as Taizo did which could still barely be heard over the sound of Duke Dread's nonstop attacks.

Toyo stared ahead feeling even more winded and panting exhaustedly. His eye was not as wide as the Princess' were, but he stared at the hero in front of him and darted a glance in Kirishima's direction as well. He hated to admit that when these two arrived, all he had hoped for was that they could stall long enough for more heroes and better heroes to arrive and save them. These two teenagers are not the strongest heroes I've ever seen… but they are the tankiest.

They took everything the villains threw at them. Kirishima and Tetsutetsu were screaming out as hard as they could. And then two things happened. Duke Dread took a breath at the same time that he was switching from his drums back to his guitar. And Tetsutetsu's right leg cracked and buckled under him on Taizo's next punch. Tetsutetsu darted his eyes down as the ground cracked below that knee that slammed into the ground. He tried to drag it back up, but his flurry of punches had slowed and Taizo's did not. Tetsutetsu's back slammed into the ground, and Taizo just leaned forward more and bent his body over the boy who he kept swinging down at. One huge fist slammed down below Tetsutetsu's arms he tried crossing for protection over his chest. That fist slammed into Tetsutetsu's gut instead and bent Real Steel around it, denting deep into his stomach and making spit and blood fly up out of the shiny hero's mouth.

Kirishima sprinted forward in the instant that Duke Dread gave him. He darted to his left and used the damaged speakers of the personal Spider to his advantage. Duke Dread strummed his guitar hard, but Kirishima dodged around before the Spider turned for its functioning speakers to aim at him. The way he darted also made it harder for Dread to turn after him because it would turn the Spider to aim in the Princess' direction. It was not what Kirishima thought of, but the thought did flash through Duke Dread's mind as he had been watching Taizo grow to sizes that he had not even predicted his ally could get to, and he in no way wanted to anger Taizo himself. Kirishima reached the already-damaged leg of the Spider and he slammed both of his arms forward. He smashed into it and made the Spider stumble backwards, but then he pulled back right before a whistle from Dread's flute was going to slice his face.

A green light flashed in the left corner of Kirishima's vision. He started turning and raising his arms, but the beam hit him in the face before he could get up a guard. He still had his Quirk activated, but chips of flesh flew away from him while his legs came off the ground. He flew out of the smoke cloud and green explosion, and then the slam of a bass drum hit him after he bounced on the ground. He was sent flipping through the air and then rolling across the floor in too hard a way to not rip up a giant trench in the courtyard.

"DIE! DIE DIE DIE DIE!" Taizo screamed while slamming fist after fist down into the boy below him who was getting imbedded deeper into the ground with each hit.

"STOP!"

The voice came too close to the villain who yanked his whole body back at once and stumbled himself, nearly falling over in shock. Makani Taizo stared with trembling eyes and in disbelief and confusion at the girl with long orange hair who had dove forward underneath his fists. Her whole body hovered over the boy below her. The teenage girl one year younger than Tetsutetsu had her arms on either side of the human-shaped indent in the bottom of the crater she ran down. She had sprinted to the spot against the muttered pleas of her Head Guard behind her who stared in as much shock as Taizo at what the Princess just did.

"Stop it, please," Aya begged. Her eyes rose up to the villain in front of her only a few feet away. The monster who was worse than she even imagined him in her nightmares, who was somehow scarier than he looked in any of the terrifying drawings that had unnerved her art tutors through the years, stared back at her with eyes full of confusion that teetered on lunacy. The lack of understanding to an extreme of what was such an understandable act in the Princess' mind to protect someone who was trying to save her, terrified the girl who could see that complete emptiness in Taizo's head. He could not even process why she would do such a thing. The fact that he could not understand it, subconsciously told her that he was less than human. He lacked simple traits that made someone human. Simple concepts, like compassion, were absent in his mind for him to be looking at her in so much confusion as to why she would protect her hero. "Don't hurt him anymore," she whispered, though her words came out so softly as she doubted they would reach Taizo even if she had called it out to him.

Aya had attempted to reason with him before. She knew that there was no reaching the monster in front of her. Her lips quivered and she just lowered her body more to put herself closer to the boy underneath her, to protect him from the monster she imagined was going to ignore her and finish him off anyway. "Princess…" a voice came out below the girl whose eyes bulged at the sound of it. It came out raspy, but her eyes lowered down and then she leaned backwards in her own disbelief this time.

Taizo's face flipped immediately back to rage as he finally processed what just happened. "These two," Taizo growled in understanding. Tetsutetsu's hands that re-covered in Steel gripped the edges of the hole he was in.

"Don't, worry about me," Tetsutetsu growled out, though he tried to make his voice sound more heroic too. Blood dripped down his fingers on both hands, but his face looked the worst of all when he brought his head up out of the shadows in the hole. Deep cuts on his forehead, cheeks, chin, and around his eyebrows were spilling silver-shaded blood around his face. "You can, get back," Tetsutetsu assured the girl who had covered him up right there to protect him. How could I make the Princess feel like she needs to protect me? I'm the hero here! Tetsutetsu unbent his elbows and pushed up more, standing in front of the younger girl on her knees who lifted her amazed and awed look up his broad back that rose in front of her. "I'll protect you, if it costs me my life!"

His blood dripped down her face, but he stood back up in front of her. She could no longer see the face of Makani Taizo behind Tetsutetsu whose back was too wide that it was all she could see. She heard Taizo's voice on Tetsutetsu's other side though, "You- Your fault. I know. It's you. You two- you're keeping her, from me. You- You-" Taizo's head twitched. His eyes shook madly and his head vibrated in maniacal rage. It was breaking Taizo's mind seeing the Princess protect Tetsutetsu just as she had been shielding Toyo. Toyo was shocked by Tetsutetsu standing back up too, but his eyes got more anxious as he saw the look of insanity on Taizo's face causing the villain to stumble backwards, raising a hand to the side of his huge head and gripping his temple in confused agony.

I've used too many, Toyo strained his eye to force another beam out, but he was pushing it at his last attempt and was running on empty here. Bisecting the bodies of many villains whose corpses littered around the courtyard had taken it out of him, as had the attacks he had aimed at Taizo, including one that had grazed him. That former wound was just covered in bulging flesh and muscles now. The only fabric that remained on Taizo's upper body were the scraps stuck to him because of the blood he had spilled earlier in the fight. Toyo's eyes shifted back from the face of their enemy, to the legs of the boy that Aya had not noticed as her eyes were up looking towards Tetsutetsu's back and broad shoulders. Toyo was the one who saw the shaking in his right leg, and the blood that was pouring down his left…

"SHOOT HIM NOW!" Dread yelled out. His voice amplified by his Spider that was wobbly due to only three of its legs still being in good condition. The fourth was stumbling each time it stepped down, being too thin near the bottom where the steel had been dented and crunched by Red Riot's attacks. Dread's voice barely came over the sounds of the instruments he was continuing to blow into, slam, and strum with all his strength. Kirishima was not pushing back towards them this time. The eardrums of many of the villains around Duke Dread were ringing and pounding, and many of them were in pain just by being this close to him, but they listened to their boss and fired their weapons and any long-ranged Quirks they had towards the teen already being bombarded by Musically. "This is it! HAH- HAHAHA! NICE TRY, LITTLE FUCK-"

The Spider that Duke Dread stood on top of vibrated. He was on the front of the vehicle. The cockpit was open and the Spider had a convertible top around its central console where Duke Dread was standing. He had his guitar in his hands and had just strummed down a huge shockwave that slammed into Kirishima the same time that explosions went off all around the boy who only screamed out in pain this time. Duke Dread felt the Spider shake, and it was a weird time for it to vibrate like that as it was expelling so much noise from his voice and instruments. The speakers were down in the legs though. They were on the front of the Spider. Yet the vibration he felt came from the back of the Spider, and it came from on top of the cockpit that was not very large and that he stood in the front of.

Dread brought his left hand to the flute around his neck and pulled it to his mouth while spinning and gripping the strings of his guitar tighter. "Ugh-" Duke Dread gasped out. The air was forced from his lungs as he was stabbed in the back. No one had heard him approach. Duke Dread was far too loud for anyone but him to hear this man. Some of the villains down at the legs did not hear their comrades behind them gasp and fall. Cut-off yelps on the bridge had alerted a couple of villains, but they had fallen as well before being able to alert anyone else.

Duke Dread was in mid-turn, but the flute slipped out of one hand while his other hand came off the guitar. That guitar promptly fell from his chest as the strap going over his shoulder and along his back had just been sliced. The slash across his back disconnected his guitar and made it start to fall while Dread himself spun the rest of the way around. As his front spun to the man behind him, another blade cut into the bottom left of Duke Dread's torso, and then it slashed up through his uniform and up past his shoulder. Blood splashed into the air, and finally other Jazz villains started looking up at their leader whose voice had been cut off.

The blade that just slashed past Duke Dread's left shoulder turned into a more viscous silver substance that curved at the end into a hook. That hook slammed down on Duke Dread's shoulder and cut into his back, and the villain who was twisting one way as he got slashed suddenly got spun around the opposite direction. The other arm of the man behind Dread slashed across his side as Duke Dread was being spun, then it slashed all the way around his back before curving itself into a silver scythe as well. That scythe hooked Dread's side in between some of his ribs, then he yanked back the other way and spun Duke Dread 270 degrees to come face-to-face with the new arrival again. Both of the man's scythe-shaped arms slammed down on top of Duke Dread's shoulders and the blades locked into his back and under his armpits.

Taizo darted a look over as he noticed the three in front of him finally took their eyes off him and joined everyone else in staring at Dread. Taizo snapped his gaze back to the Princess, but he spun back and turned his head all the way this time as those hooks over Duke Dread's shoulders pulled towards the man in front of him. Those scythe-shaped arms pulled forward but also down, and the guy slammed his right knee up into Duke Dread's chin at the same moment he had pulled Duke Dread's body downwards. The opposing forces slammed Duke Dread's jaw shut so hard that it broke all of his teeth. The scythes dug into Duke Dread's shoulders and armpits too, ripping through skin and tendons as the blades sharpened even while digging into him.

Blackstar lifted up the scythes that dug too far into Duke Dread's arms that he was about to get stuck in bone. His right arm pulled back and the blade straightened out. Duke Dread had stumbled back and was about to topple over the front of his own personal Spider droid. He opened his squinted eyes though and they darted straight to the long silver blade replacing Blackstar's right arm that was swinging towards him. Duke Dread's squinted eyes only looked towards that feint, and he gasped out in shock and lost all the spit in his mouth and some puke from his stomach as a foot dented into his torso so hard it bent Duke Dread's entire body over it. Blackstar's kick launched Duke Dread off of the Spider with blood splashing out of a dozen slashes across his front and back.

Duke Dread hit the ground on Kirishima's right and bounced then rolled past him. A blood smear on the ground went past the redhead who turned his head and watched Duke Dread skid past him and then slump motionlessly into the floor. Kirishima had been the last to realize what had happened. He was disoriented and his ears were both bleeding. He had not even realized Duke Dread stopped screaming because all the sound directed straight at him had rang his ears into oblivion. He was still confused as the smoke and dust around him cleared, only for him to watch a man he had never seen before kick the leader of the Jazz off his own Spider. That villain was unmoving on the floor behind him now, and Kirishima just blinked a few times in confusion then turned forward and lifted his head to watch the man jumping off the Spider and doing several front flips on his way down.

He landed down on his right foot and his left knee. The Jazz did not attack right away. A few stepped forward, and others who had been staying back to avoid Duke Dread's wrath slid their feet in a bit as well. Some lifted up weapons, but they still hesitated with their fingers itching on the triggers. Was it the way he had easily disposed of Duke Dread that stopped them? Or was it the smirk on his face that some who had looked up at the Spider had seen as he slashed up their boss? This man was not a hero. He got back up off his left knee and stood there in casual clothes: a t-shirt and sweatpants, and a pair of sneakers.

Kirishima's ears were losing a little of the ringing in them. He was facing the dark-skinned man in front of him who had landed slightly to his left as well so he was more between Kirishima and Tetsutetsu. That man opened his mouth and called out, "I'm just a regular Japanese citzen." He had on a white t-shirt. Under the sleeves of that shirt, everyone could see the burn scars covering his right arm that made the skin more discolored and darker than the rest of him. Then again, some of the perfect skin on his left arm had been cut through on his way here as he had blocked stabbing attacks with that arm, and the fake skin was missing to show the steel prosthetic underneath on his elbow and on his forearm just above his wrist. That fake arm had some silver color to it. Other than the cuts that showed off the prosthetic though, Rodney Black was undamaged after taking out the leader of the Jazz in a surprise attack.

The smug American man spoke in Japanese, "How dare you attack this city I live in?" He turned his head slowly to the left. His eyes scanned over villains who stared at his face and felt unnerved by the scars all over it. Shrapnel had ripped up his face because of the mortar that had taken his right foot. There was also burn damage all over it, mostly on the left side though where the skin was badly discolored like on his neck. He had a scar over the bridge of his nose from the burnt left side of his face straight across and over his right eyelid, over his eyebrow that was missing some hair because of the scar. His short black hair had bald spots on the left side of his skull around his left ear that looked like a mangled mess. Scars on his left cheek and on his right cheek finished the appearance of a man who did not appear to be just another Japanese citizen. His accent was pretty good though. "I have come here to assist the heroes, as I feel I am in danger and have the right to protect myself thanks to Lifebringer's Law!"

The right corner of Blackstar's lips curled up closer to Kirishima.

It was still hard to hear, but Kirishima's hearing was getting better and he heard what this man just shouted. Kirishima was already staring to his left at the man in front of him with huge eyes though. Kirishima stepped forward. He stared at the right side of this guy's face and his eyes grew even wider, then filled with pain too at what the man just shouted. "Now! You villains should surrender before even more citizens of Japan stand up to-"

"Blackstar," Kirishima said. His voice was low. He stared at the side of the man's face that twitched.

Blackstar's eyes darted right and back at the boy behind him who just cut him off. "You…" Blackstar darted his eyes back around the different Jazz members. A few of the gang leaders still standing amongst the rest were whispering to each other and starting to organize despite the loss of Duke Dread. Blackstar still paused though and wondered under his breath, "He told you about me?"

"He told me, about all of you," Kirishima replied softly. His voice was hesitant and pained. His eyes shifted to the floor at the question Blackstar asked him which confirmed to him beyond all doubt who this man was. Kirishima had spent a whole night listening to Zach tell him every detail about his army and all his lost comrades. The living got less descriptions, but Kirishima had heard enough about this man in front of him to recognize him at a glance from this close up. "You were there with him, from the beginning," Kirishima whispered.

"Hmph, I was just-"

"But since you missed Wampajawa, you didn't feel like it," Kirishima continued. His pitch rose and his voice came out more strained too as Blackstar started speaking out almost like he was about to counter what Kirishima just said.

Blackstar closed his mouth and frowned for a moment, then the corners of his lips lifted slightly and in a nostalgic and happy way. He humphed again but had to shake away the touching thought he just had about how Zach knew him too well that he had known how much that had bothered him. "Well, I don't know what he told you… But I'm just your run-of-the-mill Japanese citizen!" Blackstar rose his voice and yelled at villains who he started smirking at again. His attitude and expression went against what he was yelling. Here he was with his only allies all injured and beaten-up, and he was claiming to be just a regular person, but he was grinning at a much larger group of heavily-armed enemies. "And I am legally allowed to fight you, to help the heroes and protect our Princess!"

Wow, Princess Aya stared over at the citizen who had come to help her and was blowing her mind with his completely confident attitude here.

Toyo was not as oblivious as the girl who had not been allowed to watch Zach Sazaki's trial or the streamed recording of Wampajawa. His eye shifted back onto Taizo though who glared away from the man who took out Duke Dread, deciding that this mattered more to him than his boss who was just cut up and defeated. He stared back towards Aya and ground his teeth at the sight of both Tetsutetsu and Toyo still in his vision, still breathing.

Legally allowed, because of Lifebringer's Law? Kirishima's fists shook at his sides as this man so confidently and cheerfully yelled that out at their enemies. "But…" Kirishima started. His teeth clenched. He had to look at the floor as the man to his left glanced back over his right shoulder at the brutal-looking young hero who was surprising him by how steady he was on his feet despite all his horrible injuries. Kirishima's eyes looked saddened though as Blackstar glanced back at him, and Blackstar rose up his eyebrows as the teen growled, "Zach, he's already… I'm sorry-"

"You…" Blackstar started. He frowned deeply as Kirishima looked back up. The younger man got confused though by the disappointed and even annoyed look on Blackstar's face as he frowned at the kid. Then the corner of Blackstar's lips lifted back up though and he grunted while looking back forward. "Aren't you one of Zach's best friends? I thought you would have known him better than that," Blackstar remarked. He did not keep his voice down. He spoke with no care of being heard. His voice reached the Princess who finally started pulling her head back and staring with huge eyes in realization of who she was looking at.

The villains who were not certain themselves, flinched. A few of them gripped their weapons tighter because their hands were sweaty. Sweat dripped down their faces at what this man was saying. And Makani Taizo twitched. Tetsutetsu was glaring straight at him and would not dare looking away, but he watched as the villain before him shifted his irises into the corners of his eyes and stared off towards the foreigner in the courtyard. A lump formed in Taizo's throat, and it rose up and bounced down as even the most insane villain gulped.

"You really think a single bomb could kill that man?" Blackstar wondered. He chuckled and actually felt glad that he could tell the kid this, pushing aside the annoyance as he figured it was somewhat understandable. "A bomb couldn't kill him." Blackstar said it with such assurance that Kirishima's head tilted back in shock and made tears form in his eyes as he believed the man in front of him. Unfortunately for the villains all around the courtyard, they believed Blackstar as well.

This person who they imagined was in the Army of Death leaned his head forward. His dark hair shadowed partially over his eyes while his lips curved into a much more malicious and intimidating smirk. "No… no, he's alive," Blackstar's voice came out darker and it sent chills down the spines of the heroes and villains alike. Some of the Jazz members got tears in their own eyes that trembled so much at the sound of this person's taunting voice. Their eyes grew huger and their heart rates skyrocketed, as Blackstar rose the pitch of his voice in a questioning way, "But when he gets back up, and he sees what they've done to this city in his absence?"

Blackstar's arms turned back to silver goo and waved around before hardening into the shape of long silver blades. The right corner of his lips curled up so much and he shook his head as if in pity for the villains around him. Those scared villains could not think of any retort to make, as Blackstar hissed towards them, "He's gonna be piiisssssssed."

---

Three blocks away from the Karebo Office, Present Mic yelled over his shoulder, "This way! Follow me to Ringers' Stadium! Go go!" He waved his right arm ahead of him and yelled at the people he was leading from a more dangerous area. Then he spun and looked up in the air at a metal enemy flying down towards him and raising up an arm that popped open to show barrels all around it ready to fire down at him and the civilians behind him. "YOWWWWW!" He screamed towards the robot that's targeting functions malfunctioned while its vision turned staticky. It spun out with parts ripping from it and slammed into a wall on Present Mic's right side. "GO!" He yelled at the people behind him who were hesitating but who all started sprinting again when he yelled at them.

How strong are these things!? Present Mic grit his teeth at the sight of two metal arms reaching out through the wall and gripping into the outside of the building. "I'll be right behind you!" He called out, while he ran towards the building the AANT was dragging itself out of.

Behind Present Mic, dozens of people were running past and towards the huge baseball stadium of the Tokyo Ringers. One man glanced to his left and slowed down as he was running by the escalators leading down into a subway station of Chiyoda. A thought came into his mind to run down there and weather the battle underground, but just as quickly as it came it went. He turned and ran with everyone else towards the stadium that the hero promised would be safe for them. He gulped though, because no matter where they looked, smoke was rising in all directions. The citizen glanced back over his left shoulder as he ran with the crowd, But, what if there are villains down there? His second hesitation about going down there pushed away again, though he was regretting it and doubting his decision that he feared might cost his life.

Had he gone down the stalled escalators of that particular subway station though, he would have ran back up as fast as he could. The platforms underground were empty. All the explosions aboveground at first had caused people to rush to the streets in fear of the roof collapsing down on them. Subways had shut down and people had been evacuated out of them and to evac centers by the Police Force and heroes. A stopped train was on the tracks off the platform. One of the subway cars was parked partially inside the tunnel to the northeast, while the tunnel to the southwest was open. Near that more open tunnel that led across Tokyo towards Shinjuku and then Shibuya, a body of a hero lay on the platform with blood pooling around him.

X-Less lay on the platform with three stab wounds going through his costume. The hero's blue costume was soaked in red. His red cape was discarded near him and had rips in it. The hero who had come down into this subway did not do so without purpose. A blood smear near his body showed he had tried to crawl after collapsing, but the smear did not go far from the initial spot he fell to where his body lay now. Going a different direction than that smear of blood though, was a smaller trail of blood that looked to have been dripping to the edge of the platform. That trail continued down on the tracks and into the dark tunnel towards the southwest.

Another hero who had run into that subway tunnel after X-Less followed the trail of blood himself. He was panting heavily. The hero with a thick chin and black mask over the top of his face slid through the tunnel just to the side of the empty tracks. Slidin' Go was sweating through his purple and green costume. The muscular hero secretly a member of the Meta Liberation Army slid faster and then stopped short as he saw the person ahead of him in the glow of the red emergency lights on the walls of the subway. "Toga!" Slidin' Go called to the girl limping away from X-Less' corpse.

Toga Himiko did not slow her limp. Her eyes were locked ahead of her towards Shibuya. Her focus was extreme and this man's appearance behind her did not slow her down. Tokoname Tatsuyuki stopped sliding and sprinted the rest of the way up to Toga's right side. "Toga! Did you know- of course you did not! That bomb would have killed the both of us at Karebo." Slidin' Go turned his head when he saw where Toga was looking and he glanced down the tunnel himself in the same direction. More sweat formed on his face but he spoke in a lower voice while continuing to walk at her side, "I noticed that Sonic and the others were no longer around right before the bomb went off. They must have known the full plan."

"That Raijin," Slidin' Go growled. Anger covered his face for an instant but it twitched too in pain as he wondered in a lower voice, "Did he, do that without telling Re-Destro-"

Slidin' Go's voice cut off. His eyes bulged and then darted to his left at the girl next to him who had similarly been at Karebo still in her disguise when the bomb went off. Her eyes were shifted to the right corners and looking up at his face in pure insanity that Slidin' Go had wished he had noticed before the teenager had stabbed a knife into his throat. His hands rose up and Toga leapt away from him as he swung a muscular fist at her. She winced and fell down to her right knee upon landing, grabbing at her own thigh above it where a gash from X-Less' Laser had hit her. That pro hero had been much more cautious and aware than the low-level hero the MLA had working for them.

Toga pushed down her bloody hands and got back up off her knee. She winced as she put her right foot on the ground, but her teeth ground in more anger as she looked at the pathetic man dying in front of her who grabbed at his throat and tried to stop the bleeding. He accidentally knocked her knife loose from his throat though. Losing the knife meant blood poured out of his throat much faster. Toga did not stay to watch him collapse. Her eyes shifted towards Shibuya again. The ground shook above her, and she knew that Deku-kun was over there fighting against Shigaraki right now. Tomura-kun, Toga's eyes so full of rage and insanity, were full of betrayal as well. "I trust you…" His voice filled her head and made her hands curl so tightly into fists that her nails pierced through the skin of her palms.

Toga marched farther down the tunnel. Her teeth clenched in anger as she thought about staring up at the explosion while in the shape of Nikko Kaizo. She knew that bomb was not supposed to be stopped considering all the other people who had been gathered there who it was meant to kill. Considering that Sonic, Meta, Pinoko, and Hypnos had all slipped away before it went off. She pictured the flames ripping out of that dark mass that were so close to incinerating her. Why? I- I need to ask you. Did you know, what he- Toga grit her teeth harder. She knew it was Raijin. She knew that he had put it there and that it was all his plan, and yet… Did you know I didn't know?

The determined naked girl who had melted out of the Prime Minister's body stopped short. She stood in place and froze. Her right foot just touched down on the ground in her next step. She was frozen. Her eyes staring straight towards Shibuya shook while bulging massive. Those eyes darted to the side, and her head shifted slowly to the right, and she stared behind her into a tunnel that had lost much of its red glow from the lights behind her. The ones ahead of her flickered while the ground above shook again. Small cracks on the ceiling got a little bigger, and chips of cement fell from the roof mixing with the dust down here already. Through the thick dust that was very visible in the red lights, Toga stared into the darkness behind her that was deeper black than it was when she had limped through before.

Her body was stuck in place facing the other direction. Her eyes stared behind her though and darted from wall to wall. She watched as black lines tracked along the walls and ran down onto the floor. Her eyes followed the shifting darkness behind her. And those eyes locked onto the black puddle on the tracks of the subway. Pitch blackness pooled there and grew each second she stared at it. Then a bulge came from the top of that darkness. It pushed upwards and rose a foot high, then two, then six. Darkness dripped off of the mass that neither looked solid nor liquid nor even gaseous. It was just darkness that was darker than the air around it which was darkening itself too.

Toga stared at the top of that black bulge, and her head tilted back as a pair of red eyes flared to life near what might be the head of that mass. Toga turned herself around and faced the creature behind her that was staring straight into her eyes with its red ones that flared wildly and brightly. They were not solid red orbs but flames of red on either side of the head of the mass of darkness that was shading the entire tunnel. A loud boom above them followed by many intense thuds caused cracks to spread on the ceiling even more. Some pieces fell into the pool of darkness around that black mass, and they were surrounded and swallowed up by it. Wisps of blackness came off of the swirling tendrils exuding from the dark figure.

Toga stared straight into the eyes looking back at her. As she looked into its eyes, another pair of eyes opened up farther back in the tunnel. All of the darkness was weaving around Slidin' Go's body next to the tracks where Toga had stabbed him. Way back in the illuminated subway station though, X-Less opened up his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

Eye-Gun Hero: X-Less, put his hands down on the floor at his sides as he shook off his exhaustion. The hero remembered where he was and pushed down quickly to sit up. He froze though as he pressed on the floor and felt the slippery ground around him. His eyes looked down at the blood and then over cuts on his own costume. He ignored the puddle of blood though. He even somewhat ignored the sight of repaired skin over where he knew he had been stabbed. The hero who just sat up turned his head to the left and stared over at the tunnel entrance leading away from this stop to the southwest. X-Less' eyes grew wider as he put together why he was sitting up again.

Relief did not fill the hero who saw that darkness in the tunnel that looked pitch black as he stared into it. That darkness stretched out of the exit and around the walls near the tunnel, on the floor, on the tracks, and in the air itself. It was seemingly appearing out of nowhere and trailing all in the same direction at once. It was getting thicker and becoming visible just outside of the tunnel that it moved into and condensed in. X-Less pushed his hands down on the ground harder and then pulled his left away quicker as he got to his feet. His eyes darted to a snaking wisp of black that dragged under his palm across the platform to the edge and then dropped down onto the tracks. It merged with more wisps and slid farther down the tunnel towards some distant point that X-Less decided in that moment to stay very far away from.

What is this feeling? It was in the air around X-Less that was darker than normal air. He stared into the tunnel and felt emotions in the air around him that made sweat cover the recently revived hero's face. We, might have a problem here.

Clink

Down the tunnel that X-Less spun away from to run off and rejoin the battle someplace else, and to tell someone about what just happened, darkness trailed through the subway quicker each second. It slid faster the farther from that station that it got. Around Slidin' Go's body, the darkness snaked past the fake hero while leaving him completely untouched. Slidin' Go was not revived behind where this black mass of Death was getting more condensed and thicker each instant. That mass that was sliding forward down the tunnel now started to shift. It already had two appendages sticking off of its sides on the upper portion of it, but as it was about to make another slide forward, a leg stepped out of the front of the darkness.

Dink-tink schh

A second leg stepped out of the mass that was turning into a more humanoid shape. A dark, wisping, human-shaped man walked down the tunnel with his steps echoing around in the emptiness just as those sounds of metal clanking on the floor had. The 'clink' of a blade falling on the floor echoed first, then the sounds of it bouncing twice before scraping to a stop.

Du-thud

Death snaked around the body that just collapsed to the floor behind the dark form walking away. It all avoided the girl whose neck was opened across the front. Her cut throat poured blood into a growing puddle below her. The knife that dropped had scraped to a stop next to Toga's lifeless body, and the growing puddle spread to soak the knife even more in red. Even as that puddle spread around the knife though and covered the hilt in Toga's blood like the blade already was, part of the hilt still stuck out facing upwards. That golden hilt, splattered in blood…

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A/N ...Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed the chapter. Response time:

TachyonPhantom chapter 246 . Feb 13

When you write your novel please post its name on your profile or something. Your writing is amazing and I'd love to support it!

I will for sure do that! I'm glad to hear you'd look forward to that and I'd be happy to have fans before I even publish my first book. Thanks for the review, and glad you enjoy my writing!

Wrenlou chapter 246 . Feb 15

I'm crying right now after finishing this chapter, in my heart i knew All Might couldn't last forever, especially in this amazing world you've expanded on. but that doesnt mean that reading him dying in such a brutal way doesn't hurt. on the flip side though, I audibly cheered when exodus showed up, cant wait for the ruthlessness of the AOD to give the villains what they deserve. also thanks for not killing Mei (yet cough) she is one of my favorites that doesnt get enough screen time.

Got a lot of people feeling mixed ways with that last scene. All Might's fall coincided with the arrival of Exodus, and the rest of the AoD that we saw this chapter. Mei makes it through with the help from a lot of others when it seemed like she might not last. Glad you like her, she's a pretty cool character and it was fun writing her with a bigger part in this battle than she's had so far. Thanks for reviewing!

JesterLOLs chapter 246 . Feb 21

I've been following this story for a little while now and It's great, I really enjoyed the parts where you got creative with the quirks, since they can be literally anything and got into using them outside of combat like helping construction of the cloak or building life city as well as the worldwide implications of industries such as quirk-enhanced alloy blends. Also massively awed by the absolute MONSTER of a chapter that was Wampajawa, we didn't get to see many large-scale quirk battles in the manga due to the style of hero vs villain instead of army vs army so getting to read a story with sieges where you have multiple quirk users having their effects compounded together and being chained was really cool. Do have to wonder though, will we get to see Snow again? It would be funny to see the interactions of her and other AoD members with class 3-A and class 1. Also what will happen to life city? It'd be nice to know how it's been though If I'm remembering right it's located within India's border, gonna be hard to expand or reveal themselves in the future without causing a political incident. My bet how the next couple chapters are going to looking at Exodus is maybe having the entire army project the image of a civilian militia? It would maybe fit into Zach's vision of people being able to defend themselves like the speech at the end of Wampajawa, though it would have cool if everyone at life city saw this happening and volunteered to come help Zach, like a my army is bigger than yours kind of thing.

Thanks for the review! I'm glad you've been enjoying the story and all the world-building I've put into it. I can't give any spoilers on who we might see again and any future interactions, but Life City does pose a lot of serious societal repercussions. It's actually inside of Kazakhstan's border*, but yeah it will be tough to reveal themselves there. Really nice prediction on the civilian militia. It isn't exactly what the Army of Death is going for, but Endeavor thinks about it a little in this chapter and we see the different AoD characters shouting about how they're just regular Japanese citizens to try and project that image of just legally defending Tokyo from villains. It's definitely fitting with Zach's vision he shouts about at the end of Wampajawa, and so I just wanted to say awesome prediction there. Exodus' arrival somewhat gave that away but it's still cool! Anyway, hope you enjoyed the new chapter!

Guesssst chapter 246 . 7h ago

All I want is Zach to come back and slaughter

You still sure about that... XD