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. Expansive AU. Goes through multiple years. Warning: gore, death, loss, depression, and a lot of other stuff a few readers have found triggering. Just a heads-up.

249. Chapter 249

Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia

Chapter 249:

Zach flew towards Kaminari and slammed into him in the next instant. Both of his hands snapped up and he reached for his enemy. His body was engulfed in darkness. Kaminari did not dodge. Zach sped straight at him and Kaminari backpedaled and jumped up in the air. His hands snapped up and caught Zach's hands that were ready to reach to either side where Kaminari might try to dodge to. Instead, their hands slammed into each other's. Zach curled his fingers into Kaminari's and bent his arms backwards while still flying forward with Death pushing out behind him to speed him up even more.

They flew up in the air over the steel drill that Kaminari had leapt up above so he would not be slammed back into it. Zach's momentum carried them over the street farther from the Todoroki brothers who spun with wide eyes after the trail of yellow and black that shot over their battlefield. Dabi's head turned back to his brother first, and his teeth bared but his fists surrounded in much brighter blue flames in the next second. Shoto's hesitation was gone as he looked back at his brother though. Hearing what Zach had to say to Raijin and to his own brother made it much easier for him. "I won't let you kill anyone anymore, either," Shoto told his older brother. "I'm going to stop you, Dabi…"

Kaminari leaned his head forward while pulling his and Zach's arms out to the sides. They were arcing down towards the street two intersections past where they just lifted off. He put his face closer to Zach's and smirked through his helmet visor at his friend who was pulsing Death out of his hands and into Kaminari's, to no effect. Zach's eyes darted to their interlocked hands only once the Death vanished from his right hand though, because Kaminari just gave him an even cockier smile as even Zach's bare-handed clutch did not kill the villain. As Zach's eyes darted down to their hands though, Raijin's right foot kicked up through the gap between their pushed-aside arms.

Zach's head moved to the left in evasion. His reflexes were as fast as Raijin's kick that showed off how flexible the villain was to kick his own leg straight up between them like that. Zach extended his head off his black neck then turned and bit down on the shin of his best friend. He clenched down his jaw hard. Electricity pulsed out of Raijin so strong that Zach gasped and pulled his head back while letting go of Raijin's hands too. Kaminari gripped tighter though and pulled towards himself while flipping backwards. They were almost down on the street already, and Raijin flipped backwards and slammed Zach down into the floor behind him. Zach's body slammed into the ground, and his torso blew apart in five different directions on the collision.

That dark smoke flew around Raijin who magnetized his own boots and the steel pieces on the insides of his Anti-Death armor. Lightning bolts connected him to the building on his right, and he slid that way quicker while starting his barrel roll. One of Zach's forming feet slammed down into the ground where Raijin was rolling, but because of the magnetism added to the roll, Raijin got just a few centimeters out of the way. Zach's foot broke apart the street and sent chunks of pavement flying after Raijin. The villain pressed the soles of his feet to the floor while it was still cracking under his feet though. He leapt to the building and then spun halfway to it, and he swung his right arm behind him-

Zach yelled out in pain as he dove through the electricity anyway and tackled Kaminari in the middle of his body this time. They smashed through a window on the second floor of the empty office building Raijin had been about to sprint up. Zach gripped his friend around his sides and dug his nails in- only to flinch as Raijin's body erupted in even more electricity than a few seconds ago. The pulse made him flinch enough that he was slow in darting his eyes up to Raijin's left hand that was risen over his skull and holding a three-inch white blade sticking out of a similarly white hilt. Raijin's arm zapped with electricity and swung down while Zach was pulling his arms away. The left arm was coming down fast, but he pulled his head to the left quick to dodge while at the same time turning his right shoulder into thinner Death so that the blade would pass straight through.

Raijin stabbed down and imbedded the knife deeply into Zach's right shoulder. SClurch! Blood splashed up out of the darkness from Zach's right shoulder that re-solidified as Raijin released the weapon and dodged. Zach wanted Raijin's arm to be passing through, so that he would be directly where Zach just stabbed five large Death broadswords out of his own chest. "My armor's too thick!" Raijin called out as he darted backwards then over to the right from Zach's perspective. Zach was sprinting after him but his body stayed in a more humanoid shape this time, and his red eyes darted to the knife sticking up out of his right shoulder that hurt like hell. "You can't bite through, because your teeth are just bone, and this is a bone-tevlon hybrid! Specially engineered by all my best scientists, and myself of course."

The blond-haired villain jumped up to the ceiling and grabbed onto a panel that he swung himself off of as three stabbing spikes of Death shot up out of the floor that Zach had sent them digging under. Zach flew up towards that ceiling panel he forced Raijin towards, but his enemy kicked his right leg forward and sent three white projectiles flying from his boot at his enemy who darted to his left by blasting out a huge pulse of Death out his right side. Those projectiles flew through his dark cloud, then Zach got slammed by a kick in his gut as Raijin flung himself right at his enemy who was not expecting the attack from his enemy who had not been the one on the offensive thus far.

Kaminari kicked Zach back out of the building though with a lightning-powered kick that smashed Zach through two other buildings and out onto another street. Zach spiraled himself in a funnel of Death and then swung both arms forward towards the hole in the last building. His eyes darted up though to the roof of that building that some lightning sparked above, then he swerved to his right as Kaminari shot out of the alley on his left and nearly pierced through his heart with a ten-inch shortsword of the bone and tevlon hybrid that he was speaking of. Zach reached to his left and grabbed the blade with his own left hand that stopped being surrounded in Death in that moment, and he gripped so hard that his harder-than-steel prosthetic snapped the blade that he flipped around-

Raijin was too fast for the multi-pronged movement to work as a counterattack. He also knew that Zach knew this, and he did not focus much on that blade that Zach was flipping around in his left hand. Nor did he care much about the Death that snaked down the blade and jumped off at him as a triple feint to show that maybe Zach thought he knew that he knew, and he was trying to use that weapon anyway. Zach's right foot twitching towards him was not the right attack, nor was his right elbow swinging around or the black sword shooting out of Zach's chest. Lightning bolts flew at his enemy who dispersed a chunk of himself downwards into a mass of Death that he separated back when Raijin was pretending to go over the roof but instead darted through the alleyway.

Two black hands reached up to Raijin's feet. The enemy who jumped up at Zach after sprinting through that alley just yanked his feet up though with blue light glowing out the soles of his shoes. His body bent backwards and he turned up the power. Raijin flew horizontally over the road and made Zach speed after him, his body pulling back together around bolts of lightning and then shooting parallel to the ground after the villain who smirked while leading him away. Then Zach picked up the speed, and Raijin's smirk dropped as his eyes darted up with bolts of lightning zipping through his irises at the sight of Zach suddenly right above him. Zach's hands connected and slammed down, and he even adjusted in mid-swing to the right as Raijin connected some electricity to the building on that side to try and pull himself away. Raijin did manage to twist himself at the last moment though, as he only sent some electricity that direction to make Zach think that he was trying to magnetize and dodge. The twist was not enough to fully dodge though.

Zach's hands grazed his enemy. He spiked Death off of them, and the Death that he spiked into Raijin was as condensed as he could make it to try and pierce through that armor. The spikes hit the villain. And the points of those spikes pushed into fabric hard, only to break apart after a second. The force that Zach pushed them out of his hands as he was grazing his enemy was still enough to sent Kaminari spinning around much more though, but Raijin smirked as he came out of it and swung both arms to his sides in the moment that Zach was flapping huge black wings behind him to get speed for a second attempt. His strength is down. Maybe the right arm. Maybe just weakness, Raijin's head blurred back while his arms pointed to either side of the road that they were on.

Zach could see it in his peripheral vision. Sparks shot off of Raijin's super-powered costume that was pulsing with blue energy. Zach had seen the bars on the back of it that seemed to be surging with electricity. This costume was suited for his enemy who seemed to have more electricity than ever under his control. But even with all that power he already had on his body, Raijin sent sparks flying at the outer walls of two buildings Zach was about to fly between.

His red eyes locked on Raijin's that filled with exhilaration as Zach was moving too fast to try and get a second attack that could actually pierce his armor this time. The walls on Zach's right and left both glowed bright blue. Dashes of blue light glowed up entire steel beams supporting the structures on either side of this road. Trap- "AHHH!" Zach screamed as the huge bolts of blue lightning shot across the street in massive traps. Panels with generators on the insides of them opened up just past this trap, and as Zach froze in midair while surrounded in giant bolts of bright blue lightning, his eyes squinted back open and he stared towards Raijin who floated in midair with his arms pointed out to either side.

Long bolts of yellow lightning connected Raijin's fingers to the generators. Each of his white-clothed fingers siphoned the energy from the generators he had filled up over years and stored all over the city. Zach could imagine it as he looked into the pulsing white eyes of his enemy who cackled madly even after Zach stopped his own scream of pain. Zach forced his body forward by exploding as much Death as he could spare out of his back, just to get out of the space of this lightning trap he could already feel weakening. Forcing himself forward did not make Raijin back away farther down this road though. His enemy just supercharged his costume, and now he had too much than he knew exactly what to do with.

A lightning punch in an Anti-Death glove slammed into Zach's face right as he pulled himself out of the lightning trap. Raijin's punch sent Zach straight back through that trap, then the villain flew forward himself and laughed as he got back the power he just blasted into Zach's face by flying through the remnants of his last trap. He slammed into the ground then bounced to the wall on his right, then ten stories up to his left so that he dodged the wave of Death that flew up the wall across the street from the spot on the other building that Zach thought he would bounce over to next. Then Raijin dive-bombed at his enemy, and he crossed his arms and slammed straight through the Death that Zach spiked up at him. As he had just dodged a wave of it, his enemy did not expect him to just dive straight through on the next move.

Raijin's arms uncrossed and he grabbed Zach around the neck right above the ground. Zach flipped around as he saw where Raijin's hands were already going towards. As they hit the pavement, Zach slammed Raijin down into the ground back-first by his arms. Raijin's fingers gripped tighter into Zach's neck though above him. His fingers gripped through the Death and made Zach's body more solid. He choked out the hero who suffocated but gripped his own hands harder into Raijin's arms. He was not piercing through the armor, but he was gripping so tightly that Raijin felt his flesh ripping under the armor. Raijin's right hand let go of Zach's neck as his left gripped tighter to keep choking him.

Raijin's right hand moved away from them to his right. His palm pointed up in the air, and his fingers twitched. Electricity sparked away from that hand. Zach saw the right corner of Raijin's lips curl just a bit higher. A bolt of lighting more powerful than any Zach had been hit by so far flew out of the sky from some unknown location. The next thing Zach knew, he was the one on his back on the floor and Raijin's hands were both down on his throat this time. Raijin strangled his enemy while leaning his head down directly over Zach's dark face that was becoming more and more defined as Zach choked out.

Zach's fists clenched slightly off of Raijin's arms. The villain pushed down on Zach's neck and leapt in the air as Zach rose those hands. Zach's fists hit the ground on either side of him and collapsed the street and sidewalks around him. A pillar of black smoke rose faster than the debris and ash from the slam of his fists. His body spiraled up in the air in a dark pillar that grew twenty times in size before spinning around in the air and flying at Raijin who was sprinting straight up the side of an apartment building.

A few blocks away, Aoyama staggered backwards. He was panting but he rose his right hand and rubbed under his nose that was bloodied from the last time he hit the ground on his face first. He turned and glared at Rabbit who hesitated and then bounced to his right, then his left, then up to a wall of a building just below a shattered window. He turned his body as his knees bent ahead of that windowsill, then as he saw Aoyama's bellybutton start glowing, Rabbit shot to the other side as where he was about to bounce to instead.

Rabbit came down and a beam of energy missed him. He twisted his body and dodged, and Aoyama started aiming again, and then both of them snapped their heads the same way down the street as a flash of yellow came around a corner and then a black blur slammed down into this street. That black blur bounced past the street, then it flew back and intercepted the yellow blur over the corner, and the black blur's arms gripped onto an arm in a white costume and swung in a direction unintentionally towards an evacuation center.

"Over here!"

"Not going to answer this time?!"

Shinso changed his voice over and over and shouted at the same time as his classmates. He tried to stay behind them or behind the black smoke veils that Kuroiro would create for him.

Marin sprinted at Kendo and yelled, "Cancel!"

All their Quirks Cancelled. A yellow and black blur that just flew above them got in the range and dropped out of the air. Zach's left fist slammed forward and into Kaminari's right shoulder that disconnected from the strength of the punch. The blond spun out before hitting the ground, and he rolled out of the way of Zach's left foot that nearly slammed down on his head. Zach was bare-ass naked now as his Death all vanished for a second. Marin's head turned in panic and sweat covered him head to toe. Neither Zach nor Raijin's eyes looked his way. The Class B students stared in disbelief at the sight of Zach Sazaki's burnt-up and blistered naked body. All of the new burns over his old scars that most of them had never seen in such detail was a horrifying sight for anyone. Raijin twisted his own right arm and made a popping noise of getting his arm back in place with no more than a wince on his smirking expression. Zach dove at Raijin with Death re-engulfing his body though as sparks came back out of Raijin at the same time.

Two black blades formed in Zach's hands that he swung down at his enemy who whipped up two blades of white that clashed with them. Zach's third arm punched out of his stomach and into Kaminari's gut, knocking his friend and nemesis up into the air at ninety miles per hour. Kaminari coughed in his helmet, but he swung his right hand down and released the white blade in it at his enemy who pulled his head to the left quickly. The blade slashed across Zach's right cheek though, and red came out too in the splash of Death from Zach's face.

Zach did not slow as he was grazed though. He grabbed Kaminari by the front of his costume and ripped backwards while kicking forwards. Raijin's body zapped with electricity and made Zach flinch, his body inside the Death and the aura itself all being filled with electrification that he could not withstand as it hit every single cell at once. The electricity that Raijin's body could handle was too much even for the force of Death who was grabbed by his right hand and then swung around and released in a flash of lightning away from here and out of sight of all gawking spectators.

Bolts of lightning slammed into dark clouds that smashed through buildings and darted around across the air. They crashed into and through streets. Both went underground, and Kaminari backpedaled as the dark force filled up the entire tunnel ahead of him then sped down it with nowhere for him to run. His sparks hit the insides of this tunnel they entered from what Zach thought was chance as he had been the one to break them through it. The walls all illuminated though, and red lines shot under his feet and up the walls around him. BOOOM!

The street ripped apart, and then lasers shot from the buildings on either side of the broken road that Zach came flying up out of. Raijin slammed down on Zach's head as he dodged above those lasers. Turrets popped out of the walls behind Zach and aimed at his back. They unloaded, but Zach saw the white color of the bullets flying towards him and did not risk even attempting to turn his body intangible for a moment. Every attack is meant to kill, Zach thought. He did not think Kaminari would try to fight him any other way. He felt enormous pain in his right shoulder where he still had not removed that bone blade, and his right cheek was also gashed open and he could feel the blood dripping down and off his chin as he dodged bullets and his enemy's kick all while in mid-retreat through the air away from red lasers that chased after him.

Raijin's kick missed, but lightning shot out of the sole of his foot and into Zach who flinched. He had pulled far enough away though and already sent the curving blades of Death that sliced apart the turrets that no dangerous bullets hit him in that moment he flinched. Raijin's heat lasers cut him in his right shin though before he could pull it away. Then Zach got a knee in the face, and he was hit by bolts of lightning so powerful that they made the electricity-fueled knee feel like just a taser zap. He would have screamed in pain if he had any air in his chest that formed fully inside the dark veil when Raijin's knee in its Anti-Death armor slammed into him.

Near an intersection that was no longer under their control, a group of heroes were surrounded on all sides. They had an Army of Death member with them. They had a few Tokyo vigilantes on their side. But Bitchess 'N Cream had the overwhelming number of allies who just kept appearing from all sides along with League robots that were as powerful or stronger than each foot soldier of their organizations.

Koichi pulled Pop-Step back and rested her down next to the injured U.A. teacher who was panting and gasping on his last legs. Cementoss was bloodied and gripping the ground under his knees in pain as blood pooled around their trapped portion of the street. "If you give up, I'll at least let you all be taken to Tartaros!" Bitchess called out at her enemies who were struggling to the bitter end. They were no longer the ones surrounded, and the new arrivals from Desusuta were almost all defeated and killed. Their bodies littered the road as did many other heroes who had been pushed back to one small part of the district now. "Intanzo has some great plans for what to do with all of you down there," Bitchess taunted the heroes who stood in their flaming capital city and suddenly wondered if the villains were about to take over their world.

Mt. Lady winced in pain but dragged herself up onto shaking legs. Blood poured down one but she glared towards Bitchess anyway and tried to focus on her Quirk. "We aren't letting you win," Mt. Lady countered. Even in the normal size of a human being, Mt. Lady sounded formidable to most of her enemies.

Revellum grabbed at the bullet wound on his lower right side. He stumbled back to his left and grabbed at his head that he heard too many voices screaming inside of, as a smirking short-haired villain on the other side of the heroes' group as Bitchess had targeted him with her Quirk and got in his head. I know how to counter this! COME ON! He screamed at himself internally for not being able to fight off this kind of attack yet, and his enemy was actually starting to sweat as they felt the counter-force in the soldier's head trying to push her away.

"Then you'll all die here-"

Crash!

The ground between Bitchess and Koichi who just stood back up and stepped forward to face this enemy, cracked and made dust fly up for a second. "Who the fuck is this now?!" Bitchess screamed angrily. Too many new arrivals kept popping up and interrupting her fight when she was thinking they were winning. She did not care who it was this time though, because each of those other times it did not come to matter anyway. She opened her mouth back up, then a flash of lightning passed by her side and stopped in front of her.

Manika Esiri blinked a few times in confusion as to why Raijin was there. Then she looked past him. Her face turned as pale as a ghost's.

"…You're wondering if I'm getting weaker! But you're the only one who is losing any strength Zach, something you could fix easily if you'd just kill some of my allies right here!" Raijin yelled. "How about it?! Want to power up and make this fight a bit more fair? Take as many of them as you want!" Raijin yelled ahead of him at his enemy standing only ten meters away and just in front of Koichi who could not breathe as he stared at the wisping black back in front of him in shock.

The dark aura simmered down around Zach's body. The veil pulled in around his torso and mainly on his face as Zach conserved some. He was panting but he did not think Raijin would attack him just because he was obviously taking a break. "No, you wouldn't do that," Raijin teased his friend who just glared him down as that darkness pulled from his face. Raijin cocked his head to the side while looking specifically at the bloody gash on Zach's right cheek and the blade sticking out of his right shoulder. "But as you only get weaker, I have unlimited energy all over this city, Zach! And I'm not getting weaker, because your Death can't get through my armor!"

"Lifebringer…" Mt. Lady whispered in disbelief. She was under the impression that he was dead. She could barely believe her eyes. Her lips pursed though as she stared at the boy facing down an enemy they all knew he had a fight to finish with. The villains all stared towards Raijin in even more shock, not because of his offer of all their lives to Death, but because of the amount of damage that this criminal mastermind had done to Death himself. All of the horrible burns were not enough. There was a blade sticking out of Death's shoulder, and there was blood all over Death's face that made that cheek wound look freshly inflicted.

He's really doing it, Bitchess thought in sheer astonishment. And he really survived, she thought about Lifebringer this time rather than Raijin. Both of them amazed her too much to say a word. The amazement paled in comparison to the fear she felt of these two who had not looked around at any of them since they arrived. Their fight was in a different league and every person there knew it.

Revellum's enemy was distracted by this development and got forced out of the soldier's head in that moment. Revellum turned himself though and looked back towards Zach Sazaki who he stared at in shock at how he looked right now. Death. The first, Death.

"My power is everywhere in this city. I'm limitless, and I won't weaken because this armor isn't something you can break. Don't you get it, Zach?" Raijin wondered towards his enemy who could not hide from anyone there that he was tired and injured. The fact that he had pulled back his own Death and was showing off these injuries only made it more clear that he was trying to conserve his Quirk, as if he barely had any left. Raijin thought nothing of that as it could all be a ruse or real, and he was going to take Zach as seriously as possible either way. He did taunt his enemy though in the time that Zach was taking to catch his breath which definitely seemed real, "I didn't just use any bones for my Anti-Death gear…"

Zach's fists curled at his sides and blood dripped off his right. The stream of red coming down that arm dripped to the floor next to him as Zach's teeth started grinding harder and harder. "No!" Raijin yelled at his enemy he leaned his face towards behind the clear visor of his helmet. "You know me better than that! I wouldn't risk fighting you without the best possible selection of bones. The most efficient hybrid, needed to be made of bones that I was certain would be effective against you!"

"Ra- rr- GRRrr- RAhh-" Zach's head was snapping back and forth. It blurred and some spit came out of his mouth as he drooled. His head raced and his heart pounded violently in his chest.

"Hahaha! I want you to know, that I only used the bones of people who you've revived before!" Raijin screamed at his enemy who was foaming at the mouth and looking to lose his sanity. Every one of Raijin's allies wished he would shut up, while the heroes and Zach's allies stared on in absolute horror and disgust. Their eyes filled with tears at the sight of Lifebringer's hands reaching up to the sides of his head and gripping through his dark hair and into his temples.

"How many do you think I killed?!" Raijin yelled. "How many people who you brought to life, did I go and hunt down and turn into my own weapons and armor? One dozen? Two?! A HUNDRED?!" Raijin cackled at his friend whose head snapped straight forward as his jaw unhinged and bled in the corners as it only partially turned into Death to allow it to be possible.

"RROOOOOAAAAAAGHGHHH!" Zach's voice was ungodly. Even Raijin pulled his head back. He expected some kind of agonized yell of grief mixed in, but all he heard was rage. Sheer, unadulterated, rage. The pure hatred and anger that radiated off of Zach's body turned the atmosphere around them five shades darker, and there were no clouds above them in this part of the city. Wind flew down the street and gave everyone deeper chills than that scream alone.

"Do you hate me?" Raijin wondered at his enemy as he brought his head back forward and stood straight up in front of him. "Do you think you can beat me, while I'm wrapped up in the bones of those who you saved just so that I could torment them to death a second time?" He asked his enemy these things while each of Zach's comrades got even more horrified and passionate looks on their faces too. Each of them wanted to help him. They wanted Raijin to stop talking already. They were enraged. Koichi and Mt. Lady both knew that they could have just as easily been choices of Raijin's to make into the very gear he was speaking of. "Tell me, Zach! What are you thinking right now?!"

More Death faded down Zach's arms and up his legs. His waist stayed wrapped in a thin veil of that dark aura, but the rest of his body lost his Death aura. Zach rose his dark red irises and locked gazes with his enemy who could not help but laugh again as that look of rage glared his way. Zach took in a deep breath. "You want me to hate you. You try so hard, but Kaminari…" Zach paused and his eyes narrowed. His enemy's smug look flinched at the sound of that name being spoken again. The left corner of Raijin's lips twitched as he saw that Zach recognized how annoyed that made him even as he tried to keep up his smile. The rage that Raijin hid was growing more though at Zach's response in a much colder but apathetic tone at him. "I'm not killing you out of rage. I want you to know that when you die here, it's because I can't let you hurt anyone else. That's all."

Cementoss darted his eyes to the back of his student who just stated aloud in front of a large group of heroes that he was going to kill his enemy. Neither Raijin nor Zach seemed to care though that there were others around them bearing witness to this fight. "You still think you can kill me?" Raijin wondered. The corners of his lips pulled higher up into his cheeks. "This city burns and you take a break to catch your breath because I'm beating you! Look at yourself! Look at your allies!" Raijin bellowed at him. "I haven't even begun to tap into my strength. The power that I've accumulated, is so much more than what you have left to offer me."

Zach lifted his left hand up. He grabbed the hilt sticking out of his right shoulder. SCrlch! Zach ripped the blade out and made blood splash up over his shoulder. He lowered his hand slightly and let blood drip off of that knife in his left hand just as it was off his right hand still down at his side. That hand curled into a tighter fist though just as his left did around the bone blade that he flipped around. Whoever you are, you'll help me win this battle. Zach did not know whose bones the weapon in his hand was made up of. He made a promise to them in his head though as he turned that bloody bone blade towards his enemy who had left it jammed inside him. Death on the brain. I'm wounded. He knows. I know. We know.

My allies are doing poorly. I can't run off. I have to chase him. He can attack me or run away. It's my job to stay on him at all times. He may go on the offensive at times but he can just as easily run away, and I need to stay with him. If he gets weak he'll have emergency measures to escape. If he slips away for more than a second from my sight, he can kill anyone he comes across. I won't let him. I won't let Kaminari kill anyone. No one else. Zach's brain was in his head, but it was shrouded in a dark cloud that rumbled around in and out of his cerebrum and cerebellum, curling inside of his medulla oblongata. His irises swirled with red color as his thoughts moved faster and faster. He's angry I won't call him by his villain name. It's getting frustrated. Taunting is in his nature because he can only act in ways that make him win, and the more he sees me in pain the more it feels that he's won. That doesn't mean he'll avoid killing me until I've suffered enough, but it is enough to get him to pause and speak. Giving me ten times as much time because our conversations haven't sped up even though both of our mental capacities have.

"I have stores of Anti-Death equipment all over this city. Bullets and swords forged with the sole purpose of cutting you down. Enough electricity stored to power this city for weeks if I wanted it to, which can all be weaponized in an instant. What do you have? A little remaining Death, and one of my own blades? Are you trying to come up with a way to beat me? Trying to figure out a way to save this city, when you're too busy fighting me? You know she's going to die while you're busy facing me. Don't let that distract you though," Raijin teased while his enemy's eyes darkened deeper back at him.

Act as if his mind games are mildly getting to you. Like you're holding off but also that it's not bothering you at all, which he'll be able to see through and make him continue on to get more of a reaction that I won't be able to hide as well like with the bones. Now, I'm injured. That's the biggest issue. I can't get any stronger while facing him. But I can prevent myself from getting weaker. I'm bleeding too much. That's not an easy fix. Wasting the Death to remove portions of myself will only exacerbate my wounds in the long run, and I made promises. I won't die here. I have to try my best not to, at least. And if this fight takes too long, and my Death does run out, the blood loss will continue but when I'm weaker and can't handle it anymore.

Think quicker! Faster! The Death raced around his mind quicker and through the synapses in his mind even faster than ever. His brain remained exactly where it was. It had solid form in his head but was surrounded in Death that made his mental processes occur so much more rapidly. It's not just my mind. Using Death I am able to speed up my movements. Not just by bursting Death out behind my limbs. I use Death to speed up. To move my body beyond its natural limits. Stronger. Faster. Thinking quicker. Seeing better. Seeing slower. Not breathing. Becoming all-around, more powerful. Smarter.

More efficient. That's the core of Death's upgrades. Everything I do becomes more efficient through the addition of Death. I've been testing my regenerative abilities. My broken bones healed in days. Killing Ares had a lot to do with that, but they were still broken the next day. I healed. Rapidly. So rapidly. A fraction of the time it would normally take. Without killing, just my natural regenerative abilities. Cuts I received against assassins faded. Nuomo's cut didn't last. This one is deeper. But I'm much stronger than then. Yet it won't heal fast enough. None of my wounds will…

Passively, at least.

What if it wasn't a passive ability? Zach's mind raced faster. Death focused on neurons around that thought. Parts of his brain shrouded so much deeper in darkness. Different synapses barely touching started surging with thoughts. The electrical signals shot across the gaps faster and faster. What parts of the brain control clotting blood? Was it passive for Ares? He mentioned healing his own wounds. Regeneration. Eziano had properties of regeneration. He could slow and stop his own blood loss. Eziano was just a man. Longevity has no power boosting ability to it. He managed that with hundreds of years of skill and experience. Training, but for a man with no power addition. I've had both. Ares obtained his power through hundreds and thousands of years. I obtained all that power though from killing him. So even faster. Not just a fraction of the time it took Eziano to learn it. I have the power already. I have far more power than he ever did.

It's in there. The ability to do so. It lays dormant until I can figure it out. And I know how! I know how he did it. Focusing on muscle regeneration. Skin reformation. Scarring. Blood clotting. Scabbing. I know how it works. I, I can do it manually. It doesn't need to be passive. I can force it. Maneuvering Death inside of- no! I, don't need it, Zach realized. They didn't need it. Power was there, not Death. Raw power. Power that Death gives me. Even without my Quirk, I've noticed. The strength. The, energy…

Zach's eyes closed. He gripped the knife in his left hand harder. His eyes opened slowly. They glared towards his enemy whose mouth froze open at the look Zach gave him. "You really think you are winning this fight?" Zach asked. His voice came out cold. The question sounded genuine. He wondered it as if seriously asking if Raijin thought that what he was taunting about was the actual situation they were in. Zach's question sounded like he was calling Raijin a liar for saying these things in a way like he actually believed it, when they both knew how much stronger Zach was than him.

The question just made Raijin smirk more though. "I know you're powerful, Zach. No one can deny that. But I'm still standing!" Raijin threw his arms out to either side. "I'm still alive, and you can't tell me that you're not weaker than usual! Just the fact that you didn't chase me out of Heroally right away and allowed me to get in this armor told me that much! You were too slow to prevent me from getting my gear, and you're not that far above me that you can just kill me, no matter how badly you want to- or, that you need to," Raijin corrected himself, because Zach told him already how much he did not "want" to do this.

Zach lifted his left hand to his face and ignored that entire response. He put the back of his fist against the start of the gash on his right cheek closer to his nose. Then he pushed that hand into his face hard. He dragged his fist hard across his face and brought his forearm over the gash. Steam came out of the start of the cut as Zach's arm carried past, and that steam came out of the whole wound over to the side of his face. Zach brushed his hand across his face and then lowered it while steam lingered on the closed gash that was no longer bleeding.

Kaminari's lips lowered down slightly from the big smile he had. His allies were staring at Death in disbelief at the sight of the scar going across the right side of Zach Sazaki's face. It had still been bleeding only seconds ago, and yet there was scar tissue over it now that got lighter and became harder to see. The rest of his face was still red and there were burn marks over sections of it like over the rest of his body. The burned skin around that gash had lost some of the discoloration to it though. The wisps of steam that came out of Zach's face were not black. Raijin's eyes narrowed on that gash as he attempted to see dark wisps, and he kept smiling but looked up from it and into Zach's eyes again after a moment of processing insanely fast what he just saw and changing his strategies based on it. "That's a new one," Raijin remarked.

"Since when can Death seal up your wounds?" Raijin asked his enemy in an interested tone. He did not sound upset or even that surprised, more like he just figured that Zach might have hidden abilities to his Quirk that he had never showed others before.

Zach's lips curled down farther at the corners though. His head tilted back and he looked down his nose at his enemy. "That you think I just used my Quirk shows how unprepared you are to fight me," Zach growled. His statement made Kaminari's smile vanish this time. Zach's eyes were cold. His voice was menacing and ominous. The implications of what he just said made everyone who saw what he had done either doubt the authenticity of his words or feel their hearts drop in their chests at the idea that he was telling the truth. "I don't need Death to kill you, Kaminari," Zach snarled. "But who said that I was running low?!" He wondered in a skeptical tone with his voice rising so much louder in volume.

Kaminari swung both of his arms forward. He had lowered them a little from when he held them out to his sides, but they were still outstretched to either side enough that his hands were able to flick in while aimed past Zach's sides. Zach's body had erupted in Death that covered him head-to-toe again in an instant. He also rose to twelve feet tall, and his arms that he snapped up grew bulkier and gained claws on the ends of them that he slammed down on the ground in front of him. The nails of those claws dug into the street and started pulling backwards to launch him after Kaminari who zapped electricity out the entire front of his body while flicking off of both of his hands at the same time. Raijin had never trusted that Zach was actually as low as he looked even as he taunted about it, mainly to try and get Zach to show off how much he still had. His allies were more caught off guard, as were Zach's own allies who were suddenly being attacked by huge bursts of electricity they were not fast enough to dodge.

Zach's body that covered in Death expelled giant black spikes from the back of his wolf-like Death form. As Zach slammed into the ground, Death on his back legs shot to the sides and made walls that blocked the lightning from hitting his allies. Out of the spikes on his back, the sharp black spikes on his head, and out of the front of his arms, a hundred black arrows flew out of him simultaneously. He dragged his hands backwards and launched himself forward after Kaminari, while a hundred black arrows flew away from him and at all the enemies whose locations he had a perfect lock on after those moments of talking where he was able to discern all of their positions and their mental states to see which of them were in a position to potentially dodge. He only needed to focus on a few Death arrows in particular which bent at sharp angles and shot to the positions that a few of his stronger enemies were able to start dodging into, only to panic more and then get knocked out as Zach predicted their attempts to dodge.

A flash of yellow flew down the street several blocks with a blur of darkness chasing after it. All of the heroes flinching and clenching their eyes shut steadied themselves and opened their eyes back up. Zach's skeptical shouted question was followed by actions from both parties that were too fast for anyone else to follow. The heroes and their allies could not track what had happened. They just opened their eyes back up, to see black arrows piercing through the chests and sides of their enemies. Those dark arrows pierced through their bodies and out of their backs. They were lifted off the ground and thrown by the force of being impaled by that dark energy. All of them hit the ground and skid or bounced to stops a second or two later. And the remaining AANTs were all pierced through their cores by much more solid arrows.

Zach and Raijin had disappeared from sight with nothing but trails of color to show where they had gone. And in this one part of the siege, Bitchess 'N Cream was down and a hundred different villains lay motionless on the ground around her. The heroes who thought that Zach Sazaki was completely ignoring them during this fight saw that those black walls had protected them. They saw their enemies were defeated, and yet a few glanced over to the fallen bodies of their comrades who remained dead around them. They felt guilt over their own frustration and anger that their fallen comrades had not been revived. That guilt over wanting more was stronger than those other feelings though, because they felt gratitude as well and pity for the person who just saved their lives.

"Lifebringer's really going to do it," Pop-Step whispered in shock. Her head was lifted even as Koichi had to help her stand still. "He's going to save us, again."

Cementoss looked down from the spot that Lifebringer just vanished from. The injured teacher from U.A. glanced at the floor where Lifebringer's feet had been. Two bloody footprints remained inside of large splotches of red that had dripped off of Sazaki during that confrontation. What Zach had said about the regenerative ability he showed off had amazed his teacher, and yet Cementoss just felt his heart race faster as he looked at that blood which had not pulled back into Zach's body when he sealed his own wound.

"You can pretend like you're not pissed!" Kaminari yelled while flying down the street, his head pointed back to the black mass soaring after him.

He spun and flicked a blade of white into that dark cloud. Zach saw steel points on the sides of the hilt that just came flying at him. His body of a Death pillar pulled apart and allowed the blade to pass through. Electricity sparked off of Raijin's sides though and into steel supports going up the walls of skyscrapers on either side of him. Those sparks entered into electrical wiring of the buildings and then shot specifically to exit ports on the exterior walls of the far sides that Raijin was still traveling towards. Those far walls he was passing as Zach sped up more to catch up with him, had "air conditioning" boxes sticking out of them. The generators sparked, and as Zach flew forward and the knife flew back, bolts of lightning shot out and connected with the knife out in the middle of the road.

Zach's body split apart more. His dark pillar ripped apart into multiple different streams of Death that swirled around thinner and then pulled back together slower this time. A human body strained itself to form inside of the dark mass that just separated thin again. It had to just get thinner than it had been since Zach pooled himself together back in the subway. He dodged individual sparks that jolted out from the blade and exploded across the air. His control over Death was precise. He spun away from sparking yellow bolts and then reconnected and formed wings out of his back that he flapped to send his body forward at Kaminari who just landed down and sprinted around the next corner to the left.

Zach spun around that corner and swung his left arm down. His left side ripped apart into a wave of Death that spread over the entire sidewalk and blocked every window. Arms of Death wrapped out of the wall and around heroes on that side of the street who Raijin just tried to electrocute as he ran past. Hands of Death too dense for electricity to break through grabbed onto heroes and pushed them out of the way right before Zach plowed through the space they were just in and threw a bone blade at Raijin himself who had to dive backwards and bend his whole body to let the knife pass over him. When Zach's face came closer to Raijin's, the blond smirked more and yelled as he unbent his body and zapped a huge wave of electricity into the spread-out mass of Death, "I know you are! All those people I killed, it makes you angry! You can lie all you want!" Raijin yelled while darting backwards and dodging a kicked slash of Death that flew at him.

His body twisted sideways and darted back forward. The slash suddenly jolted out in a sharp attack at where Raijin twisted his body sideways, but by also darting forward he avoided the second attack as well that Zach pulled towards him. "But I know that you hate me-"

"I am angry!" Zach yelled while stomping towards Kaminari. He dispersed Death around him and swirled it far to their sides to create a funnel that they were inside of. Death that broke out behind Kaminari did not keep pulling towards him but moved farther and spread to connect to more Death that Zach stretched to give them an arena. His stepping forward without much Death on him besides his lower body was a challenge to his enemy who stepped closer himself while flipping around two white blades he suddenly had in his hands. Zach created two blades of pitch blackness that condensed and became harder and sharper in his own grasp. "I'm angry that something like this happened. I'm pissed, that you did that just to hurt me, and I'm… frustrated, that you had to watch yourself doing that just for the purpose of hurting me."

Pain filled Zach's eyes. Raijin's teeth bared and he yelled, "I didn't have to do anything! I- I didn't watch- I was the one who did it!" Raijin's expression was getting beyond frustrated. He breathed heavily in his helmet that had anti-fog on the visor which kept him glaring straight through the clear face-shield and at his aggravating enemy. Raijin walked to his right and circled his enemy who moved to his own right in the rising spinning circle of Death gradually surrounding them higher and higher. The top of the swirling Death curled in on itself to make a domed roof, preventing any easy escape upwards. Raijin lifted his eyes towards that domed ceiling then lowered his glare back at his enemy walking around the inside of the circular battlefield. "I killed them. And they screamed for you to save them. Just like she did."

Zach put his chin down into his chest and slammed his eyes shut. Hearing those words out of Kaminari's mouth made his own mouth dry. It had his fingers twitching and curling over and over at his sides. "You ready to kill me yet? Do you want to do it, yet? Because to tell you the truth, Zach, I don't want to kill you either." Kaminari admitted it and tilted his own head back while Zach's eyes opened and locked with his. "You and I? This battle? It's all I've ever wanted. A true competitor. An enemy, who it's not so easy against."

"Shut up," Zach whispered. His voice had a pleading tone in it but it was also just soft and barely audible to his enemy.

Raijin smiled wider and called to him, "I told you before! Victory is in the eyes of the beholder. What kind of win is it when you have to hold back so much? Every other fight. Everything leading up to this. I kept so much hidden, from everyone! All for this one fight. All, just for you." Raijin smirked the right corner of his lips higher. "Because this is the only fight worth having. The only battle I truly care about. Tokyo? Japan?! This whole world means nothing! Not if I don't have you to face me. It… felt so empty, fighting the others. I let them show me all they had because I desperately wanted to feel it. The spark I feel now. This!" Raijin swung his arms out to the sides. They were inside of a swirling vortex of Death that could all collapse in at any moment and kill him. His enemy was the one person who had ever defeated him before. His heart was racing and his smile full of joy and fulfillment.

"Stop smiling like that," Zach seethed through his teeth. "With his face-"

Kaminari's expression twitched and he yelled, "It's my face!"

"Stop-"

"I MEANT to do all of this!" Raijin screamed at his enemy. "You still think there's someone else in here?! I AM a villain, Zach! And you're delusional-"

"Kaminari would never do something like this, if he wasn't stuck. Pushed down by some shade of-"

"RAIJIN!" The blond screamed at his enemy. He cut off Zach who closed his mouth and stared down his enemy with no smug expression but a look showing he had known that it was angering the villain. Raijin's teeth ground back and forth so they made a scraping noise in his ears. "Call me by it. Call my name!" Raijin's body erupted in sparks that shot out of him on all sides. They pushed forward into Zach too, as well as back into the wall behind him that they darted in and out of as it continued to swirl around them.

"No," Zach finally responded. "Goodbye, my friend," Zach had just been hit by sparks that flew straight into him. He did not flinch. His fists curled. All of the swirling darkness in the dome around them shot inwards.

Zach's red eyes darted to his left and up towards the top of the incoming dome. A blue glow that just shone through the darkness blasted an eight foot wide hole. The beam of blue energy that just shot into the Death field out of nowhere passed between him and Raijin. Zach's body turned fully into darkness and pulsed out towards the large hole where the beam ripped through, while he closed that hole up at the same time to stop the huge bolt of yellow lightning that just flew up there from the spot Raijin stood in.

Zach's red eyes started darting back to the other side of the dome's interior. The beam had ripped a larger hole on the upper section to his left initially, but it had continued passing through the field and had slammed into the opposite side of the Death dome as well. The hole on that side was not ripped open as much, but a smaller bolt of lightning flew over there and actually had a body inside of it unlike the larger diversionary one that Raijin had tricked him with.

It was all happening in an instant. The beam was still fading from its path, but a trail of yellow light followed after the blue towards the opposite side than the beam came in from. That smaller hole started to close as well, and Raijin pointed both of his hands out in front of him just before he was reaching the dome's exterior that was still closing in on him but now pulled in faster all around that hole as Zach's red eyes were darting to his real position. Two of the dashes on the back of Raijin's pack lost the blue glow above them. That blue glow transferred into his arms. The lines going down his Anti-Death armor glowed so brightly blue that it looked as if his entire arms were glowing with the color. Two small holes on the palms of his hands opened up, and he put his palms closer to each other so that the beams that blasted out of his own body connected and made a beam twice as thick as the one that had fired into the dome a second ago.

He could see the exterior of the dome in his visor already. The visor that looked clear from the outside had visuals on the inside like his goggles had earlier. He targeted the position he was stuck in while conversing with Zach, and while making no signs that he was in the middle of coordinating a counterattack and a way out of a seemingly trapped position. Firing the beams out of his hands ripped open the closing hole and blew away the Death that was pulling in towards him. He spun around immediately after passing through the other side of the hole. He bounced on the street and then curled the fingers of his left hand and swung it downwards.

A pillar of black smoke flew out of the same side of the dome that Kaminari just emerged out of. As he bounced off the pavement and farther from his enemy's swirling black vortex, Zach's humanoid body sprinted out of the black pillar moving two hundred miles per hour down the road. Another three beams of blue light fired out behind the vortex behind Zach. His red eyes darted to the left corners of his vision as the first of them was nearing his side, and he yanked away- which put his back directly in the space that the second of the beams fired out of his collapsing dome behind him. Zach was hit in the back by a thick beam of blue light that took him off his metaphysical feet that broke apart and then reformed as skin and flesh as he rolled on the ground.

A black wave flew down the road and rose up like a tsunami as Raijin sprinted back the other direction and at where Zach was rolling. Zach kicked down on the floor in mid-roll and bounced up, barrel-rolling in midair and punching his right arm out at his lightning-covered enemy. A wave of darkness rose up over him while he was punching. Raijin ducked his punch. The villain slashed across Zach's left side as he sprinted by, then he dove forward through the hole ripping through the black wave that the third beam fired created. That beam passing Raijin hit the ground where Zach tried to slam his Death down to intercept him, and blue light, pavement, and Death exploded out in different directions.

Zach's Death flew around to the sides of the street and wrapped around fast-moving debris about to slam into buildings. As it pulled away, Zach landed and stumbled while grabbing at his left side where blood spilled from a shallow gash. He had seen the white blade Raijin was about to slash him with coming and nearly pulled his body away enough even after just missing a punch of his own. His legs were turning back into darkness before he even landed, but he had to solidify them more while gripping onto the bloody wound he could not prevent.

Zach glared between the halves of his Death wave that lowered chunks of the road safely down to the sidewalks next to buildings that still had people in them. He glared towards Raijin across the hole in the road and where the villain with blond hair stopped backpedaling a "safe" distance from his enemy. Zach glared back towards him with red eyes full of fire that got darker as the villain smirked maniacally at him. "You did so little all this time you were back in Japan," Raijin taunted down the road to his enemy who darted a look over his head. Zach snapped his eyes back down from the cannons that stuck out of opposite walls a few buildings behind Raijin and were still pointed down towards him with blue glows on their barrels. Did he lead the fight to this street intentionally? Or is it just that every street is this fortified in his weapons against me?

"I didn't even tell my closest allies about most of my preparations," Raijin continued towards his enemy who he saw examining his defenses and now checking out random portions of this street. Waste time looking for my countermeasures. I hid them all so well, and all the obvious locations you'll be concerned about and looking out for are areas I wouldn't place them. They're everywhere but nowhere you'd be ready for! "Not until days before this invasion," Raijin called over to his foe. "And even then," he rose his tone and chuckled, "none of them know about some of my most intense preparations."

"Haha- I would even laugh at them! I would taunt them for stupidly suggesting going after Virtucorp and taking their technology. I would talk about it as if it were impossible and would only draw the ire of the Army of Death, but in reality," Raijin continued with a bigger grin. He paused as his insinuation set in for his enemy who already figured something like this based on Raijin's technological prowess in this battle thus far. "Your friends who gave you that epic entrance back there may be good at what they do… but I'm the smartest man in the world," Raijin bragged. He tilted his head back and taunted louder, "I wasn't just stealing their tech. I was making it even better. I heisted. I invented. I… experimented."

The tone in which he said that word dug so deep into Zach that he could not keep it from his half-shadowed expression. Zach's expression immediately re-intensified back focused solely on the fight and not on what horrible atrocities Raijin was suggesting he had committed. He did so because he heard something coming from back behind him, as well as ahead and past Raijin farther in the distance. …whr whr whr-Whr-Whr-Whr-WHR-WHR-WRRWRRWRR…

A couple of kilometers away, Gentle bounced off an invisible elastic barrier in the air in front of him. A condensed spike of cement and steel slammed into the same barrier on the other side of it and bounced back away. That spike curved upwards though then swerved over the barrier and down towards Gentle who swung his right hand up and bounced himself farther down, before throwing his left hand to the side right where Intanzo just directed the spike.

The ground underneath Gentle cracked far below. Steel pipes ripped out of the street and flew up towards his legs. He forced out Gently Rebounds on the air below him. Danjuro was panting but he flipped backwards while bouncing away four different attacks coming from Intanzo all at once. As he was on the defensive too, Endeavor attacked Intanzo and threw a bolt of flames that just barely missed the enemy who flew out of the way in the nick of time. The heat from the flame bolt burned the villain through his own costume though even as it withstood the flames. It was just too hot that Intanzo winced while pulling away. The villain flew himself much higher up, and he grit his teeth while glaring down at Endeavor who flew up after him by slamming his arms back behind him and firing jets out of both palms.

The spike that bounced back from Gentle's second Rebound that stopped it, shot back towards the space between Intanzo and Endeavor. It forced the hero to cut the flames from his palms and duck, his body dropping just below the spike that he twisted himself underneath then pointed his fingers of his left hand up at Intanzo who swung both arms at the walls of tall buildings on either side of Endeavor and dented them inwards. Then those walls ripped away, and some civilians on the insides of them were too close to their windows where they were watching the fight from.

Endeavor changed his direction. He switched from attacking to rescue, as did Gentle for a moment as he bounced around and threw barriers at civilians that sent them softly back into the buildings they fell out of. Endeavor caught two different young men and started dropping to the ground with them, while Gentle bounced upwards to defend against those huge walls that Intanzo was about to throw down at him. Those walls were breaking apart into many different weapons that moved farther from each other, giving too many targets for Gentle to defend against.

In the intensity of the fight, in the midst of a battle where they were fighting Japan's most wanted villain and trying to save every civilian they could… the hero and the villain and the vigilante all turned their heads. Endeavor told the civilians to run and they did, but his eyes had already shifted to the right. They bulged as he stared down the road and towards an attack helicopter that had blades making loud whirring sounds as they spun around above it. Out both sides of the helicopter were what looked to be minigun turrets and rocket launchers. The helicopter was painted white.

Intanzo stared towards a vehicle he had never seen before. It looked too weaponized to be the heroes', and it was not the color that the Army of Death made all of their own vehicles. He also knew that Gentle was attempting to pretend like the AoD were not even there, so bringing in an attack helicopter made no sense. It's ours- Raijin. Why would he… Intanzo's breathing picked up. His heart started racing. His eyes grew as wide as Endeavor's as he stared down the road and around a corner to where an explosion of blue light just pulsed up over the tops of buildings, mixed with giant swirls of pitch blackness. "Impossible," Intanzo whispered.

Gentle turned his head back first. He looked away from what distracted the others, and he smirked up towards Intanzo who saw that in his peripheral vision and slowly shifted his gaze back onto the gray-haired enemy glaring up at him. Despite all of Intanzo's weapons floating in the air around Gentle and the damage to the city around them that Intanzo had caused, the Gentle Criminal was smirking at him and laughed in a condescending way at his enemy. "…Heh, haha. Did you really believe that you had killed him?" Gentle asked.

He wondered it loudly at his enemy who stared back with eyes that were still wider than Gentle's had gotten even when he first looked that way and saw the signs that Zach Sazaki was alive. Endeavor looked back up and at the back of the Gentle Criminal in shock himself. Gentle's smirk got more menacing as he stared up at Intanzo and into the villain's soul. "You're an imbecile. He is not one to die from a single explosion. You fool… All you did was make him angry." He put a hand up to his own forehead while shaking his head in a sarcastic way teasing his enemy for being so dumb. "I can only imagine the rage you've stirred inside my good friend. I would rather you face justice, but who knows how many of you will remain alive when the dust settles today?" Gentle's hand lowered down past his eyes while his shaking head stopped partially bowed. His eyes glared up through shadows cast by his gray hair and under his eyebrows.

For a moment, both Endeavor and Intanzo looked at a man who they realized simultaneously was Death. Zach Sazaki had stopped being Death a long time ago. He had given the mantle to this man, and the Gentle Criminal's tone and expression matched who they knew he was now. He taunted his enemy while bouncing in midair surrounded by potential attacks that could all fly at him at once, and yet they all knew that Gentle could protect himself from those attacks with little effort. This was a man who had fought in war. They had seen him stand while on the verge of death and face down an army of powerful enemies who were fresh and all wanted him dead. As much as he was speaking on Zach Sazaki as the most intimidating and unstoppable force in the city, suggesting he might go and kill Intanzo and his allies, it was Gentle who intimidated his ally and enemy at the same time.

Intanzo's shaken look settled back down. Raijin was smart then. Hiding his full arsenal from everyone, ensured that no spies for the AoD in our own ranks could warn Sazaki. This city is his weapon. A massive civilian population makes it harder for Sazaki to fight. The bomb will have weakened him just as Raijin believes. In which case, I should just leave it to him. As untrusting as he has been of me, I must trust him now and not save it just in case I need to face Lifebringer myself.

"I don't think so," Gentle's voice was low. He slammed his hands behind him and bounced higher into the air. The pouch on the lower back of the spiky-haired villain that just opened up released a vial of something into the air behind him out of Gentle's sight. The villain did not question his enemy's quick reactions or instincts to know what he was about to do. Intanzo just swung both arms down at Gentle and pulled all of the Matter in all directions towards the man who bounced himself rapidly back and forth between flying sheetrock and glass shards. He jumped up over a metal pipe flying a hundred miles per hour towards his head, then he spun himself around by spinning in midair and bouncing off of Elasticized air he created that repelled debris shooting as fast as shrapnel from a grenade at all parts of his body.

Gentle bounced up above the mass of Matter and had trails of it all pulling up after him. It came diagonally towards his sides and in front of him between him and the villain whose vial of Double Trigger rose up behind his head and the plastic covering of the needle popped off on its own. Gentle was too far still. He was forced back by all the material that Intanzo had control of. Intanzo had the needle coming towards the side of his neck. Then the corners of his vision flashed bright orange.

The way that Gentle had bounced up towards Intanzo was not random. His actions were intentional. While blocked off from the villain's sight for a mere instant, his gaze had darted down to the top hero below who saw that look and prepared as Gentle had been nothing more than a distraction for their shared enemy. Endeavor had yelled around at the civilians near him to clear out of there, looking like he was more focused on evacuation and that he was leaving Intanzo to Death. But his real reason for yelling at everyone to clear the street was so the fiery explosion that came from him would not burn anyone alive. The force of flames he exerted below himself sent him flying straight up and directly behind the villain whose head started turning to the left with his eyes growing wider and his Double needle moving quicker to his neck. Too late! Intanzo saw Endeaver's right fist punching upwards from how it had pointed down first and fired flames out to get him this high in a second.

That uppercutting fist was inches from Intanzo's turning side. It was engulfed in flames and burning brighter than the rest of the flaming trail into the sky. Gentle's lips curled into a smirk at the look of surprise on Intanzo's face as he realized that Endeavor was there too fast for him to stop.

And then Endeavor was gone. His fist that had been about to touch Intanzo was missing. The force of the fiery wind that pushed into Intanzo was not joined by a fist smashing powerfully into his side. Intanzo blinked in shock. Gentle's jaw dropped and his eyes bulged at the sight of the glowing red elbow extended out in midair in place of the top hero of Japan. A madly smirking villain with burn scars all over his face, mixed with other more-recent scars that looked like stitching too, had Blasted-Off faster than anyone had been able to follow. Intanzo stared at his ally behind him who did not even look at the man he just saved from Endeavor's fiery punch.

Furuki Keymar had appeared out of nowhere. His eyes were locked straight on the hole in the apartment building that Endeavor had smashed through. Pieces of the wall were crumbling around the man-sized hole and making it even larger. The villain known as Splodo grinned even larger as he started to fall. He kicked his legs below him and Blasted up way higher in the sky than Intanzo was, and he screamed down towards the hole that he just sent Endeavor through, "HOW DOES IT FEEL?!" The burn scars that wrapped around the bottom half of his skull and onto his neck were less pronounced due to the extra scars that wrapped around the sides of his head and up over his now-bald skull. It looked as if whatever experimentation had been done to the bulkier man than he had once been, must have ripped him apart if there were scars in so many places. And yet there were burns around those scars that looked as if the skin had been stitched up afterwards. As if the villain had prevented his own blood loss for long enough for the League's scientists to close him up and keep him alive after the experimentation had concluded.

"Hahaha- HAHAHA! YOU DEAD, ENDEAVOR?! No, I've been waiting for this for TOO LONG! GET YOUR ASS BACK OUT HERE AND FIGHT ME, YOU BITCH!"

"Splodo," Gentle muttered. His eyes snapped down and his teeth grit furiously at the sight of a needle sticking into the side of Intanzo's neck.

"Thank you for your assistance," Intanzo said. His voice was not too loud but Keymar still smirked while darting a quick look towards the Gentle Criminal.

"Want my help killing Death too?" Splodo wondered. He was not seeing anything from the hole he just sent Endeavor into. "I think I may have knocked out Endeavor already. I'll go finish him in a second, but I definitely felt ribs cracking on that elbow."

Is he bluffing? Gentle wondered while darting another look to a villain he did not even know was part of the Radians. He had assisted Intanzo from out of nowhere. No one even knew that Splodo was associated with any of the main villain groups of the nation, and everyone had hoped that he was still unassociated. The League had promised Splodo a second chance at Endeavor though, with an "edge" this time that they definitely delivered for him.

Splodo shook out his right arm as he arced out of the air, looking towards Gentle now as there was no response from the hole in the wall where he had just sent the top hero flying. "Don't even feel a thing," he said in a smug tone. The power in which he flew into Endeavor would have broken his arm had he attempted such a speed before his enhancements. He just grinned in a cocky way now though while looking down the leader of the Army of Death in complete confidence in his own ability.

Intanzo closed his eyes as the Double Trigger poured into his bloodstream. His body shook and all the debris that was falling out of the air after everyone froze on Splodo's arrival, froze as well. That falling debris stopped dropping. The entire city below them started shaking too. Splodo's own cocky look darted down and his eyes grew wider then snapped back to Intanzo below him whose eyes snapped open wide and glowed dark green but brightly from his skull. Not just his irises, but Intanzo's entire eyes glowed so brightly that dark green light was exuding like flashlights from his head. And a dark green glow surrounded giant pieces of matter all over this section of Nerima that had been discarded on the streets nearby.

Splodo popped his hands down below him and flew up higher again to get farther from the Radians' leader. Even though a second ago he was thinking about how he could take on Endeavor and Death like it was nothing, he felt pressure coming off of Intanzo that was shaking the very air around them. Gentle felt the air thin around him. He bounced himself farther from Intanzo because of it, but also because of the faster-moving rubble that flew up into the sky and started spinning around Intanzo with a hundred foot radius around that flying villain.

Gentle spun his head to the left and started at a giant leg of the Scorpion that he had left resting against a wall of a building several streets away. That leg just dragged up the side of that building and was flying towards Intanzo. Other pieces of Scorpion legs flew up in the sky and started pulling back together. They were glowing with a green aura just like Intanzo, who all those Scorpion legs started flying straight over to instead of into the growing funnel of Matter that Intanzo was spinning around him as a shield to protect him from any potential attacks. Intanzo smirked through that veil of rubble as huge sheets of metal started pulling together below him. The machine that Gentle had needed to use its own material to damage it, was bent like it was as malleable as playdough. It wrapped around his body. Sleek dark-purple and black metal sheets wrapped around Intanzo's arms and legs and made the villain thicker and larger. The legs stuck into his wider back and connected in while the huge metal joints condensed thinner and then created new joints while steel reconnected into itself, ripped plates welding back together from sheer force alone.

Wood and metal and glass all started to thin out on one edge as it spun around Intanzo. Hundreds of pieces of rubble were sharpening on one end or the other. They stopped spinning around as much and just hovered all around the villain who now had four massive metal legs connecting to his back and all the way down to the street below. His green eyes glowed out of the black steel helmet he created for himself. The walls of buildings down below had bent outwards and were crumbling from the pressure of being pulled into his Matter Control.

Gentle glared into those glowing green orbs. He ignored the man above Intanzo who smirked more at his leader's insane power, and Splodo started to grind his teeth as he saw Death completely forgetting about him and only focusing on Intanzo. "Don't forget, there are two-" Splodo's voice cut off. His eyes shifted to the left as he was falling. A dark red glow came out of the hole of a building on that side of him. Intanzo's glowing green eyes shifted that direction for a moment too before going back onto the enemy who was only facing him, and who was not looking deterred or afraid at all even after his injection of Double.

Splodo turned completely though as he understood why Gentle was not focusing on him anymore. A hand reached out of the hole and gripped onto a broken wall outside. That wall started to melt. The glass all around that apartment which had luckily been evacuated beforehand, started to melt just as the room behind the hero in that hole burst into flames. The walls were melting. The fire alarm went off and the sprinklers turned on, but the metal pipes in the walls and on the ceiling were melting, and the water going through them was evaporating immediately. It turned into steam that could hardly shroud the man engulfed far too brightly in his own flames.

Blood spilled down the right corner of Endeavor's lips. His chest ached and his whole body was in pain after being hit at such speeds by someone he had not expected to face again today. Endeavor glared through the flames around his eyes though and up into Keymar's surprised eyes that turned more excited every second that the hole around Endeavor was melting. "Good," Splodo said, his expression turning deadly and his fists curling down at his sides. Those fists started pulling behind him and glowing bright red with smoke coming out of them, just as his entire back was doing the same through his dark red costume. "I'm not done with my payback yet."

"I have this," Gentle assured without looking towards Japan's Number 1. He did not want Endeavor rushing. He kept his own gaze locked firmly on Intanzo's. As bright red explosions blew through the sky behind Intanzo, Gentle bounced himself forward and right through rubble that slammed into him with sharp edges that bounced off his suddenly Elasticized body. He flew straight towards Intanzo and reached forward, grabbing Intanzo's helmet on the eye-hole and yanking down towards his own knee. A metal plate broke off of Intanzo's chest on its own and slammed into Gentle. It sharpened as it hit him, and it pierced through the Elasticized armor and into Gentle's own costume, but Gentle's criminal costume was made of the same strong material as the Army of Death's even if it was not the usual black color. And Gentle was able to bounce himself back away and then spiral through the air to avoid two massive Scorpion legs that Intanzo swung up at him.

Endeavor had flown back towards Splodo but was unable to shoot off as much flames as possible with the building behind him when he started. Splodo's speed was more. They flew down out of the air but Endeavor did not let himself get slammed back-first into the ground by his faster enemy who was larger than the last time that they fought. As he twisted them around and slammed Splodo into the ground first that tore up in a long trench they dragged several blocks, he looked down into his young enemy's eyes and saw nothing but hate behind the pain in his eyes at having his back dragged through the ground like this.

Splodo's arms started to glow as they bounced along the ground at his sides. He slammed one up into Endeavor's face while smashing the other down on the floor below himself. The ground exploded and Endeavor was thrown away from him at the same moment. The power in which he hit the floor was more than what he was able to put into the punch upwards into the hero. That slammed blow into the ground also came just after he punched the hero, and as Endeavor was thrown off of him, Splodo flew back up and slammed into Endeavor's gut and bent the hero over his own body. "Die die DIE!" Splodo punched fist up after fist into Endeavor's gut, burning through his costume and launching Endeavor higher and higher into the sky each time.

Endeavor's entire body erupted in a massive flame that pushed down into Splodo and made him reel backwards. The villain falling down out of the air farther below Endeavor pushed his head up into the bright orange flaming sun above him. He glared straight through the fire and into Endeavor's eyes even as his skin reddened and his body burned. "NOT THIS TIME! ENDEAVOR!" Splodo's entire body glowed bright red. Smoke came off of his arms and legs as Endeavor was repositioning himself in the air above and aiming his hands down at the villain.

Thin wires of red flames fired from Endeavor's fingers. Two of them pierced through Splodo's right leg. One beam of flames pierced through his right bicep and his shoulder and through his back out of his shoulder blade. Another few just cut along the sides of the villain who had blood splashing out of him all over. Splodo slammed his legs and arms backwards. A trail of smoke could not track him fast enough. Endeavor's eyes widened as his enemy vanished, as did all of the heat and flames in front of him that were dragged away as the oxygen was pulled from the air that followed Splodo in a funnel nearly spinning the hero to the side that Splodo just passed by him.

Splodo was above Endeavor and on his right side. Endeavor's head started turning that way as the wind dragged his body sideways. His eyes rose up to the figure whose body was no longer visible inside of the blurry thick red veil that covered him head to toe. Endeavor's eyes focused mainly on Splodo's right elbow that he had grabbed just below on his forearm using his left hand. That left hand was gripping so tightly that blood steamed out of his ripping skin, as his right arm's muscles bulked and the blood coming out of the piercings from Endeavor's sharp flames turned to bloody steam as well. Splodo elbowed back and down to his side, his whole body twisting while his Quirk sent him down into Endeavor. His elbow connected and shattered Endeavor's jaw. Teeth broke and flew out of the hero's mouth as well as through his left cheek that was hit by fast-moving shards of teeth at too fast of speeds not to break through his skin.

Endeavor flew out of his own flames. He moved too fast that he hit the ground in the same second he was hit. Splodo's huge smirk right as his elbow connected lowered down slightly. He was in a lot of pain, but his enhanced body made it easier for him to ignore it. His own glow faded as he was dropping out of the air and could not use his Quirk immediately after using it to reach such speeds. Didn't feel his neck crack. Thought that one would do it. Splodo's left hand that had gripped tightly onto his left arm had released after his elbow connected, but he reached back over to his right arm that was at his side and swinging back and forth in a way that caused him pain as he dropped. Fucking Dice was right. "Such speeds at which you ripped through Doctor Suresh remarkably did not end your own life. Even this enhanced body could barely handle such power though, as I'm sure you noticed yourself." Splodo rubbed over his right elbow and ground his teeth but lowered his hand from the arm that had weaker nerve endings on it to cause him pain, but which he could still tell had broken just like Endeavor's jaw had when their bones collided at such speeds.

Quirks could adjust human bodies so that the users could handle their own abilities. As much as the League's experimentation had been able to upgrade the villains' Quirks, and even adjust their bodies to be able to handle some extent of that extra power, the natural Quirk-enabling adjustments that the body would go through in order to assist with using Quirks was a much harder thing to artificially modify. Splodo's Quirk was already one that he had to be extra careful with in order to prevent hurting himself. After the experimentation, had he only had the body enhancements he would have been able to handle some more of his own Quirk but the Quirk itself would not have gotten any stronger. Adjusting his body and the Quirk, he thought there would be a proportional increase in his strength and durability which would mean the same exertion of power as before would be even more devastating, but instead the proportions he had trained his whole life with were thrown off. His Quirk's power had improved far greater than his body's durability which he had discovered the maximum for early on after the adjustments. He had never seen the maximum power that his Quirk, Blastoff, could reach even before the experimentation, but he knew he needed to be far more careful with not exerting too much power since the experiments had taken place.

When Endeavor was cutting through him though, piercing through his limbs with multiple thin beams of red light at once, Splodo exerted just beyond what he had told himself he would keep his limit at in order not to self-harm. His smirk rose back up as he glared down towards the residential housing complex that Endeavor had smashed through, and from where there was not bright orange glow emanating this time. Not snapping his neck was fine. Any harder and I could have lost the arm. It doesn't need to end immediately. I want him humiliated. I want everyone to know that I humiliated Endeavor, before I killed him.

Gentle wished he could assist his ally as he saw Splodo a few streets away turning his body into a dive towards the building that he was certain he just saw Endeavor ragdolled through. His two strongest enemies from earlier had merged though. He was staring at both the Scorpion and Intanzo, but the Scorpion no longer had the mechanical limitations that Gentle had assumed earlier to be able to destroy it. The giant mechanical beast had weaknesses in its joints, it had vulnerabilities that he knew about because of his knowledge of advanced engineering and how power ran through such a large monstrosity to keep it going.

This metal monster had no electricity coursing through it. It had stronger plating in the joints, and yet those joints were bending even better than the Scorpion's legs used to despite having needed thin plating on those areas earlier in order to be able to walk like that. Intanzo could change the malleability of the steel though. It bent like rubber or ripped apart like paper.

An arsenal of weaponized city flew up behind the villain on four giant metal legs whose torso was engulfing in even more steel to make him look merged with the Scorpion himself. Gentle re-surrounded himself in Elasta-Armor, and he was toe-tapping on the Elasticized air below his feet to keep himself high above the city that was facing too much collateral damage. He was frowning down towards Intanzo though who he needed to keep aiming upwards even if that was at him. There were several tons of pieces of building and street and vehicles that hovered in the air behind Intanzo. Any Death touches some of his Matter-Controlled material, and he would be down. He is right to be intimidated by Zach. But, he is ignoring the knowledge that Zach's survival could mean his downfall. "One problem at a time," it looks like he's thinking. And with Death and Endeavor out of the way, it would become easier to kill Zach Sazaki. Easier to take Tokyo, Japan, and the world.

But just as Zach believes that Deku can defeat Shigaraki Tomura, Gentle's lips curled into a small smile as he stared down an enemy whose green eyes flared at that misplaced look of confidence on Gentle's face. I cannot let him down either by allowing Intanzo take this fight to anyone else. Gentle slapped both palms behind him and flew straight at his enemy who opened his mouth to call something out at him. He did not let Intanzo speak, he just shot towards him like a missile and punched his enemy in his steel-plated face.

Farther across the city, past where Splodo dove into a building's roof to beat on a badly injured Endeavor, the attack helicopter that they had seen flying overhead was hovering over the street it flew onto before stopping. It came in from one direction, while another helicopter looking just like it had approached from the opposite way and blocked off the sky on the other end of the street. There were cracks and scorch marks around the block. Two broken turrets were dropping from walls with blue explosions still fading above them with smoke and darkness seeping upwards away into nothingness.

Sparks and dark wisps vanished from the space between Zach and Raijin. Then Zach saw them in his peripheral vision coming up on the edges of the roofs directly on either side of him. Three large robots pure white like the helicopters hovered forward, though he was convinced that they were just painted the color. He wanted to believe at least that Kaminari had not killed enough revived people that all of these robots were actually coated in the same Anti-Death tevlon-bone hybrid material.

"While my AZ-AT's… my, Anti-Zach Attack Terminators, and the drone helicopters," Kaminari continued with a nod backwards towards the flying white gunship thirty feet behind him and a hundred above up in the air. "Aren't made entirely of my Anti-Death material, I would have you know that every bullet…" Raijin punched his arms out in front of him then twisted his wrists that glowed bright blue when he made that kind of movement in his technologically-advanced costume. The miniguns on the sides of the bottoms of the helicopter behind him started to spin around as he manually took control of the ship that his bluetooth helmet connected into the systems of. "And the shrapnel in every missile," Raijin went on, while wirelessly connecting to the other gunship and using the voice commands he had programmed before the battle to make two rockets load into place, ready to fire.

"They're all made from those same people who I wear for my armor," Raijin assured his enemy. He had yet to hear Zach say that he hates him. He had yet to hear his own name from Zach's lips. So his smirk grew as large as possible as he saw the expression on his foe's face that was so desperately holding back the rage that made his eyes and lips twitch violently. Raijin curled his twisted fists and then yanked his elbows backwards. He unloaded from the minigun turrets of the attack helicopter behind him. One stream of bullets flew straight at Zach and caused the hero to dodge, backwards instead of forwards at his enemy as the second line of ammunition just cut a track between Zach and Raijin to force the hero to dodge for longer before attempting a counter.

Every bullet was white. Raijin yelled out as Zach dodged, "Is it really okay to just avoid them all?! You're really fine with dodging each of the shots?!" Raijin yelled over the sound of his whirring helicopter blades and the spinning turrets and all the bullets that flew from them. He laughed louder and taunted his enemy who bit down and parted his lips showing how hard his teeth were bared as Raijin screamed at him, "Because each missed shot is a broken-down bone of one of my victims! Wasted- Torpedoes!" Raijin called out, and the first volley of rockets fired from the gunship behind Zach that he was pretending not to pay attention to as he dodged backwards closer and closer to it. Zach flapped black wings down and dodged the first explosion then swerved around the second rocket, while another two rockets replaced the first ones fired and then shot straight out at the enemy flying towards this ship.

As rockets missed and exploded away from Zach, Raijin yelled towards him, "That shrapnel is made up of the people who you doomed to be tortured to death, just by reviving them! Hahaha…"

"RAAAAA!" Zach spun his head and roared in rage back towards his enemy.

"HAHAHAHA…" Raijin's laughter grew louder as Zach responded to him. The attack helicopter Zach cut through the side of was riddled with white bullets that Zach continued to swerve around despite them being fired faster than normal bullets could. Then the ship exploded anyway while he was dodging attacks ripping through it. The self-destruct system inside of the helicopter also had bone-tevlon shrapnel around it that carved through the steel of the helicopter and ripped through Death that Zach winced upon feeling. Even as he had just swirled his body into a smoke cloud out of a hole in the explosion as it was happening, and there was no humanoid body for that material to pierce a specific point of him, it cut through the Death itself and caused him pain even without a body.

A smoking mass of Death shot out of the explosion downwards towards the street. Raijin flew towards it and swung his right arm at the smoking mass that was hit by lightning, right before it faded. His eyes darted back up to the humanoid-shaped form of darkness that erupted out of the top of the explosion and flew straight towards him from the smoke. The real one- is there! Raijin saw a black mass coming out of the left side of a smoke column that blew from the explosion. Red eyes were on that mass, but his eyes snapped back to the closer one while also catching another form coming out the opposite side of the same helicopter explosion that the AZ-AT's had targeted. All three had glowing sets of red eyes on them.

The one closest to him turned into a spinning drill that Raijin sped straight at and grabbed onto the arms of that were at the tip of that drill. He yanked them apart and kneed up into the dark form's face while two other masses of darkness sped towards his flanks. The mass he had gripped onto started to break apart into gas after he kneed it in the face, so Raijin released the left arm then extended his hand out into the shredding darkness of the form's chest and gripped it tightly. Zach's attempt to break apart was cancelled as Raijin's bone-tevlon glove gripped him into the physical plane, right before bullets fired from the arm of an AZ-AT that changed targets to fire at the head of the Death form Raijin was gripping.

Zach's head shrank down into his neck like a turtle pulling into its shell. He may not have been able to make his chest disperse, but his body needed no human form to exist physically. Raijin gripped into a sphere of darkness that had one protruding arm that he was still gripping with his other hand. Two other dark forms shot at his sides faster than the robots or turrets could trace. Raijin's body exploded with sparks in all directions. He electrocuted the mass he was gripping onto that still had a faint red glow coming from inside the hole where its eyes had disappeared to.

The other black masses pushed through the electricity even as Zach felt the pain of being electrocuted throughout. One suddenly stopped short as Raijin turned towards it, but it shot backwards and spun around into one of the AZ-AT's as if to show that Raijin turning its way had nothing to do with how it had stopped before reaching him. The other sped at Raijin then cut itself into the larger mass that Raijin was gripping and which instantly protruded eight huge spikes of condensed Death. Raijin released though and his pack glowed bright blue as did his hands and feet that shot him high in the air and dodging just in time.

The extra dark form that had sped at an AZ-AT slammed its left arm into the chest of the slower-moving robot that could not keep up with the humans' speed. Its left arm sharpened at the hand to try and pierce through the robot's armor, but the instant it touched the outer coating of the robot, Zach learned that Raijin was lying about the makeup of the robot's armor. They still might not have been "completely" made up of Anti-Death material, but Zach's metaphysical teeth ground in rage as his arm blew apart into nothing as it collided with the white armor that was clearly full of matter from those he had revived. His arm reformed and he pulled his head to the left and dodged a bullet fired from the mouth turret of this AZ-AT.

Raijin was speeding down at the larger mass he had just flown away from, but his eyes darted to the other black form that lost most of its black veil to show Zach's form inside it. His right hand pulled back and clenched into a fist while the AZ-AT was aiming back at this humanoid form that glared furiously up into its glowing eyes. Zach reached out with his metal left hand and gripped the robot by its right shoulder so it could not escape, then he punched his right fist forward and straight through the back of the robot as if cutting through butter. His hand turned and grabbed onto the top of the bottom of the hole he had ripped through, while his left reached down and grabbed onto the top of that same hole. Zach ripped either direction and tore the robot in two.

A hail of gunfire flew at the human form of Death, and the wave of darkness that Zach had left in the other mass flew in the way and created a wall between him and it. He dove down after tearing the robot in half while it was still ripping to either side and not even falling yet with gravity, but Raijin dove underneath his wall of Death and slammed his left foot into Zach's back. Zach's head did a one-eighty around his neck, and two arms reached up out of his temples and grabbed Raijin by his leg that the villain tried to pull back first.

Sharp blades of Death came out of Zach's palms as he gripped onto Raijin's leg. Lightning surrounded the villain, but Zach pushed through the pain of his Death cells electrocuting and continued trying to cut through Raijin's Anti-Death armor to get contact on his skin. Raijin's left arm rose up. They were just underneath the Death cloud Zach pulled above them. It no longer had red eyes in it. Zach did not see what approached Raijin's arm, as he thought Kaminari was just collecting electricity there because of the growing sparks that shot down from the wrist of the villain whose hand was slightly hidden. Then Zach heard the locking noise. Click. Clunk.

Something locked itself onto Raijin's arm. Zach did not see the AZ-AT transform while it flew towards Raijin. He did not see its body open up and its parts suck in and flatten together to create one large, heavy, white gauntlet around Raijin's arm. Blue lights glowed around the gauntlet to keep it up better than Raijin could due to its weight. Then the blue lights all glowed on the back of the gauntlet farther away from Zach, while Raijin surrounded the entire arm in Electricity and pulled down himself at the same time. Four dashes of Raijin's backpack dropped in an instant as his speed surpassed anything he had ever reached. The double propulsion at that much power was too much for Zach to dodge quickly enough. He turned his body and brought his right arm up to try and stop the huge white gauntlet from smashing through his head or chest.

SNAP!

Several city blocks away, Honenuki Juzo shook the body of his pro hero he had been interning with. "Vixen! Vixen please-"

"OI MUDMAN!" Bakugo roared down the street at the student from Class B who spun to see Explosion King glaring his way. Bakugo using his hero name shook Honenuki for a moment. Bakugo did not say anything else, but his eyes did dart to the giant leg on the street real close to where Honenuki had dragged his pro's destroyed body over to. "Get it together," Bakugo growled under his breath, though he did not need to say it as he saw Mudman getting back to his feet already anyway.

"Sensei," Bakugo continued. His eyes darted down to his final remaining pair of gauntlets then shifted over to his teacher who was closer to him and heard his voice.

Ectoplasm kept his gaze up in the air at the group who were keeping Machia's attention that high for now. Gran Torino flew around its head with Uravity who was tossing giant chunks of debris to distract the monster too, but Bakugo knew what its target was. "It's going to look back this way soon," Bakugo warned. "When it does, get its attention… Can you do that?" Bakugo had seen Ectoplasm take a lot of damage in his huge form earlier, and his supply of Clones had dwindled to the point that Bakugo did not know if he could get large enough to distract Gigantomachia again.

"Do you have a…" Ectoplasm stopped asking the question. He does, the teacher told himself. Just one side glance at his student told him that Bakugo Katsuki had a plan ready and was about to carry it out. The fact that the student asked him if he could do it first showed he was thinking far enough in the future to question which other heroes he could get for a distraction if Ectoplasm could not do it. "I'll draw its attention away from you," Ectoplasm assured. Then he sped off, and three other Ectoplasm Clones moved in to follow the leader past the leg of the monster that Honenuki glared at from the side of the road with Bondo Kojiro.

"Plamo! Mudman! Get ready to bring it to its knees," Bakugo growled loudly.

Other heroes nearby looked towards Explosion King and prepared themselves as the boy called out, "When it falls, we don't want it hitting the city that hard." Bakugo's shout assured them that whatever he was doing was going to take down the monster. Wanting it down on its knees first was just so that the fall of such a beast would not destroy the city around them.

Uraraka stared down past the enraged face of the giant who was mainly focused on Gran Torino who it seemed to know personally. Machia was fast, but Gran Torino was quicker. Machia started turning its head though and glaring back the other direction. Uraraka grit her teeth and she gripped onto the control sticks of the jetpack she had incorporated into her costume very recently. Her own Gravity was gone. She fired herself towards two huge chunks of pavement that were spinning around with Zero Gravity near her. She gripped onto one then flew to the other and gripped it as well. She could not control her jetpack very well with both hands curling around huge pieces of street, but she released for a second then fired some power from her jetpack that propelled her and her massive debris at violent speeds because of all their lack of gravity.

"HEY!" Uraraka screamed, and she threw one piece then the other at the right side of Machia's head.

The monster snapped its head back towards her and chomped its huge teeth through the first piece. The second piece blew apart on its face, and it punched its right arm up at the weightless girl who fired some power from her jetpack to get away. Even though the arm missed by a wide margin though, she was weightless and got dragged by the wind that was so forceful she was thrown hundreds of feet into the sky and lost all of her breath in an instant. She just kept flying farther and farther up at the same speed with very little to slow her down. Soldiers in a cloaked ship high in the sky opened their eyes wide and pulled the cameras on one of the drones up as some projectile looking like a young girl, just skyrocketed past their angle.

Uraraka returned her gravity and spun herself while recuperating in midair. She aimed herself downwards and turned back on her jetpack that she darted her eyes towards as she felt a jolt of electricity. Sparks were coming out of the pack, and she had to slide her arms out of the sleeves quickly and throw it aside in fear it was about to explode on her. She spun back and turned her body more but without the use of her jetpack. She dove down through the air with her arms at her sides. Wind pushed into her face but more into her visor that allowed her to keep her focused eyes open and glaring down at the top of this giant's head. It's too large to make weightless myself. I need to keep it distracted for whatever Bakugo's plan is though…

Uraraka looked past the giant she was divebombing towards. She looked straight towards her classmate whose eyes were lifted over Gigantomachia's head and looking straight towards her. What is he waiting for? She wondered. Sweat formed on the sides of her face. She gulped, then her eyes shifted back down to Machia's head. I can't, Bakugo. He's too large! I… If I do, its fall would… be weightless. It's used to being so heavy. Is that it? What if I can't lower it enough?! What if I-

Gran Torino yelled at the side of Machia's head, but the beast continued turning it this time even as Gran Torino flew down and kicked at a spot that Bakugo had blasted multiple times with his gauntlets. Machia did not even swat away the fly at its shoulder. It turned…

Bakugo grit his teeth as Machia ignored Gran Torino and looked towards him. Do it, Uravity-

Bakugo spun his head to the left. Uraraka stared past Bakugo and to his left side at the building behind him that was shaking, just as four others were past that building to Bakugo's left. The one just past the shaking one on Bakugo's side had been hit too hard and too many times. Floors were collapsing inside. Gran Torino was relieved that he had evacuated that building in precaution for Machia's attacks to stretch farther away. Sorahiko was staring like Machia did in a moment that the giant stopped for a second, staring past its target instead at the pitch black flames that were inside of a crater on the building on Bakugo's right side and behind him.

A ditch was ripped up in the road behind Bakugo where the dark mass had slammed into after breaking through several buildings on Bakugo's left. The spiky-blond-haired teen who spun left first saw the dark flames in his peripheral vision. His breathing sped up. His eyes were huge as he turned the other direction. He looked back and to his right at the cement wall of a building that Zach did not smash through as easily as the glass and steel of the previous ones. Floors and ceilings broke apart in those buildings with loud crashing noises behind him.

Zach fell out of the crater in that wall and was still engulfed in pitch darkness, but it was simmering around him. His back was covered in dark flames, but he was losing the aura as he squirmed and thrashed where he fell on his hands and knees on the cracked sidewalk. Ectoplasm looked back down the street past his stunned Class B students who gawked like him at the sight of Zach Sazaki. He was alive… But Zach could not stay up on his right arm which they saw as he tried to put a hand down on the floor. The bone sticking out of his right arm near his elbow protruded farther, blood splashing out of it while Zach's face fell to the floor because the arm could not hold him up.

His legs kicked on the ground as he tried to pull them up only for his feet to slide on crumbling footing. He wheezed and then choked and gasped out a bucket of blood onto the ground below his bowed face as he was lifting it from the cement it just slammed into. The bottom half of his burnt face was covered in blood. His burns were horrible. He dragged his left arm back up and pushed his elbow down below his face, pulling his knees up under his stomach and then gasping out again in agony and exhaustion. "Acck-urghghaah-" Splshh Blood spilled from the corners of his lips and onto his steel left arm below him.

He curled the fingers of that left hand through the cement. His head was shaking. His vision was blurry and he was dizzy after that blow that hit so fast that he found himself lodged in the side of a building the same moment he was feeling the pain of smashing through several others. Zach turned his head and looked back towards the hole in the wall he just smashed through. He must have, used much- generators. Right now, he's, charging… Zach's back enflamed darker in Death. He choked though and his focus shifted from attacking Kaminari in this moment that his enemy was likely charging back up from some hidden generator which was why he was not capitalizing on Zach's weakness.

Ribs pierced lungs. Arm couldn't stop it. Arm's broken in multiple spots. Snapped my humerus. The bomb took so much Death- no! No excuses. Wake up. He can't beat you. Zach blinked a few times and gasped out a bucket of blood again but started lifting his head higher. He's my best friend. I have to kill him. I- I don't want- Zach saw the face of Kaminari Denki flash him a smirk after a joke that had made a few of the girls in class laugh. He saw his best friend standing across the roof of a tall building in a U.A. training zone, preparing for the Sports Festival with him. The look on his friend's face as they stood at the top of a mountain, a chorus of cheers ringing out for them for their victory! Zach's eyes clenched shut and his head bowed so his chin slammed into his chest. He gasped again but it was not in physical pain. I can't do this. I have to! He, he needs to be stopped… Why does it have to be me? I- I did enough. I don't want this. It hurts, so much-

"Oi," Zach heard a low voice growl on his right side. His watery eyes squinted and then shifted that way and looked into Bakugo's that glared right back at him. "What are you doing?" His classmate seethed towards him. "Get the fuck up."

Zach clenched his eyes shut for a second. His left hand curled harder on the floor. "Or do you need me to fight your battle for you?" Bakugo wondered. His voice came out taunting, but Zach heard the tone just scolding him for staying down and telling him to get back on his feet. His left elbow extended and he slid his knees up more, tilting his body back and then bringing his right leg up to one foot. "Good," Bakugo growled. His own eyes turned back towards Machia, even as he saw the sparking yellow light coming from the holes Zach was just sent flying through.

"He's alive?" Uraraka whispered in disbelief. She was slower in her reaction than Bakugo. Her eyes darted towards Raijin too as she slowed her fall by bouncing off of Zero Gravity material in the air above the street behind Machia. She bounced past his side though while Machia's eyes glared back down on Bakugo Katsuki's.

Zach slid his left foot up and planted it on the ground. He was panting. Blood covered the bottom half of his face. His eyes intensified though and glared towards the yellow ones of his enemy who floated through the holes in the wall he had left and was glaring down back at him. In the corner of his vision, Zach saw the giant who had left bodies of heroes everywhere near them. This street was in chaos. Buildings had fallen. His comrades were in danger of dying. It's too big. I can't waste the Death knocking it out. Kaminari would kill people and I'd miss saving them by just that much because of the Death I waste here. "Don't lose," Zach growled.

Bakugo humphed and did not look back at his classmate who did not turn to the right when he said that to him. Raijin glanced over Bakugo's way and smirked in a crazy way only to dart his eyes back at Zach who staggered on his feet but had Death flames around his hands too. Zach felt sick. His insides were messed up. He coughed and blood sprayed out of his lips. Raijin grinned at him wider as Zach was trying to control his own insides using Death but was failing. The shrapnel, Zach thought.

It had hit him while he was inside of masses of Death. His body had been too large though and the pieces of white shrapnel had gotten caught in the dark clouds that were not able to turn as gaseous once spiked with those pieces. Zach turned his insides to Death. His throat and his mouth became Death as had the entire inside of his body. Darkness pulled up through his insides and to his mouth. His innards reformed as flesh, and he glared into Raijin's eyes while spitting down to his right side a glob of blood mixed with pieces of white shrapnel that bounced on the ground. "How do they taste, Zach?" Raijin wondered towards his opponent.

"How disrespectful of you, to just spit out pieces of the people who you revived," Raijin taunted. "How did it feel to have their bones inside you?! How did they taste in your mouth?!" Raijin yelled.

"You fucking bastard!" Uraraka screamed down towards Raijin who lifted his eyebrows up for a moment at the sound of that enraged scream from above.

Bakugo's heart raced as he heard what Raijin just said too. He was trying to quell his rage at Raijin to the best of his ability. The second he saw the state Zach was in, he knew who his supposedly dead comrade was fighting. He had already made a plan to stop a different one of their most powerful enemies. He was trying to focus on Machia and to have faith that Zach could win this fight, despite the state that Zach looked to be in right now. Hearing what Raijin just said though made Bakugo's eyes grow huge as did all those who heard what Raijin taunted at Zach. Fucking sick, Bakugo thought. He darted his gaze to the side to check how Zach was reacting to it, and his heart rate spiked even faster at the look in Zach's eyes as the darker-haired boy's head tilted back.

Blood spilled down Zach's right arm fast. His skin was ripped open where the bone had protruded out from. Zach's eyes were cold. His expression dark as he glared down Raijin with a rage unparalleled. "You will never get me to call you Raijin," Zach taunted back. "You're nothing."

"You're getting angry-"

"I am angry," Zach replied. His voice was steady though. Without the weaponized bone shrapnel inside of him anymore, he had stopped his own internal bleeding and was standing in a sturdy way as well. "You're right. You've made me very angry. I won't hate Kaminari though. And I will never call you Raijin. Because you are not the 'God' of Lightning, you're not even the shadow I thought you were. You're an out of control parasite…"

"Shut up."

"I've seen your kind before. You were a thought that a six year old had once, and you grew out of control into a parasite that took over his mind!" Zach yelled.

Raijin's teeth grit but he yelled out with the corners of his lips pulling up, "Shut uppp!" His tone rose in a childlike tone as if he was mocking what Zach just said sarcastically, even as his fingers twitched at his sides and his body sparked in fury.

"A parasite that thinks itself a God," Zach snarled. "Is not a God. You're not even a shade. Just a figment of-"

"You would know!" Raijin yelled back down towards his opponent. Zach froze with his mouth open. Raijin smirked more at him though and cocked his head to the side, "Tell me more, Zach, about how I'm not a God. After all, who better to teach me what it's really like?" Raijin laughed, and then the air around them darkened while the atmosphere became thinner.

What is he talking about? And why, does Zach… Uraraka stared towards her classmate who seemed to know exactly what Raijin was referring to.

Seconds passed without Zach saying anything. "Danny?" Zach wondered. He said it mainly to himself. "Hm. The Devil had a partner who could make him disappear which makes sense as to how they survived that night." Zach spoke knowingly, and Raijin opened his mouth while still smirking to continue on. They had no reason to explain things that the other would be able to figure out rapidly because of their mental capacities. Zach knew that Raijin knew too much and had been hinting too much about Muindo, and he put it together and confirmed it based on Kaminari's expressions as he theorized who he had gotten the information from. "You're a fool," Zach told his enemy.

Raijin paused with his mouth open. His expression angered though he kept smiling as he got ready to keep on taunting his enemy anyway. "I bet Danny made you think he was nothing more than a pawn," Zach said. He spoke condescendingly down to Raijin who slowly started lowering the corners of his lips. "I bet you allowed Danny to join you, and you all just planned on using him for more fodder and for information, and he probably made himself out to be weak and afraid of me, in order to make himself out to be far less than what he really is."

"Do you think 'The Devil' is a title he obtained naturally? That it was a nickname that he just obtained because of the number of people he killed?" Zach wondered more knowingly at his opponent. He spoke down to Raijin like he was a child, and he taunted him darkly, "Enzo created the title of 'The Devil' for his most talented assassin. And when that assassin was killed by another, Enzo allowed her to keep the title for herself. That is how it was passed down in his time, as it continued to be in the time of his son, Eziano."

"It may have been Nuomo's blade but it was Danny who really injured me before my fights with Eziano and Ares," Zach snarled at his enemy. The air around them was darkening as Zach mocked his enemy whose lips were flat now. "Do you really think that on the night the leader of the assassins died, and their God, and every other assassin in their ranks died, Danny survived by chance?" A cool wind blew by them and Zach snarled louder at his opponent, "That when myself and Midoriya scoured the landscape for survivors, he managed to slip away from us by chance?" Zach tilted his head back more and snarled at his opponent in a condescending tone, "The last 'Devil' of the assassins. Tell me, Kaminari! Where is Danny right now? Because you've allowed a very dangerous man into your ranks under the guise of being a pawn. I wonder, have you even considered that you're not the one using Danny, but the other way around?"

Zach shook his head at his opponent whose lips were flat and his eyes scanning Zach's face for some sign that he was lying. Raijin ground his teeth behind his flattened lips because it did not look like Zach was. He had not even once considered this option though. Zach was right, and the thought had never even crossed his mind. Now though, all he could do was consider the cautious and anxious way in which Danny and Sly had returned to the League to ask to join them, and how afraid they had seemed of Zach Sazaki in that moment which had made the big shots of the League think so much less of him. He thought of how he had electrocuted Danny, and he wondered now if the assassin had only allowed him to do that in order to complete the picture.

"You think you've planned for everything," Zach continued in a dark voice at his enemy before Raijin could regain some composure and continue on himself. Zach reached to his right arm with his left, and he snapped his bone back inside his skin. His teeth ground but he did not even let out a noise of pain as the bone snapped back in. His left hand curled around the broken skin he just pushed that bone through. Steam came out from between Zach's fingers. It came out under his hand as his bone reconnected and the skin sealed, and then Zach slid his left hand down from that point of his arm over his elbow and then down his right forearm too. All of the bad burns over his skin steamed. Cuts sealed up. Smoke came out of his reddening skin that was no longer covered in wounds.

Bakugo's eyes snapped completely back towards Zach now as he saw that in his peripherals and thought it was a trick of the mind. Zach pulled his left hand down his right arm completely then swung the right out to the side while lowering his left hand into a fist in front of his chest. The air around Zach was darker but not full of actual dark wisps. The sky was no longer as clear anymore. Clouds had filled it and were rumbling above the city. "You think you've killed enough of the people I revived to give yourself the ammunition to defeat me, but you were too afraid to kill more because you knew I would notice. The only reason I didn't notice you killing dozens or even hundreds of those I revived in order to give yourself weapons and ammo to beat me, is because I revived thousands! So you can't make me regret bringing people back to life, just because you killed some of them again. You made me angry, but I won't despair."

Zach's right fist curled and lowered down in front of him as well. His eyes were intense and glaring furiously into Raijin's as he spoke. Wind blew around them and Raijin shook his head with a chuckle, "You can't intimidate me like you can the rest of them! I know this is just your friend Maelstrom giving you some 'world effects-'"

"Maelstrom's not here, Kaminari!" Zach taunted back. His voice was so knowing and taunting at how wrong his enemy was that Kaminari's eyes widened and his face dropped in an instant. His gaze darted back to the sky and then at his enemy again whose teeth were grinding too as the ground under his feet cracked and then cracked out so much farther as the pressure around him grew thicker.

Death was not growing from the two flaring masses on his hands. Zach's black hair was wavy though and blowing in the wind as the sky got darker above him and the atmosphere thicker and darker as well just around his body. He still had blood all over most of his form. He had a thin veil of Death pulled closer to his body around his waist and upper thighs. Red pooled in his irises but they did not glow the color. He was burned, wounded, depleted, and nothing had ever looked or felt more powerful than Zach Sazaki at that moment after he manually healed his own right arm.

As everyone else stared in disbelief though or tried to wrap their heads around what those two were talking about, Bakugo grinned. He smirked straight up towards Machia's face. The small doubt in his mind from seeing Zach struggle just to get to his hands and knees the first time he saw him since the bomb, faded away as Zach shouted scary stuff which made him sound like his regular old self. As Zach showed himself to be far more powerful and menacing than anyone could have pictured him having seen those injuries, Bakugo knew that he had really survived that bomb and was standing there right behind him. Do it, Zach. Kill him-

"I'm going to fucking kill you! KAMINARI!" Zach screamed at the top of his lungs. Even Bakugo's eyes widened as Zach declared that with no restraint and in front of tons of heroes. Darkness erupted from Zach's back and yellow light ignited around Kaminari's entire body.

Clashes of black and yellow blasted around the air all over this street. They spiraled around Machia and clashed near the walls of buildings that dented inwards and windows that shattered. Those broken pieces of glass then turned more into dust as other shockwaves erupted near them. The speed at which the two of them moved was unreal. Gran Torino's eyes darted as fast as they could to his left and then he spun his body to try and track the two who flew by them without focusing on anyone else as they clashed over and over with punches and kicks that they parried off of one another for immediate counterattacks. By the time he turned after they raced by him, the two were no longer even on the same street as the rest of them.

Bakugo was flying up in the air though at that same time. Machia was punching his arms at the hero who he was sent to target by "Shigaraki." He had other orders though. Orders Shigaraki had given him before the fight. About what to do if he saw that dark figure. And he was questioning what his current orders should be since that dark form was still alive, yet Shigaraki had told him to go after Bakugo Katsuki more recently. "Bakugo first, Sazaki second," Machia growled under his breath as he attacked. His breath was still so huge that muttering under it meant everyone heard him, including Bakugo.

"I'd say the same thing!" Bakugo yelled at his enemy. "You first, ugly! Then… Raijin," Bakugo snarled that under his breath which no one else heard. If you don't kill him, I'll finish the job. Bakugo did have faith in his comrades, but this was less about faith and more that he wanted to be the one to do it. Not that I'll get my chance, Bakugo thought. His eyes darted around to others who needed to refocus and all started doing so as Bakugo and Machia were already back into it and ignoring what just happened between Zach and Raijin.

Zach and Raijin collided in midair high above the closest tallest building to them. Their hands interlocked and Zach bent forward, only for his arms to be pushed right back by his enemy whose arms surged with glowing blue light that pulsed from his back that Zach could not see was currently at three-quarters of the way filled to capacity. "Leaving it all to Bakugo is a bad idea, Zach," Raijin sneered into his enemy's face, pulling his own clear visor closer to Zach's face as he did. "It's a bad matchup. Bakugo's Explosions won't be able to-"

"Shut up and fight," Zach said in a deadpan voice back. He did not care what Raijin had to say. He kneed up and met Raijin's knee between them. They lifted their legs so fast that the air around them blew apart in another shockwave. They pressed their knees into each other's, and Raijin grit his teeth in more pain even as Zach's leg did not have any Death on it. Their legs just pushed into each other and Zach leaned forward while pulling Raijin's shaking arms out to either side. He leaned his head forward and slammed his forehead into the clear visor of his enemy, slamming their foreheads together and glaring into Raijin's eyes the whole time he did so.

A circle opened in the center of Raijin's costume revealing a bright blue glow in the middle of his chest. Zach let go of Raijin's hands, but Raijin's fingers curled tighter into their interlocked grip and held him there for enough time for the blue beam to fire into Zach's chest. Raijin released when Zach started twisting to try and force Raijin to release, but he had not gotten far enough in the twist yet that he was not expecting Raijin to just let go. Kaminari's right foot kicked underneath the blue beam though moving almost as fast as the energy was itself. He sent Zach flying from the kick and the beam, then he moved in a bolt of lightning and came out of it above Zach in his trail of smoking blue light, spinning a kick down towards the top of the hero's head.

Zach's body split in half vertically and appeared in two forms on Kaminari's sides with his fists punching towards each other. Raijin held out his palms and blocked the fists that turned to flesh as the darkness was blown off of them by slamming into those white-gloved palms. One right fist and one left fist punching straight out towards Raijin's sides from opposite directions. Raijin's eyes darted side to side at the sight of them, and his arms buckled inwards as Zach's sheer brute strength was overpowering him. Energy surged through his back and another dash of his backpack dropped down, his arms pulsing with blue energy and pushing back against Zach's fists-

Zach's fists pushed in twice as hard and buckled Raijin's arms. Lightning zapped out all around the villain and forced back the different forms of Death that turned fully into darkness again. Raijin zipped away, and he swung his arms out to the sides as he dipped towards a street with lots of heroes and civilians on it. The lightning flew at unsuspecting people who gasped and pulled away… from the black walls of Death that curved in front of them and protected them from the Electricity the villain tried to electrocute them with. Zach flew after Raijin and roared towards his enemy, "I will not fall again! Until you are dead, I will NOT FALL!"

Bakugo flew up higher towards the head of the monster whose arms he dodged by blowing Explosions out his palms and his knees. He blasted around in the air as he rose higher and higher towards Machia's face. Of course he wasn't going to stay down, Bakugo thought. He imagined a video of Zach with deep gashes on the backs of his calves, holes in his torso, his face sliced in half, staggering but not falling to his knees. He saw Zach in the smoke with his face half-torn apart, bleeding heavily but remaining on his feet. He was down, because Kaminari's someone he doesn't want to stand against, and yet he'll do it anyway. Plus Ultra…

He's the example, Bakugo thought as he faced down this giant enemy who had tanked every attack he and every other hero had thrown at it. He rose up towards its face and glared into eyes that had unimaginable fury in them directed towards him for no other reason than its orders were to defeat him. Zach exemplifies that in everything he does. He doesn't think of himself in that way though. To him, it's Deku. I've seen the way he looks at Deku. The way he's always looked at Deku… "They're all capable. Especially, Midoriya Izuku… He'll come here for sure, even though Bakugo told him not to."

From the very beginning, he looked at Deku like the way we all see him now. The way I know Deku looks at him. He'll beat Raijin, and Deku will stop Shigaraki, and I will take down this fucker too! Bakugo yelled it at himself. His attacks earlier doing little to damage the monster? It didn't matter. Machia's strength that only seemed to increase as this battle had continued? Meaningless. It's not just Deku… Bakugo thought. It did not come to mind very often. He ignored it whenever he considered it. But sometimes he could hear that kid in the middle of his torture, "You know him already- KATSUKI BAKUGO! His Quirk's Explosion and he's the strongest guy in Class A! It's not just his Quirk, but he's smart and has great fighting instincts! I never was able to think of any way to beat him, I promise! H-He gets angry all the time, and especially- he hates Midoriya-"

Bakugo saw Zach during their Capture the Flag game. He pictured the annoyed look on his comrade's face for a second that Todoroki had reached the flag room. How they ran at Todoroki together. And how Zach had ran right out of the fight without looking back, because he trusted that Bakugo would take care of things after he got the flag."I'm just getting the flag! I'll leave you to it when I get it back!" He believed in Deku. Bakugo's gauntlets sparked and the small Explosions coming out of them for maneuverability started to get larger as he tested how much these experimental gauntlets that Hatsume sent to him last could handle. He trusted Deku would go beyond, Plus Ultra. He figured out Deku had All Might's Quirk the quickest, because he knew that All Might would give it to someone like him. But…

What was he going to say in his room? "Kirishima, if you had come with me you wouldn't have survived. I know you're strong, but you wouldn't have survived out there. None of you could have. It wasn't a place for heroes, no matter how strong. Not Midoriya, not Todoroki, not-" Why did he cut himself off? And in the training dome, "The kind of person I was though… From our better world but hardened despite it, allowed me to survive Terra when I don't think anyone else would have been able to…" Why did you look away after saying that? Why did you hesitate? I know why. Because when you called me the "strongest" to Shigaraki, I was surprised. I thought you would have thought it was Deku. I thought maybe it would have changed over time, like everyone else… but it didn't. You saw him like that from the very beginning, and yet you didn't consider him the strongest. Even when I doubted myself. Even when I lost! Bakugo thought, for once not getting angry as he considered the final Sports Festival where Deku had beaten him for the very first time and in front of the entire world at that.

He still looks at me the same way. Bakugo smirked as he rushed at Machia. The Capture the Flag game once again flashed through his mind. He had been happy getting in the fight with Deku, Todoroki, Iida, and Uraraka all as his opponents. Having Mineta and Zach was a handicap. It made it more interesting for him… and yet he also knew that maybe Zach could actually be able to deal with the other two so he focused only on Deku and Todoroki first. With anyone else though, he knew he would have had to shout something at them. Yell about how he was fine to handle it on his own, how he didn't need their help, for them to just stay out of his way and listen to him, but he didn't do it. He knew Zach had made a plan with Mineta without telling him, but he didn't think Zach just did it to avoid him yelling at them to shut up. Zach had given him full concentration, knowing that facing Deku and Todoroki at once would be incredibly difficult. Zach did not doubt his ability though. He just allowed Bakugo to focus on the other two strongest in the class, and even though he had failed and let Todoroki get past for a moment, Zach just managed to hold off long enough for him to get back there. He's always had that much faith in me. Even in Camino Ward, Zach believed in me to a point beyond what I was actually capable of at the time, because I thought Zach had really betrayed us when he thought I would realize what my friend was actually doing.

He came to out Toga in Recovery Girl's office when Deku and I were there for a reason. He didn't waste his Death here despite how much damage this huge fuck is doing, because he knows he doesn't have to! If I had cared enough back in Camino, if I had tried to make friends rather than ignoring the rest… I would have known Zach well enough to know the lies about Diamondfist, about where he was going when he left school, and I would have seen the Lifebringer Incident coming. I was still mad about the stupid shit. Small shit that when I look back on, Zach did it all just to save us all. Until his last moment… Which wasn't actually his last. Bakugo felt glad about that. The things he had not had the time to think about after Zach blew up that would have haunted him, just pushed to the back of his mind as he knew that that explosion was not the end of his friend's life. He's much stronger now. No denying that. Bakugo imagined their fight above U.A. He's more experienced than anyone. Bakugo thought about the trial and the videos he had watched that still beyond amazed him. What he heard Zach say afterwards as he laid his heart bare for his friends, echoed through his head as he allowed Zach to take care of Raijin despite how badly he wanted revenge for Indago.

It was why when Zach shouted what he had about the Prime Minister being Toga, more than just the past fight they had had with her, he was willing to believe Zach right off the bat. As fucked up as Zach had looked on those steps, he couldn't believe Zach had killed Nikko's wife anyway. Nikko being Toga made a hundred times more sense. He survived that bomb so that he could kill Raijin. I heard him say what he believes Raijin's Quirk did to him. That he really thinks Kaminari's still in there. And he survived that attack because despite how hard that means it is for him, he'll do it anyway, Bakugo thought of how his classmate stood back up. He had been thinking about what Zach said about Kaminari's cursed Quirk to Ashido and Kirishima, when he saw Zach's agonized expression as he was laying there coughing up buckets of blood and at the verge of tears and not wanting to fight anymore. He knew at that moment why Zach looked like that and who he must be fighting. But he still trusted him to get the job done anyway. Because he trusts me to get this done. And, trust goes both ways. The doubt Bakugo had felt in his friend had faded, but more than that, the doubt in himself that had festered throughout the futile battle with Gigantomachia had disappeared as well.

The smile on Bakugo's face was confident. It was determined and focused solely on defeating Machia, with the look of cockiness that everyone around him could only imagine seeing on Bakugo's face in such a situation. They knew him to be someone who would always look like that no matter what kind of fight he found himself in… and yet it filled them all with that same kind of confidence that only he could instill in them by looking such a way. Gran Torino's eyes widened. His doubt was stronger than anyone else's. He did not know Bakugo well, but he knew Machia. He was the last, but even Sorahiko's doubt finally shredded apart at the look on Bakugo's face as he started blasting around himself and turned into a spinning drill of Explosions that flew straight into Machia's face between his arms, just as a preliminary attack that he screamed out of, "NOW!" No one thought it was all Bakugo had in mind. It did create a whirlwind of Explosions in front of Machia's face that shrouded everyone else from sight for the moment though, and his scream was the signal that everyone else supposed they had been waiting on, and a dozen heroes moved at once to Bakugo's command.

---

Ashido fell onto her butt and scrambled backwards. She pushed her hands down on the floor at her sides and excreted Acid below her palms as well as below her feet and butt. She slid back on the floor, and two sets of legs that came down to stomp on her, landed on the slippery Acid instead and slipped. The shorter men than the pink girl slipped and slid on the street that the hero pushed her hands down hard on to backflip up off her butt and dodge another attack that came from the side this time with this fraction of Dismembermen diving towards her head with his bloody fingers just missing and curling through empty space.

"We got your back!"

Ashido was landing and spinning with her hands pulling together. She got ready to spray the Acid out behind her at two other Dismembermens who she recognized. She knew of the disgraced police officer and the insanity he had gone through. Mina felt bad for the man, but she would have felt worse had this street not been devoid of any life. Some villains were unconscious, but the heroes who had captured them and taken them down were in pieces around the street that she found herself on now. The Radian member's last two parts had attacked at her back while the ones who had slipped were getting back up. The one that had dove past her turned and glared at the three teenagers who just rushed in and punched and kicked his split forms.

Trabo and his two clones, one of whom had a licked-flip of hair to signify that he was Trabo X, attacked Dismembermen and forced all five of his pieces onto one side of Pinky. Three of those five were rushing forward while two were forced back though, and then all five rushed as that momentary three-on-two turned into a five-on-four, but at least it was better than the five-on-one that Ashido had barely been surviving. She was panting heavily, but she smiled as the Trabos ran past her sides. She sprinted forward with them and attacked Dismembermen again, swatting her right hand across her body and then spinning around while his punch slipped off of her arm. She splashed very acidic Acid behind the spinning-out one's right foot as it was coming down. The pavement was searing through and did not give him a good foothold, and he stumbled backwards allowing the girl to capitalize… except there was still one more Dismemberman than there were heroes fighting against him.

Trabo punched his right fist forward that was light-skinned and had a tint of orange to his pigmentation. The boy in a red costume pulled his right fist away though as the clone of Dismemberman punched straight at his knuckles. He was right to try and dodge, but Dismemberman aimed towards the middle of his arm anyway and broke Trabo's right arm with the single punch of his arm that was covered in stitches and very muscular despite being smaller than usual having already split into many pieces. The five Dismembermen's were smaller than the heroes, but they looked to be stronger with their broad shoulders and the stitch-like scars over their bodies that indicated some kind of experimentation the heroes were dreading to recognize on villains by now.

Trabo X spun to one of the other two who was on his right. He sprinted towards him and jump-kicked into the side of the Dismembermen's head as he was moving on the one who stumbled back while yelling out and grabbing at his broken arm. That one fell to one knee, while Trabo X finished his kick and made blood spurt from the Dismemberman's nose, only to be decked in the back and then kicked while he was rolling past another one.

"Got you!" Ashido slid underneath Trabo X as he was kicked into the air towards her. She had her fingers pressed together and sprayed Acid at two of her enemies which ran opposite directions from each other. She twisted and did a cartwheel as she popped to her feet, avoiding another one's kick that the other normal Trabo ran towards and tried to push up on to knock that villain off his feet. That Trabo pulled out a special capture-wire that he dropped down to one knee holding as he gave the lifted leg of his enemy a pop, and he wrapped it around the other ankle that planted hard to keep the clone from falling. He dove past Dismemberman's leg and pulled tightly on the wire, but he had to twist his body and barely dodged a flying stoplight that had fallen on the street and that another of the villain's fractions just used as a projectile.

While he focused on the stoplight, the one whose ankle he caught reached down and unwrapped his leg, before yanking back on that wire and forcing Trabo's Triplet to release the end that had the majority of the spool still inside. He cursed as he lost the tool, especially as he saw Trabo X staggering back on his feet and dropping the wire of his own that had broken from its spool and got tangled when he was kicked directly on that part of his toolbelt.

"Could use some support," Ashido called out, as two of the Dismembermens were circling her flanks.

All three of the Trabos faced down one of their own. The Trabo with the broken arm cursed and bowed his head for a moment. His curse was in reluctance, and it made both of the other two dart their gazes towards him with their eyes widening for a moment before snapping right back on their enemies who charged at them. "Really?" The second Trabo muttered.

"Whatever, your call," Trabo X said while backpedaling and then diving to his side as the short villain clone sprinting at him was much too fast and nearly charged straight through him.

"Unnn NNNNAGH!" Broken-arm Trabo ducked his head down harder while the Dismemberman rushed him. The villain's fraction stopped though and pulled his body backwards. He yanked back, but he was too slow as an arm reached out of the top of Trabo's head and grabbed onto Dismemberman by the front of his costume. That arm was muscular and yanked back towards the top of Trabo's head, while it was ripping another body out of the boy who Ashido darted her eyes to for a split second with them growing huge.

"I thought your Quirk was Triplet?!" She exclaimed in surprise while dodging her two enemies.

Those two stopped chasing Pinky and looked to Trabo and the figure who just pulled out of his body as a fourth form to be created. The odds were evened. And yet those two stopped chasing Pinky because they watched as one of their pieces was just thrown across the street and went rolling away all the way into the wall of a building.

The more muscular Trabo pulled out of his body and shook his head. He spat in both hands and then pushed up into his dark hair and stuck it up in a much different way than just the flip of hair that Trabo X used to differentiate himself from the others. The Trabo with a broken arm gasped out and fell to his left hand, gasping in pain and exhaustion after expelling this new clone. "Trabo, Y," Trabo said in a low voice. "Help Pinky," he continued, motioning towards the girl who still had two enemies closer to her.

"Uh uh. Not unless you call me by my name," Trabo Y retorted.

Trabo clenched his eyes shut and then muttered under his breath, "Obart, please."

This new Trabo's skin was not as light as the other three's. He still looked almost identical to his counterparts, only with slightly tanner skin and a more toned physique. He turned and grinned huge while sprinting towards Pinky who smiled herself and swung both hands towards the Dismembermen who ran back at her again.

Obart sprinted by Pinky's right side as a Dismembermen leapt over her splash of Acid. He punched his fist forward while Dismembermen punched him. The two of their arms pushed against each other, and Dismembermen growled as the hero's punch packed enough punch to actually hold back a fifth of his strength. That fraction that was grinding its teeth smirked though, and then all five versions of Dismembermen shrank. His high-tech costume shrank down with them, as another form split out of the one punching into Trabo Y whose momentum took him forward. Both of the even shorter villains punched forwards into the top of Trabo Y's legs and knocked them off the ground while his body was already leaning too far forward with too much momentum.

Trabo Y flipped and rolled across the street, then Ashido sprinted forward and kicked one of the Dismembermen in the back of the head and knocked him to the ground. "Stop that!" She yelled at the villain who had split himself smaller like that right when they started fighting each other too.

The muscular small villains attacked the girl who opened her eyes wide at how fast they were even in their short size. Their decreased weight made up for their shrunken leg sizes, and the fact that there were more of them made it harder to dodge as they were everywhere she tried to land. "Pinky look out-" the second Trabo called towards her, but he had to spin back and cross his arms while ducking down to avoid being punched in the gut by a man whose punches still packed so much of a punch he felt his arms bruise, though at least they did not break when he was split into sixths.

Agara Inorgami caught Pinky by the right ankle just as she was jumping up again. Dismembermen swung her around towards two others of himself who caught her and grabbed her by her arms and legs. "Do you want to know how I got my name?" The one that grabbed her arms asked, before pulling them up over the top of her head while the one that swung her grabbed onto one leg tightly, and the other grabbed another leg tightly.

Pinky already knew how he got his name. Panic rose within her and she quickly secreted as much Acid from her hands and feet as she could. Dismembermen's fingers dug into her skin and drew blood, preventing her from forcing his hands to slip off. Then the one of the six forms grabbing her right leg, was stomped on top of his skull and plowed straight into the street. Her eyes bulged as Obart was just past her right foot and had stomped through pavement. She kicked off the shocked villain holding her other foot, then she pulled her arms down quickly and swung the back of her head into the face of the short two and a half foot tall man behind her who stumbled away when she did that.

Pinky scrambled up to her feet and took a few deep breaths. She looked towards the Dismemberman she kicked away who started growing and groaned in agony as he did, just like the one stumbling away behind her and the ones facing the other three Trabos. She smiled as she looked below Trabo Y's foot where he just glanced down to see actual fleshy goop disintegrating into nothing which seemed to result in the Dismembermen growing taller again but in lots of pain. "Thanks a lot-"

Trabo Y turned and he grabbed Pinky by her right arm. He spun the girl around and leaned in towards her. Ashido's eyes bulged as Trabo Y put his lips to hers and put the arm he used to spin her around behind her back. He slid it down her back and placed it on her lower back just above her waist, then he really dove in deep into the kiss. "Nn- mmm…" Ashido's bulging eyes closed a little as her noise of surprise turned into a quieter more confused but pleasant sound. The second Trabo that formed when Trabo split himself sprinted towards Pinky, and he socked Trabo Y in the face and knocked him stumbling away from the stunned girl who had not moved from that spot but finally gasped out as their lips became unlocked. She gasped a few times and then exclaimed, "What are you-"

"Sorry for him," Trabo apologized to the girl next to him. Her cheeks were brighter pink than usual, but so were this Trabo's, and the one down on one knee with the broken arm who was shaking his head in embarrassment and wondering if he really made the right choice splitting again. The second normal Trabo who was most identical to the original and who punched away Trabo Y glared at the fourth version who turned his head slowly back and had a trickle of blood coming down the left corner of his lips that he wiped away before turning to glare at the closest Dismembermen who was snarling at him. "That's, why we call the Quirk: Triplet, and don't usually go past 3 of us."

The Trabo explaining to the girl he felt he had just sexually harassed, or assaulted, in the middle of their fight together, grimaced as he glanced to the heroine next to him to see if she was angry with him. He continued explaining in an uneasy and guilty way, "Trabo Y is… unpredictable."

"I'm unpredictable," Trabo X snapped over towards them. He glared back towards his own Dismembermen he had to take care of, while muttering darkly, "He's unstable." Ashido looked towards Trabo X in surprise at that tone of voice coming from the Triplet she always saw grinning in such a cocky and uncaring way. Trabo X was annoyed by the presence of Y though, as he had claimed before to the other two Trabos that 'once I'm out, that's all we need.'

"Oh I'm so sorry, did one of you want our first kiss?" Obart apologized sarcastically and in a taunt to his counterparts who all got even redder in the face while Ashido spun around and looked at them all in surprise.

For their first time, that was pretty good- what am I thinking about?! Ashido shook her head back and forth quickly. "Well, it's five versus five again," Ashido said. She cracked a smile which relieved the Trabos who saw her expression. "Let's take care of this baddie first… then you boys can take me out to dinner, to make up for that kiss." The smirking girl winked at the boy at her side then ran at the Dismemberman closest to her. Trabo Y darted a smug look towards the one with the broken arm who was staring towards Pinky's back with his jaw slightly agape and his eyes wide. He frowned at Obart's victorious and smug look like that was all calculated or something, and then Trabo just pushed down on the floor with his left hand and ground his teeth through the pain as he glared at the enemy he was going to fight even only with one good arm.

"Who's this tiny loser we're fighting anyway?" Obart called out, despite knowing everything the other Trabos did so he knew exactly who Dismemerman was. He laughed though at the pissed-off look on Agara's face as he ran at the shorter villain, and he yelled out, "Nevermind! WHO CARES?! I'LL JUST RIP THIS PIPSQUEAK APART!" His fingers curled at his sides and cracked as he smirked in a deadly way at the enemy he ran at who glared even more bloodthirstily back at him.

Whoa, Ashido thought, realizing that the 'unstable' way that the other Trabos called that one was not an exaggeration. She ignored it after a moment anyway though. Not as scary as Zach, Ashido admitted to herself.

The second Trabo who attacked a Dismembermen right next to the one Ashido started fighting, realized the exact same thing as he noticed her dulled reaction to what he was afraid she might be looking like after hearing Y's shout of no restraint. He might be a bit off the deep end, Trabo thought to himself. But we really just put aside the notion of using him or getting used to fighting alongside him because of that attitude. We're going to have bad chemistry here against Dismembermen because we didn't train with four, but maybe after this fight, we really should give him a chance. If Zach could control his demons, so can I. And, he did get us a date, somehow… That Trabo darted a look to the girl at his side who he was glad to fight alongside here, as she just splashed some Acid in front of his Dismembermen and gave him an easier target as the villain focused more not on slipping and swung his arms to the sides, which allowed Trabo to kick him in the face. "Thanks!"

"We've got this!" Ashido called back confidently, as she jumped up in the air and splashed Acid down at her own fraction of the enemy who had to back away fast to dodge her. The Acid splashed up even though he dodged it though, and it got on the villain who yelled out as his costume seared through from the attack. Ashido smiled wide and heroically as she landed, calling out, "Take that!"

---

"Stay inside!" Himazuri ordered to her right towards closed doors that had been boarded up and the windows that were covered in steel plating to protect the masses inside them. She could hear their mental voices and continued calling through to them, "If you come out here, we'll be too concerned with trying to protect you and won't be able to focus-"

"Move!" Dendo yelled at the girl on his side who had kept her head on a swivel but was getting too distracted by the thoughts from brave, albeit arrogant, citizens just on the other side of that wall. He called it at her while diving at his classmate, and he tackled Himazuri out of the way just as their red-haired enemy's eyes flashed blue. A square of green light glowed on the floor under where Himazuri's feet just were. Dendo's eyes widened as he rolled with the girl he thought was about to get lazer-beamed by their enemy's eyes, or something.

Their opponent with short cropped hair had lifted a smartphone and aimed it their way, using her Quirk, Scan, to create a synthetic grid along the street. Dendo and Himazuri recognized her strange muscular body and the scarring on it that indicated she was another of the enemy's enhanced super-villains. They had already run into two others before seeing her, but something about this woman made both of the Shiketsu students far more cautious than they were against the more confident and reckless of the Liberators they had defeated already.

Dendo rolled off the square that glowed on the ground, right before a flare of green light blew up from the ground and expelled heat into the two eighteen year olds who just got off that part of the grid in the final second. The force from the ground exploding upwards like that pushed into each of them and made them do an extra roll away from where they were initially going to stop and get back to their feet. As they were finishing the final roll, Dendo snapped his head up as he noticed a shadow cut off part of his light for a second.

Himazuri heard his thoughts and the woman's above her. She pulled backwards and fell on her butt while Dendo jumped quicker to his feet and out of the way of the woman who stomped her right foot so hard into the street that it caved in under her. Himazuri put her hands to either side and pushed away from Genial who glared straight into her eyes and thought, Dendo Takashi's Slicer is coming for my left side downwards at seventy degrees with a width too expansive to go around. I'll blow the wall behind him and move him off course while stomping on Himazuri Hikari's neck. Genial stepped forward while the green square fading into existence on the wall behind Dendo got brighter. Then the villainess jumped up in the air without warning, spinning to Dendo while pulling a gun and pointing it towards his head.

"NO!" Himazuri had been getting up and leaning backwards as she prepared to be charged and stomped on. She knows my name. She knows I'm listening! Himazuri realized it and changed directions, only for Genial to swing her right arm back towards the girl who stepped closer to her after changing her own momentum. Her thoughts, are all misdirection- Himazuri flinched as Genial pulled the trigger the same moment the wall behind Dendo was exploding.

He had seen the green light glowing behind him. Dendo ignored it though. If it was meant to make him miss his kicked Slice, he just had to kick quicker than the wall could explode. Genial fired but had to yank her body backwards in midair at that very moment because Dendo whipped his leg around the front of his body first and kicked off the Slice of green at the woman in front of him.

The explosion knocked Dendo forward farther, while also giving Genial more speed in her own flip. Himazuri stopped hesitating after her flinch. Dendo made it so the bullet flew by her harmlessly. He was falling though after yelling out in pain, and Genial was finishing her flip and coming down as well but still with a pistol in hand. Don't give her a second- "Left?" So right then? Himazuri darted to her own left, which would be Genial's right, but the villain just smirked while finishing a flip with her head pointed the other way as the young hero.

"Get down!" Huh? Dendo was lifting his head, but he ducked it and then bounced on all fours to his left to avoid the second shot that Genial tried shooting at him.

Damn- need distance! Genial backpedaled and got farther from the Mindreader who had gotten too close and was reaching behind her waistband for capture weapons. Land and set off D-3 to D-6 on the grid. Genial made the thought while darting a look at a certain section of the street that Himazuri was about to sprint onto, which caused the student to stop short then grind her teeth as Genial landed without setting anything off.

"Dendo." Show frustration that she's figured out my Quirk. "Don't show any sign that you can hear me. Keep looking at her." No one else knows. It's not something she could know about my Quirk. She didn't notice that I told Dendo to duck. She thinks he's just that quick that he managed to dodge, which is also true.

I don't understand. Himazuri? Dendo looked towards Genial and tried to hide the confusion he was feeling by keeping his face stoic on the outside. You're listening, right? "Yes." But how can I hear you?! Have you always- "Zach and I had been training my Quirk." How?! When? How did this happen- Her Quirk is so crazy impressive now- "Focus Dendo! We need a strategy to win this. She's very, very smart. Her thoughts are all misdirections to mess with me. She's had some sort of experimentation like the others, but she isn't considering her physical strength as overpowered, nor her Quirk which seems very versatile. She knows who both of us are. She knows our Quirks. And I can't trust that what she's thinking is a real indicator of what she's… thinking. If you understand, shout something heroic at her!" We're being too suspicious.

Dendo panted a couple of times then shouted at his opponent, "You freaks are done treating this city like your playground! All Slice is going to cut your ambitions down…" He had panted at first to make it out like they were just standing there to catch their breath after earlier fights, and he referred to her as one of the "freaks" to show they had been in fights already that may have tired them out as well as to show why they were not curious about her strange body that Himazuri already knew from the others' thoughts was due to voluntary human experimentation. She won't let us stall forever, Dendo thought for his comrade to hear. Those other two were real powerful but didn't expect to be hit so hard by Slicer. If she knows my Quirk, we're not getting her the same way.

"This woman doesn't know all of what my Quirk can do. We need to keep it that way until I find the right moment to catch her off guard. I have a new kind of attack I've been planning for, but I haven't tested it yet."

I don't know either apparently-

"I'm sorry I kept it a secret. Zach and I have strengthened my Quirk together, but I wasn't sure how to even explain how it happened-"

Sorry. I- didn't mean to think- All of my thoughts she can hear? I'll just attack! Dendo cut off the involuntary thoughts that came even as he was trying to hold a mental conversation with his close friend and comrade. He shouted in his mind how he would just attack her, and he started wrapping up the small heroic speech he felt was doing a good job at convincing Genial he was serious about.

"Alright. You go, I'll shout out things that she's thinking. She knows that I've realized her strategy already, so I'll call out to you what she's doing in a second and then shout how half of her thoughts are what she's really planning and the others are the lies. She's not letting me hear any of her real plans. It's like she's fighting naturally. Without thought. But if I call about half of them being real, she'll get nervous, hopefully. Start questioning if my Quirk can let me hear even the subconscious and instinctual thoughts. The ones she'll start thinking about more audibly in her mind as she questions if I can hear them or not. Once she's hesitating, that's when I'll go for it. I need you to hold her attention and just keep her off me until then though!"

"She's thinking about moves that are complete lies to try and disorient me," Himazuri warned her classmate aloud as he started running forward at their opponent. Dendo dragged his leg across the street and kicked up towards Genial who darted to her own left then sprinted forward at the student who had expected her to back up. "She was just thinking about retreating and now she's running in. About half of what she's thinking are lies and the rest are what she's actually trying to do. I'll, just have to call out about as much of it as I can!" If this doesn't work right away, and she doesn't start thinking about her actual moves just from being startled here, then I have to predict her next moves! I have to guess her moves based on what she's thinking as a misdirection, and if I guess correctly then I'll hear the doubt and realization in her own mind that I can actually hear her. And I'll call out about that too to even further mess with her head!

All that time she spent with Zach, Dendo thought as he slashed with his arms and legs at an opponent whose eyes glowed brighter blue and made several squares of area that she scanned on this street all start glowing bright green at once. Dendo maneuvered himself around the bright glows though, and he kept himself between Genial and Himazuri as best he could while his classmate behind him called out Genial's thoughts that were a mixture of truth and lies. She spent time in his head too. I never knew you to be so clever- You were always smart though! ...Is she even listening in my head right now? She's focused in the villain's. Himazuri, I don't know if you even realized it- I know I didn't. I noticed how much stronger Zach made me, Dendo thought, while he used his costume to fly up in the air and dodge the glowing green sections that glowed brighter much quicker than the last ones did as if Genial had planned to get him into a rhythm that she just shattered. He was quick on his reaction time though and showed off the use of his new equipment that she had not seen before and was surprised to see the flying hero with blue light coming out of his palms, back, and feet.

But I didn't notice what he was doing to help you, because it was all in your head. Your strength is in your mind. And he didn't just make your Quirk stronger. This plan of yours is going to work. I know you enough to know that you wouldn't have told me to go along with it if you weren't confident of that. Zach, you really helped us all. You saved us, and we just let you- "Dendo!" Uh- yeah? Was she listening- "Why- I mean, nevermind. It's this villain's thoughts! She's started letting her true thoughts out because she thinks I could hear them all anyway. She just thought about how there's a 87% chance that Zach is still alive!" What?! "I don't know! Something about seeing some darkness just moving through the sky some streets behind us when we weren't looking, and swirling around with some lightning… I think he's fighting Raijin. She thinks it at least!

Dendo landed down with his knees bending and his head spinning towards the villainess sprinting onto his right side then curving in to charge at the muscular student who was taller than her but smaller in width after her enhancements. His dark green eyes narrowed at the woman and his expression stayed dark as he acted like he did not hear what Himazuri just put in his head. Is Zach alive? Maybe. I'm happy to believe it. Too many people have died today… And if he's going to revive them, then I can't let them kill anyone else! I don't want him to suffer like that.

Dendo swiped both arms in front of him at the villain who darted to her right while also pulling out a small black device that she aimed Dendo's way. He had darted to his left though as he predicted her dodge, and the green lines that started scanning over Dendo on her screen got all squiggly and broke apart as Genial had to leap up into a triple-backflip and avoid the kicked slash of green straight towards her. Dendo slammed both palms down at his sides and fired blue lights from his costume's gloves, launching himself into the air after her then spinning around and kicking much stronger now that he could do so while aimed up with no buildings behind Genial for him to worry about.

Himazuri lost focus on the intense concentration she had in Genial's head and predicting the next moves and thoughts. "She's pulling a gun- No! A green square behind you!" Himazuri yelled out, trying to recover her concentration even as Dendo reacted to her words with no hesitation to redirect himself a different way that Genial found hard to see coming too which Himazuri heard in the frustration in the villain's head. Do I even need the plan? Dendo's… amazing. Genial yanked her body back in midair and a green Slice just flew over the top of her body then past the front edge of a building on her right that showed her that Dendo was not even just focusing on defeating her but on all the aspects of being a hero at the same time.

A smirk covered the frustrated woman's face. Himazuri's eyes widened and she yelled, "DON'T!"

A wall of a building on Himazuri's left side and thirty feet off the ground started glowing green. Genial's eyes had flashed blue, and Dendo spun his head and snapped his green eyes towards the large eight by eight foot squares that just glowed one by one across that wall. Civilians! Dendo knew exactly why Genial would target an area that had no strategic utility in defeating him. He flew as fast as he could straight towards the green squares, and he spun his body rapidly and kicked, not too strongly, towards the glass panes and steel beams of that wall. Genial was arcing down towards the ground and aiming towards Dendo's back, but her eyes widened a little more as she watched him Slice through her grid. By breaking the solid squares that she had Scanned over earlier, Dendo had hoped to stop the explosions from going off. He managed to dim the green light on the materials he Sliced through, but they were an instant from exploding anyway in some areas and went off but with smaller blasts.

"AHhhh!"

"HELP!"

Dendo snapped his head right and looked towards where the first green panel had glowed and the explosion was still large in comparison to the smaller dud blasts which gave him a better idea on how Genial's Quirk worked. "FOCUS! She's shooting you!" Dendo yanked his body to the side. He used his costume to change his angle in midair, and Genial grit her teeth that he was able to react to the gunshot that quickly. It still grazed his left arm but he barely reacted to it with less than a wince showing on his face for a second. Dendo was proving himself in a way that did not make her doubt his reaction time, when it was actually thanks to his comrade's assistance.

Dendo turned and glared down at the woman who grit her teeth at the sight of his focused undeterred eyes. I have enhancements- calm. Genial relaxed and her expression showed the instant calm she put over herself. Her frustrated thoughts ceased and her own blue eyes glared straight towards Himazuri for a moment as the girl started shouting out about the frustration the villain had felt. Genial turned her gun on Himazuri, then she made more of the building behind Dendo start to glow green again right as he flew down towards her.

He did a spin while flying down with his costume. Dendo kicked behind him quicker this time and with a Slice just strong enough to break through the glowing green squares of the grid but not keep pushing through them very far. He cracked windows and shattered them along with steel beams that made the wall around his Slice shake but not collapse. It did cancel out Genial's attack though, while she spun her pistol back on the boy who thought she was aiming at Himazuri and sped up before losing focus for an instant to kick towards the civilians again.

Himazuri darted into Genial's blindspot. Then she kept moving until she was farther on Genial's right side while Dendo dodged to his right and rolled forward on the ground. Then he jumped up and dodged more shots, then he spun around and slashed his right arm down in front of him while Genial was firing up towards him. Her eyes bulged and she dropped her gun while twisting her body to the side. The Slice ripped up the pavement below her but just on her right side, and Genial got her phone out in the very next instant as her gun was still Slicing in half next to her. Pieces of it fell while she Re-Scanned the surrounding area. Moving parts did not get put on the grid when she was Scanning such a large area, so neither of her enemies had green lines going up their bodies on her screen.

The floor next to her got broken up. She wants control over all of it! Himazuri understood that parts of their enemy's grid were no longer under her control after Dendo's last attack. We need to- already?! Himazuri was shocked as she saw the enemy pocket the device that she used to Scan everything around them. Dendo was already sprinting back towards the villainess though who instead of blowing anything up or using her Quirk, charged back at the teenager who tried leaning away from the first punch only for Genial to kick up into his stomach. Dendo lifted off the ground and up ten feet in the air. He gasped out and spit flew from his mouth at the strength of that kick.

A green square of the grid glowed between Genial and Himazuri who yelled out her friend's name. "Dendo-" Himazuri crossed her arms and leapt backwards before the green light exploded upwards from the pavement that had been Sliced but still glowed in the perfect squares her enemy had been able to recreate thus far. Now! Himazuri darted to her left after she landed and the explosion blocked the two of them from each other.

"GET HER! DENDO!"

The shouted command did not go into the head of her ally alone. Himazuri yelled it into Genial's head, using her own voice, and making the sounds that Genial's mind processed come from as if Himazuri was on her right side. Genial spun to her right, expecting the girl coming out behind the smoke and green light from behind her was trying to get an angle on her side. She knew Dendo was still recovering from her last kick, so she had the moment to attack this girl first…

No one was there.

Genial's eyes bulged as she heard Himazuri again but directly in the middle of her own mind. "Move into her blindspot and take her down." Genial was confused as she started spinning. She stopped herself and darted her gaze to Dendo whose teeth were gritting and whose body twisted before he had even come down to hit the floor after the kick sent him flying. He was about to hit down, but he swung his arms towards the woman who ducked down and just lost some strands of her short red hair due to how close the Slices came. And then Himazuri decked her in her blindspot while she was ducking and focused on Dendo in that moment.

Just as Himazuri had said that half of what Genial was thinking had been lies to distract her, Himazuri knew that that call-out would still be inside of her enemy's head when she put her own thoughts in there. Genial was not expecting Himazuri to just give away her actual position and plans. Her own doubt delayed her reactions, and Himazuri slammed into the woman who was in a strange position with no balance after ducking from Dendo's Slice so quickly. Himazuri slammed a taser into the woman's side as she pinned Genial to the ground. By grabbing onto her enemy like this while she slammed the taser into her, the electricity coursed through Himazuri also and made the hero girl grind her teeth in pain.

Himazuri was expecting the sudden shock though and dealt with it, while Genial jolted and was unable to quickly respond to the smaller woman grabbing her left arm and putting it behind her back in an arm-bar. Himazuri reached down with one hand and pulled the device that Genial had been Scanning with out of her pocket. She smashed it down into the street at their side into a hundred pieces. "Don't move. I'll snap your arm," Himazuri warned inside the woman's head. "Or maybe I'll just kill you." "You are under arrest," Himazuri said aloud, while Genial's eyes bulged and darted to the side and up at the smiling hero girl who did not speak aloud that threat which would not have been very heroic of her.

You could just deny you ever said it? And they'd take your word over mine because I'm the only witness. See, that's the arrogance of heroes. You think that you've won. You think you can threaten me with snapping my arm, just because you have the positioning and the grip? Genial's bent backwards arm started to pull, and Himazuri grabbed it with her other hand and yanked into a more uncomfortable position while putting both knees on the side of the villain who struggled to pull free.

"We have you," Dendo warned the villain who Himazuri was struggling to hold. Genial's eyes shifted in front of her to the boy whose arms both glowed with a thin green veil. He glared down at her and threatened, "Stop struggling, or we'll have to…"

Heroes need to understand their folly. Young girl, you may know Zach Sazaki, but you are not him. Don't pretend to be. He is no hero. He is my enemy, but he is also someone I respect. Your ideals make you nothing but a pawn of the government. An oppressor against us Liberators. Genial smirked. Her device had been broken. Dendo was ready to Slice down at her if she managed to throw Himazuri off. And yet she smirked. Her thoughts were only about ideals and taunting her enemy who could not read into her attack, which Genial could tell by the way the girl was still pinning her down, when this was the last place that Himazuri would want to be in a second.

Himazuri's eyes grew larger and larger as they darted past the back of her enemy's head and to the green square that glowed on the street below them. It spread out in front of her and behind her, on both her right and left sides, and Himazuri started to release Genial and stand back up. "You're crazy-" Himazuri started yelling while pulling her body to the side she could get to quickest.

And then eight more green squares glowed. All of the squares touching the sides on this grid and at all the corners so escape was difficult in all directions. One square was under Dendo in front of her that he was running across to get to the women. "Himazuri!" Dendo swung his right arm and Sliced across the pavement on the women's left side that had been Scanned already and did not need Genial to Re-Scan for her to blow it sky-high. Dendo grabbed Himazuri by her left hand that she reached out for him, and he pulled them back both onto the square that he just Sliced. The green glow dimmed on that square and only had a minor puff of green light that came out of it while Dendo hit down on his back with Himazuri on top of him.

Both of them were much more hurt by the other eight green squares though that blew up closer to their feet but also on either side of them. The green light glowed brightly and pieces of pavement flew through the heat into the screaming heroes. Dendo held his arms tighter around Himazuri's back and protected her as best he could as the explosions hit them in their sides. It burned through his costume on his arms, disconnecting the gloves from the power source in his back that was also beyond repair after he just hit down on it on the minor explosion of this square of the Scan.

Who… wouldn't… have a backup?

Himazuri's clenched-shut eyes had squinted open. She was looking down in worry at Dendo's panting expression and exhausted face. But she turned her head and scrambled out of Dendo's shaking arms, getting to her feet then dropping back to her right knee hard and coughing as she was not expecting the pain to hit her so sharply. She had only jolted up because of that terrifying thought she just heard from the smoke behind her. Both of her shoes' soles had burnt through. She was standing on hot pavement but ignored the searing pain on the balls and heels of her feet. A backup?! She had another device on her, okay, but maybe the taser-

"You think an ally of Raijin wouldn't make sure that a measly taser couldn't affect her main means of fighting him?" It was as if Genial had her Quirk and could read Himazuri's thoughts. The silhouette with glowing blue eyes stepped through the smoke and lowered down a device in her hand that she pocketed once more. Himazuri got a look at her enemy and tried to calm herself again as she saw the state of her enemy. Most of Genial's costume had burnt off. Her skin was reddened and she had a lot of blood on her stomach and breasts. "Now then…" Genial started.

In the corner of Himazuri's eyes, she saw something truly horrifying. Dendo's eyes squinted partially open and shifted down, straight at his left arm that had some blood on it from when he was grazed by a bullet earlier. It was burned too and lost much of the costume on it. But as it glowed green, Himazuri could see in the panic on Dendo's face and from the smirk on her enemy's that this was not Dendo's Quirk covering his arm in the aura for a Slice. The green light flashed and Dendo screamed, "RAAhaAAGhh! YAAaah-" He bit down and slammed the back of his head into the floor under him. Stupid! Stupid! AH- We needed to move!

Himazuri stared at Denddo's left side at the arm inside the smoke. It was burnt and bloody and had flesh hanging off while it was still smoking. She turned back to Genial who just showed she had the ability to blow up her friend, and she could not hide her own fear even as she tried to show a collected and focused expression. Himazuri glared down the muscular villainess who just displayed a sadistic side to her evil. Genial's burnt lips curled up high and she wondered to the mindreader girl who had just caused her to do so much damage to herself, "Let's play a game, shall we?"

---

"OH MY GOOOOOODD!"

Tiny shards of ice flew at a hundred miles per hour away from the street covered in shattered windows and walls that were being bent inwards and away from the visible vortex of wind. That vortex pushed horizontally into the constant waves of ice emerging from Geten's body that itself was engulfed in an armor of ice so thick that it protected him even as he was slammed into the walls and streets whenever Inasa caught him. His ice armor and the enhancements done to him like was done to all of the Liberators had kept him from facing the severe injuries Inasa was intending to inflict with how hard he hit an enemy he was now fighting with all of his might after seeing he did not need to be as concerned about hurting this villain.

"Get out of here!" Inasa yelled behind him towards civilians who a secondary gust of wind picked up and pulled out of the way of shattering ice and glass that whipped around too much but Inasa was also redirecting out of their paths.

A wave of ice pushed up underneath Geten and tossed him over the vortex of wind. That huge funnel pushed through the ice pillar that shot Geten up and shattered it a second later, but Geten slammed his arms out to the sides and created a pair of huge falcon-like wings of ice that he slammed down. Inasa swerved through the air and wind-yanked those ice wings hard into Geten's back, but Geten swung both arms upwards and fired out spikes of ice that Inasa barely jerked his face away from to avoid being impaled through his skull. Leaning back so quickly put Geten out of his line of sight for a moment. That moment was all the more experienced villain needed to recreate his ice wings while the old ones were still breaking apart behind him.

He flapped upwards and Inasa caught a glimpse of his long pale hair whipping up in his peripheral vision. Inasa turned his body and slammed both hands at him, and Geten swung one muscular arm forward and pushed down on the back of Inasa's right hand. Inasa's palm pushed downwards instead and forced out such a strong wind that he still avoided the spike of ice coming out of Geten's other palm that the villain was aiming at Inasa's neck. The force of wind pushed Inasa upwards instead of backwards, and he funneled more wind through the tubes of his costume to twist himself faster and into a kick downwards. Spikes of ice shot out of Geten's skull though towards Inasa's leg he had to yank back away.

Inasa had to focus more on his leg not being impaled, so Geten's secondary attack blocked from sight by the emerging spikes out of his head, worked in cutting through Inasa's costume through the tubes that air had been funneling through. Inasa spun out as he lost the precise control over his own flight that his costume was designed to assist him with. Geten swung his left arm down while dropping from the air, and he created a wave of ice all the way to the ground that caught his legs then pushed him towards where Inasa was spinning out with less control over his movements than his opponent even up here in the air.

Geten had injected with a Quirk enhancer. Inasa had found him among many defeated heroes and "civilians" who he suspected were actually Army of Death soldiers like the woman he met outside of the city. This villain was stronger than any he had ever faced, and he barely got himself upright in the sky in a populated area where he had to keep far more than just defeating this enemy in mind. He has more experience, Inasa understood as he stared down this angry enemy with a very powerful Quirk. Inasa recognized the attack patterns were beyond what normal villains could employ during fights he had had with them over the past three years.

Geten had stopped short when Inasa managed to right himself in midair even without the proper equipment. Inasa simply adapted to missing his costume and adjusted his flight patterns accordingly. "You're strong, I'll admit," Geten told the student ahead of him. "And in our coming world where strength is all that matters, you would have been above most everyone with that Quirk." Geten's eyebrows narrowed down and two spikes of ice slowly pushed out of his palms. Then more spikes bulged from those while others came out of the ice armor all around the man whose helmet of ice thickened as well and even covered over his eyes and started in over his mouth. "But you will not see that world. You chose the wrong side."

He's strong. All he cares about is strength. "I hate guys like you the most," Inasa said. His own expression was darker than usual. His lips curled down farther at the corners. "A world where strength is all that matters, sounds to me like a spoiled child's dream. You should grow up already." Inasa put his arms behind him and started collecting up strength. The atmospheric pressure changed around them. Geten's eyes darkened more and the ice armor around him thickened to cover everything. More waves of ice spiked up from the ground as Geten slowly dragged his arms upwards with his palms pointed towards the sky.

Here I go, Inasa took in a deep breath. Then he blew it out and a visible wind pushed from him and towards Geten. He pushed out the winds behind him then slammed both arms forward after traveling half the distance to Geten in an instant. Ice shot up from the ground below Inasa but he already swung his arms forward, and yet Geten managed to swing his own in at the same time after traveling only a quarter of the same distance Inasa just traveled.

Ice pushed forward and up in front of Geten. It forced its way into the hurricane of wind that Inasa smashed into it and shattered it all apart, only for more ice to replace what was just there. The initial winds had more wind pushed into it from behind, while the ice that started got supplanted by even more that emerged out of the ground and from the rest of the cracking ice that sealed and got even stronger. Geten pushed himself forward farther after being stopped only a quarter of the way to Inasa, and he got halfway. "HaaaaAAAAAAHHHHHH!" Inasa yelled out and pushed both arms forward harder while forcing so much wind into his back to keep him upright and close to his enemy who was getting even closer.

The ice is too thick! My winds aren't- they aren't- "AHH! HAAAAAA!" Inasa screamed harder and his muscles tightened while his whole body forced forward through the winds that continued cracking and shattering ice but not blowing enough of it away compared to how fast a Triggered Geten was replenishing it.

"Use an assist, Gale Force?!" A voice yelled behind Inasa.

His eyes widened and darted to the side for a second. Then both sides of him became filled with huge jets of flame. Fiery pillars flew by either side of Inasa and into the ice that was almost upon the teenager who could not see this new person who came up directly behind him but far enough away to avoid being sucked into the funnel. Jetflame had to yell out over the winds and breaking ice to reach the boy's ears, and Inasa heard him just fine.

Geten's gaze snapped from behind his ice helmet up over Inasa and to the disguised figure pushing down jets of flames into Inasa's Whirlwind. Geten had seen this man's Quirk in Wampajawa even if he did not recognize the man right now. He had seen a glimpse of him in the final scenes of the battle. "Jetflame," Geten growled, knowing from his intel who it was he was really looking at despite the man's wig and disguise. More spikes of ice bulged out the top of Geten's huge wave now covering most of the street, and they fired off as projectiles towards the former hero turned AoD who was trying to assist Inasa.

Spare winds now full of flames too pushed upwards and protected Jetflame who did not flinch while continuing to supply fire-power to his ally. Inasa grinned as his winds melted through that ice far quicker than before. The winds he could create were flaming hot now, and he pushed them harder into Geten who could not focus on a second attack on Jetflame as his push forward was suddenly jolted to a short stop. "FIRE HURRICANE!" Inasa screamed, a giant smile spreading over his face as he found himself engulfed on all sides by fire that he kept from burning himself. I've known for quite a long time now, how well my Quirk works with fire, Inasa thought of a rival of his with half red and half white hair, but that thought just flashed through his mind for an instant before he focused fully on this attack that was still facing much resistance. "COME ON!"

"Push- PUSH!" Geten slammed both hands forward and into the back of a massive wall of ice that speared out the other side faster than ever towards Inasa. And those spears of ice got thinner and then barely broke through the hole in the fiery winds where Inasa was flying himself and sweating badly as he was completely surrounded. Those ice shards fell apart and melted though. Then the ice pushed back and melted more. Geten's eyes bulged as the wall his hands were pressed up against started to glow bright orange. The ice became hot. It melted over his hands that lost their armor as well and started to burn.

Ice replenished around the villain who pulled backwards to evade as he realized it. It was too late though. The wall and his footholds shattered as the heat made them too weak to stand. Ice wings coming out of Geten's back melted as the fire slammed into him and made the villain scream. The fiery wind engulfed him and pulled him high up in the air before curving and slamming down five times as fast. He can take it, Inasa assured himself, right before he slammed Geten into the street so hard in an enormous fireball that the heated wind that exploded off of it felt like the outside of an explosion.

Inasa put an arm in front of his face and blocked the wind for a second before just making a little cone of air in front of him to keep the rest away. He then flew himself over the crater in the street just as Jetflame did. They both stared down into the crater and at the figure inside of it who was twitching, but unmoving other than that. Then the twitching stopped and the villain just lay still in the hole in the ground. Inasa was panting hard, but he took in a deep breath and then lifted his gaze up to the man in front of him. "Thank you," Inasa started. He paused but held back from asking a question that he assumed he already knew the answer to about this man who did not look very Japanese but had spoken with a pretty good accent so far.

Inasa glanced down and thought to go check on the villain he believed was out after how strong a blow he just landed. He froze though while Jetflame was opening his own mouth. Both of them turned. They looked out of the city to the north. Some swirling dark clouds had stopped rumbling in the north. Some of them were even clearing up, though there were large explosions coming from up there. Blue lights swirled in the sky, and he saw massive figures silhouetted in the distance through fog that was thinning out. "Maelstrom…" Inasa whispered.

Jetflame was staring the same direction with narrowed eyes and a focused expression. He frowned but still turned his head and looked a different way inside of Tokyo itself. Inasa frowned as well and glanced at Jetflame's face then turned too and looked to the east, the west, and farther south of him. Buildings all over the city were shaking. They had flames coming from windows and billowing black smoke rising from them. He could hear the people's screams in all directions of him.

"What is a hero's top priority?" Inasa could hear that woman's voice echoing in his head. "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." She was right. Zach trusted his people and I trust Zach. I know where I'm needed most. I fought this villain because I had to, but I need to start doing what I know is most important! "The people of Tokyo need their heroes to get in there and save them. You go handle that, I can take these guys." I'm leaving it to you, Maelstrom.

Because I know Zach is alive. I saw some dark and yellow explosions during that fight. He's fighting Raijin. He survived, and that means he'll have to revive people later. I want that number to be as low as possible. There are many zones of danger in this city. I'll go where civilians' lives are most at risk first and make my way across. Inasa looked at Jetflame who he did not recognize even looking at the man from up close where Jetflame held himself in the air with some fire coming from his soles and his pointed-downwards palms. "I'm going to help evacuate as many people as I can."

"Good decision," Jetflame assured the teenager whose Quirk would work well for that. "I'm just a regular Japanese citizen, but I'm going to continue fighting to protect myself and my city." Jetflame gave Inasa a serious nod then turned away. "Good luck, Gale Force. Do whatever you can to protect as many people as you can."

"Thank you," Inasa said once more. Then he turned, and he and Jetflame flew off in different directions.

Jetflame looked off to the north where he thought Inasa might have wanted to fly off to and assist his own comrade. Maelstrom's facing more resistance up there than anyone else. That ice villain took out too many heroes and our own forces. Defeating him doesn't get us to the same level. Mother Russia's out of commission too. I want to help you, Maelstrom, but we're stretched thin as is and need to take on as many separate enemies as possible. I trust, that you can take care of yourself… I hope.

Maelstrom flew backwards at the top of a tornado that broke apart as the ground the base of it dragged across collapsed into a hollow pit. Giant snakes shot up the sides of the pit and leapt into the tornado, rising up higher as the winds spun them around only to launch them outwards at five different flight-capable villains soaring towards the woman at the top.

One of those five just spiraled away from the snake and kept on the most on-line trajectory with Maelstrom after his dodge. He was now the only one that close to the woman who changed directions without changing the direction of her latest tornado. She dove off with wind pushing behind her, and she extended her arm out to clothesline the enemy. The man flying towards her flapped his brown feathery wings though and spun again, dodging her arm then aiming both guns in his hands up at her.

His eyes bulged as her extended arm opened its fist up. The way that her hand had curled looked to just be to ready her for the jolt she would feel when her arm slammed into his face, but it actually activated the watch on her wrist that wrapped around her hand and glowed bright blue as her palm pointed towards the stunned villain.

PSHU! A blue beam fired into the flying enemy and sent him plummeting with smoke coming off his burned body.

Lightning shot across the sky above the panting woman who ground her teeth but pushed down with both hands and dropped the area around her into a low pressure system. The slowing black clouds above her started speeding up again, and she ignored the gash on her left side and on her right arm above where her advanced watch-gauntlet ended.

Maelstrom felt shifts in the wind ahead of her through the fog she had created herself. Water droplets moved around something large that was charging at her. Three bolts of lightning flew out of the sky as she swung an arm down, and the giant getting zapped tripped and skid across the floor below her before sliding straight into a deep pit and falling in.

As she attacked by swinging her left arm down and wincing from the pain in her left side, Maelstrom caught sight of the silhouettes moving in behind her. She felt the shifts in the air above her direct control, and she darted her gaze up as a massive hole ripped open in some of her swirling clouds. The air around her shaded blue, and she ducked her head to dodge underneath a huge chunk of earth being thrown her way with trees still falling out of it.

She flew the direction that earth was thrown from, but she stopped short as the AANTs flew into her path and aimed straight at her. She could still feel the approaches behind her at the same time, and she shot upwards and aimed at the villain who just destroyed parts of her clouds, while robots and men below her fired at and hit each other. Some of them swerved out of the way of allies' attacks and chased Maelstrom higher into the sky though, and she cursed under her breath while glancing down at all her enhanced or Triggered enemies, or both in some cases.

They had powerful Quirks that were disrupting her Weather Manipulation even on Trigger herself, though she could feel her own extra power fading. The AANTs and fighter drones were powerful as well. There was an army of them still surrounding her. I've dropped hundreds of them already, she grit her teeth more harder as she told herself that. It means nothing if I don't defeat them all! She ground her teeth for trying to pat herself on the back or give excuses as to why she was struggling here, and she just soared up into black clouds that pulled behind her after an enemy who was being carried up there but yelled at the flying villain helping him to get them out of there.

Clouds covered them, and then the fog got thicker below the clouds that dropped and caught all the others who chased her up there. If I take full control over the sky, it won't matter how many of them are on the ground. Maelstrom got behind a robot that had thermal vision and spun to her when she arrived. It fired, and Maelstrom dropped herself faster than gravity alone could. She zipped back up behind the AANT that spun and punched at her, and she pressed her right palm into its chest after ducking below that punch. Her right hand was glowing blue, but instead of firing energy into the robot, she curled her fingers and pulled backwards towards herself.

Maelstrom's glove glowed brighter while the eyes of the AANT she had ducked dimmed. It was starting to swing its other arm at her, but that arm slowed down and then dropped limply to its side before the robot started to plummet energy-less from the air. Maelstrom grinned while looking at her pulsing glove, then she spun and yanked her head back. A dozen red beams flew past her and some cut through her orange hair, making strands fall in front of the woman's face that almost got pierced through itself if she had not felt the pressure and cloud changes that informed her of the incoming attacks that almost moved too fast for her to dodge.

She aimed her right hand back towards where she was fired at. Then she curled that hand into a fist and made the brightening glow dim for now. Save it for when the Trigger runs dry. This fight will last until I either stop them all, or the fight in Tokyo winds down enough that someone assists- I don't need an assist! But still, I wouldn't deny some help here.

---

Wind rushed by a group of sprinting children who had been hiding behind the counter of a convenience store after running inside from a nearby park when the battle started. The store had been broken into by a hero and two villains who smashed through the glass windows causing what the hero had thought was just collateral damage until the people started screaming from behind the counter. The store owner and her employee who had hid with her both joined in with the hero while yelling at the kids to run, but they had been hiding for too long and did not realize as the hero did who tried calling out to them to come back, that the city outside that store was far worse to be running around in. It would have been safer for the group of 6 of them to have stayed in that store despite the two villains there, because at least it was a 3 on 2 and one of the 3 was a pro hero.

Outside in the streets, the kids had not seen a hero yet, though they were lucky that the few villains and some scary robots they had seen had ignored them thus far. Bang bang bang- A gun flew out of the air and bounced on the street. Bang! It fired off again and a bullet flew through a window in front of the first of the six kids, the one girl in the group who stopped short with bulging eyes that darted to the gun then the bullet hole in the glass just ahead of her to her right side off the sidewalk. Had she run a few feet farther forward, that bullet would have hit her. The other shots that fired from the same weapon had not come close to her though. The kids all looked back and farther down the road to where a villain with long blue hair skid back on the soles of his feet while glaring at the teen whose legs were sputtering out black smoke after he pulsed to his fastest speed in order to save those kids.

Sonic sprinted towards the student on his cool-down who backpedaled as fast as he could, which slowed down gradually as Sonic sprinted towards him and increased the power of his Slow. As much as Iida had trained his Quirk to reduce the cooldown of even his fastest bursts of speed, he had needed to use Turbo Boost against Raijin and now against Sonic as well. His Quirk doesn't speed him up and yet- Iida yanked his head to the left, but Sonic's right fist slammed into his right cheek and knocked his head spinning to the side faster than Iida had been yanking it away himself.

When Iida tried to move his own helmet-less head, his head was slowing down as Sonic got closer and closer. Yet as the fist connected and he saw Sonic drawing a blade from behind his waist using his other hand, Iida felt the pain in the backs of his legs subside. The speed my Quirk recharged was not Slowed. That confirms mind is Slowed and my body is as well, however it has to do with perception and not physical limitations. Yet objects can be Slowed as well? Iida was trying to pinpoint the specifics of Sonic's Quirk while they fought. His legs glowed red out his calves and he sped into the man who was whipping his arm forward, slamming his metal-encased body into the villain who sidestepped and turned his body to the side but did not get all the way turned yet.

The two of them each fell to the floor and rolled in weird ways. Iida bounced up though with the flames from his Engines still pushing out to jettison him from his back straight onto his feet. Yet as he glared towards the villain his legs raced him towards, he saw Sonic barrel-roll onto both feet with bent legs and his fingers curling into the ground in front of him that cracked under the pressure of his grip. It's not his Quirk, Iida turned himself to the side and rose his bloody right arm that had been grazed earlier, blocking the next attack then swiping it back to try and knock the blade out of Sonic's grasp.

Sonic dropped the blade from the hand of the arm that Iida parried. Despite the teenager slamming his arm in a metal casing into Sonic's that was just in his thinner costume, Sonic did not wince or seem to feel any pain from the boy's arm smashing into his own. He dropped his knife while his other hand was snapping forward and Iida's other arm was Slowing down from parrying the second. Sonic caught the blade and slammed it forward, and Iida's U.A. costume just kept the blade from piercing straight through his armor, only allowing it to carve deep and just break through before Iida could kick both legs up with a shout of "RECIPROBURST" as he felt the blade cutting through his steel breastplate.

All Might took him down. No one ever knew the full specifics of his Quirk, but we didn't know how strong he was either! Iida flipped backwards and found himself moving in slow-motion through the air. His backflip by kicking both legs in front of him had almost hit Sonic in the front of his body, but only the wind made Sonic take one extra step back before stopping. He looked in control as he did not stumble or stagger despite nearly being nailed by Iida's steel-coated legs propelling the blue flames making them go so much faster. Slowing others doesn't speed him up, but he doubled the efficiency of his already powerful Quirk by making himself faster. He trained, and somehow in prison- or just in all the time since he's been out, he's been training to get as fast as he once was. Or faster! Slowing me while at a speed beyond normal human capacity. Just speed that any human could reach.

Iida continued to backflip slightly faster as Sonic had backed away while Iida did the same. His feet were going to touch the floor before Sonic could reach him, but Iida's eyes suddenly darted to the left as he saw that Sonic was intentionally not glancing that way. The pistol was over there, and children were in the vicinity who Iida had been attempting to ignore so as not to draw Sonic's attention to them or show that he could be distracted from a fight in which every instant could be his last.

Sonic took a step. He stopped. Iida's eyes darted past Sonic whose head turned slightly more to the right and stared back behind him and over buildings. The children who were staring in shock at the speed of this fight all looked at the two of them confusedly then turned around themselves and looked back but failed to see anything.

As fast as Sonic and Iida had been fighting, both of them nearly missed what they just saw fly down their road and curve around an intersection behind them. The double helix of black and yellow looked like a blur even to the two fast enemies who glared back at one another to avoid their opponent getting the drop on them after that moment of surprise. "Who do you think is going to come out on top?" Sonic wondered to his heroic opponent. He sounded cocky and like he was making a taunt, and yet Iida saw past the facade and stared deep in Sonic's eyes that did well at hiding the true nature behind the question. Sonic lowered the corners of his lips but still kept them above being completely flat, and he tilted his head to the side as he wondered, "You know, I watched all the clips of the past Sports Festivals from when I was in prison?"

"Needed to study up, after all," Sonic stood straight up and cracked his neck to either side like he was preparing for round two or as if he was letting his guard down which Iida did not buy into. "But I remembered you wearing glasses back in those first two festivals. Not in the most recent one."

"Everyone knows that I-" Iida began.

"The new Ingenium!" Sonic called out and interrupted. His voice lowered in a more taunting way, "Ignoring the villain by his side, because he got revived." Iida's lips flattened and his mouth closed after he was interrupted. His expression did not flinch but his eyes did narrow at the enemy before him who continued with more of a smirk, "You are no hero. None of you are."

"Heroes only follow the laws they want to, just like us," Sonic called out. "You allow criminals like Sazaki to go scot-free. Is it because he revived you that you ignore it? That you have a murderer in your midst? You and I both know that he's killed far more people than I have, but you side with him. You side with a murderer just like I do."

Iida's expression was unshaken. "Heroes must be absolute in our justice," Iida declared to the villain before him whose lips curled up as his look became more incredulous at the hypocrisy in what this teenager was telling him. "And yet I am willing to ignore Zach's crimes," Iida continued. He stated it and showed that he was not just ignoring the hypocrisy that Sonic thought he was. The villain thinking little of his immature opponent became more confused that Ingenium would just declare that without hesitation.

Iida did not need to question himself though. Nor did he feel a need to explain. There is no reason in arguing with criminals. I do not need to explain myself to Sonic. I know that it has nothing to do with Zach reviving me. That's not why I allow it. That's not why any hero does, even if some of the public may let him get away with it for that reason. I know, that I was willing to arrest Zach before. Even after he revived me and made it so that I can see unobstructed. "My vision is clear, but my vision as a hero is even clearer," Ingenium told his enemy who had allowed his Quirk to recover. He would not just give me this time to taunt. He knows I need recovery. His Quirk must require the same. Just as I fought with Raijin before this, I can guess that I was not the first enemy he came across today.

"Your vision is clear? Yet you as a hero admit that Sazaki has killed?! You can't have both-" Sonic called out to him.

There was no need to respond, but Iida needed his own Boost and Recipro to recover more than he needed to rush an enemy whose recovery time he could only make estimations about. "I believe in Zach's justice as much as I believe in the justice of the laws I enforce!" Iida retorted strongly to his enemy who pulled his head back at that declaration from a straight-laced hero before him. Zach's may be superior to the law even, Iida thought. Certainly to my own. I sat by, because my justice told me to stay in school, and he saved me while I did nothing. I cannot believe that I am superior in judgement when I know that my justice only exists in its current form because Zach protected it for me. Zach, is the only one who can make decisions that are beyond my own and beyond the law's justice, and that I will continue to judge on a case-by-case basis, because…

"I believe in Zach more than anything," Iida stated firmly to his enemy. He regretted the doubt he had felt earlier today that he was now certain he would never feel again. "So who do I think will win between those two?" Iida wondered. "Between the one I choose to believe in, and the one who took my life?" Iida questioned, his voice raising with more certainty and more determination in it. His feet slid apart into a stance ready to sprint and the exhaust pipes on his calves started to glow brighter and hotter. He opened his mouth wide and yelled towards his enemy, "The answer is obvious!"

"Do it, Ingenium!" One of the boys on the side of the road yelled.

"KICK HIS ASS!" The girl who had been leading the group shouted towards the hero who would have at any other time told her to watch her language. It would have been tough for her to hear him though at the speed he was sprinting, because he was already spinning at the spot directly in front of Sonic when the girl was still finishing the second word of her shout. The third word came out and he was still practically in the same spot though due to being Slowed, and yet Iida learned something new about Sonic's Quirk as his "Slowed" leg connected with the villain who only pulled himself almost all the way back, so that Iida's leg briefly connected and applied the force of a leg moving far far faster than what looked to graze Sonic at only a few miles per hour.

Only a few blocks away from Iida and Sonic's fight, another student of Class A finished tying up the heavy unconscious villain she flipped back over using an automatic jack she had Created. She had promised that the special wire she had made that she and her comrades used to tie them up with would hold even the strongest of their enhanced enemies. Creati glanced up in the air as an AANT spun out of the sky with black smoke coming out of it then exploded before hitting the ground. Pieces of it blew apart and rained down on the street behind a spiky-haired hero who looked past Yaoyorozu and shook his head in amazement at the damage that flying girl up above them was doing.

Bikergang limped closer towards Yaoyorozu and spoke to the heroine who was still on this street with him and helped finish things here even after most others ran off for other fights. "Creati, that was really good work," Bikergang had some blood coming down the side of his head as well as on both arms, but his right leg still looked the worst of it as Yaoyorozu looked back to the man who she had tossed some emergency medical supplies herself before allowing him to help her tie up their defeated opponents. "Both of you kicked some, serious butt right there," Bikergang took in a deep breath as he was panting just walking a dozen meters down this street.

"Thank you, Bikergang," Yaoyorozu replied. She made sure to be respectful and grateful to the more experienced hero first, because she told him immediately after, "Now please get off the road and into one of these buildings. I believe you will only slow us down due to your injuries."

Bikergang's eyebrows rose up but he chuckled once then shook his head at the younger woman. She opened her mouth but he told her in a steadier voice while standing straight up even on a badly hurt leg, "This isn't the kind of battle you sit out. We'll fight these villains to our last breaths, if that's what it takes to win." Bikergang gave her a slightly smaller smile and then added in a lower voice mainly to himself, "The kid isn't the only one with that kind of resolve."

Yaoyorozu took in a deep breath herself. She nodded back at the man who gave her a small nod back in appreciation that she accepted his resolve to see this through. You probably haven't seen it, Zach, because you've been stuck on campus since the trial. But you inspired everyone with what they saw that day. No hero wants to feel like the Army of Death are more willing to sacrifice themselves. Creati reached up to her chest. "In that case," she began to the hero before he could turn from her. "Here is another grappling gun," Yaoyorozu had seen him lose his own during the fight, and she did not see Bikergang's motorcycle anywhere around them. "For your mobility," Yaoyorozu said, while Bikergang caught the weapon and turned it over in his right hand before letting out an impressed whistle as the weapon looked better than his regular support item.

"Hah," he spun it around and slid down to his empty holster. "I should just hire you in the future for this sort of-"

BOOOM!

A green flash of light behind Bikergang made Yaoyorozu and his eyes bulge in shock and then panic. Horror covered only Yaoyorozu's face though as Bikergang's head was still in mid-turn when the burst of green energy slammed into his back, and blew him apart.

"AHHHEE!" Yaoyorozu screamed while getting blown backwards by the green explosion.

She hit the ground and rolled back until she stopped on her stomach. She had burns on her arms she crossed in front of her face, but Bikergang had been standing far enough in front of her that the explosion did not take her out completely. Creati tried to shake the shocking image of Bikergang's flesh ripping off and his limbs blowing from his body out of her mind. She rolled onto a knee and a foot, scraping the skin of her left knee but using that pain to jolt her senses back to the present.

Her head snapped up and she grimaced but tried to ignore for the moment what remained of Bikergang on the road ahead of her. There was certainly no need to check if he was still alive in the state his corpse was in. A smoking pile of flesh, or piles of flesh, lay under the green-tinted smoke that billowed up but thinned just above the road Bikergang died on. Creati glared over that smoldering corpse and straight at the villain who had snuck up on them when they thought they had this road fully under their control.

Up in the air farther from the villain blocked by the smoke, Darling's eyes darted back down the street she was about to leave. Her teeth grit and she thought frustratedly, They made their tech even better than Whiplash's before we sent them to prison. That explosion was massive. I know Gentle got Whiplash and his gang back in jail, but not all of them. And the League managed to better condense that energy directly, from the… "Source," Darling saw the silhouette through the thinning smoke. She narrowed her eyes at the sight of the large spherical glowing green vats that made up Source's shoulders.

Yaoyorozu glared at this villain too whose costume was more advanced than any villain's she had seen thus far. The League of Villains put a lot into their investment. Not all of the villains they freed from the Sicilian prison had joined up with them afterwards, with some groups like Whiplash's disappearing on their own afterwards only to be re-captured by the Army of Death. The one person who the League would not allow to leave if they so wanted though, was the one man who they also made feel much more welcome to join them and gave him many incentives to join, not that he needed them…

Source laughed and stomped forward towards the hero girl who stood back straight up and glared furiously in his direction. Vihaan Shah narrowed his eyes at a girl who he recognized as a close friend of Sazaki's, and the right corner of his lips pulled farther up. The Indian villain glared back towards her while raising up his arms that glowed brightly with the green energy stored inside them. His costume was covered in green tubes that held excess of his energy source that he had filled the suit with before the battle, that way his shoulders had been able to replenish fully and he still had more. He had a huge cylindrical vat on his back that was attached to the tubes as well, and those tubes were connected to different weapons' systems all over his bulky armor that made him an even more intimidating and large figure than The German had been, even though Shah did not have any experimental enhancements.

"I can't wait to see the look on Sazaki's face when I show him your corpse-"

Bang! Bang!

A metal blast-shield shot up from the base of either of Source's shoulders. His body twisted back to the left, then right as he had to take a step backwards with his right foot too that he stomped down hard to not skid very far. He was sniped twice. Both shots hit the center of his blast shields, and the bullets crunched against the stronger material that the League had provided in order to protect Source's source of energy that they had powered their best weapons with. Source twisted his body back straight and glared to Yaoyorozu's left side where another young woman dropped out of the air and landed with bent knees and her head bowed.

"Source," that second girl growled. Source opened his mouth to yell out at her, but then he stared closer and froze at the sight of the brown-haired girl's plane wings retracting into her back. Her arms in the shape of rifles shifted back into regular human arms. Source's eyes grew larger and larger while the girl lifted her head up and glared into them.

"YOU!" Source yelled. "You were there that night!" Yaoyorozu darted her eyes to the side for a moment before snapping her gaze right back onto their enemy.

"You should have stayed in prison," Airi snarled towards her old enemy. Source recalled it. When most of the Army of Death were lagging behind, this one figure who could change her body into different kinds of tools and weapons had been the one keeping up with him and Whiplash no matter what. She had chased them through Cazzitanno. Even out over the water after they had gotten on his supercharged jets powered by his own Quirk, the Army of Death with this girl among the fastest of them had been right behind them. The girl he had not seen since that night growled darker at him with a cold look in her eyes, "I'll be sure to put you back there-"

"Ha, hahaha," Source laughed at the two women ahead of him who frowned at the sound of that laughter getting louder. "I'm glad you're here," Source sneered. He threw his arms out to either side, and he called towards the women in front of him with a look towards Creati too, "I was freed from prison to assist the League. They gave me money, women, power over my own subordinates! And all they wanted was my help, but what they didn't know is that they didn't need to offer me any of that. I know, that Sazaki is going to die here today. You think I would miss that?"

Darling grit her teeth. Yaoyorozu's expression darkened. Her fingers twitched at her sides and she focused on the armaments their enemy was surrounded in which seemed to be able to react on their own in order to protect him and the League's greatest energy source. "That bomb Death took to the face surely weakened him," Source continued towards his enemies. The light-brown-skinned man smirked wider and added to the women he knew as close comrades and friends of Zach Sazaki, "And now he faces Raijin, who has filled this city with years' worth of electricity that he has siphoned for the sole purpose of killing Death. If- IF! Sazaki can survive him as well," Source's lips curled up even higher at the corners. "I know that he will have used up every last bit of his power in order to defeat Raijin. And if it comes to that, then in that moment of his greatest weakness, in that moment that he is weakened and wounded, I WILL BE THE ONE WHO BLOWS HIM APART-"

The angered looks on the women's faces in front of Source shifted. His mouth froze open. The two had already been glaring darkly at him, but their expressions shifted in different yet similar ways. The girl to his right bared her teeth at him while a deep snarl came out the back of her throat. Her eyes were full of rage and murderous intent unmatched by nearly anyone Source had ever seen before. He had been a test subject of human experimentation before, and he recognized the look directed towards him that he knew had once been on his own face. Shah wished that having a hero next to this former Army of Death member would have made him feel more secure in the idea that Darling would not be able to just gun him down if she got the drop on him.

Creati's eyes flashed for a moment though with a look that was not heroic in the least. She had seen the way that Bikergang was just killed. A man who Zach had respected and who he had interned with. She knew it would hurt him to find out what had happened to his old pro hero whose body was in no shape to be revived. Yet in her head as Source was speaking, she saw what he was threatening them with and mentally pictured it as Zach died in a similar way. Her racing heart somehow slowed down as her expression flashed with a different kind of anger, then became more intense than she had ever been while facing a villain before. Even between all the thoughts of their enemy's weaknesses and all angles that she could move to, all weapons she could create and opportunities she could exploit, she was thinking so fast that the thought flew through her mind, This must be what it's like for him to have 'Death on the brain.' Her self-awareness of how much adrenaline just pumped through her body to give her this speed of thought did not linger. Her eyes were locked on Source's and yet she analyzed everything and everywhere in her peripherals simultaneously.

Can't kill. He wouldn't want that. Not to protect him. Breaking fingers and legs isn't killing though. The right corner of Darling's lips curled up even as her lips stayed pushed apart to continue showing her baring teeth that now looked like some sort of predator's smile. Her rage continued to show through, but so did a look of someone who had hurt, and killed, many many people in their life. She looked like an experienced carnivore.

Airi's legs started to transform the same time as her arms. The front of her body was turning to steel but pointed out in the front of herself to give her a more aerodynamic form. Her skin turned silver in color while jets opened up on her calves and all the way up her hamstrings to her ass. Yaoyorozu's chest glowed bright white and popped out several technological devices all at once, as well as a big black cloak of kevlar that she grabbed while darting to her right side because Source's cannon arms popped open and fired down the street at the girls in that moment.

The green cannon shots went just behind Creati who dove into a forward roll then leapt up out of it with a jetpack firing her twenty feet up in the air. That jetpack was hidden below her long black cloak that was heavy but felt light in the adrenaline she was filled with at the idea of this enemy going and killing Zach while he was wounded after a fight with Raijin. Darling did a backflip with the jets on her legs accelerating just as the green beam was getting close to her. Her back bent over the top of the light, surprising the enemy who fired stronger with that right arm pointed at her because he thought that with her steel-body she was going to try and tank the attack.

Darling aimed her own right arm towards the villain and fired a canister towards him out of her own kind of cannon arm. Creati closed her eyes while grabbing onto a pair of curved scimitars that she pulled out of her chest in a move that made Airi's eyes snap towards her in recognition for a moment and then back at their enemy. "Ch," Airi ignored the sight that she recognized as an exact replica of a move she had once seen in a fight much like this. Both of those scimitars in her head were completely black though and wisping with dark smoke compared to the normal ones that Creati just pulled out and dove for Source with. The villain was covered in green tubes of his Quirk energy, and his attacks were aimed far from him. Even without the prior knowledge that Airi had on this enemy, Creati knew to get close as well in case Source's Quirk could hurt himself or she could disrupt his ability to use it by damaging his costume.

The flash of the flash-grenade went off and Source grinned. His visor shielded him from the light while Creati herself was closing her eyes. He stepped towards her while lifting up a glowing green pistol from his waistband that he fired at the girl. His arm snapped down and to the right as he was pulling the trigger. His eyes darted that way to one of the glowing devices that Creati had popped out a minute ago, and then his visor lost the HUD on it as well as another of those devices she had left behind while darting away from them had activated on a timer. Her eyes snapped back open as she landed and sprinted at the enemy, only for those green tubes to cover in steel coatings that spread down from his thick armor at the moment of collision of her blades to them.

His costume reacted quicker than either the villain or hero could move. But as the smart costume registered the incoming attacks on his armor, it had to refocus quickly up in the air at the girl who shot over using the speeding jets out of her back and legs now that accelerated her in a flip over Source's head. His helmet started hardening, and her foot hardened quicker as she kicked down and into the back of his head. Source slammed into the floor. Yaoyorozu grabbed his left arm while releasing one of her blades, and she bent it behind his back, then she dislocated it while it was still inside of the strong costume. "RAAA!" Source yelled out in pain.

"Back!" Darling warned.

Creati was thankful for the help, though she recognized what was coming only a millisecond later than Darling did anyway. The two girls leapt backwards. Darling crossed her arms while making her body stronger and heavier which did slow her down but protected her better. Yaoyorozu grabbed the right edge of her black kevlar cloak and wrapped it in front of her body. Source's armor had suddenly opened up all the panels on it and spread out thick casing around his whole form as he lay there face-down. Creati had to let go of his broken arm, but her eyes did widen a bit as she was pulling the cloak in front of herself to see Source lifting that arm through the pain he continued shouting in. The casing around his shoulder vats got thinner as it spread down his arms too, and they could see the green glow in those vats getting brighter but also depleting as the liquid energy source inside flooded out through his body.

Source slammed his arms down. The ground exploded in a massive green blast that slammed into both women fighting him who had backed away in preparation but were still hit by the edges of the monstrous green blast that Source powered with so much of his Quirk that it infuriated him. He was panting in the center of it inside of his powerful body armor that still made him feel the heat from outside but at least protected him from any further injury. Source winced and ground his teeth in more frustration than pain, I need everything left for Sazaki. I'll just, find where he and Raijin are, and then… Source dragged his right arm up, and he moved his hand towards his left shoulder but winced as he touched it. I need to put it back in! IGNORE THE PAIN!

Source slammed his whole torso down into the ground while pushing up on the shoulder. "AH- ahck gah- NNnnn," he cut off his scream then just groaned through the agony as he pulled his left arm back up on the floor as well. It still hurt but it was easier to move now than when he was trying to make the explosion that felt weak due to the lack of control he felt in that arm. Source dragged his knees up, then he turned his head to the right and stared with huge eyes at the silhouette also standing up out of the smoke around him. He heard movement on his other side and spun his head that way as well while he was getting onto one foot, then up on the other as well just as the taller girl to his left side was doing.

"Damn you," Source snarled in a low voice. "Don't get in my way. You-" his head snapped the other way to glare at the shorter of the silhouettes. "Do you know how long I have waited for this moment? This day… This whole world, was against me from the start. Turned on me, when my Quirk was the answer to ALL of our problems. Energy? Technology? I had- I had the potential to change it all! And this world, this fucking broken world, that HE PROTECTED! A world that he could have changed with his power," Source shook his head back and forth with his expression furious. "He knew what it was like, and he betrayed all of us who were the same as him. He's a traitor-"

"The rest of us joined him to change the world for the better," Airi countered through the smoke where her silhouette was becoming clearer. It made Source glare towards her, leaving the other unmoving silhouette only in his peripheral vision but more in his blind spot so he could not tell that there was actually a scarecrow in place of the tall girl who had stood up on that side of him. "You weren't special. Just another person with a cursed Quirk like his, but you chose this life. You chose vengeance and evil." Airi's green eyes glared into the villain's and did not waver despite what he had said that had made Yaoyorozu's eyes glance down for a moment as she grit her teeth while slipping in a crouched position around the villain's right side. "He didn't 'protect' the parts of this world that were broken. He destroyed the lab in Pakistan that you escaped from. While all you did was run from it."

Darling stomped towards the villain and rose her arms to aim at him which made him snap up his cannon arms to aim at her as well. They were still dim but started glowing brighter as he refilled parts of his costume with the energy in his half-full shoulder vats. His teeth were grinding even as his eyes filled with frustration and anger, rage at what she was telling him that he was trying to push down and ignore as just meaningless taunts from the enemy. Her words were too strong though and made his head start tilting back as she said, "You didn't change anything either. You were a coward and just ran. You are a coward, so you're running from the idea that you were wrong in your past choices as well. And because you're too afraid to face that reality, you've imagined yourself as some inspired tortured savior, when in reality, the only reason you're trying to kill him is because he put you in prison. You're pathetic, Shah."

"RAA!" Source's armor was amazing. But it could only compensate so much for its user's actions. It alerted him to the sudden threat on his right side, but the girl in front of him had arms raised towards him and was a bigger threat who he needed to fire on first. His choice to fire on her went against the alerts of his costume that was telling him where the greater threat was, but then again, that was exactly why Airi went to the effort of breaking down her enemy's ideals and shattering his purpose.

Even as she charged on her enemy's right with powerful electric rods at her sides ready to jab forward, Yaoyorozu still got a bead of sweat dripping down the left side of her face. You really taught her everything, Yaoyorozu thought. Her enemy's face was twisted and his eyes panicky as he was firing his cannons at the other girl who expertly dodged the sloppy attack at him while keeping her arms pointed his direction. Due to that, Source could not choose whether or not to spin to the other enemy he knew was attacking on his right or to fire again but aimed up at the flying girl who was too fast for his attacks to hit when he was trying to drag his cannons after her.

His head turned while his arms were still more indecisive and stuck partially between Darling and Creati. With no communication whatsoever, the two women had split his attention while attacking at the same time. He could see the scarecrow now that the smoke had faded and knew that Darling had only been distracting him, and yet the things she had said were not empty words. Her sneers were nothing more than a tactic for the fight and yet the girl did not sound like she was lying either. Source's eyes darted back and forth, and he hesitated. His armor tried to compensate, but no matter the improvements that Dice had made to give him the best chances in this battle, these two opponents had adapted to his gear's capabilities already.

Darling fired at his legs. His armor blocked despite his own indecisiveness. The gear tried to protect his right side as well. It covered up his ribs and his neck. The jabbing rods that Yaoyorozu slammed into him were electrified. His gear had the kind of anti-EMP tech in it that reactivated his power before after getting cut by one of her devices that she popped out the same time as her kevlar cloak, but that power was supercharged by the girl's attacks that conducted very well through the bulletproof steel that had wrapped around him. Electricity surged straight through his neck armor and into his ribs. Darling flew down after firing her shots, so right after they were blocked and Source was shocked, he was double-kicked in the face while his gear was short-circuiting.

Source was thrown off his feet and backwards. He was electrified and disoriented. Darling flew behind him and then fired jets above her and dropped with a knee that she coated with diamond at the last second while also making her bones harder inside her body to protect herself from this huge jolt of her diamond knee into his now-dented armor. Source gasped out with spit flying from his mouth, then his body started to glow green again, only for Yaoyorozu to fire from halfway to where he had landed with a taser. Airi leapt off at that very moment, and Source's armor was targeted directly in the power source that Yaoyorozu spotted during his roll away from Airi's double-kick. His armor stopped wrapping around the rest of his body, malfunctioning midway, and Airi dropped back down and landed another diamond knee into his right elbow this time, crushing his bones and collapsing the natural cannon barrel inside his arm that Source had hesitated to keep filling with power when his body was not completely protected this time.

The women confirmed that his own Quirk would severely damage him. They attacked in ways that damaged or circumvented his armor. And the two who sustained minor burns in their fight with the villain backed off and stared at his twitching form that they remained cautious of. Despite how his mouth was open and no noise was coming out, how his armor was sparking, and his green glow had dimmed, this was a villain planning on killing Zach Sazaki today. Unfortunately for him, he had come up against two people who were absolutely not going to let that happen.

---

CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

Clusters of red feathers scattered from the shockwaves that ripped through some of them. Hawks saved some of his feathers but could not pull away all of them, and more of his feathers were torn to pieces by the massive forces of Iscariot's Claps. The villain in a white costume who had a crimson cape on with a black X over it ignored the other feathers flying towards him from different directions. Hawks had so much control over his Quirk that he had made several targets for Iscariot that were too close for the villain to ignore. Had Iscariot not Clapped at them first, he would have been taken down by those clusters, but Hawks also had mid-range feathers and ones farther away that were spinning quickly in circles overhead or down the streets in preparation for attacks in Iscariot's blind spots once those areas became blind spots.

Iscariot ignored the mid-range feathers that flew in after the closer pockets were disrupted. His loud Quirk caused a gap in Hawks' control over his feathers on top of just destroying the ones that were hit with too much force that each hair of the feathers were ripped away. Hawks still had some control over the rachis, or the center needles of the feather that were thicker and managed to hold together, but the force had cracked them too and without the hairs those rachis could not do the kind of damage that Hawks' Quirk usually could. The feathers had lost their blade capabilities as well as the ability to catch people as softly and pull them out of the nearby buildings that Hawks continuously had to be careful of during the battle that had left giant craters and trenches all over the street and along the walls of the nearby buildings.

Iscariot did not pay attention to some of the more-functioning feathers that were flying rapidly towards him though even from mid range. He focused more on the dark form that swept down towards his right side that he had to spin to while leaping backwards. Iscariot kicked his feet together while his hands were still pulling inwards. Tsukuyomi had measured the time it would take him to turn this direction and Clap, but the clackers in Iscariot's hands were not the only ones that amplified powerful noise through his Quirk. Clap The tap of his feet together was not as loud as when he Clapped his hands, but it disrupted Tokoyami's flight and made him miss the timing of the next flap of his Dark Shadow wings.

Then Iscariot finished Clapping his hands. Hawks grit his teeth in frustration but did not shout out his sidekick's name in the concern he felt. Tsukuyomi adjusted as he got so close that it was almost point blank. Tokoyami had realized he would not reach to be able to attack first, so Hawks had the one consolation that at least his sidekick had crossed his huge black arms in front of his face while pulling his body back with the flap he finally got off. CLAP!

Tsukuyomi's trajectory instantly reversed. His momentum mattered nothing, but he avoided jolting as hard by flapping his wings first so he had already slowed and pulled back. He still got sent flying eighty feet backwards before hitting the street and bouncing while wrapped in his Black Ankh armor. Tsukuyomi rolled from the Clap, Dark Shadow's voice grunting every time they bounced, "Ow- ouch- bah- fuck- kah- BITCH- owww…" Tsukuyomi skid to a stop and he opened up his eyes while laying on his back. He pushed his arms down at his sides and groaned, "Nnnn, get up." His voice sounded more like Tokoyami's, even though his face was still wrapped in Dark Shadow and his eyes still flaring yellow in the pissed frustration of his menacing passenger. That frustration was shared between them though as Tokoyami glared back down the road towards the intersection where Ousuno Kanami dropped down to one knee, then to the other as blood spurted out the back of his left leg behind his knee when he tried to keep standing on it.

Iscariot had to make the choice. Hawks or Tsukuyomi. Tsukuyomi was closer than the next level range of Hawks' feathers, and he had hoped to land and be able to roll out of the way before those flying red feathers could reach him. Hawks himself was flying down holding two long feather blades, his smaller wings fluttering more like a hummingbird than usual as he needed more flaps per second to reach the same speed he could if he still had his full wings behind him.

Hawks landed a few meters from Iscariot though as the villain rose his right hand and curled his fingers in Hawks' direction. Hawks turned his body side-face and let the force of Iscariot clenching his fist pass right in front of him. The curl of his fingers made a clacking noise much softer than the previous Claps, but Hawks did not risk even getting hit by it in the slightest. He flicked his right hand after turning sideways and before Iscariot could open back up that right fist, and Hawks sliced through the speaker device on the back of the villain's hand that amplified even such a small movement of his fingers to allow for a semi-powerful force to emit from his fist.

Blood splashed from Iscariot's knuckles. His focus on them for a moment in the pain made it harder for him to stay kneeling up on his knees too as the tendons were too ripped from Hawks' previous sharp feather slices in the backs of his legs. He fell forward and slammed his forehead into the ground, and the collision of floor with his skin made a 'smacking' sound that repelled all the feathers closing in on all sides of him at once. The bloody feathers included, all of Hawks' attacks bounced backwards as a rippling circle of force blew away from the villain who had to slam his face extra hard onto the floor to make that loud of a noise as there was no extension to his costume that amplified forehead-smacks.

Hawks leaned backwards as the end of that ripple hit him and pushed him slightly backwards. His feet only skid a little back on the floor though. Hawks stared towards the man face-down on the floor who was struggling to move his legs that were just sliding forward and back on the bloodying pavement below his knees. Iscariot's head slid forward and back too on the blood starting to pour out from his forehead. "Why-" Hawks stopped himself. He grit his teeth and then pursed his lips to stop himself, but he could see Gargantuan's slumped body in the corner of his eyes. He thought of how betrayed Thunderclap's old friend had sounded. Hawks imagined the look of such a villain that Iscariot had showed him when they started their battle.

Hawks saw Tsukuyomi back up on his feet down the road. His intern getting injured like that made it easier to slice up his own former comrade, and yet he stared down at Iscariot's struggling beaten form and could not keep his face steady. "What are you fighting for? I don't, understand, Ousuno."

"I'm going to kill you, Hawks. Then I'm going to kill Tsukuyomi." Iscariot spoke it while dragging his face up on the bloody floor. His face was covered in his own blood as he rose his head. His deep voice sounded menacing and determined, and when Hawks looked into his eyes he saw that full determination to kill them on display.

"But why?" Hawks repeated. He hissed it at the man who did not have an answer for him. "Those things you said about the villains rising? About revolution? When did you start to believe that? Tell me, Ousuno. Was it always a lie?" Hawks shook his head so darkly. Tokoyami was jogging their way but slowed down as he heard what Hawks was saying. He paused completely though and turned his head to the right before reaching the intersection that Hawks had their almost defeated enemy surrounded by hovering feathers prepared to speed in faster than Iscariot could get off another Clap this time. Tokoyami stared into a dark alley on his right side and narrowed his eyes at the sight of a tall silhouette walking forward in it…

"Grr- NNn!" Iscariot ground his teeth and tried dragging his arms up on the ground at his sides. Feathers flew down and pinned through the backs of his hands. His already bloodied right hand got pierced through to the floor, while Iscariot curled his left quicker and prevented the feather from going all the way through his hand and fingers into the pavement, though his left middle finger was sliced completely off due to his quick reaction that allowed him to yank his left hand away. Iscariot put his left fist towards his face and bit into Hawks' feather, ripping it out the back of his hand while the other hero just younger than him stared at his former comrade in such confusion and anger.

"I know the cost will be high, but someone has to be willing to pay that price." Hawks could see the man before him stating his intentions before himself and some of the top hero officials of their time. He had no prosthetic, and Thunderclap had looked to him and specifically to his right shoulder. "The League will not stop attempting to get insiders in our ranks even after Lifebringer and Hawks. I will have to throw a lot away to gain their trust. I am willing to step into that darkness, because I know that it is the best way I can stop them." "Don't try to stop me, Hawks. Thank you though. It's because of you, that I know this is worth it…"

"I thought-" Hawks started. He cut himself off as he heard an explosion in the distance. His eyes darted up, and he saw smoke rising from all directions. He glared back down while Iscariot's head twitched, and the villain stared back into his eyes with slowly widening ones. There was sheer frustration in Hawks' eyes. The number 2 hero hissed at his old comrade, "Even when first word of you killing Tracer spread, and that you were now 'Iscariot,' I still had faith that you were willing to just go that far. I thought, maybe, you had even faked his death… After everyone!" Hawks yelled.

He had tried to keep his voice softer but it cracked as he yelled down at his enemy he just fought. "After everyone else, even the ones who knew, gave up all faith in you," Hawks paused and squinted his eyes in fury as he glared at the enemy who had shown no remorse for this betrayal through their whole fight. And only now, did Iscariot's head start to bow with his eyes huge and staring down at the floor below him in emotions that Hawks felt were fully justified. "…I still believed," Hawks whispered.

Huh? Where… Where am…

"I thought, that somehow you were just playing the long game. Getting in even deeper. If you were in the Radians, then were you trying to get to the League still and that was just your 'in,' or, or… But no. It was just you." Hawks curled his fists and glared in a more pissed-off way down at the top of Iscariot's head as the villain gasped out and made a noise from the back of his throat sounding horrified. "Because there is no long game. This, right here, is the end. And you're still on their side. So this is you. This city burning. Your friends dying! The people who-"

"Hawks," Iscariot's voice came out in a cracked whimper. Tears spilled from his eyes and his fingers curled into the floor. His right hand pinned to the pavement still moved as much as he could move it, his fingernails dragging through pavement and two of them peeling off. His left hand curled as well and bled just as much with his nails cracking from the sheer rage of him curling those fists. And despite the rage, despair was far more powerful inside Ousuno Kanami who lifted his face with his jaw completely open and tears streaking down his face. "I'm- I- I'm, sorry-" Hawks froze and his panicked eyes snapped up from Iscariot to his sidekick in the middle of the street ahead of him who just snapped both of his hands up to his head. Iscariot's voice spoke in a shaky voice in front of Hawks' feet, "W-what am I? What am… why- am- Estirou?!" Thunderclap's eyes darted up and he stared towards the corpse of his close friend, Gargantuan, who he clearly remembered killing earlier in the battle. "Ahh- AHHH-"

Iscariot's mouth froze open. Horror was covering his panicked expression. And then the villain in a crimson cape heard the scream from the sidekick behind him who Hawks just yelled towards. "AAhh- RAAAHHH!" Tokoyami's body hunched forward. His elbows pulled in and Dark Shadow's form pulled off of him from the way it had been wrapped on his body.

"WHOOAA!" Dark Shadow screamed in pain while pulling away from Tokoyami's body as far as he could stretch out from his back. "That smarts!"

"Tsukuyomi! Kid! What's happening-"

"Hypnos," Thunderclap's voice came out in the most hateful hiss that Hawks had ever heard in his life. The villain he had down on the floor in front of him turned his head to the right, looking back behind him and towards Tokoyami in a worried way that Hawks could see at the bottom of his vision. Even through that hatred, Hawks saw concern in the villain's eyes for his own intern who that same villain had claimed to be about to kill only moments earlier. And all of Hawks' feathers turned away from Iscariot, pointing directly towards a figure stepping out of an alleyway in the lime green costume of Embrya.

Hawks recognized the costume. He did not recognize the woman inside it who was not the same woman he saw outside of Karebo when he first arrived there, and who just like Electro and Bloodhound, had gone missing before the bomb went off. She was as tall as Embrya, but her hair was not the same green as Embrya had made her costume to match, rather it was much longer and as white as snow. "You know," the villainess started while turning her head from a groaning and struggling Tsukuyomi towards Hawks. "I thought at first that the Number 2 would be the right target, but instinct told me to wait and watch. And I have to say, Hawks, I get what you see in this one-"

All of Hawks' hovering and hesitating feathers flew at the woman at once. "Protect me!" She yelled out, keeping her smirk on her face while she stared down the approaching feathers. She had shouted instantly, and yet they were more than halfway to her by the time she finished her shout. They were meters away, closer, and then a huge black hand swept out and intercepted all of Hawks' attacks at once.

Hawks snapped his gaze to the right. He stared to the middle of the street and the boy whose right hand was still pressed up to his forehead but who slowly dragged it down his face. Dark Shadow's body had just flown to Tokoyami's right and grew a large hand to protect that woman with. Dark Shadow looked back towards Tokoyami and called out in surprise, "Why are we helping her?!"

"You be quiet, monster," Hypnos scolded the dark creature that looked back at her in surprise too and then more annoyance after a second.

"Why don't I just- oi! OI! Let me at her!" Dark Shadow sucked backwards towards Tokoyami's body as its arms jolted to stops at its sides every time it tried swiping at her. Tokoyami walked forward in the meantime while staring confusedly at the villain himself.

"Tsukuyomi, what are you…" Hawks darted his eyes back down to his feet.

His eyes widened as did Hypnos' for a moment. She lifted the right corner of her lips up higher and then spoke softly in a voice the older heroes could not hear while ignoring the bloody form who had far more blood spilling from his legs as he dragged himself to his feet through sheer will alone. Ousuno's legs wobbled as there was not enough cartilage left in his joints to hold him up, and yet he stood nonetheless. Hawks stared at his enemy's back, only he no longer felt like the man in front of him was an enemy at all. "Hypnos," he called her. Oh shit. Oh this is so, so fucked up. Hawks pulled his head back in disgust while also darting his eyes past Thunderclap and towards the kid who he was getting far more concerned about by the second.

"You," Thunderclap's voice was shaky. His eyes were full of horror and disgust, and pure animosity. "I- I killed- ahh-" Thunderclap's memories were intact. His heart was ripping into pieces for the first time though.

Can she only control one person at a time? Hawks had to theorize about their enemy's Quirk, even as he felt his own heart break a bit at the cracked gasp of his old comrade whose mental state he could not even imagine at the moment. And yet his own pain and pity for his comrade was mixed with admiration as he shifted his gaze back to the man whose legs steadied on the ground below him. Hypnos was saying something to the boy who had walked in front of her, and Hawks was insanely worried about his sidekick who he needed to save from the horrific fate that he had put together happened to Thunderclap. He did what she said without question. Thunderclap remembers. Can't let the kid go too far. What about Dark Shadow?

Hawks had the ability to focus on Tokoyami alone for a moment rather than his real enemy, as he had a new ally by his side. Thunderclap stomped his right leg forward and ignored the agony and the feeling that he was about to collapse. His bloody hands were shaking and curled into fists, but he could not just Clap at her while that other prisoner was in the way. "No one else," Thunderclap snarled. They won't forgive me. No one will. I killed- I KILLED SO MANY- All of his time as Iscariot came rushing back to him but in a clear mind. A mind that was no longer clouded with the many orders that Hypnos had given him.

"…and at any moment you find yourself able, put in danger as many civilians as possible to create an opening. Killing heroes is the secondary priority after my own safety-"

"I WON'T LET YOU DO IT TO HIM TOO!" Thunderclap lifted his right foot and stomped it down on the ground. The clacker in his heel created a large enough Clap to launch him up in the air so he would not have to take any more steps, as he knew that one more and he was going to collapse again. Ousuno could remember now, and it killed him for the first time as he remembered all the things that he had been there for and did not even react to. The true reason he became a villain, the high-ranking woman in the League he had stepped in front of the last time he was still in control, all of it! He could remember the way that Intanzo would smirk towards him while all the other villains around just looked at him like one of their own. And he imagined how Shigaraki would talk in ways that would disturb him one second and yet he would be nodding along with all the others in the very next second.

Thunderclap's teeth bared in rage as that stomp sent him flying into the air. He launched himself to the sidewalk on the right of the street which was to Tsukuyomi's left and would draw the teenager protecting Hypnos in his direction. Either that, or he would have to stay where he was to protect from Hawks' feathers that all rose back up and started flying her way to work as a combination attack between them.

Hypnos was partially blocked from Hawks' sight by his own intern who only partially turned towards Thunderclap but mainly focused on Hawks who he knew as the bigger threat. Thunderclap's arms were swinging inwards as he was coming down. He planned to Clap before he landed, as his landing was going to be more of a crash-landing than anything as there was no way his legs were going to hold up his body when he touched down. Hawks could only partially see it, but Thunderclap saw the small black device that Hypnos pulled out of a tool pouch on Embrya's waist and shook back and forth while giving him a sideways and skeptical glance. She waved it around and then clicked on a button on it, and BOOM! Both of Thunderclap's arms blew apart at the elbows.

His lower arms flew away from the shredded stubs below his shoulders that flailed and sprayed blood as Ousuno screamed out. "Did you seriously forget about that elective surgery you accepted? I didn't tell you to forget, so it must be rattling around in there somewhere," Hypnos taunted the hero who thrashed on the floor on severely damaged legs and bloody stubs of arms. His face was still covered in blood too from his own self-inflicted headbutt into the pavement before, and the second-in-command of the Radians looked like an absolute mess on the verge of death.

"Thunderclap!" Hypnos called towards his ally before snapping his gaze back to Tsukuyomi who just sent Dark Shadow flying towards him out of the extending black connection at the top of Tokoyami's shoulders. Hawks flapped his small wings and narrowly avoided the huge swipe of Dark Shadow's right arm that grew even larger and made Hawks' dodge almost not enough. Hawks' eyes darted up for a moment to a dark cloud in the sky that had blocked off the sun and was strengthening his intern against him.

Hypnos tilted her head to the side while looking towards her old pawn whose thrashing was slowing just like his breathing. Thunderclap was wheezing with every labored breath. "I want you to know, Iscariot, that your 'sacrifice' was not in vain. Your choice to come to the League and infiltrate us, did matter. It did, I swear to you." She crouched and stared towards the man whose face lifted ever-so-slightly so he could look her back in those terrifying eyes that made fun of him to the very end.

"Don't listen to her!" Hawks yelled towards his dying comrade whose expression he could see for a moment as he dodged Dark Shadow. His eyes snapped back to those yellow ones of the dark creature attacking him, "Fight it, Dark Shadow. This isn't Tsukuyomi telling you to-"

"Oh shut up!" Dark Shadow curled his right claw into a fist and slammed down near Hawks. Hawks pulled away again, but Dark Shadow's fist destroyed the ground and sent some pavement flying out in all directions including at Hawks who only intercepted a few pieces with break-off feathers but was hit by a few others and sent spinning out. He rolled on the floor after hitting down then jumped away at the last second and avoided an extending dark arm that just barely passed in front of his body.

"Everything you did to help us get here has made it so we are able to take Tokyo, and the world to follow," Hypnos assured her victim. "Your sacrifice did mean something…" his head dropped back down and his labored breathing slowed even more, his eyes closing with tears spilling out of them freely. She watched as his body stopped heaving, and she finished while pretty sure that his ears would still be picking up noise for a few more seconds, "…To me." He died, and Hypnos lost a bit of her evil grin to say more nostalgically, "I can only affect one mind at a time, but I will be sad to see you go, Iscariot."

Hawks clenched his eyes shut for a moment as he flew up high using some of his own feathers to pull him by his costume rather than flapping wings that he could no longer keep together while still having enough weapons to fight with. Hawks got farther away to where Dark Shadow could no longer reach him. He had hoped the teenager would give chase, but he had taught Tsukuyomi too well. His intern knew him well enough to know that Hawks wanted to draw him away from Hypnos so that he could attack her better and without the amazing defense that Dark Shadow provided. And Tsukuyomi's primary directive was protection of the villain behind him, not defeating his mentor.

"You may have the speed, Hawks," Hypnos called up to her enemy. "But I have the attack and the defense."

"How did you do it?" Hawks growled but loudly enough that the woman down on the street could hear him.

"My Quirk, obviously," Hypnos replied with a scoff. "Perfect Hypnosis. I'm sure by the fact that I gave up Thunderclap, you already understand that it can only take over one mind at a time. However," a smirk grew wider on her face. "I believe it was quite worth it. This one would be top ten right out of high school, I'm sure. And surpassing you on the leaderboards? Well, isn't that what you've been molding him for?" Hypnos's smirk grew larger still at the reaction on Hawks' face as he saw Tsukuyomi not react in the least.

Dark Shadow did turn its head from above Tokoyami to glance down at him then back up towards Hawks who he glared at. In a low voice though, the creature wondered, "Why are we doing what she says again? This seems like bullshit to-"

"You listen to him, and he listens to me," Hypnos scolded the bird monster thing sticking out of her newest victim's back. "So you listen to me. That's all there is to it-"

"I don't listen to jack shit-"

"Control your Quirk," Hypnos ordered her charge. Dark Shadow froze completely. It turned back towards Hawks and narrowed its yellow eyes, though there was frustration in them that Hawks could tell by the way those yellow eyes flared violently and its dark body got spikier as well.

Hypnos herself frowned at the sight of this fight against her "Perfect" Hypnosis. Hawks did not feel good about her frown. It was not a frown suggesting that maybe her Quirk was not working as well as it should and that Tokoyami could break free, rather she looked annoyed by the slight mishap that might make it so she would dispose of this pawn earlier than she had Thunderclap.

Using him would make it not very difficult to get my hands on any of the other Class A students. Having them lower their guards around him is important. This one fought hard even after seeing that Hawks had defeated Iscariot and that the fight should have been over at that moment. It was perfect timing on my part, and yet I had to get within arm's reach for it to take full effect, and I lost control over Ousuno before that. Releasing Tsukuyomi for one of his comrades will leave me vulnerable against both until I can grasp control and give out my orders. He will know how it works at that point too, and his friends will be unlikely to damage him as badly as Ousuno was before I have to release him. Many are likely already injured due to their fights and Tsukuyomi may get damaged against Hawks however. "Hmm," Hypnos thought quickly and so many steps ahead that she was beyond the current fight and thinking farther into the battle. She had different variables rushing through her mind, and the woman who told Hawks the name of her Quirk to stall for a bit more time to think just sighed after another moment as she figured she needed to focus on the task at hand first.

"Let the kid go, and take me instead-"

"It's not that simple, hero," Hypnos retorted. She rolled her eyes while saying it too. She had claimed that she took Tokoyami over Hawks by choice, but Hawks already wondered if she picked him for some other reason. Hypnos did suspect that Hawks would have his guard up more than Tsukuyomi at that moment, but she was not lying about her other reasons. She was not going to explain to Hawks why it was 'not that simple' though. Hypnos just shook her head and then added, "But why would I want a one-armed washed-up hero whose Quirk is good at saving lives, over a monster who could wreck this city on his own if I really set him loose?"

"You know?" Hypnos raised her tone with a glance up to the darker sky. "It seems like Sazaki's allies have shown up. Long as that Exodus is distracted, I think Tsukuyomi might be able to take on the whole Army of Death on his own. Think you could?" Hypnos wondered to the back of her prisoner's skull.

"No," Tsukuyomi replied. Hypnos rose her eyebrows. "Zach's comrades in the Army of Death are equipped with flashbangs. Also, there are others like Jetflame, the former British hero, who have Quirks that can limit my ability."

He answered her like it was nothing. She's turned him into a completely subservient slave. Hawks glared angrier at this woman than he had even at Thunderclap back when he felt that his ally had betrayed him. She was worse in his mind than most any villain he had ever met before. All of Hawks' feathers including damaged ones flew up in the air and gathered near the hero who needed to get to this woman somehow. She came out in the open for some reason. It's not her range. Unless Thunderclap was always within a certain range of her. It might just be the range for the initial activation, so I can't let her out of my sight for a second or I could lose any chance of freeing Tsukuyomi from her. Hopefully, defeating her will release his mind. I'll kill her if the need arises.

Whoo, scary. Hypnos tilted her head a bit back at the look in Hawks' eyes, but it did not deter her at all. "Kill Hawks. You know him best; exploit his weaknesses." Hypnos released her slave onto their enemy, and Dark Shadow instantly wrapped around Tsukuyomi and grew far larger than a second ago.

Oh shit, Hawks flew backwards while sending a few extra feathers around to try and keep Tsukuyomi back for a second by having his feathers target Hypnos. Her arms rose up with small metal tubes popping out of her green costume's sleeves and spraying some small flames out the ends of the barrels. The costume may have looked like Embrya's, but it had weapons hidden inside that Hawks knew his colleague's costume did not. She curled her fingers, and both barrels sprayed fire in huge fireballs from the flamethrowers she had incorporated as a defense against both Hawks and Tsukuyomi. They each had the same weakness, and she leapt backwards while aiming at the feathers that she burned up, in order to get farther from her own servant whose Quirk she did not want to weaken by creating that bright light source.

Hawks could have usually been able to dodge his feathers around the flames that Hypnos sprayed at them. However, he was too busy focusing on dodging his own body around the long swipes of Dark Shadow's arms that extended from Tsukuyomi and swept through the air rapidly. Those claws sharpened and had black spikes rippling off them as Dark Shadow was swinging at Hawks. "You sure about this?" Dark Shadow wondered confusedly, though the demonic Quirk creature was smiling wide on its face over Tsukuyomi's more stoic one. Dark Shadow swung its right arm the way that Tokoyami was ordering it to, but as it saw how close it got to slashing through Hawks, his yellow eyes darted down to the face of his partner who had nothing but murderous intent and focus on his expression. "We really killing Hawks?"

"Yes."

"Alright then," Dark Shadow looked back towards the older man who just opened his mouth to yell at the creature to fight back. Hawks' eyes widened as Dark Shadow smirked his way. "Remember all those times you lit me up?" Dark Shadow's body grew larger over Tsukuyomi's back. Black spikes coming out of him wrapped around Tsukuyomi's arms making much thicker wings. Tsukuyomi flapped down and he soared at Hawks while Dark Shadow roared, "KEEPING ME DOWN?!" The clouds above got slightly darker black from the gray, and Dark Shadow and Tokoyami's expressions both started to enrage at Hawks who darted backwards and then had to make a sharp cut away from a skyscraper so that even if his enemy missed they would not smash through it.

Dark Shadow's next swipe just went below Hawks, but the force of such a massive arm swinging at him still shattered all the windows of the building that Hawks kept the swing from smashing through directly. Hawks leaned away and winced as the wind from the end of Dark Shadow's claws slashed through his costume. His squinted eyes opened back up and he stared at the huge dark form that was extending down below Tsukuyomi's legs and merging together to just make a huge shadow that flew towards him while letting out a roar of intense rage and excitement. Hawks grimaced deeper. There was nothing holding back Dark Shadow right now. Hypnos had told her servant to cause as much damage as possible, so Tokoyami had no intention of making Dark Shadow slow his roll.

"Control it, Tsukuyomi. Whoa!" "STOP ME!" "A little longer, kid. You can do this- shit." Hawks imagined the dark monster charging at him as it exceeded Tokoyami's ability to hold it back. The dim high-tech training facility they were in flashed with light as Hawks turned up the brightness and blinded the monster that roared. And as it pulled back into Tokoyami's body, and as his intern gained back control, Hawks could imagine that pure rage in Dark Shadow's eyes in the moment that it shrank back and lost control. Even after all this time, Dark Shadow's still just an uncontrollable beast. There's no point trying to reason with it. Especially since I've trained Tokoyami to control it far more now, and his control is actually a negative in this scenario.

"In speed too, it doesn't look like your advantage is going to last," Hypnos remarked in an impressed way while looking up towards Hawks who had Tsukuyomi between him and the villain he really needed to get to already. "You know?! Dabi wanted a word with you, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. If you wind up surviving this fight, somehow, maybe he'll come to visit you in Intanzo's new Tartaros! We already have a few heroes prepped and ready for transfer."

Electro, Hawks had imagined that his friend was definitely dead. "Is the Prime Minister alive?!" Hawks called out. He needed to know this more than which of his fellow heroes had survived.

"Nikko might not have always been Toga, but he was always on our side. Under our thumb from the beginning-"

"Is he alive?!"

"Oh yes," Hypnos replied with a chuckle. "After he saw Enri's body, he actually tried to fight back for once. So Shigaraki wanted him to see what else he had helped us with would bring, other than the death of his wife. I wonder, how much remorse can one man feel?" She imagined the man they had strapped down somewhere watching the chaos unfold and could not hold back a more sadistic smirk at the idea of it. That smirk grew even more as she thought, Though I'm certain Thunderclap felt it worse.

She's sick. Confident. Cautious though. No one even knew who she was. Definitely one of the most dangerous League members. Unknown as she has pawns that can carry out her will for her. What other weapons does she have- even the flamethrowers alone are going to be difficult for me. Shit- Hawks needed to focus on the enemy in front of him rather than the woman he was trying to figure out. Tokoyami curled his arms in front of him and then slammed them out to the right side after Hawks dodged backwards. The hero's eyes bulged as Tokoyami shot towards the building closest to him and smashed straight through the wall. "No! Tsukuyomi stop-"

Hawks had flown straight towards that window that Tokoyami had bashed his way through causing the people inside to scream. Hawks thought that Hypnos' orders that she had told Tsukuyomi mostly in a quiet voice had probably included slaughtering civilians, and he did not want his intern hurting a single person on his watch. Tokoyami's priority over the collateral damage was protecting Hypnos first, stopping Hawks second, and so smashing through the building kept Hawks focused on him and not on Hypnos. It also forced Hawks into close quarters which made it easier on the teen who was facing away from his pro as Hawks reached the windows and sent his feathers towards the screaming civilians who Tokoyami's claws looked like they were about to slash towards.

Red feathers flew by Tokoyami's sides. They pierced through civilians' clothes and lifted them off to safety. Dark Shadow's arms extended and curved backwards looking to have no bones inside the dark masses. They shot back towards Hawks who just sent most of his feathers to protect people. Other feathers pulled in front of his body while he pushed his feet down on the ledge and crushed some glass shards just inside the windowsill. He jumped backwards while trying to stop Dark Shadow's claws with the remaining feathers he had. Two of his feathers in front of Tsukuyomi who was turning around to face Hawks, tossed their passengers towards other feathers that started dipping and bending as it was tough for individual ones to hold up multiple civilians.

Those two feathers shot at Tokoyami's back and aimed for his ears. Sorry kid, Hawks thought even as Dark Shadow's claws swept aside his main mass of defensive feathers. He had no feathers on his back to stop him from falling, as he needed every last feather to stall those dark claws that would have killed him had they collided at the size they were at currently and the speed they were moving at. The edges of Tsukuyomi's claws swept at Hawks, and although he slowed them by pushing against with all his feathers he could, and although he attacked the sides of Tsukuyomi's head to try and take out his hearing and prevent Hypnos from giving him further more-specific orders, Tokoyami's right claw hit Hawks in the left side that he rose his left arm to try and protect.

Hawks used fewer feathers to stop the attack on his left side. He had to make the compromise. No arm on his right meant that he could not let any attack get through or it risked hitting his vitals. His left arm gave some protection to his left side, but three gashes dug through it and splashed blood out of the man who went spinning through the air as he plummeted to the ground. Hawks squinted open his eyes he clenched in pain, and he used the two feathers he had tried to pierce into Tsukuyomi's ears to grab that teen instead and pull him back out the same window they had entered in. He focused on the civilians, on Tsukuyomi, and he still managed to get some feathers to fly down and catch himself as well right before he would have hit the ground at terminal velocity.

He did not manage to stop his momentum completely. Hawks did flip himself over though, and he caught himself on his feet and his left hand though that arm nearly buckled when his fingers curled into the pavement. His eyes darted to the deep gashes on it, out of which the highest of them was the deepest and allowed him to look through his tricep and see some white for a second. Blood then pooled in from either side of the deep gash that allowed Hawks to see his own bone for a moment there. He used two feathers to lift himself back up onto feet that he tried steadying best as possible with only half-focus as his majority focus was on the thrashing teen up in the sky directly above him who was fighting against the feathers flying into him.

Hawks had put down the civilians a safe distance away before bringing his feathers back. The remaining feathers on him he sent up to assist the rest, and then he ducked and darted to the side off the street as the feathers above him burned up. Hypnos only aimed one arm up while firing the other flamethrower straight at Hawks to force him to dodge. It also took Hawks' eyes off of the red feathers he was zipping around Tsukuyomi and grabbing him by appendages to keep spinning him around and keeping him in place up there.

Tsukuyomi slammed his arms out to the sides. Dark Shadow's head pulled up and let out a roar, and then black wings flapped behind him and sent him in a dive towards Hawks who saw the darker shadow cast over him. His body was tinted in dark red from the flames he pulled away from. He was down to only a couple of dozen feathers that were all lagging behind the boy who dove like a falcon and exceeded the speed of Hawks' Quirk to keep up with him.

Hawks backpedaled and pulled out the half-burnt feathers that Hypnos just caught. They were flaming but still connected to his Quirk, and he slammed them into his sidekick only for Dark Shadow's natural body armor to protect them from the easily breakable needles that lost the remaining red tendrils on them. Tsukuyomi slammed into the street in front of Hawks, but his arms got much stronger as Hypnos was not expecting that much speed from the boy she had last seen a hundred feet above them. She cut off her flamethrowers, but the light from the flames still caused Tsukuyomi's next attack to come out weaker, and it also caused that attack to hesitate as the yellow eyes of Dark Shadow widened at the last second.

There! Hawks noticed Dark Shadow's hesitance. That moment that he got smaller to a point of far more control by Tokoyami, Dark Shadow itself seemed to have a moment of doubt. Hawks noticed it, but there was no time to capitalize on his theory. Tokoyami's arms slammed into Hawks and knocked the stumbling man backwards off his feet and into the wall of the building behind him. Tokoyami bent his knees and Dark Shadow started growing larger as the flames behind him had gone away.

He leapt at Hawks, and then Tokoyami's eyes and the yellow ones of Dark Shadow shifted to the left at a six-armed form gliding down rapidly into their path. Tokoyami turned, his left arm swinging that way, and Dark Shadow's yellow eyes bulged this time and darted down at the user who just tried to attack Shoji with full strength. "Whoa?! Wait-" Dark Shadow's left arm twitched and struggled backwards, then that left arm swung at Shoji whose right three arms moved quicker than the arm that had to fight against a split personality's resistance. Shoji's three right hands gripped Dark Shadow's large left arm by different points and then pushed them down into the ground, taking Tokoyami off balance and making his body tilt to the left with his head fully turning towards Shoji now.

"Tokoyami! Get a hold of yourself-" Shoji started yelling while pushing his face towards his best friend's.

"Kill him as well!" Hypnos yelled out. Then she leapt backwards with her eyes darting up at the very last second to protect herself.

Tsukuyomi snapped his head back towards the woman who just barely avoided the red feathers that curved from aiming at Tokoyami to aim at Hypnos instead. Hawks had a moment as this young hero saved him, and he cursed internally while pushing off of the building behind him with his very bloody left arm. "She's controlling him, just like she controlled Thunderclap," Hawks said.

In the corner of Shoji's eyes, he saw the bloodied armless mess of a hero he had once looked up to and had come to hate over the last year. Hawks' one sentence was all that Shoji needed to understand the severity of Tokoyami's situation. "That's Shoji, you know? What are you doing-" Dark Shadow wondered at Tokoyami who he pulled his own head away from and looked back at.

"Tentacole, hold his attention for twenty seconds. I'll get him back," Hawks said. Tokoyami glared back towards Hawks, and then his feet were lifted from the ground as Shoji's other arms grabbed his other arm that he just swung at his friend. Tokoyami was strong, but Dark Shadow resisted against him while looking hesitantly back at Shoji. That hesitation allowed Shoji to lift up and take Tokoyami off his feet, though before he could swing his friend down on his other side and pin him, Dark Shadow extended out on Tokoyami's orders and dug into the pavement for stabilization.

Tokoyami's left claw swung out and whipped Shoji off his feet after he reconnected with the floor. Then his right arm extended out into Hawks' path, but Hawks had all of his feathers flying around Hypnos who backflipped then cartwheeled out of the way of other feathers Hawks tried getting her with. In mid-cartwheel she sprayed some flames on one side of her, but Hawks did not lose any feathers this time as he just avoided and curved them around her back.

"Fweeweep!" Hypnos whistled at the maximum volume.

Hawks saw the blur as he dove over Tsukuyomi's arm that did not move up to stop him as Shoji punched Tokoyami in the face to regain his full attention. Hawks ground his teeth in frustration as his feathers pierced through a body that Hypnos pulled behind her. For a moment he questioned if her Quirk could actually let her control multiple people at once, only for his expression to get even darker as he saw the actual form towering over the woman who faced away from it and straight at him with a smirk on her face.

"I have very high-standing in the League of Villains. They came to me, after all, to ensure another mistake with a turncoat did not occur again," Hypnos taunted her enemies. "Because of that, Shgaraki allows me all sorts of perks, and although this may not be the Ultimate…" The Nomu behind Hypnos glared violently towards Hawks. It stood twelve feet tall. It was pitch black but had its brain exposed above the dark head that had a large yellow beak on the front of it. Its muscular arms had ridges from its wrists all the way to its thick elbows, and those ridges got thicker as the arm seemed to coil in with its fists moving closer to its elbows. "But it's the next best, and it's all mine."

Hypnos stepped to the side. The Nomu rushed in at Hawks who had already pulled his feathers towards himself. He flew up into the air and just over the coiled right fist of the Nomu that slammed it so hard into the space that Hawks just occupied that he knew it would have snapped him in half had he been a half-second later with his escape.

Shoji grappled three arms and three arms with each of Dark Shadow's claws. Tokoyami leaned forward. His dark body extended larger. The darker boy's face leaned forward over Shoji's. "Fight it," Shoji seethed in a strained voice behind his mask. His arm muscles strained and veins bulged on them as he pushed back, leaning forward and pressing his skidding heels down so hard that he stopped getting pushed back. Shoji slammed his forehead forward into Tokoyami's and yelled into his friend's face, "FIGHT IT!" Even a hero like Thunderclap was trapped for years- but you're not him. You're not anyone else! "You can do it, Tokoyami! TAKING CONTROL IS EVERYTHING YOU'VE BEEN TRAINING FOR!" Shoji roared into his friend's face that pushed back into his with a dark and villainous look on it and in his eyes that did not twitch at his friend's yells.

Dark Shadow's dark arms pushing back into Shoji's started pushing too hard. They pushed downwards and made the floor below Shoji crack. He was not allowing his legs to skid back anymore, but his heels broke through the sidewalk and cracked the ground all around him. Shoji's whole body shook as he put every last bit of strength into fighting back against his friend. "You can't change his mind," Hypnos taunted. Tsukuyomi's exterior coating of Black Ankh was too strong that Hawks' attempts to damage his ears had failed. Tsukuyomi was completely covered in Dark Shadow, and Dark Shadow was listening to him and pushing back against Shoji who glanced up from Tokoyami's unwavering eyes to look into the yellow ones that did not overlap with Tokoyami's at the moment.

"Nice! We did it! HAHA! You guys suck-"

"Dark Shadow."

"WHAT?! We're the best! Right Shoji? Give me five!" Dark Shadow could hear the sigh of the boy who had not ordered him back inside right away after their victory during a Class A sparring session. And he laughed over Tokoyami's sigh, as Shoji lifted his upper right hand and gave him the high five he wanted.

"Nice work, Dark Shadow…"

Shoji pushed his arms forward and bent Tokoyami and his Dark Shadow backwards. Hypnos glared towards them. Shoji Mezo is strong. Not that strong though. This may be a problem.

Hawks flew down towards Hypnos as the Nomu leapt up towards him. Unlike Tokoyami who was also under her direct control, the Nomu did not have the mental capacity that the young hero experienced in battle did. The Nomu was fast. Its strength threatened to kill Hawks in one blow if it connected. But Hawks saw the way it charged at him was reckless and with wild abandon. Just another mindless drone, Hawks thought as he tackled Hypnos and rolled her over on the street. He used his feathers to drag his back above the road, while he pushed his left arm down on Hypnos' right cheek and pressed her left cheek into the street that they dragged over. His eyes darted back towards the Nomu, then he let go and threw Hypnos forward with half his feathers grabbing her and dragging her farther while the other half pulled him away from the flames that she just fired up at him.

Two of his feathers had to be sacrificed. He slashed them through the tubes of her flamethrowers inside her costume, and flames exploded out of them as the still-ignited flamethrowers caught the fluid that was pumping into the weapons. Hypnos screamed and ripped off the flamethrowers using her hands that had flameproof gloves on them. Her forearms were burning, but she ripped off the devices and threw them to the sides no longer attached to her costume. Some of her white hair got messy and went in front of her face that had skid marks across the left side of it. She glared through the strands towards Hawks who dove to his right and barely escaped the right foot of the Nomu that dropped where he was just rolling and stomped a hole in the street.

Bang bang bang

Hawks twisted his body to the side then ducked. A bullet passed just over his head, and he dove forward and dodged another shot as he saw her aiming after him in his peripheral vision. She was slower at moving her gun to try and lead his dodges, but a large chunk of street shot towards Hawks as the Nomu slammed down with another foot. That pavement hit Hawks in the back and he heard a loud crack that filled him with pain, though he felt lucky even in that pain that at least he felt it. His body was twisting and he kicked his right leg up, thankful that his spine had not broken but still panicking as he was being shot at and charged by the Nomu that had its left arm coiled in and punching towards him about to extend.

A red feather flew into Hypnos' right arm and pierced through her wrist. "YAAH!" She screamed with her gun flying out of her hand. Bang! It fired as it hit the ground, and a window cracked on one side of the street as a bullet went through it. Then the window shattered completely as Shoji was thrown through it and into the first floor of an office building that Tokoyami charged into after him. The front desk flew at Tokoyami who smashed both of his large dark arms forward and through it, only for his head to spin to the left as Shoji was sprinting by him back to the window.

Shoji ducked under the left arm slash that Tokoyami tried to hit him with. "RAA! Stop fighting me, Dark Shadow!"

"Shoji's your friend, dumbass!" Dark Shadow yelled at the boy who only missed his last claw because Dark Shadow caused his arm to slow down.

Shoji's left middle and left upper arms extended out back onto the street and grabbed the Nomu by either side of its face. Shoji yanked towards himself while Hawks bent his whole body backwards. After that pavement had hit him in the back, doing such a dodge caused him excruciating pain. He grabbed onto a red feather that flew towards him though and sharpened as his hand gripped around the bottom of it. He slashed upwards and tried digging through the Nomu as Shoji yanked it over his body, but his feather just slid across the exterior of the monster's body and did not break through its rough skin.

Tokoyami tackled Shoji with a Black Ankh armor wrapped around him but Dark Shadow completely pulled into him with far less control due to the limited amount that Tokoyami had out. He tackled Shoji to the ground, and as Shoji rolled over to try and fight back, both of Tokoyami's hands grabbed Shoji by the throat and slammed his head back down onto the ground. Tokoyami lifted back up while pressing his thumbs harder into Shoji's jugular, his nails extending out of his hands as he slammed back down again into the street. His claws dug through part of Shoji's mask and tore it off while blood spilled between his dark fingers. Shoji punched his arms inwards into Tokoyami's sides, but Dark Shadow wrapped around him too powerfully and blocked the punches to the kidneys and ribs that felt like nothing to him and were getting weaker with each hit.

"HEY! Stop it Tsuku-" Hawks tried to run towards them, but the Nomu that was yanked past him turned and punched its coiled right arm towards him. That arm extended much farther towards Hawks than he thought it could, and he twisted his body to the side so the extending fist just barely passed in front of his stomach. When he twisted to the side like that, his eyes darted back behind him and he saw Hypnos picking up her pistol with the hand of the arm he had not pierced with his feathers. His feathers shooting towards Tsukuyomi to pull him off of Tentacole split. Some of them flew at Hypnos, but she aimed his way and fired between him and the Nomu that charged at him and forced Hawks to change the aim of even more of his already few feathers.

"YOU'RE KILLING HIM!" Dark Shadow screamed into Tokoyami's mind. "That's your friend you're strangling. Stop listening to that bitch. Yo- YO! LOOK AT HIM!" Dark Shadow's yellow eyes shook as it stared down at Shoji's face turning purple. His eyes were bloodshot and tearing up. Shoji's punches into their side were getting so weak, and those fists just pushed against them one more time while Shoji's desperate look filled with despair, and pity.

"It's not- your fault," Shoji gasped out. His throat was closed and he had no breath left, and this was forcing out the very very last of what he had. He breathed that up into Tokoyami's face though as his best friend strangled him with claws that shook on Shoji's neck as Dark Shadow fought against the control that Hypnos had over them.

"FUCK THIS!" Dark Shadow's yellow eyes dimmed as his voice got even louder inside of Tokoyami's head.

In the eighteen year old boy's mind, a shadow flew through a dark void that this shadow was even darker than. A silhouette of Tokoyami Fumikage was hovering in that void with his arms and legs pulled out to the sides and held there by transparent chains. Those chains wrapped around his arms and legs, around his body, around his neck that was pushing forward so hard into them that his metaphysical throat was closing. Tears spilled down the face of Tokoyami in that void, and then his panicked watery eyes started growing, and his open mouth that was making no sound as he tried to scream at himself to stop, screamed out a different name instead as he saw the shadow that spotted him too and flapped down wings. "Dark Shadow!"

Tokoyami blinked. His hands loosened on Shoji's throat. Chains in his head were breaking apart. Dark Shadow's claws were harder than the imaginary metal in his mind. Those claws tore through the Hypnotic steel, and Hypnos spun her head towards the boys as Tokoyami's hands started to lift up-

Bang bang bang bang!

Tokoyami fell off of Shoji's body and he tried scrambling to his side but was hit by more shots. Dark Shadow was not out to react quick enough, and his Black Ankh had gotten weaker on his body so it did not stop the bullets completely. "ACk- gah- Tokoyami!" Shoji gasped out in the loudest voice he could after coughing back in breath into his agonized throat. He punched his left arms towards Hypnos who aimed her pistol down at him while snapping her head back towards Hawks who spiraled in the air using the last of his feathers and got around the Nomu.

Hawks reached his left hand up to the side of his head while trying to put his legs out in front of him to drop-kick Hypnos. She turned her body to the side so Hawks flew right by her with his legs just missing the woman… and his hand that he had gripped his temple with in agony shot off and grabbed her by her throat at the last second. The infiltration into his own head that he felt getting stronger as he got closer to the woman glaring into his eyes with a growing smirk, faded as he flew off with Hypnos and slammed her into the wall of the building past where he was intending to kick a moment ago.

Hawks let go and then flew away to the side, and Hypnos gasped then screamed out, "AHH!" She ducked and barely avoided the huge black fist that smashed into the wall behind her. The force of the Nomu's swing that Hawks dodged still knocked her down and caused her to gasp out in more pain as she rolled over shattered glass that cut through her costume in various points. Her head snapped up and she glared at Hawks again where he was flying off, and he brought his left hand to his head and screamed out again as he felt her getting in his head. "Distract Hawks!" Fuck! She thought in more panic than her composed shout made it seem. That's never happened. Tsukuyomi's Quirk is too different- it has its own personality!

"Tokoyami," Shoji gasped to his side, dragging himself up to his knees as he did.

"I'm- I… Shoji I-"

"Listen to me," Shoji's upper right hand grabbed Tokoyami by the back of his bowed head and lifted his friend's face to look back at him. Tokoyami's eyes lowered from Shoji's and down to his friend's bloody throat, and then Tokoyami's eyes lowered more to his own bloody hands that he gagged at the sight of. "That wasn't you. She's going to get, Hawks," Shoji panted a few times and pulled Tokoyami's head up more to look in his eyes again. "We need to stop her. Don't let this get to you." Shoji turned his friend sideways a bit so that he could look at his right side, "Alright, how are your bullet wounds?"

"…I, I don't think-"

"WE'RE GOOD!" Dark Shadow yelled, his body lifting up out of Tokoyami's back. His claws slammed into the ground at their sides and pulled them back to their feet quicker. "Stop crying you idiot! I saved you, because I'm the best! Now let me at her! Come on!"

"Listen to Dark Shadow, Tokoyami." Shoji turned and glared towards the woman who had to dart her eyes away from Hawks despite not having him under her control yet. "And let's get her."

Tokoyami darted a look towards Thunderclap's corpse still on the same street as them. All of them were injured, but Hypnos still had her Nomu on her side that did not look to be getting tired at all. He shook his head around. Thank you, Hawks. Thank you, Shoji. And thank you too, Dark Shadow. "You better thank me!" Dark Shadow called back in their head. You three kept me from going as far as Thunderclap did. I will be forever grateful. Now… "Let's do it."

---

A flash of lightning and a zipping blur of darkness flew by an alleyway on Felluci Ave that lay between Felluci and Kairou Avenue. "There he is," a man's low voice said. His eyes were dark and his right hand moved for a hilt sticking out of a sheath on his right side.

The woman next to him took in a deep breath but released it calmly. "We're going to Hell for this."

"There is no Hell. Now get in position," her comrade countered in a Russian accent. She was British, but he spoke in English back to her because she did not know any Russian while he was proficient in her language.

The two of them darted back towards Kairou Ave. They were fairly rich people. After the up-front deposit for their job, they were already richer than most people in the world. They had only received one-tenth of their bill though. The two who Raijin had hand-picked darted to the edge of the alley crossing Kairou, then the woman turned translucent and kept sprinting across with her body barely visible to the human eye. She got across the street and gasped out in relief as she noticed the blur of black spinning around an intersection a mile down this avenue as the two had already reached that far and shot down a perpendicular road connecting this avenue to the one they had just looking on.

The man who stayed on the opposite side of Kairou typed a passcode into the keypad on the back door of a corner store. The code he typed in was not the code to unlock that door which only employees knew. It was the other code that Raijin had linked from this keypad to a line of generators above. Those powering-up generators pushed out of windows and walls up above and knocked the air conditioners out of place that hid them on the inside where Raijin had stored them.

Lightning zapped from Raijin's left arm towards the generators that he siphoned the power from while spinning back towards Zach who chased him down the street and swung both arms forward. Raijin swung his left arm and created a veil of electricity that intercepted the fifty black Death swords that all lost their solid forms and destabilized under the power that Raijin hit them with. The swords were mostly aimed high, and Raijin was dropping out of the air after spinning around as his jetpack was no longer pointed behind him to keep him flying the same direction.

Zach dove under the connecting lightning and Death, and he flapped his wings behind him to soar towards Raijin who landed down and then stomped both feet back in Zach's direction. The lightning zapped through the floor and caused Zach's eyes to dart down at a manhole cover near him that glowed far too brightly yellow. He leaned to the right, expecting an explosion, but the road below his feet just cracked apart and made it harder for him to keep running as he did the instant he landed. He was in mid-sprint, and the road was destabilized, and he was off-balanced, but Raijin was still thirty feet in front of him.

Raijin zapped forward though, forcing Zach to slow down as Raijin had a pair of bone knives in his hands that he spun around. In the corners of Zach's vision, he spotted the other figures. They were people who he did not recognize. They were holding long white swords though that they pulled out of their sheaths a moment ago. Dark waves flew into them, and Zach slammed his right fist forward and punched at Raijin at that same moment. A huge black fist flew at the blond boy who launched himself up into the air by bending his legs insanely fast and jumping up while his jetpack pulsed with blue light that caused one of his power pack's dashes to drop off.

Raijin soared into the air and brought Zach's eyes up, and his attention was too high that he only realized it from the movement inside the Death off to his sides rather than by seeing them. Two figures sprinted out of his Death, and they stabbed forward their bone blades at the man who had once revived them. Both needed the money. Both had lost family members after being brought back themselves. They had personalities that Raijin had long studied to determine that they were the right kind of people to hire. Ones who were even willing to go so far as to allow experimentation to be done on them (though Raijin had assured them it was a tested and safe procedure with no dangers to it and only positives for their increases in strength). He checked all of their social media posts ever. Saw where they were raised and the environments they were raised in. He knew that one of these civilians had a prior record, and another had posted a rant after losing their parents in a car crash that it was all Lifebringer's fault because they had seen a video clip of how easy it was for Death to revive them.

They each stabbed their blades forward while Raijin turned himself in midair and aimed down towards Lifebringer himself. Then he kicked his legs out in front of him to go back. His boots pulsed light to change his trajectory while his eyes darted to the right and the left then straight back at Zach who just glared him down and ignored what happened at his sides.

The man rushing at Zach's right side lifted his eyes up at the last second as he saw the blur of wings flapping far too fast for him to avoid the Chinese woman who kicked her right foot out into his face. She used her legs, because a second ago her arms were occupied with the darker-skinned man that she flung backwards while flying over Zach's head. The man with one horn on his head and another looking like it had been broken off at one point, slammed his right fist at the translucent woman who had trained for this moment and managed to lift her sword in her left hand to try and cut this guy first. The African man who was punching at her opened his right hand and snatched it forward to grab this would-be assassin by her wrist, pushing her arm out to the side while he himself landed down and slammed his left fist forward into her open chest.

His left fist collided and the woman felt an arm made of harder steel than she could imagine denting her sternum. She gasped out in agony before Arko followed through with his punch and threw her back off the road. Firefly glared towards the man who she had kicked away but who Bounced when he landed on his back the second time despite the surprise he was in. He Bounced backwards and then landed in the shadowy alley that he had come from, and he stared out in shock at the woman standing there who had long dragonfly-like wings coming off of her back. He had studied up for this assassination that Raijin had hired them for, as just one of a thousand contingency measures that the villain had planned out. And the man who just got kicked in the face, causing him a bloody broken nose, recognized the woman standing in front of him who gave him a look that he was terrified of even as he stood straight up and with his bone sword still grabbed.

Zach glared forward through darkness that was pulling back into his body. He looked a mess with all the damage done to him, but he stood on steady legs and glared into Kaminari's eyes with no look of wavering in the least. He ignored those people to his sides who he knew he had revived at one time but who Raijin managed to turn against him. And he also ignored those two who he saw closer to him in his peripheral vision but who also did not turn around to face the teenager at their backs.

"We are just regular Japanese, Lifebringer," Arko said in Japanese. His accent was horrible.

Firefly's was better to actually make it seem like she might be a Tokyo resident. "You focus on Raijin. We won't let anyone interrupt." Her glare was furious as she looked into her enemy's eyes. She wore casual clothes just like Arko did behind her. "We know you can do it," Firefly encouraged him.

"Defeat that villain, Zach Sazaki," Arko growled. "You're the only one who can."

"Stop Raijin, Zach. We'll take care of the rest," Firefly finished. Then she flapped her wings and shot towards her enemy while Arko sprinted at his own.

Zach stomped his right foot towards Raijin. "Your countermeasures mean nothing!" Zach snarl-yelled at his opponent. He kicked off of that right foot he just stomped down and launched himself at his enemy who had another trap set below his feet which was an actual explosion this time that tore up the road and blew it sky high as Zach was flying over it.

A smoking form of Death flew out of the explosion with the smoke and Death fading from his damaged form. He shot towards Raijin with his black wings flapping to speed him up even more. His right arm swung forward and a spear of Death flew out rapidly towards Raijin who twisted his body and zapped his pack brightly so it pulsed all of his flight mechanisms and allowed him to dodge down to street level then around a bend of another intersection. Arrows of Death curved over the tops of buildings and out of alleyways, and Raijin darted in and out between them while swinging his arms to the sides at the buildings there that had not been blocked up by Intel-Ants and which had people cowering inside them.

Zach's body broke apart as he turned the corner. Waves of Death flooded down the sidewalks and rose up to block the lightning that would have hurt the people in those buildings. Raijin sped away as Zach protected them, but some of the black arrows continued to give chase, and Raijin's eyes locked on a set of red eyes on one of those arrows thicker than the others which seemed to be watching him, somehow. The next bend I'll have him! Raijin darted around another corner, and his body pulsed with all of the electricity he still had. It surged into buildings on his sides in a specific manner and in the street at different points. Some Death intercepted a few of the bolts that looked like they may be aimed at areas that people could be hiding near or in, but Raijin's Electricity was all aimed at traps and hidden generators, though some of the lightning flew straight ahead of him and into another of the drills dropped by a Spider earlier.

The huge metal tube opened up and showed a full set of Anti-Death gear that made Zach's face twist in agony and rage at the sight of. How many?! His teeth ground back and forth as he landed on the road and glared towards his enemy through a fence and grid-pattern of lightning connecting generators on both sides of the road and zapping up from cracks in the ground. It looked like pothole repairs had been done on this street after the last winter, but out from the old cracks that had been filled-in came lightning that showed whoever had filled in those cracks had been on Raijin's payroll and did something during the reconstruction.

Zach flew onto that road, and then he broke apart his wings and expelled as much Death as he needed to off to the sides of the street. Individual bolts fired off towards windows that Zach saw people inside of. Just as Raijin's Electricity had slowed and stopped Zach's Death swords on the previous road, Zach's walls of Death blocked bolts of lightning from getting through. The energy of Raijin's Quirk and the 'particles' that made up Death seemed to counter-balance each other too perfectly. Black and yellow wisps and bolts clashed all over the road and dispersed apart from each other.

And Zach and Raijin stood fifteen meters apart with their Quirks swirling and fading away in the clashes all around them. Thicker darkness around Zach made a protective veil from the Electricity just as Raijin had a violently sparking aura around his own white armor that already acted as an inner wall of protection against Death. Each of their Quirks simmered down around them while they glared through the haze at one another on a road that was completely empty other than some corpses of cops and a few burning vehicles including some cop cars. The buildings on this street had been better protected. Some AANT remains lay near the first-floor walls that had steel plating on them, but Zach could see the civilians on the other floors above, mainly the second and third floors of the buildings on either side of this street.

The metal tube that had dropped from a Spider which had helped defeat the cops on this street earlier, dispatched some new weapons and replacements to Kaminari who held his arms out and collected them. Some were magnetized and flew straight into his body and attached on different parts, while some reached out when his Quirk activated steel arms inside the tube and made them extend out to hand him new weapons. Raijin swiped a new pair of white blades in front of his body then slid them down into hidden sheaths at his sides where the blades constricted as he pushed them in. "Fully charged," Raijin remarked in a taunting tone, as he could see on the HUD of his clear visor that his pack was back to full capacity. "And yet you still just lose more and more, especially with all you waste to save them."

"Look at them, Zach. Why do you protect them? Why do you try so hard-"

"I won't let Kaminari kill anyone ever again-"

"So it's not about them then?!" Raijin exclaimed. He lifted his chin higher and rose his eyebrows up high while shouting that Zach's way. "You don't care about them-"

"That's not what I said," Zach growled. "I will protect them. And I will prevent you from killing anymore. I can care about both."

"But do you really care if they die?" Raijin wondered it loudly and made Zach falter as his enemy actually seemed to be looking for an answer here. Zach got a confused look on his face at the seriously pondering gaze on Kaminari's which did not make sense to him. "Does human life still mean that much to you?"

Don't. "Of course-"

"Even after everyone you've killed? Tell me, Zach," Raijin called out. He yelled it so that the people inside the buildings on his sides would catch it in their phone cameras that he saw so many recording from. His smirk rose as he shouted towards his old friend, "Do you even know how many you've killed?!" A few people shifted their cameras towards Zach, but most who were recording could see both of them in the frame at once. Zach's eyes did not shift towards the buildings on either side. He just glared into Raijin's dark yellow eyes and bit down frustratedly at the words coming out of his friend's mouth.

"Hey Zach, if we counted up all the people I've killed and all the ones you've killed, who do you think has killed more people? I mean personally," Kaminari specified. "Not all the lives we're responsible for ending. I'm talking about the ones who we killed, do you think I have you beat? Come on, tell me!" Raijin called it towards his enemy who curled his dark fists and made him wince from the pain of just moving and tensing like that. Those who were recording caught Zach looking like a complete beaten and burnt mess, other than his right arm somehow. "The answer is you, by the way," Kaminari answered his own question. "Hell, I know that you've killed more people in a single day than I have in my entire life!"

Zach flinched. Does he know? Did he find one of the people I let go-

"In the 'Battle of 6 Armies' that you call it," Raijin taunted him. "Or should I call it, the Villain Summit?" Raijin stuck his tongue slightly between his teeth on the left side of his mouth while smiling wide at his friend who lost his furious look for a moment and actually just narrowed his eyes at his enemy.

"You're wrong," Zach growled.

"You killed so many that day!" Raijin yelled out at him. "I read all the reports. I heard the first-hand accounts of what you did-"

"I didn't kill them!" Zach yelled back at him. Raijin lifted his left eyebrow higher, and Zach ground his teeth then shouted at his enemy, "I didn't use enough Death to kill the ones who... I made sure-"

"Ha- HAHA! Then you're even more of a psycho killer! RIGHT?!" Raijin screamed at him. Zach's face pulled back and his eyes twitched. "You didn't use enough?! Then they didn't die instantly, huh? You used just enough to not kill them, which meant you left them unconscious so that those oceans of lava could wash over them. Only ten thousand were captured from that day's battle after it was done and in the hunts afterwards, but how many tens of thousands were there?!" Zach's clenched fists loosened a little and trembled as images flashed through their minds.

"And even if most of them killed each other, YOU were the one who came up with that plan! You knew they would kill each other and you turned them on each other anyway- haha- ha- You turned friends on their own friends. You made them shoot and stab each other in distrust!" Zach's teeth ground back and forth, his expression turning infuriated and agonized at the same time as he thought of the battle in a way he never had at the time, and which he did not try to consider when looking back on it as it hurt enough just thinking about his own lost friends and the fight with Zombieman. His lips trembled as his head pulled back farther, while Kaminari yelled his way, "They felt that they had been betrayed by the people around them, and they slaughtered their own allies! And you towered over them all, killing hundreds with a swing of your arm!"

"I didn't-" Zach started yelling back.

"You knocked them out and they fell into pits that closed back up!" Raijin yelled at him. He taunted his enemy in an even more sinister tone, "They were unable to save themselves because your Quirk made them too tired to get back to their feet, but not all of them were completely knocked unconscious, were they?" He wondered it and then chuckled at the look of disgust and pain on Zach's expression. Raijin called his way, "If you were trying not to feel their deaths yourself, then you only used enough to knock them unconscious, but I'm sure there were many who even the amount you used only took them to their knees. Your attacks only weakened them so much that they couldn't run, they couldn't use their Quirks, and yet they were still awake and still conscious as the waves of lava rushed towards them! They were still awake to feel the pain of MELTING! Do you really consider that day as a day where you didn't kill?!" Raijin shouted in disbelief with his expression amazed. He laughed at the top of his lungs at the way Zach looked as he shouted it at him.

"As enemies all around you Triggered and used attacks with massive splash damage, ones that they couldn't rein in, you didn't want to get your hands dirty by killing them yourself, so you let them suffer and die far more painfully than they would have had you just used your Quirk. But, why wouldn't you do it?" Raijin posed that question and let it hang in the air. Zach's eyes that stared down at the street in front of his feet in horror and utter despair rose back slightly to glare into Raijin's eyes again. "Is it because you're afraid?" Raijin wondered, on a roll now that he had struck a nerve in his previously unwavering enemy. "Afraid of what killing that many people might do to you? How it might make you feel… good?"

"Shut up-"

"It plagued me, you know?!" Raijin screamed at him. "Because I KNEW that you couldn't kill Kurogiri, so then how? HOW?! I couldn't understand it. Was I wrong? Of course not. But you were, when you thought that you could control your own Quirk," Raijin sneered and smirked more each second that he saw the recognition in Zach's eyes to what he was saying. "Because I knew you, I knew that it didn't make sense when you started laughing. Laughing? As you killed people?! That's not you, so, what could have caused it? And then I remember, how my old friend Zach told me the feeling of taking a life felt. The 'agony' that you felt to do it. The way you tried to hide the real sensation it gave you, because you felt that Kaminari would be disgusted with you."

"Kaminari, I won't let-"

"THAT'S RAIJIN!" His blond-haired enemy screamed back at him. Raijin's forehead scrunched and his whole body jolted with electricity sparking out around him. People cowered inside the buildings around him. They pulled away, but nothing could keep most of them from those windows that they slowly stepped back towards to look out and at the two outside. Some of the windows were cracked and allowed sound in easier, but they were yelling at each other from a far enough distance anyway that it made it easier for the people in those buildings to hear them. "Ah, haahhhh…" Raijin panted and caught his breath while still smirking at his enemy who he just erupted at. Then he continued in a dark menacing voice, "I know you Zach, so I know that when you kill someone it feels great, doesn't it? I want you to say it."

"I want you to tell me!" Raijin yelled towards his enemy who ground his teeth more at the sight of his friend screaming this at him. "What kind of man feels good when he takes a life?! What kind of Quirk is that, that allows you so much strength?! It's not just your Quirk though. You can make decisions for lesser beings. You can see their future as easily as a biologist can predict how animals will interact! Just as I can!" Raijin screamed towards him. "And you can kill them as easily as a kid stepping on an anthill. You could wipe them out." Raijin's eyebrows narrowed in towards his nose, "Just as I could, without you in my way. Tell me Zach, what does that make us? You and I?!"

He wants satisfaction. He can't fight me to extent he wants, because I refuse to acknowledge him by his villain name. It's killing him. Because until I say it, he's losing. Zach's expression was hurt even as he glared in hatred towards his enemy who wanted him so desperately to answer the way he wanted Zach to. "Tell me, Zach. How did it feel to kill them that night in Enudora? When you were laughing so loudly, killing your old comrades who wanted nothing more than to run away from you, tell me! What was it you were thinking, as you laughed while we tried to flee?! How many people have you killed?! Is it over a thousand, tell me that much at least- Two thousand?!" Kaminari screamed his way as Zach did not instantly reply or react to that first number he tossed out. "Don't worry, I understand why you did it. Even though my Quirk doesn't make me feel that way, I know the feeling well! How good it feels to kill!"

Zach was thinking rationally. He forced in the rational thoughts to calm him down, and yet he was seething with rage. Seeing that new set of anti-Death armor behind Raijin that was just an extra in case this was the road that they started their fight on, meant even more people who he revived and that Raijin killed just for this. Just for an extra backup. Another contingency. Seeing those weapons, and the armor, mixed with what Raijin already had on him, and the taunting words coming from his best friend's mouth, was too much for his rational thoughts to keep thinking of counters and about this fight solely in the way he was trying to. His teeth ground back and forth, his building rage showing fully on his face as Raijin continued shouting at him in such a mocking way. "I know Zach, because I'm just like you! Both of us, are GODS!"

"You will never be a God," Zach hissed towards Raijin. He seethed it out in hatred at the voice speaking to him. Raijin smirked that he got the reaction out of Zach, but the right corner of his lip did twitch as Zach snarled at him, "I've met parasites that think themselves Gods before. You're no different from them. You're an idea. An idea that acted like a parasite and infected Kaminari's mind. Nothing more-"

"I, AM, A, GOD!" Raijin screamed at him.

"You're nothing," Zach shouted back in a deep voice that scratched and boomed down the street. "Less than nothing. You call yourself a God?" Zach taunted in a mocking tone back at his enemy. The corners of his own lips started to lift up and his head tilted back to talk down to his enemy, "That's the first sign that you aren't. You think He wanted to be a God? You think anyone wants to be a God?" Zach mocked him, as if Raijin shouting that was the only sign that he needed to tell him that Raijin was far from being a real God.

"What is it that makes me not a God?" Raijin wondered back. His pitch rose in a questioning way. "Tell me. Come on, tell me! Immeasurable power? I am LIMITLESS! This world runs on electricity, and I can use every last drop. Siphon it and store it, and I will never get tired. Burn the fuels and give myself ever more. Solar or wind or waves all converted into my sources of Electricity. Unlimited power."

"Intelligence?" He wondered next. "The ability to see the future, just like you?! To see what these insects are thinking and how they'll react to EVERYTHING?! I can see it all, just like you can."

"Or is it because you're immortal?" Raijin wondered.

Zach's mouth had opened up, but it froze open like that. He bit down and glared in rage at Raijin for saying that, using his rage to try and hide the pulsating fear of why Raijin would say something like that-

"I could be immortal too? If you want?" Raijin offered. Zach froze completely. His whole body tensed. His eyes grew huge and he stared in confusion towards his enemy who lost his own mocking expression. The desperation for Zach's response shifted away, but only a little. Raijin himself seemed to hesitate for a moment after what he just said. He looked into Zach's eyes and saw Zach staring back in shock, and Raijin pursed his lips for a moment before opening his mouth and then hesitating again. His tone got softer, as he called down the road, "I can move memories to different parts of my brain, if certain sections start to rot. I could, have mind transplants. Brain transplants of a piece at a time, moving my consciousness around- and full body transplants when it's not my brain but my body which gets too old. I could, live forever. You wouldn't have to be alone."

Zach's right foot slid slightly back on the floor beneath him. The same thing? Did he know? He couldn't have. Why? I- I don't want… I can't. But, ever since I killed Ares, there have been moments of regret where I wondered about his proposal…

"Is that why Ares didn't want to be a God? Was it the loneliness? Is it why you don't want to be one?" Raijin wondered. His mind worked too quickly. He could judge Zach's reactions, and in this moment their fight to the death seemed to somehow pause as for the first time, another option other than death for one of them was put on the table. "I don't blame you," Raijin continued with his tone lifting a little higher. "I mean, this? This is the most fun I've had in… it's the most fun I've ever had. Fighting you? What could come after?" It was as if there was a moment of clarity in Raijin's mind. That once he defeated Lifebringer, there could never be any challenge that would ever compare to this again. And he wanted it to end? "I could even, only transplant my mind into brain-dead bodies… I won't, I mean. I could, if I was the good guy." Zach's face pulled back in pain and his lips pursed. His whole expression scrunched up as Raijin gave him a small competitive smile, "Then where would the fun be in that? You'd have to try to stop me from getting a new body, and each time we fought, I'd be someone new. Throughout all time-"

"Stop," Zach hissed. He squinted his eyes and just shook his head towards Raijin who frowned disappointedly as this idea was shut down before it could be looked into any deeper. "You think I want that? I'm killing you right here, because I don't want you to suffer anymore. I won't let Kaminari continue to live like this for another day, let alone for eternity!" Zach yelled at his enemy that would even consider this a possibility for them to consider. "I'm going to kill you. First I'll put a cut in that armor of yours, then I'll touch through it with my bare right hand and kill you instantly. That's how this is going to end," Zach informed him.

"And when you kill me," Raijin called towards him, his voice raising back up as his smirk did the same. His moment of disappointment faded as he shook it all off as a singular lapse. This was the final battle that it had all been building to. There was no need to extend it. "It will feel amazing. Come on Zach, I still haven't heard you say it. But since you weren't denying that you were a God, I'm sure-"

"I'm not a God!" Zach yelled back at him.

"And yet you feel good taking lives?!" Raijin screamed back. "What kind of man feels pleasure from taking a life?"

Zach bit down in rage that Raijin would start screaming this at him again. His whole body urged him forward and yet it was so difficult to just rush and kill his friend whose face he saw looking back at him and smiling so evilly. Every moment of this disgusted him more than the last. It made him feel sick, and that sick feeling was translating into anger that bubbled back up after Raijin tried to convince him to be allowed to use up Kaminari's body and then transfer its consciousness to a different host. Parasite. Fucking insect. KILLER. It killed Kaminari. He is Kaminari- it's nothing! I HATE IT! FUCK- FUUUCCCKK!

"I know that I feel good when I kill! But you? How does it feel, Zach?! Tell me the exact feeling. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO TAKE A LIFE? I WANT TO KNOW-"

"IT FEELS AMAZING!" Zach roared towards him. Zach's teeth bared again but the corners of his parted lips rose up into his cheeks as he glared madly towards Kaminari with eyes flaring red. Kaminari's eyes widened and then darted to either side of the street at cameras he saw pointed towards them, then he snapped his gaze straight back to Zach who leaned his body forward while looking so mad in a way that shocked the people looking out towards him. Something had snapped, and Zach's head cocked to the side as he wondered, "Is that what you wanted? You want me to tell you that it feels great? OH YEAH! It feels amazing- it feels, like the best fucking feeling in the world."

"Killing someone? Taking a life?!" Zach yelled out. He looked beastly, enraged, hateful. "Nothing can compare to that euphoria that I feel. The pure pleasure that Death gives me to take a life, is like NO feeling in the world! How could I describe it to you? It's exhilarating, and the pleasure is insane! And yeah! It makes me feel like a GOD!" Zach roared it at the top of his lungs at his enemy whose whole upper body leaned back this time as Zach roared that at him looking like a truly menacing figure, which made Kaminari's lips curl up so much that Zach was doing this in front of so many people.

"But Kaminari," Zach continued. His voice was still loud and bellowing towards his enemy. His eyes were still bright red and flaring, but his tone shifted in a way that made Kaminari's lips start to shift back downwards. "When I bring someone back to life?" Zach pondered towards him. He was still smirking as he posed the question and as he described it himself, "That pain, is like no pain I would wish on anyone. It's so horrible, so fucking painful. When I bring someone back, I DIE for them. I have to die, in the most painful ways imaginable to do it. It hurts, and I suffer, and every time I bring someone back to life…" Zach's body stood up straight. His fists curled at his sides and his elbows pulled in while those fists rose up in front of him. "I do it knowing I will feel that pain again."

"So you may have killed those people who I revived, but I don't regret it!" Zach yelled. He may have looked like an animal when he shouted out in rage, but people were still staying near the windows and looking out at him. Even in the shock they felt from hearing all of this, Raijin started to notice that they were far too close considering that he was right there and could kill them so easily… except Zach was also there, making them feel that that was impossible. As enraged and dangerous as he looked, Zach was still protecting citizens and acting righteous. He was not giving up no matter how horrible he felt throughout this fight. No matter how much Zach did not want to kill his friend, he was still there, just like he kept reviving despite all that pain too.

"I know that people will die again after I bring them back," Zach admitted. "There's no avoiding that," he told his enemy who had thought that all those weapons which truly were getting to Zach might actually be able to break his spirit, which was what he was very wrong about. Because Zach's resolve was as strong as ever as he snarled loudly towards Kaminari, "You may have killed those people, but I know that I gave them months to years of more time with their families. Lives that they were grateful for and lived happily! I know that people will die, they always will, but I'm going to keep reviving them and nothing you can do will stop that."

"Because it feels good to kill." Zach smirked violently and sadistically at his enemy. He did not hide the bloodthirst filling his eyes as he snarled, "It fills me with power. A surge of euphoric energy as I grow stronger with every life I take! Making me feel like a God!" Kaminari noticed all the people staring in looking at Zach in shock but he also saw his enemy not caring at all. Zach just snarled towards him in animalistic rage that surged from the sight of all those dead people he revived and the sound of all the horrible things that Kaminari was saying due to being enslaved by the parasite created by his Quirk. His voice shifted steadier and got even louder as he continued, "But bringing someone back and suffering for them? Taking all of their pain and dying in their place? That makes me feel like a hero."

"And I would take being a hero over being a God, ANY DAY!"

Zach's statement was full of resolve. There was no doubt in his eyes over what he just declared. Kaminari's left foot lifted up and he stomped it back down quickly before he could take a full step backwards. He stared back into Zach's determined eyes in disbelief though at such a statement. Zach shook his head at the expression showing real surprise on Kaminari's face, and he taunted his enemy for that disbelief, "You call yourself the God of Lightning, 'Raijin?'" Zach scoffed it out in such a taunting manner without really calling his enemy by it, just making fun of the name that it had chosen. "Instead of Chargebolt? Someone who actually was cool. My best friend. A hero, and an actual winner-"

"He was a loser!"

"He was the closest thing to a winner that you ever got," Zach retorted without hesitation. It showed that what he was saying was really how he thought of his enemy who considered himself to be Zach's nemesis. The most insane rage spread over Raijin's expression, but Zach did not care. "As close as you may have gotten to killing me," Zach continued. "No villain is ever a winner. Even if you did finish me off, you'll never be a winner, Kaminari."

Zach leaned his head a bit forward and continued, "Because villains are losers." He taunted his enemy in such a disrespectful sneer that it actually made Kaminari flinch. "Pathetic, sniveling, weak losers," Zach went on. He looked dangerous. He had just shouted something out that had every single civilian watching him staring in awe and smiling wider that Lifebringer would rather be a hero than a God, something none of them knew they would be able to say the same if they had his kind of power. They had thought earlier that day that he had betrayed them, and yet he was still alive and still fighting against their enemies because he was going to be their hero whether anyone wanted him to or not.

Even though the civilians were terrified of him, a few started shouting out, "Lifebringer!"

"You can do it!"

"Kick his ass!"

"KILL HIM!"

"LIFEBRINGER!"

Kaminari's eyes darted around. He thought that what Zach had shouted about being a God would have turned more people against Zach, but he also understood what he was seeing at the same time. Heroes are cool, he thought. The thought went through his head and he did not force it down as he stared back at Zach whose words really had amazed him. People cheer for them. In Kaminari's mind flashed a soccer game as a kid and his classmates picking him first, cheering him on when he scored, but cheers that stopped and fell quiet in his head when he got it too easily that it was expected. In his head he envisioned the envy he felt of the other winners when he had lost on purpose, or when he watched his weaker and dumber classmates get better grades that made them feel so victorious.

It twisted Raijin's face in fury as he thought back. A young Kaminari stood there watching a classmate get lifted up and cheered for, while he pretended to laugh while scratching the back of his head apologetically to his own teammates for losing. But when they all looked away from him and to the loser who won for the first time, and he was able to stare towards him as well and examine the look on his face, that was the feeling of victory he wanted. A young Kaminari looked on in so much envy of someone who no one thought would win, winning. And as angry as Zach just made him… Excitement also rose within him as those people cheered for Zach which meant he was the underdog. With every shout towards Zach of 'You can do it' that people called his way so genuinely, showing their true belief in him, Kaminari felt his heart pump with more and more excitement.

Zach ground his teeth as he saw Kaminari getting more excited by the moment as people cheered for him. His smile that he showed off heroically, albeit still very menacingly, flattened out as his dark eyes glared into Raijin's that were clearly thrilled at their situation. "You still just don't get it. After all this time," Zach's voice was lower and people quieted down as Zach spoke again but they could no longer hear him. It was hard to hear him too even when they quieted down, as Zach just spoke to his enemy who frowned and glared at him for not just attacking when he was ready for their final battle to start right here.

"You lose no matter what," Zach told him. "Because you're a loser. I mean that, Kaminari. You can't win." Kaminari opened his mouth but Zach cut him off, "You have no friends." His enemy lowered his bottom lip that Zach was saying that to him like it actually made him a "loser," and Raijin cocked his head to the side as that was not the kind of "loser" that he was talking about. Zach shook his head though and just stared down his enemy in a resolved way as he accepted that this had to happen now. And yet he still needed to say it anyway, "No one cares about you. You're wrong when you say that victory is in the eyes of the beholder."

Kaminari closed his mouth and frowned more at his enemy for saying that. He was about to call that out again at Zach when his opponent had cut him off. "The biggest victories, aren't the ones when most people lose. They're the ones where most people win." Kaminari smirked back at Zach and shook his head for saying something like that which was so clearly wrong. "The victories that really matter!" Zach yelled at his enemy who would give him that look as if Zach was making this up just to annoy him. "Not sports' games," Zach remarked in a scoff and sarcastically back at his enemy who had used that as an example long ago. And that caused Kaminari's lips to slightly curl down, though he shook his head again at Zach as the example was just a smaller version…

"But when heroes win," Zach continued firmly. "And everyone wins, then the heroes win even more because victory for one person does not mean much at all. It's still just one person's victory." Zach spoke down to his enemy. He spoke condescendingly towards him, and Kaminari's teeth started to grind a little though he tried to force out of his head all that Zach was saying to him. And yet for some reason, that memory in his mind started to come back again. And he saw that boy on the shoulders of his other classmates. The one who made the final goal and had everyone cheering for him… Kaminari saw that look again that he envied so much, but his mental vision rose from the boy's joyous smile to the top of his face. And in the memory, Kaminari saw that kid's eyes looking down at the people lifting him up, and the smile on his face that was so wide because of their joy for him- Kaminari shook his head again and pushed that creeping doubt out of his head.

"I don't need anyone else-"

"That's not true!" Zach yelled at him. "The reason sports' teams victories matter so much in championships isn't because every other team loses, but because they win for themselves and for all of their fans! They're still winning for something bigger than themselves." Kaminari could imagine parades that went on in the cities of championship teams after they won their final games. Zach shouted at him as he imagined that, "Who wins if you win, except for you? I know you aren't doing it for the other villains. So your victory is empty!"

"Because you can never understand the most simple thing!" Zach yelled at the blond whose eyes twitched. The corners of his lips pulled down so far as he already knew what Zach was going to yell out. "It isn't about you," Zach said. He said it in a steady voice but did not yell it. He did not need to. Zach could see that Kaminari remembered, and yet his friend had not taken what he said back then to heart. "I beat you back then because you couldn't figure that out. It isn't about you. It isn't about either of us."

"That's all this day is about," Kaminari countered.

Zach just softly shook his head back and forth. "Victory when everyone wins is a victory that really matters. It matters so much more than any other victory. What feels like more of a victory than anything else, is when the most people have won to share that victory with you. Each person's victory amplifies everyone else's. You can't celebrate on your own. That's no celebration. Anyone looking in could tell you, that someone who celebrates on their own is just having a pity party."

"Shut… shut up."

"I know this, Kaminari. Because I've known for so long that I don't matter at all, and yet I still know what it feels like to win! Even though I didn't care about myself? I can still feel victory! Because I can still win as long as everyone else wins. As long as they're safe, and they're happy, and as long as I know that they feel victory, then I've won. Defeating you? Yeah I'll feel like I've won, but not because I killed my best friend," Zach explained. "That wouldn't be a victory. But knowing that a world without Kaminari means that the rest of the world is safer? Knowing that it will spell the end of the League of Villains, who have plagued the hearts of humanity for years? Something that will make people feel safer? Cause celebrations which spread even more happiness? That's a real victory. That's a victory, that you can never have because you don't care about anyone but yourself. Not one will celebrate you, and even if they do you won't care. You don't, because you have a loser's mentality," Zach said.

Zach just roasted Kaminari for over a minute. He picked apart Raijin's ideology and trashed on his personality. The villain staring back at him opened his eyes wider in Zach's last taunts that sounded so mean and ill-willed. They were truly directed at him and not at Kaminari as a whole, just at this personality that Zach was taunting for stupidity and for limiting its own ability to feel the best victories that Zach was claiming to have felt before to understand that he was right and that Raijin was wrong. It was in his anger that Zach tore apart what made his enemy tick and made this fight so enjoyable for him, and it made rage spread on Raijin's face that Zach was making him feel this way after only a minute ago he was feeling so exhilarated to be the underdog in this fight. It was as if Zach saw him feeling that excitement and decided to rip it away from him by pulling the rug out from under his feet.

"You're going to pay for that, Zach." Raijin informed his enemy that his previous taunts would come back to bite him. The way he said it implied that he was about to kill a lot of people for those very taunts. He wanted Zach to know as well beforehand, that it was due to this moment right here that those people were going to die.

Zach glared darker back at him. "No I won't. Because I refuse to let Kaminari kill anyone. I won't let you do it. I won't let you win at all. I won't let any of you villains feel even the smallest victory from today." Zach's voice got louder and his rage was apparent but his determination exceeded all other emotions on his face as he yelled out in a louder voice but a way that made Kaminari stare at him in more shock than ever. Everyone else stared towards Zach in that much shock too, as he yelled towards him, "Buildings can be repaired! The injured and maimed can always recover, and I will get prosthetics to those who need them when the day is done. Property can be rebuilt, and wounds can heal, and as for the dead?!" Zach bellowed in a voice that had everyone staring silently back towards him with eyes as wide as possible.

"When this battle is over, I SWEAR! I am going to revive EVERY, SINGLE, PERSON who has died here today!" Zach roared it at his friend in an amount of resolve that made it hard for anyone to doubt him. "As long as they have not died before- and I will believe in the other heroes to be able to protect them, for the heroes who have died once before to treasure their second lives and stay alive! I need to believe they can, because I mean it when I tell you…"

"No one, will die today. Not one civilian or hero will fall. I swear it, Kaminari. And if it takes every last ounce of my strength to kill you while protecting everyone else from your insanity, I'll bring them all back using your life alone! I'll kill you with Death, so that you can die instantly and that you no longer have to suffer anymore, but since that's how it's going to happen?! Then I know that I'll have more power. I will use the surge from your death to revive them all. Don't worry, Kaminari. I know you're in there, and I want you to know that your death will SAVE this city. I will make it so that the hero Chargebolt is the one who brings this city back to life!" Zach screamed at his best friend whose eyes he looked deep into while yelling it. He stared into Kaminari's soul while Raijin stared back in utter shock.

Zach slammed his steel left fist into his chest which had bubbled over and seared in agony as he hit it like that, just so he could scream out towards his foe, "I will not allow this to be a victory for you or your League! I have done too much to bring this world to the light to allow you to taint it for even one day! I won't let you descend it back to the darkness. I swear- I promise you, Kaminari! I will not allow it!" Darkness shot out of Zach's back and created massive wings behind him. Dark claws extended from his fingers. His right arm bulged five times in size, while his left extended ten feet. Four more left arms emerged out of his left at different lengths to protect different ranges around his body. Four tentacles shot out of Zach's back and curved over his shoulders and around his sides at his waist level, the jagged points of each of them blurring and tugging towards Raijin looking to only barely being held back.

Black webs came in from the sides of Zach's face closer to his eyes that bled fully with red from what had been just bright red in his irises. Zach's body grew to ten feet tall. His teeth ground in agony as his limbs extended while turning pitch black. The air around him darkened. The sky itself darkened more. And the civilians near him still just started yelling out his hero name again at the top of their lungs, feeling so much more reassured after hearing the promise that Zach was making to all of them that sounded unbelievable and insane. It was hard to doubt him though as he started to look far more powerful, if more monstrous at the same time. And despite that monstrous appearance, despite how terrifying he was, Zach Sazaki leaned his head forward and smiled heroically through his dark veil and roared, "This world, is under MY PROTECTION!"

---

A/N Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Sorry for the super long update everyone. These chapters are all pretty massive, but I also had a lot on my plate. There're only about 5-6 more chapters left in Death total. It's going to take a while to get them all written and out though, especially if I keep averaging over 40k words per chapter as I have for the past 20 chapters. Zach vs Raijin starts up and Raijin's got a ton of anti-Death gear and contingencies lined up around the city to help him fight our hero. Zach's still kicking ass though and figuring out some new strengths as well now that he's being pushed to the limits for the first time since killing Ares. Hope you guys are enjoying that fight so far. On top of their fight, still a lot of others going on in the city. Inasa takes down Geten with the help of Jetflame. Dendo and Himazuri take on Genial. Splodo shows up and takes on Endeavor, leaving Gentle to face down Intanzo on his own after the leader of the Radians has injected with Double Trigger to take control of the destroyed Scorpion. Iida vs Sonic, Bakugo's got a plan against Machia, and Ashido and Trabo face down Dismembermen. Momo and Airi take on Source who we saw in the dream sequence chapter Zach had right before his apartment exploded, and who has supplied the League with super powerful weaponry his own Quirk can create. We finally see Hypnos use her Quirk too. I've been hinting that she was a very high-up member of the League for a while. Showed her when the Jazz were incorporated into the League's plans. And in the MLA flashbacks she was there with Shigaraki and Dabi, as well as a figure that the Liberation Army people were surprised to see (that being Thunderclap who was under her control all that time). I also tried to hint at Iscariot's mind being a little fuzzy in the other scenes that had him, but he wasn't too prominent in the story before as I didn't want to give it away... though I think Hypnos' name alone could have given some people hints. XD ANYWAY guys, I really hope you're enjoying the Battle of Tokyo thus far. As for why it's taken me so long to update, I was a ski instructor this winter and so March and April got pretty busy with people's spring breaks that I was working a lot during. Multiple lessons every day. On top of that, I'll admit I procrastinated a bit too. But mostly, I had to spend a lot of my time planning out what I was doing after the ski season. The mountain officially closed last week. I was out of a job. And so I drove 72 hours to Alaska and I'm going to work at a fish processing plant for the summer. XD! Got myself a nice-paying job... with really long hours, sorry. That job starts tonight as I was crashing for a couple nights in Anchorage now that I've arrived, but tonight I get on a ferry that takes me to some secluded processing plant. Don't worry though. It has wifi. So if the fish aren't biting and I've got a lot of time on my hand, I'll make sure to keep up my writing and get out 250 as soon as I can! Now that that's out of the way, review response time:

cartoonfan9 chapter 248 . Mar 10

Ah yes Zach vs Raijin about to start. I'm surprised Darling showed up, I really thought that chapter way back was your way of saying "she's never making an appearance in this story again". Sounded like that was the end of her arc, and she would go live her life somewhere. But it's cool that she came back and helped Yaoyorozu.
Excited for the Class A students splitting off, now there's more to write for each of them. Zach vs Raijin will be awesome, that's going to be seen up in the sky from anywhere in the city. I have a feeling everyone will freeze for a second and look up at the two.
Great chapter, hoping for the next one soon, but it'll probably be 3-4 weeks away... :(

3-4 weeks away... well, 8-9 isn't much longer than that. XD Again, sorry about the long wait. Hope ya enjoyed the chapter though. I kind of thought that Darling's goodbye might be the last we saw her too, but her character just seemed like one to show up during this. Especially with how she left as Zach declared how good a person she was and all that, she's really proving that while showing she still cares too about Zach even if she's accepted his wishes. Her and Yaoyorozu now fight Source side by side, and the two of them are kicking some ass. Def had a lot of different scenes to write still in this chapter, which I like 'cause I do have all these character arcs and lots of side characters I care about to give them worthy final fights. Anyway, thanks for the review. Hope I didn't worry ya' too much by my long absence!

EmperorCookies chapter 248 . Mar 28

YES. FUCK YES. I damn near audibly squealed when that fuck got his foot taken off. Holy matrimony Airi Kobayashi is BACK baby. And, y'know, the climax we've spent three million words building to but fuck you it's your fault for making such lovable characters.
I was gonna do a huge long-form review of the whole story as I've read it but god it's 12 and I think I just read the equivalent of like two novels again. I'll wait 'till pika-pika-pincushion's dead then get into that ordeal.
Thanks for the interesting evenings these past few months mate, you're a talented motherfucker, I give you that. Super fucking excited to see how we close this out.
Sincerley,
Your friendly neighborhood Airi supremacist

HAHA Glad you finally caught up! XD I loved reading all your reviews as you were catching up here. Hope you enjoy the new chapter too and glad you liked Airi's return. Thanks for reviewing all that time! Can't respond to 'em all, but I really am glad to read them!

Guest chapter 248 . Mar 30

After reading this I'm wondering, since the story is due to end in probably a couple of chapters what do you plan to write after this? Will there be like a part two or will you write a story in a new fandom like Naruto or One Piece or something.

You are right, this story will be ending in only a few more chapters. As for my writing after it? I'm going to be writing a book. Probably a YA novel, most likely the first book in what I plan to be a series. I have a lot of different ideas for stories and I'll have to pick through to find the one I think is most marketable... but those are thoughts for a bit farther down the road. This will most likely be my final fanfiction on this site. It's been a great bunch of years writing on here, and I feel like all this time writing and getting reviews on my work has improved my skill drastically which was always part of my reasoning for it... on top of just having fun doing it! XD But I'm not in high school anymore, or college, and I either get serious with writing now or never do it. So this summer I'm going to work real hard and get myself a large amount of capital, so that I can spend the next 9 months after just writing with no work and no responsibilities to distract me. With the speed I write? I'll get a book or three done in that time, no problem. :) Thanks for asking!

Guest chapter 1 . Apr 7

4 MILLION WORDS WTF

4 million words... so far. XD

Fayer chapter 248 . Apr 20

Man, I never reviewed a fanfic, but this is without a doubt the best one I have ever read.
Many were the times when I feared that it would turn out to edgy, given the topic, but you did a wonderful job keeping it on tracks.
The plot is awesome, OCs are well written and MHA characters stay faithfull to the manga.
Now I just hope that you get the ending right. (even though it's probably planned since the beggining)
Congratulations, and good luck.

Thanks! That's a lot of praise. I really tried not letting it ever get too edgy. The only time I struggled with that were the few chapters before the Lifebringer Incident where I didn't want to give away what Zach was planning and could only write out chapters with Zach's outwards trickery of complete depression and sorrow, which I think paid off really well but for a bit there made myself and a few other people iffy on it. I really wanted to surprise people though rather than hinting and foreshadowing that time at what was going to come. Anyway, glad you thought I kept it on track. I really love my OCs, and I'm glad the manga has been going the way it has because those most recent ones with Midoriya in his own head... I mean, it just worked so perfectly with speeches he'd given Zach in here and how set he is in being a Shonen protagonist. XD I hope you come to like the ending, and yeah it hasn't been planned out since the beginning... but probably since chapter 100 or so I likely knew how the story was going to end. Thanks again for the awesome review!

Kang chapter 248 . Apr 25

Someone's gotta do a series on YouTube breaking down this FanFiction so we can get more people hip to the story. Would you be okay with that?

I would absolutely be okay with that. In fact, I would love to see that! XD That sounds super cool and I would love to see more attention to this story. Thanks for the review!

RedBurningKnight chapter 248 . May 1

holy shit, where do I start with this. The feelings I get from this whole story I something I haven't felt from fanfiction ever. I binge-read this whole story in 4 days and I might go back to review all the chapters, but man has this been an experience so far. The manner in which Zach's character is written with layers of self-doubt and regret, but the conviction to accomplish a singular goal. The whole worldbuilding and setting up serious consequences from actions is simply amazing. Cannot wait for another chapter.

4 days?! You are insane. Haha I have trouble getting through a few chapters a day in my recent rereads, as I'm constantly making sure that I don't have plot holes and that I close out every plot thread I can. I've reread this story a few dozen times in the past few years, but it was probably two years ago that I could still manage a 4-day reread. I'm glad you've loved the worldbuilding and Zach's character so far, and I hope you enjoyed the most recent chapter! Thank you for the review, and thanks to everyone who reviewed, followed, faved or just read this story up until now! You guys rock! XD