Prologue: Cheshire Smile
Bodies littered the street. Fire and smoke marred the horizon, turning the sky an angry infected red. A backdrop to the decimated pile of rubble that was once the city of Kamino. The collective cry of thousands echoed in a single dreadful wail of despair.
Miruko's voice joined them.
The Number 6 Pro Hero collapsed to her knees amidst the remnants of her last stand, somehow triumphant and broken, her head thrown back, white rabbit ears erect and throat raw from her screams. One leg twisted to ruin, bone snapped like a twig, jagged white jutting out of the meat of her thigh, her cacao skin darkened by a river of her own blood. One of her arms was just… gone. Toned dark skinned flesh ending abruptly in dangling red muscle just above her elbow, her own silver-white hair tied off below her shoulder in a makeshift tourniquet.
Another explosion lit up the sky, lighting up the shredded bodies around her in its orange glow. Black skin and exposed pink brains of defeated nomu reflected back at her eerily.
The street around her was in a similar condition. Concrete smashed and blacktop uprooted, entire storefronts blown out from their buildings, crumbled down like a house of cards. A monument to the Rabbit Heroine's strength and will to win.
Miruko bit back another scream of agony. She had allowed herself that moment of weakness. She only had a m-missing arm and one broken leg, she just… needed to walk it off. Yeah. She could walk this off. She was Miruko!
Miruko climbed to her feet- and woke up seconds later face down on the smashed concrete, tear tracks running through the ash and dust crusted on her cheeks. Another sob bubbled unbidden and very much unwelcome from her lips.
"Fuck." She wasn't going to walk this off so easily, was she?
She couldn't stand. The adrenaline that had kept her numb to her wounds was fading, a static cold climbing up her limbs (or what was left of them). Blood loss, she recognized. Severe hemorrhaging from her amputated arm and broken leg.
I'm going to die here?
"Fuck."
No way. She had always imagined going out in a blaze of glory. Triumphant and grinning even as she valiantly took her enemies down with her. Even in dying she would be powerful- undefeatable. She would be Miruko The Rabbit Heroi-
Another sob racked her broken body. She dragged her shattered leg up to her chest and curled herself into a ball, the pain no longer registering.
This though. It didn't feel like what she had imagined at all. She had won. Her blaze of glory already in the past. Now all that was left for her was to die amidst her vanquished foes.
Kamino was a disaster. Already lasting over two days of fighting these nomu. As many civilians had been evacuated from this part of town as possible. Miruko was alone out here. She didn't do team-ups. Her radio had been destroyed in the fight hours ago. No one was coming. Not to save her. Not with the battle still being waged in the rest of the city.
She knew the procedure. What will happen next.
After 6 hours of no contact Miruko would be marked for retrieval.
Not rescue. Retrieval.
In about a day or so first responders and volunteers would investigate her last known location. And-and-!
She hiccupped.
They would find The corpse of Rumi Usagyama curled in on herself, terrified of death, and in her last moments so utterly, achingly alone in the site of her Last Stand.
How… pathetic.
Blaze of Glory indeed.
A shifting of debris caught Rumi's attention, one of her blood spattered ears snapped in the direction of the noise. She uncurled from her ball and looked up into the beaked face and beady black eyes of a nomu. Its black body a poor caricature of All-Might. A rattling growl like a lizard filled the air.
Ah. Rumi thought as it stalked closer and raised a foot to crush her skull. At least it'll be quick. And no one would know I cried.
She saw the black heel descend, growing in her vision-
-Then she saw night sky.
A gunshot thundered in the lonely cityscape. Its payload already struck its target, like thunder after a lightning strike. The Nomu had been blasted off its feet and into a nearby wall.
Rumi blinked, her ears catching the crunch of heavy boots over rubble. She craned her head to the far side of the street and saw her savior.
A man in full body armor, the plating streamlined and aggressive, colored in subdued black and gray camouflage. Gear and pouches she couldn't identify were attached to his midriff, thighs, and shoulders. A smoking rifle with a rail-gun barrel was casually cradled in the man's arm.
The stranger -A soldier she realized, from the vaguely familiar symbol emblazoned on his paldron- cut an intimidating figure as he marched across the street towards her.
The detail that drew her in the most though, wasn't the man's armor, but what was on the sleek black helmet hiding the man's face.
A holographic emote that mimicked the man's hidden expression in toxic neon green, its eyes an innocent circle, while its mouth was a strangely uneasy smirk.
"Have No Fear-" The man rumbled. Voice deep and distorted.
The nomu's angry rattling shriek announced its reappearance, this time with a couple of friends, as it charged from the rubble. The man raised his rifle and fired, a flash of blue-green erupted from the pronged barrel and eviscerated the nomu, properly putting the creature down this time.
The second nomu tanked the follow-up gunshot, plasma sizzling around a gaping hole in its flank, the hit barely breaking its stride.
The soldier's projected expression didn't even twitch as he snapped his rifle to a magnetic lock and surged forward to meet the pair of nomu. Instead of competing in raw strength the soldier twisted underneath the front nomu's wild swing, then his left arm and right leg flared with an empty blue light- thrusters mounted inside the armor firing in tandem- spinning the armored warrior adding momentum to a brutal jet-propelled side-kick into the nomu's neck.
The aberration broke, its head flopped to the side as it was smashed into the ground, its head splattered into the shattered pavement. The soldier landed on his feet, already moving to engage the third threat. The third was larger than its two brethren. Its wide back blocking the soldier from Rumi's view.
A sputtering hiss of ignited energy heralded a dark green light, the nomu swung- then its arm fell apart.
Another flash of dangerous flickering green and the nomu slid to pieces, the scorched chunks cut apart in perfectly straight lines.
The man stepped over the smoking remains, two twin blades of rippling green energy hummed and thrashed on his arms. "-For I am Here!"
Oh. Okay. That… That was kinda hot. Either that or the blood loss is making my head go funny.
The armored man flicked his wrists, the blades of energy fizzling out as he kneeled down next to Miruko, his voice softer this time. "Sorry I'm late to the party. Seems you had fun."
Rumi -no, Miruko- huffed weakly as the man unhooked a medic pack from his belt and sprayed a wound stabilizer over the remains of her arm.
"Figures." She sighed. "Of all the people I get saved by, it's some souped-up All-Might Fanboy."
She looked up at the emote on the soldier's visor and shivered as the emote's expression spread inhumanely wide into a toxic green Cheshire Smile.