Chapter 42 – Moving with(out) thinking?

"I... what even... Yaoyorozu, I'm sorry I don't think I can... Yao?", she wasn't getting a response from Momo, but she could feel her breathing on her shoulders. Maybe she was out cold?

"Try using Telepathy on her maybe", Kendo 2.0 suggested with a slight uneasiness in her voice.

"Better than nothing, I guess. But, also like who is Kachhan again?", by the time she said this, Nanami managed to Telepathically connect with Momo as well, waking up the latter in the process.

"I believe... Kachhan is Bakougo... my head hurts a lot; did you get that tracker on the Nomu?"

"I think I just got an idea how to do it!", Nanami snapped her fingers and blasted the Nomu's hand with an explosion!

She quickly stuck the tracker on the Nomu's regenerating arm and promptly backed off, making sure to see that the tracker didn't fall off.

Moments after that a chilly breeze swept the forest, as Nanami noticed a sizable ice wall to her right! She couldn't exactly just bring out her wings with Momo on her back, so she shifted Yaomomo in front of her, snapped her fingers and flew in the general direction of where the ice seemed to have originated.

She misread the origin point of the ice and ended up on the side it ended. Nonetheless, she followed the ice, to try to find Shouto and probably others with him.

She flew close to the ground so that she didn't drop Momo from a large height in case of any unexpected hindrances and also so she wouldn't miss her allies if they happened to be moving on foot.

As she moved along a burst of wind pushed her down even more, but on looking up she couldn't see anyone!

"The hell is happening here?! There better be someone at the end of this ice wall!"

"Villains?", Kendo 2.0 wondered

"These A section students can't help but attract unwanted atte... Sorry bad timing!", everyone around Monoma 2.0 was visibly pissed at his shtick, so much so that even he realised that it wasn't the best time for it.

As she reached the end, she saw Ochaco and Asui looking up in the sky.

"Maybe they saw the source of the sudden shockwave?", Nanami wondered as she landed in front of them.

"WHAT HAPPENED? WHERE'S TODOROKI? WHERE'S BAKOUGO? WHERE ARE THE OTHERS?", the panic finally found its way to the surface. She was blasting these questions so fast that she didn't even have time to let Yaoyorozu down!

"They are chasing after that villain, they have Bakougo and Tokoyami with them! But first, you need to cal-"

By the time she could finish the sentence, Nanami snapped her fingers and jumped in the general direction of where Todoroki and the others flew off to.

She was in such a hurry that she didn't even put Yaoyorozu down, and only when she was up in the air, she realised her mistake.

Nanami couldn't fly towards where Shouto seemed to be fighting, judging by the flames, if she held Momo in the front. But she couldn't fly even produce the wings on her back if she shifted Momo onto her back.

"GO BACK DOWN AND PUT HER ON THE GROUND NEAR THAT FROG GIRL!", Monoma 2.0 screamed

"But I can't not help them, I can even see the flames flying over there! THE VILLAINS ALREADY HAVE 2 PEOPLE WITH THEM!", Nanami retorted. She knew she didn't have the most airtight plan, it was even hard to call what she wanted to do a plan. But the worst part of it all what Monoma's point was too valid to disregard just because it was Monoma's plan!

"I... don't know what to do...", Kendo 2.0 couldn't hide the panic anymore, she couldn't balance Nanami and Monoma and she definitely couldn't come up with a plan in this state.

"Take the fight to... I don't know, as heroes, don't we have to save Momo as well? I don't know what is... what is the more manly thing to do here!", Even Tetsutetsu 2.0 didn't know what he would rather do.

As for Tetsuya 2.0, he was panicking long before Nanami even reached the A-section girls. But despite all of them being in shambles, Monoma 2.0 sounded like he was sure what they needed to do.

Saving the victim was the obvious move, she knew this but what was more urgent here?

A bright light beam from where the flames were going off earlier, made Nanami notice that portals were appearing near the villains! There was no doubt about what they were trying to do.

But this only fed Nanami's indecisiveness, "I can't even charge at them with Yaoyorozu and we have even started to fall now, I..."

"Use your wings to thrust yourself towards the area of the fight, switch to Boomerang and then rush in and land a good hit and save them!", a calm and collected voice instructed Nanami, with what sounded like the best advice she got that day.

Despite the fact that her motivation is to become a hero, she was feeling awfully aggressive that day. She was, in many ways, looking for a way to get into a fight against the villains! It was very un-hero-like, according to her at least, but she kept trying to convince herself otherwise. It was selfish, self-destructive and could potentially harm her friends and classmates, but she really really wanted to engage in a fight. She couldn't lie to herself a lot longer, but this did not feel right to her either. Not the fact that she wanted to pick a fight but rather how it hindered what she believed to be her primary motivation.

"There are stories about almost every hero, how they became great. Most have one thing in common, their bodies moved before they had a chance to think, almost on their own..." All Might was once quoted saying this.

Was it the influence of All Might? Or was it just her animalistic desire to engage in a fight with those designated as villains? She didn't know what was happening there, but in those split seconds, she moved towards the escaping villains at unimaginable speeds, with Yaoyorozu firmly on her back she shifted to Boomerang and braced for the single punch she could land before inevitably being pulled back up mid-air.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, THERE ARE ALREADY 5 PEOPLE THERE, THIS GIRL ONLY HAS YOU TO SAVE HER! THIS SHOULDN'T BE ABOUT ENGAGING IN A FIGHT WHERE YOU DON'T KNOW IF YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO SAVE THAT BAKOUGO, THIS SHOULD BE ABOUT ENSURING YAOYOROZU IS SAFE! THIS IS NOT JUST...", Monoma 2.0 went into a, rather justified, rage fit in Nanami's mind before he was interrupted by her.

As Nanami's brain started running out of air faster than usual, even compared to the few times she used Boomerang, she found herself in a weird dark space, with only her hands face formed and the rest of her body missing, surrounded by familiar faces which were also only partially formed. But that didn't make her falter at all, if anything it somehow didn't seem to bother her at all, almost as if she didn't even notice a difference. She was about to admit something to herself, something she didn't want to face. Something she thought was best buried in the past but was perhaps holding her back from pushing herself too far.

"I can't forgive myself if I... if I don't reach out when I am this close to someone, not when I can probably do something about it, not when I'm not powerless anymore!"

As she found it extremely hard to breathe with every passing nanosecond, her fists got ever closer to a face that seemed to be stapled onto someone's head.

A stapler pin came off along with some blood as Nanami's timer ran out and she got snapped back mid-air, but Bakougo was nowhere to be seen.