Jack Redhawke - I am a person of culture after all ;v
fencer29 - He doesn't, but a major blow to his image might still influence stock prises of companies that Todorokis control, and that's NOT good in the present state of affairs. And yes. Froppy is growing cheeky :D
Shahryar - Well, I like writing Overhaul as a Big Threat, because of how op his quirk is :v So, yeah, expect big thinks to happen.
(***)
Overhaul lost the day.
It was completely obvious to the supervillain by now. He had many questions as to what exactly happened. Someone betrayed him, that's for sure. But, there was more to this. Much more.
Even with a spy, the enemy knew simply too much.
Was Shie Hassaikai done for? Overhaul, regretfully, suspected that it was the case. He had such a good run thus far, but finally, he went too far.
Shame.
Overhaul knew that even if he escapes, Hosu won't stay his for long. Not with so many casualties. Dabi's down, Junker's down, Foresight's down, Valiant's probably about to be down. Carnage's possibly down. He simply can't recover.
Even if everyone else escapes successfully, then he can't honestly trust Volcano, Necromancer and Impaler, especially after such a disaster. His authority will hit the bottom. The End.
Even if the Network won't roll in to end him, Kuroiro probably will.
But for as long as he escapes the Esuha Bridge, he will have a future. Dictator is too terrified of him (he doesn't dare to ask even the simplest of questions, like 'where is the toilet' without Overhaul's explicit approval) to try to escape.
Overhaul, the criminal kingpin with a quirk that could heal or enhance people at will. Dictator, the perfect mind-controller. Kurogiri, the powerful warp-quirk user. That trio alone was enough for Chisaki to recover.
It was going to take years, most likely. He would have to grab as much of the Shie Hassaikai's funds and tail it to the other side of the country for the time being.
Chaos in the country would make it much easier for him to raise again.
Killing Defiant would make the chaos in the country worse. Coincidentally, he couldn't hope to escape the bridge without killing Defiant (and probably the other superhero, although she was keeping her distance).
Two birds with one stone, and all that.
Unfortunately, he also knows that his villains aren't going to buy him much time, and it's Defiant that's looking forward to getting reinforcements. Especially if the army or the police were going to decide that now was the best time to intervene.
After all, Overhaul really didn't seem like someone in a position to realize his earlier threats that were supposed to deter them from intervening.
In short, he was on a time limit.
His remaining sidekicks barely had the time to put some distance before Overhaul touched the floor under him.
Midoriya moved fast enough to dodge the spike that erupted from the ground under him, despite Overhaul increasing his effective range of manipulation greatly nowadays.
The same couldn't exactly be said about the follow up.
(***)
Izuku flies back, gaining more distance before Overhaul can strike him again. Much more distance.
Then he looks down, on the long canyon that Overhaul's second spike carved in his uniform's front plate. If Midoriya reacted a millisecond later, he would die, impaled on it. He didn't expect a spike to grow another spike from its side, just as Midoriya successfully dodged the first one.
Overhaul, it seems, took some levels in combat skills when no one was looking.
This brief engagement confirmed that AND something more.
Overhaul's alterations were instantaneous when they happened - meaning that Defiant's shields were nigh useless. There was nothing to stop, the change was instant meaning no velocity to decrease with the shields.
The spike would just appear inside of his guts. Like it almost did.
Dodging worked, because Overhaul's control wasn't perfect. He could create a spike, but it was like running a computer program - he could do that ultra fast, but changing the parameters (like, a graphics settings of a game when you set them in a launcher rather than in the game menu) between launches required some time.
Then, there was a fun thing. Midoriya couldn't do much to the spikes… but he was using One for All for a moment when dodging.
That's what saved him. Because he realized that something was amiss. Overhaul's quirk alterations must have worked on a two-staged system - a second before the spike appeared, surplus mass was moved to the base of it, before being reconfigured.
Ignition sense was enough to pick it up. But it couldn't tell him the shape it was going to change into.
Eclipse threw a few of her surfaces at Overhaul. Izuku sincerely hoped that he would try to catch it, but no. They weren't fast enough to avoid spikes impaling them from the ground, Great.
Eclipse then has a good idea and starts throwing smaller surfaces. Alas, Overhaul was clearly much better in quirk handling than in the past. Someone must have trained himself immensely.
Good for him, bad for Midoriya.
This also explained why Overhaul picked Esuha bridge for the battlefield. 'Normally', inside of the building or even underground would be the best place to employ his quirk. However he must have realized that if he lets Midoriya get too close, he'll be taken down instantly. So, he instead used a position where he had an uninterrupted line of sight in every direction.
He must have suspected Midoriya having some degree of ability to influence things he didn't see. Or was extra cautious.
Trying to get him from under the bridge was probably a trap. Midoriya could imagine the whole area changing into a death trap with spikes from every direction. Even if it would mean endangering the integrity of the Esuha bridge, it didn't mean a lot to Overhaul.
It wasn't without its downsides. If Overhaul wasn't on the bridge, he could easily escape by digging himself a way underground.
"Eclipse, plan B." Izuku announces through his radio. "We're holding ground until we get reinforcements."
"Whatever you say, boss." Eclipse replies, continuing her barrage of attacks.
Midoriya promptly ignites and throws a car (poor owner, if still alive, just realized even more downsides of living in a superhero world) at Overhaul, who stopped it with another spike, close enough to tap it and promptly disassemble it.
Crap, he really got way better.
(***)
Elsewhere
The Bakugous are watching the transmission from the Esuha bridge battle. Honestly speaking, a big part of Japan does, they are just having some additional incentive to do so.
Namely, Kai Chisaki. The man that was pursuing their daughter (not by law, but it was honestly a matter of time, especially now that the police all but accepted their custody while moving them to temporary secure housing). The man that apparently recruited their son and had him murder Mitsuki's former best friend (just as their relationships began to heal).
Discovering what he was capable of, was… terrifying. Especially as they knew that they were going to become his target sooner or later.
The world really went mad, didn't it?
Then the superhero is wrapped in green lightning for a second, throwing a car at Overhaul.
They can see it. The feed from numerous cameras (both on the ground and in the drones) is sent into the internet, TV stations scrambling to remix the multiple PoVs into something resembling a cohesive feed.
Rare occasion of a live transmission barely interrupted by anyone from the studio. Because to be honest, everything was so incredibly alien that no one seemed to have any idea on what to say, and…
"That's Izuku." They hear a voice, shaking them from being too engrossed with the TV to notice their surroundings.
It's Eri. Behind their couch, yet clearly over its backrest. She must be standing on something to get so high, they can see her clenching her fists resting on the top of the backrest and…
"Eri, you shouldn't be watching that, it's…" Mitsuki rises from her couch, but before she can say the rest of the sentence ('too violent for you') her mind catches up to what her daughter said. "What did you say?"
(Izuku phoned Eri earlier, told her that she can tell her parents - keeping it secret from them anymore was pointless, especially as Eri felt very bad about lying to them about helping him and other heroes without them knowing)
"It's Izuku." Eri replies, her eyes still on the screen, where her hero was fighting the monster that almost took her life away from her.. "He flew and sparkled green when he saved me too."
Mitsuki and Masaru exchange shocked looks. So many things suddenly make sense.
(***)
Esuha Bridge
Overhaul realized almost immediately that the pests switched over to harassing him instead of fighting him properly. This could mean a few things, and none of them were good for him. Because the most likely explanation was that Defiant's reinforcements were on the way.
In short, it was time to finish the fight and get the fuck out.
Defiant was a problem that could make it impossible. Pest #2 was a problem that could make it impossible.
If his read on Defiant's quirk was correct, he could influence objects out of his line of sight, for as long as they were close enough. This meant that unless Overhaul would dig his escape really deep, Defiant would manage to incapacitate him from the surface above it.
If his read on Pest #2's quirk was correct, she could fire those circular buzzsaws that appeared to be monomolecular. This meant cutting through everything. She would just fire them towards the ground (they had to have some means of tracking the villain's movements, who knew it the earth was enough to suppress it?), hoping to hit him.
All she needed was a single good hit. Overhaul only survived his first encounter with Defiant before his brain wasn't damaged enough to make him unable to reset himself on instinct. If the woman's buzzsaw hits his brain, it's game over.
Solution was simple - they both had to die. Now.
For all their skills in combat, they didn't even realize that he was goading them so that they would be close to each other. He had one shot at this if he wanted the maximum chances of their death or severe injuries.
When for a moment they got close enough, Overhaul unleashed his final trump card.
(***)
Despite his failure to utilize his underlings properly during the battle, Overhaul was still the most dangerous villain that Midoriya ever faced. Even the numerous limitations of his quirk - like vulnerability to gunfire - that delegated him into the position of backseat commander, didn't change much.
Because he trained. Hard. Extremely hard.
And he might have as well been the second natural born genius in quirk sciences (of the branch that was once going to be renamed to 'quirk counseling') in Musutafu. It was the fact that he focused his genius on himself rather than on his teammates that led to Shie Hassaikai's defeat during the battle of Esuha Bridge.
Midoriya was painfully reminded of the fact that he was fighting his equal. With an accent on painfully.
To be honest, without his Ignition sense pushed to maximum, they wouldn't even realize what killed them.
Instead, he detected a massive build-up of mass at the edge of the bridge, and lept sideways, grabbing Eclipse (shit, Overhaul was goading them to be close to each other to take them out at once, they fell for it completely) and pulling her sideways.
"SHIELDS!" Midoriya yelled. Eclipse realizes immediately that something was wrong (but he had no time to elaborate, which alone spelled trouble).
She also realized where she was supposed to put her shields when something materialized mid-air in the opposite direction to the one where Defiant was pulling her with maximum speed possible, his ignition enveloping them both.
A massive ball of concrete, connected to the bridge with a small thread, the gravity alone immediately snapping it as the ball began its freefall.
To be honest, without OFA's discharges carrying a sliver of its energy that Eclipse's quirk grabbed to strengthen itself (as Nedzu theorized during their Gunga Mountain meeting) they would still die when twenty tonnes of military-grade explosives - that Overhaul submerged into the bridge before heroes' arrival and then moved right next to them with his quirk - exploded with power rivalring Shoto Todoroki's ultimate move.
(***)
Eclipse lost consciousness for a moment when the blast happened, the explosion tearing through her shields and Defiant's telekinetic barriers in an instant. What woke her up was the impact as the two of them crashlanded into a flat rooftop of one of the buildings.
Everything hurt. She was partially blind, her mask shattering under the impact and some glass shard stuck in her left eye. She seemed mostly deaf (aside from the ringing, were her eardrums… shit, of course they were, she's bleeding from her ears too).
How many of her ribs were broken? It felt like all of them, really.
Probably some internal bleeding, judging from her coughing out blood. And oh, look, the solid half of her right hand was clearly amputated with some shrapnel, she's missing three fingers.
Eri can fix all of it, but…
With some superhuman effort, she managed to stand up. She knows that she probably shouldn't, but…
Midoriya was there. Standing too. Looking about as good as she was. A solid chunk of his helmet was lost, some shrapnel coming dangerously close to splitting his head in half, exposing some of his messy green hair to the world.
Left arm was mangled almost beyond recognition.
She has no idea how he survived, his uniform seemed more shredded and… wait, did he try to shield her with his own body at the last second? How did he survive that?! His body was always weak and…
(they realized much, much later that OFA was passively improving his body durability, enough to make a difference - though he didn't know that when he shielded his comrade on an instinct)
She can see what he was looking at. Overhaul erected two concrete walls on both sides of the bridge. He must have been running towards the edge of it to rendezvous with Dictator and the others and escape, using the erected covers to avoid being sniped. Shit, after all they did, he was going to…
"Are your comms working?" Midoriya asks, glancing at her. She can barely hear him, but…
"Y-yes?" She manages to utter.
"I'll raise my hand when it's over." He says, much louder this time. "Get Paladin to my position asap, I won't be in the shape to defend myself."
What?
"It's time to end this." Midoriya says, before taking off. She actually tried to grab him (it was madness to go back there) but she ended up tripping and… shit, she isn't sure if she can stand up again.
So, instead, she relays the orders.
Trying to ignore the panic on the other side, especially from Aizawa. Who clearly expected Defiant to stand down after this blast.
He didn't know Izuku, didn't he?
(***)
Izuku Midoriya knew that he was doing an Extremely Stupid Thing. Governor Yagi all but told him to NOT risk his life excessively. Unfortunately, in his opinion, Overhaul was going to successfully escape otherwise.
And he was told to bring him in, dead or alive, wasn't he?
So despite his body screaming at him to stop, lie down and fall asleep, he pushes on, landing on the bridge around the place where Overhaul used to be. Unfortunately, he is no longer there.
He should have worked on his cardio. He clearly wasn't a good runner. But it was still quite a distance.
Midoriya considered trying to get him with his quirk through the wall, but there was a yakuza-operated drone floating over his head. No way to approach undetected, and he had no strength left for another slugfest. So, a different plan.
"OVERHAUL!" Midoriya yells. Even that hurts. Chisaki stops running, his head turning. Izuku can't see it from a distance (it's like fifty meters at least), but he is probably furious.
(he discovered much later that Overhaul yelled back "WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE ALREADY!" when he got to see the recordings from the surviving cameras)
Then, he was furiously murderous, as he crouched again, touching the bridge. He had no way of assessing Midoriya's state, he couldn't be sure that he would make it to the edge of the bridge with him breathing down his neck. So, instead he defaulted to murder.
He always did.
Midoriya tapped into One For All with all the power he had left and catapulted forward with maximum speed right as the spikes began to erupt in front of him.
His plan was, honestly, barely a plan. More like a faint vibe that he decided to make into reality. But it had some solid foundations.
Foundation one: He had an early warning system, namely Ignition Sense, telling him where the spike was going to erupt. It didn't tell him a lot about their shape and length, though, however he more or less had a reading on how long after the build-up the spike was going to erupt, and…
Foundation two: … Overhaul simply had to be tired, his quirk had its own limits, especially without One for All to boost it. The massive bomb required extremely detailed manipulation, especially as the concrete outer shell was carefully crafted with some structural weaknesses to maximize shrapnel number.
This meant lacking the capability for very quick and more detailed changes. Hence, simple spikes mostly.
Foundation three: There were dozens of cars abandoned between their positions. Cars that limited Overhaul's visibility and couldn't be directly influenced by his quirk due to being separate items.
Foundation Four: the amount of concrete and other materials that Overhaul took out of the bridge to create his massive bomb (plus the anti-sniper walls) seriously weakened the bridge's stuctural integrity.
Defiant took full advantage of that in tandem with his lengthy training with high-speed maneuvers in restricted space. He lunges forward, pushing his quirk to the extreme, spikes erupting around him, some of them dodged by a hair's breadth.
Never before and never again would Defiant experience something like this. No rollercoaster ride could even get close.
Then again, he has no time to think about this.
Overhaul, despite his quirk exhaustion slowly settling in, goes all out.
He still has enough space for some more complicated maneuvers. To attempt to squash Midoriya between the cars pressed together with rapidly erected walls (turns out he CAN do moving changes, huh), to try to block his movements with spikes coming from the front.
Midoriya dodges. Dodges like never before, his adrenaline and pain keeping him awake, more awake than he thought possible.
Overhaul screams something. More and more spikes.
Forty meters. Thirty meters.
The bridge finally has enough, uncontrollable changes start its collapse, mostly behind and around Izuku. This makes things harder to control by Overhaul and harder to predict by Izuku.
One of the spikes almost hits the target.
He throws one of the cars at Overhaul, just to buy himself the precious few seconds. He can feel his quirk reaching its limit. The car distracted Chisaki enough to reach the 20 meters mark, but he had no strength left in his quirk to just end the fight from that range.
He isn't sure if he has enough strength to decelerate without killing himself.
It's not very visible, especially not to Overhaul, but he lets something fall to the ground behind him, immediately grabbing it with his quirk. It's small, and that's his chance. It can move faster. It doesn't cost him a lot of his leftover strength.
It's hard to notice, too.
No more spikes. Overhaul gathers the mass under the surface around him. Some final omnidirectional wall at ten meters mark, enough for Izuku to squash all over it like a bug on a car's windshield.
Chisaki is almost at the end of the part of the bridge covered with cars. The rest of the drivers drove away instead of being forced to flee, clearly enough. It should make things easier, Izuku thinks.
He can barely think straight.
Twenty meters. Fifteen meters.
Overhaul didn't notice it. He didn't notice the two blades (thank you Mei) Midoriya sent on a parabolic trajectory towards him. The two blades that he would fail to control in his current state if Overhaul didn't stop throwing spikes at him.
Chisaki's final mistake.
The blades amputate his arms right below the elbows, milliseconds before Midoriya entered the ten meter radius. His quirk misfires.
The mass he gathered wants its volume back. The bridge around Overhaul begins to erupt. That's when Midoriya's right fists reaches Chisaki's face.
His gas mask shatters, and so do most of the bones in Midoriya's arm. They were going to discover later that Overhaul enhanced his own body with his quirk, this together with Midoriya's failing telekinetic shield around his fist resulting in the injuries.
The injuries and the explosion of pain woke him up. Gave him the final rush of strength (fuelled entirely by adrenaline at this point) to decelerate himself and Chisaki, the lack of further cars meaning nothing to plaster themselves on.
The bridge behind them erupts, Chisaki's arms destroyed in the blast.
With the final embers of his strength, their speed almost down to zero, Midoriya slams Chisaki's head into the pavement. Overhaul stays there, unconscious or dead, the stumps that used to be his arms bleeding profusely (so his heart is probably still beating).
It takes Izuku almost five seconds to gather enough strength to raise his fist up. Somehow, he did that to the broken one. Some unconscious telekinesis - without OFA - keeping it up even when his mind started blanking out, he was so used to helping himself move with his quirk that he called upon it even in such a moment.
The fact that he blacked out and lost consciousness only after Paladin (badly injured but clearly still capable of fighting if someone tried to finish the job) reached him can be safely considered to be a miracle brought by willpower.
Izuku was going to discover the next day that the remaining cameras caught most of the final battle (including the punch and the slam into the ground, not to mention the gesture of his fist raised) and showed it to the world.
(***)
If the world's future changes less than we all thought and there is still a Kamino Ward clash between All Might (if differently named) and All for One, then a lot of people were probably left to wonder why did All Might used the move that Defiant once used to end his long rivalry with a villain that killed his mother. Aside from those who knew the truth.
RIP Overhaul, you won't be missed. But damn if you didn't have an explosive exit.
