Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia
Chapter 185:
Sicily, Italy
"Crap. Five got past us. They're speeding off way too fast too, Delta Squad can't keep up."
"Stay on them Fillian. Don't give them any time to breathe."
Death sprinted to the edge of the highest point on the cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean. Down from the highest cliffs started more gradual slopes, with buildings built straight into the sides of the steep Italian coastline. The town was one of the most beautiful in Sicily and attracted a lot of tourists, which could be seen by the two large and expensive-to-stay-at hotels down the cliffs more to the east of the town of Cazzitanno. Death ran to the top of the highest point in Cazzitanno and leapt right off, down onto the roof of a church built up higher than most of the rest of the town. He landed with his legs curling forward so he fell into a roll and popped right out of it in a sprint across that roof before jumping off, after the three people just ahead of him who used their jetpacks to fly ahead farther after jumping off the edge of the church themselves.
"He's right behind us!"
"Holy shit!"
"Keep running!" An Italian villain yelled it at the others with him, only for another voice to counter back much louder.
"Hold them there!"
"Are you crazy-"
"Do it!"
"Death, slow down a little."
"You're between their forces now. Alpha's too far behind you," La Brava warned over comms.
Death dropped down on a tiled-rooftop connected to a line of buildings wrapping around a gradual hillside road that villains started running along instead of going straight towards the shore. "They're conserving some of the energy in those packs of theirs," Death informed his comrades. "It's not an unlimited energy source. It is high-tech though."
"All their weapons are too!" A high-pitched voice called to Death in agreement. "We should take it all!"
"Focus on taking them down first," a deeper voice countered, and the man who said it jumped down to the top of the church after another two villains he was chasing himself. "Alpha leader coming up behind you Death. Don't worry about the guys at your back."
"You're too far ahead Mark!"
"You're the ones falling behind," Mark countered at his own squad members who were too far behind him. Two others in Alpha Squad landed on the roof behind him and ran to the spot Mark was leaping off from, raising his arms and whipping them in front of him with flicks of his wrists.
"Don't let them hit you with those weapons!" Rebel warned in a loud voice over their open channel. Mark swept the whips of water out ahead of him and grabbed the plasma cannons that glowed bright green a moment before he got them and pointed them up into the air. Huge bursts of green light fired into the air, and the two villains trying to hold onto their weapons were flipped around in midair right before landing on a rooftop. Mark forced them to botch the landing, then the water whips dropped the weapons on the roof and shot towards the villains' opened mouths instead that they flew inside to choke them out through drowning.
"Whoa! Damn that was close! Haha, I barely dodged-" Rebel cut off Hyper's comms from the open channel after he dodged a green explosion back in the woods on the other side of the cliffs as Cazzitanno.
"Have eyes on Source," Darling reported in, rushing forwards faster now with jets opening up on her shoulder-blades that stuck out of holes pre-made in her costume. "He's heavily guarded by at least a dozen of them, but I'm going in!"
"Someone get up on Darling-"
"Right behind her," Gentle assured La Brava who started calling that out in annoyance.
"They're heading for the sea!"
"Don't let them escape! We catch all of them right here, and we get all that tech for ourselves," Access called out from the bridge of the Cloak flying high up above in the dark clouds over southern Sicily.
Death jumped to his right, off the roof of a building right before a villain was about to fire the green cannons attached to his wrists. The villain moved his arms as Zach dodged too early, but that was on purpose as Zach did not want the missed shots to hit the roof he was on. Instead he forced Death out of his right side and then from his left to push him around in the air and dodge the first green blast fired from the villain's right wrist and then the second fired from the left that the man aimed to where Zach was dodging into. Death then formed wings out of his back that he flapped while pushing his body forward to be horizontal to the ground, angled actually since the ground level was on a steady decline.
Zach sped back to the top of the roofs and he swung his legs up from behind him to drop-kick into the chest of the villain with wrist-cannons who tried to activate his Quirk at the last second but got knocked out first by the darkness on the soles of Zach's dark boots planting firmly into his ribs. Zach kicked the villain across the roof he landed on in the next second and dragged up a half dozen tiles with his boots upon landing, though he broke even more with how hard the villain rolled across the roof.
Death turned his head to the right and watched across the west side of the town as Darling and Gentle both dropped down on a roof even lower down in elevation as him and fought against two villains each who stayed behind to fight them. A wolf made of water dove down at a villain firing a fire Quirk up more in the middle of the town between Zach and Darling, and that villain let out a screamed curse in Italian right before the wolf that put out his flames completely swept through him and knocked him off the roof he was stepping back on.
Zach turned his head and looked more down in elevation to where he spotted a villain Darling was chasing after who had the biggest posse protecting him. In his comms he heard some more of his soldiers fighting a few of the villains he had run straight past behind him in order to catch up with Source, and he started sprinting across the roof again before jumping off and across the street to another rooftop lower down he landed on hard. He bent his legs on the landing and then fired Death out the back of his calves while sprinting up and then down the other side of the roof to leap off that one too and even farther down the town.
"We just need to get to the emergency escape ships before they catch up!" Whiplash yelled behind him for the rest of his men. He looked to the left side and the right side of his group and nodded at specific members who hesitated but then both nodded back at him and dropped off the rooftops ahead of the group Source was with.
On the Cloak of the Army of Death, Raylei typed into her keyboard faster than all the others around her. The two drones she was controlling that flew down over the town of Cazzitanno focused on their primary target of the mission who looked back again and yelled at the man around him with a look of fury on his face. She spoke only to the others on the bridge instead of the open channel, "These are the most technologically advanced villains we've fought so far."
Exodus stepped up behind her and looked down at the three screens Raylei had data up on as she worked support. Two of the screens had on her drones' cameras, and they were analyzing the tech they zoomed in on that each of the villains had equipped. "Their armor. Those jetpacks," she listed off with a grin on her face too under her intense expression.
"The plasma cannons are reading with the same energy source as Source's Plasma," Rebel said, also listening in to the bridge even without Raylei speaking on comms. "Had facial recognition working on Source after one of my drones got a good look at his face, he's an Indian man by the name of Vihaan Shah." Rebel had his voice going through the open channel as he went on, "His arms aren't just equipped with similar weapons like the rest who we know the villain by the name of Source has been supplying. He actually has these huge-ass plasma cannons in his arms, but also up near his shoulders are the vats that hold the energy he fires from them, and he doesn't need to fire that energy out in blasts. He can take it out and use it for other stuff, like making all those weapons."
Everyone chasing Whiplash's gang across southern Sicily listened closely to Rebel as he reported this all in quickly to them. The fact that Source was Indian had been unknown to them beforehand, and the rest of the villains in Whiplash's gang seemed Italian by their current knowledge. Rebel continued as he hacked into Indian governmental databases that had information on Shah, and his eyes darted around his screens reading all the information that he had to put back out in a more condensed form that only had the essentials in it. "Doctor Shah's got a record. The first time he was caught he had a giant experimental lab testing all the ways to use his arms as energy. He was arrested for the experiments he was doing, but when the data on his research was discovered he went missing from his cell. Just found him in the records for the government research lab we destroyed in Pakistan. He started working with the scientists after explaining how only he knew how his energy worked, and he convinced them he was on their side building his weapons for them to use against villains, creating energy sources so they could get ahead of their rivals in the region. After helping them though, Source got turned on by those scientists who just shoved him back into his cage so they could keep draining him sporadically of his Plasma. Seems like Source thought something like that might happen though, and he got his revenge on the scientists when he escaped."
Rebel smirked as he continued, enjoying the revenge he was figuring out, "He left his prototypes there, but they would only work with his Plasma anyway, which is why you found those weapons that couldn't be used down in that lab's storage."
Zach narrowed his eyes while running across another rooftop and leaping off. He glared down the town towards the edge of it where the water started to make a lot of splashing in three different locations. Things were rising up from below the surface, and he could see a faint green glow getting brighter out there where the villains were getting close to reaching. "I understand what turned Shah into a villain, but he's long past that now." The data coming up on his own visor that Rebel was sending him made him continue to his soldiers, "Source is wanted for multiple murders after getting away too. He joined this gang of weapons' techs and thieves, and they travel the world stealing top-notch scientific inventions to assist build their weapons. Those recent hits on Cambryo and Abdullah Inc.'s container ships were linked back to Whiplash, and Source used the tech from those companies to advance his weapons even more. We stop them here before they get these new weapons out to villains across the world. Understood?"
"Understood, Commander!"
Darling was one of those who shouted it out, and she sprinted forward faster across a roof farther down in Cazzitanno than any of her comrades. She leapt up in the air and her body did a three-sixty spin with the jets firing solely out of the right side of her back for a moment. While her back was turned her arms turned into rifles, and by the time she was facing forward again she had her arms up and aimed at the men pointing their plasma cannons back at her.
"The ones farther up are better armed," Access warned, as a drone he was flying forward and watching from high above was zoomed on the villains farthest up with Source and Whiplash. "These guys are going to be stronger too."
"I've got it-" Darling's head shifted a bit to the right, her eyes darting over as she spotted something down on the ground level popping out of a dark alleyway. The town was not very lit up, and at ten at night in the middle of the winter there was low visibility of what was coming from behind her. "Gentle."
"On this side too," Gentle said back. He moved away from the edge for the middle of the roof and sprinted forward faster.
Green beams fired up from the ground level, and Darling and Gentle both jumped up as beams hit the rooftops behind them. They dropped down on the next roofs and kept chasing after the rest of the villains who jetpacked away or flew up in the air, some of them using their Quirks to speed up while others' legs just started glowing green and sped up with their specialized gear. The two villains chasing after Gentle and Darling both flew back up in the air and landed on the rooftops behind them, chasing the two Army of Death members who could not stop to fight them or they would risk letting the rest of the gang escape in the meantime. The two of them had to serpentine across the roofs though as beams of green plasma shot towards them and blew up tiles and chimneys they swerved around behind for some cover.
Bricks flew out of a chimney blowing up in a green explosion and slammed into Gentle's back right as he was jumping up. He heard the explosion at his back though and Elasticized his own back right before the bricks hit him, bouncing them backwards at the villains who swung his thick right arm in front of him and bashed aside all the bricks flying near bricks shattered and the man pointed the green rifle in his left arm back forward to fire again near where Gentle was landing.
Gentle focused on his feet and got ready to Elasticize the ground as soon as he touched, but the green explosion hit the ground first and he had nothing to bounce on. He fell through the hole in the roof and into the floor below on his knees and elbows. He cursed under his breath, then he snapped up to his feet and spun around with his right hand swinging behind him and his left to the couch on the side of the room a man just pulled his legs up on with a panicked look on his face. That old man exclaimed in even more panic as the wall to his left exploded inwards, only for all the debris that should have flown into him to bounce backwards into the second man who landed on his floor. That debris knocked the man back outside the building, and Gentle turned to his side for a moment and tipped his black helmet to the elderly Italian gentleman. "Mi scusi."
Darling leapt up in the air and she spun around in a one-eighty with her arms snapping together into a single longer rifle than the other two she had just been firing after the other villains. While running across rooftops with her arms shaking she was unable to hit any of them in the spots she desired, barely missing several times. Up in the air though she steadied herself and fired, straight into the cannon the man chasing after her two roofs back was aiming in her direction but about to miss again from what she could tell of its angle. Her sniper rifle shot did not miss though, blowing through the barrel of the plasma cannon and out its other side, and through that man's left bicep and out the back of his tricep too.
"AHHHhh-"
Gentle leapt through the window on the opposite side of the man's house he crashed through a few seconds ago, and he kicked his legs down on nothing and bounced off the air before hitting the street where a villain was waiting and slashing sharp arm-blades at his supposed landing spot. Gentle kicking off the air like that was not what the villain expected, but he did manage to jump backwards and dodge the dart Gentle tried to fire down into his neck while flipping above. The man sliced his arms up next, but Gentle's whole body covered in Elasta-Armor and bounced the man's sharpened arms back so the guy had to swing his arms out to the sides to avoid cutting himself in the face. This time, he could not dodge the second dart Gentle fired as he was mid-stumble back with his arms stretched out to the sides, and Gentle hit the villain who had been waiting for him in the chest with the dart.
Danjuro Tobita landed and then lifted his head and saw two men in all-black armor to his left jump farther down through the town. "They're nearing the sea!" Mark called out.
"You guys are so far up!"
"We can't let them get to those ships!"
"Sending down the J-20 on auto-pilot," La Brava yelled out. "Just in case they reach their ships in time."
"Bringing the drones out over the water. I'm guessing those ships are much faster than we can follow, but we'll get as far out first so as to track them long as possible-"
"Don't just assume we won't catch them in time!"
"But do it anyway," Zach countered Darling who was still farthest ahead and now coming up on the biggest group with Source down near the coastline but still over a hundred meters out. She was nearing the main square of the town on the elevation the flattened out the most, and where there were actually still a lot of Cazzitanno civilians out tonight. "Darling! Keeping civilians safe is the priority," Zach ordered over comms, lowering his voice after calling out her name as he did not want any villains who could possibly hear him to hear what he just said.
"I know," Darling replied back even softer. She jumped onto the two-story rooftop ahead of her just one block from the square, and from the group of fifteen villains who leapt off the final rooftop ahead of her and over the square or down into it. "I'm not far enough forward!" Darling yelled.
"On it!" Rebel called back, typing into his keyboard faster. He redirected most of the drones in the area down to the square the villains just entered heavily armed and with the potential to take hostages.
"AHHH!"
"Eeee!"
"Catso!"
"Che cosa?!"
"Vedi!"
"You may be strong, Army of Death!" a man yelled back to Darling. He was wearing dark green armor that glowed on his forearms, shoulders, and knees after he stopped and turned to face her. He had on a dark green helmet too with a visor that started to glow brighter and brighter green right before the glass dropped to show inside the helmet was just a bright green glow Darling only just then realized was a different shade from the rest of the Plasma gear the man had on him. A bright beam of green fired out of his face and Darling dove to the right, firing flames out of her feet that turned into jets at that last second to get her far enough from the explosion that blew apart the brick ground of the square that had over fifty Sicilians in it.
"Quirks are powerful, but technology will advance faster than Quirks evolve!" Source bellowed, his voice coming through speakers back at the Army of Death who were not keeping up with him and the others in his group whose technology was better than anyone else's. "We will be the most powerful!" Source pointed his arms backwards, and his shoulders full of vats of Plasma glowed bright while his cannon arms opened up at the ends. "NOW TASTE PLASMA!"
Two drones flew down and into the paths of the two huge burst of plasma fired into the square. The drones exploded in huge fireballs that were less red than bright green and then black from the smoke. Death shot through the explosion and he rose up his arms with a pair of dark black spheres swirling around over them. The villains looking towards the explosions in shock opened their eyes even wider and then ran faster or steadied themselves to fight as Death was already upon them.
"Morte!"
"È Morte!"
"It's Death!"
Gentle bounced up over the central town square, but he lowed his head and called down to Darling who was sprinting across it. "At your back."
Darling turned her head and then spun and shot a grappling hook towards a statue on the west side of the square where some people were hiding. "Get away from here!" Darling yelled at them in Italian, right before a wall blew up to her right in a green blast. She spun towards it and rose her right arm while the civilians ran, but a fireball came flying out of the green blast and straight at her faster than she could dodge.
"Got you!" Rebel shouted at the very last second, bringing a drone in front of the fireball that exploded and sent Darling blasting back into the side of the statue. The fireball was stopped there but the explosion was still enough to knock her down after she hit the memorial. "He's running at you," Rebel called out directly to the girl he linked comms with.
Darling stood up and ran forward into the smoke of the explosion even as her teeth bared, clenched in pain. She turned her arms into a big steel club and swung them around the side of her body up into the front of the man running forward whose body armor glowed too brightly green, not that she wasn't able to see him anyway with the thermal vision turned on in her helmet as soon as she entered the smoke. She slammed the villain out of the smoke, but his armor took the brunt of the hit so he fell to the ground and just did a barrel-roll away from Darling before flipping to his feet again and raising his right hand. Over his palm swirled another ball of fire, and he rose his left arm that had twin cannons of green attached to his wrist he aimed at the girl running out of the smoke after him.
Rubble on the man's left side shook and made his eyes dart over before he fired at the girl in front of him. His head started to turn that way right as Darling's did…
"Slash! Fireball!" A villain farther south in the square yelled at Death, and his Quirk: Yell, created the slash and the fireball he called out that flew straight at Death almost too fast for him to dodge in midair just with bursts of Death flying out to either side. The fireball he barely dodged expanded and hit him though as the villain who sent it at him screamed, "FIREBALL EXPAND!"
Zach crossed his arms while twisting his body to face the attack, surrounding himself in more Death to try and protect from the explosion that hit him. As the flames surrounded him though, water smashed into his other side and then wrapped around his front and protected him. "Thanks," Zach said while falling out of the water and the flames, ignoring the burns he still felt on his right forearm. Mark ran up to Zach's left side and then alongside him as they both headed south, chasing after the villain who yelled out obstacles behind him to get in Zach and Mark's way.
"They're getting too close to the sea," Mark warned Zach, while they left Darling and Gentle behind still facing four other villains back in that square.
"Whiplash is already on one of the ships. They're going to get away if you can't catch them in the next thirty seconds!"
"Drop that ship right in front of us," Zach ordered. "Mark, with me," Zach leapt up to his left and onto a veranda on its sturdiest point so he would not break through. He used it as a stepping point to get him up on a balcony on the road leading down to the rocky beach, and Zach ran across the railing of that balcony then leapt to the roof of a beachside restaurant that a ship just lowered down at the edge of. Mark dropped down on the roof next to him and rolled forward, and the two of them ran for their J-20 jet, right as two other ships rose off the surface of the water and shot forward with green lights coming out the backs of them. "Knew it," Zach muttered, frustrated at how fast those ships were moving with Source's Plasma supporting their tech.
Back in the square, Darling looked to her right side with her eyes bulged behind her visor. The man who was about to attack her with green pulses and a fireball had just been slammed over twenty feet away by a giant rock fist. It was not the huge golem that ran after where that villain rolled though that had Darling staring in shock, but the teenage girl covering in rock armor who stood at the edge of the square next to an old man pointing glowing red hands forward who amazed her so much. "Help the Army of Death!" The old man yelled, and scared Italians around the square looked towards the pair who just saved that Army of Death member with their Quirks. Red lines shot through the cracks between the bricks covering the ground of the square, all the way towards another villain who had yelled at another of his comrades about taking civilians hostage a second ago.
"Yeah!"
"Get them!"
"We've got your back!" Gentle turned his head and looked behind him towards a bunch of tables of a restaurant the people who had been there for late night had turned over at first to hide behind. Young men and women who had had a couple drinks that night already stepped out from behind them, arming themselves with their Quirks. Then a waitress flew off the ground with a nervous look on her face and gulped but rose her arms as fists anyway.
Gentle looked towards the closest villain to him who spun around with a terrified look on his face, and the Japanese man questioned with a smirk, "What was that about your technology being superior to Quirks again?"
"Hahaha! Fucking lit!" Rebel called out.
"I can't believe it," Cherasaw muttered in disbelief, watching through a drone's camera as the villains remaining in the square all surrendered as the town suddenly found the courage to attack them.
"Shouldn't have said that shit about taking hostages. Not in that town," Rampart said with a chortle of his own.
"Apparently."
Gentle sprinted towards two men who had just dropped to their knees, and he rose a gun that everyone stared at in shock as they thought the AoD member was about to kill the villains who had surrendered. "Tranquilizer!" Gentle called out in reassurance to the Italians after he had fired at the two men trying to stand back up in a panic. He ran past and then bounced up fifty feet in the air.
"Grazie mille! MORTE!"
"MORTE! MORTE! MORTE!"
"Wait!" Darling shouted, as the jet over a building near the coast was lifting up with the jets behind it sliding below the bottom to send them flying up. Gentle swung his arms below him and kicked down much harder, while Darling turned her entire legs into rockets and used a lot of her matter as fuel to let her fly up to Zach and Mark fast enough.
"Get in!" Mark yelled, pulling the sticks hard to the right so the plane flipped sideways for a moment. Zach yanked the side door back open, and Gentle and Darling flew straight up into the open door before Mark straightened out the plane again.
"Hit it!" Zach screamed as he snapped his head forward to the cockpit. Mark pushed the sticks forward and grabbed the thrusters at the same time he pushed to full throttle.
"The third ship is just ahead of you, and the other two are slowing down!" Access called out.
"Source got on the third one-" Raylei started. "I'm into their comms line! Whiplash ordered his pilot and the one in the ship next to him to hold back to protect Source from us. Now that you guys are in a ship they think they can take you."
"They can't," Darling said, grabbing a metal bar on the side of the jet and yanking herself another step forward which was difficult with the jet trying to force her to the back with how fast it was moving. "Right, Mark? You've got this-" Darling stomped another foot forward, and she ground her teeth as she almost fell to the floor there.
"They're locking weapons' systems on us," Mark replied, not an actual response to the girl back behind him pulling forward like Death and Gentle.
Zach got to the front first and grabbed the seat on Mark's right, yanking his head forward and staring through the windshield towards the ship up ahead of them that looked to be getting a little too far away. "Well lock weapons' systems back," he ordered, and Mark obliged.
"We're moving into Cazzitanno!"
"Delta is arriving right behind them."
"Sweep the city and take care of the villains we left behind for you. Make sure they're all unconscious and wrapped up nicely for the heroes when they arrive-"
"Three Italian heroes are heading that way now. Michelangelo's one of them, just as a warning."
"You really think he'll attack us after we saved his ass last week-"
"Death! Do you need us to catch up-"
"We have the last of them," Death assured the rest of his army back behind him getting farther away every second. "We won't let Whiplash or Source, or any of them escape."
"That's right!" Darling exclaimed.
"No pressure," Mark joked, right as the enemies started firing back towards them without having to turn their ships around. He pulled the triggers on the sticks he was holding too, and he lifted his thumbs and pressed the red buttons on top of them to release the flares around their ship that redirected the missiles locked on to them. "Evasive maneuvers!" Mark yelled out, and the three on the ship with him held on to something tightly right before he spun the ship around. The missiles that missed them exploded anyway, and the blasts rocked their ship, but Mark steadied them an instant later and then heard the dinging of their own targeting system locking on to the ship closest ahead of him.
"Here we go!" Mark fired a missile, then he waited five seconds and fired the second one while still locked on.
The enemy's ship evaded the first missile, using all the same measures they had done in their J-20. Mark's interval he gave though before firing the second missile made it so the second one moved to where the enemy's ship finished evading, and the pilot of the enemy's ship was not good enough to dodge a second time. Mark watched the missile closely both through the windshield and on the radar, and he clicked the button he used to fire the missile a second time right before it would have hit that ship.
The blast ripped up the back of the enemy's ship but did not hit it with the full yield of the missile. The glowing green engines ripped up and parts of that plane fell off, dropping the ship down towards the water. As it started going down though, twenty green pulses of light fired backwards through the explosion, along with machine gun fire and a couple more rockets from up ahead. The backs of the two farther up ships had opened up with the villains in the back of them firing out with their own weapons along with the ships' weapons themselves.
"Too many!" Darling yelled, as the ship started getting rocked by green blasts going off around their sides though Mark was avoiding any direct hits, so far.
"Fire at the other ships too!"
"Left wing is hit!"
"I'll get off here," Gentle offered, and Darling spun her head and saw the man back at the side door he opened up and leapt out of without another word.
"Source's plane hit the water, but the water-landing looked somewhat successful!" Mark yelled out, while doing a barrel roll to the left that slammed Zach and Darling up into the roof of the plane and then back into the ground.
The windshield shattered and Mark ducked his head down, and the back of his seat above where he just ducked got shredded an instant later. Zach and Darling snapped their heads up in shock as the top half of Mark's seat just got ripped up, but the brown-haired man who was sitting there unstrapped himself and dropped between the seats, crawling back towards them and then bear-crawling towards the open side door as fast as he could. The plane was dipping down, flames were coming out of the center console, and green explosions went off on the right wing shaking the whole thing even more.
"Bail bail bail!" Zach yelled, grabbing Darling by her right arm and throwing her towards the side door as she looked to be slipping without anything to hold onto.
"Zach!" Darling yelled back as she was tossed out the side door after Mark.
The plane was about to hit down into the water, and Darling fired jets out of her feet to keep up in the air unlike Mark who just swung his arms at the water below him so as to disrupt it and not make a hard crash-landing for himself. Zach flew out of the side of the plane at the last second before it hit the water, and he ignored Rebel's voice that shouted into his helmet, "You have any idea how much one of those costs us?!"
Black wings flapped behind Zach as the plane exploded with debris shooting over the water below him. He shot forward and pulled the rifle off his back where it had been strapped this whole time. "Darling! Take them down before they have second thoughts!"
Zach aimed at the jets ahead of him that had turned around and were flying back to save Source now that the Army of Death's single chasing jet had gone down. Those jets slowed down, as Gentle had hit the downed jet and was taking on the six guys there with Source who had been too slow to get on one of the first ships to escape.
"What do we do Whiplash?!"
"They're still coming at us!"
Zach and Darling felt their necks stiffen, and the two of them became unable to turn their heads any direction except the direction they were facing when Whiplash's Quirk was used on them from afar. Darling tilted her body back instead of moving her head for the sights of her rifle she just created out in front of her, while Zach flapped his wings behind him again and then started firing towards the bottom of the jet on the right of the two, as he was on Darling's right side and knew he could leave the other one to her.
"Slash-"
Gentle swung an arm in front of him and bounced the slash that appeared in midair back at the man who created it with his Yell. That man got slashed across the middle of his torso and thrown off the ship into the water with four of his comrades, then Gentle leaned down into the broken cockpit of the last ship that Source had been on, and he grabbed that man who was slumped forward over the console but was reaching down for his right side and a glowing green pistol strapped there. Gentle yanked the man out of the ship by the back of his collar and swung up over his own head, then smashed him down into the front of cockpit with the Indian man yelling out in pain as his body arched up on the collision. As the man yelled out in pain like that though, Gentle aimed his pistol down and fired a dart into the gap in his armor just below the start of his helmet and above his shoulder-pads.
He aimed around the water too at the other villains and knocked the remaining conscious ones out too. "Mark, if you could-"
Darling hit the plane on the left in its back left engine right as it finished spinning around again to face south. The explosion blowing out of that engine caused the ship to tilt to the right and swerve that way, almost slamming into the other plane that Zach kept missing his shots on as he continued flying forward towards it. It was difficult to follow the ship's trajectory as it evaded his shots when he was unable to look around after it, having to turn his entire body in order to do so as trying to turn his neck caused him intense pain otherwise. "Damn it!" Darling yelled out, as she had almost taken down both ships with one shot there.
"Just get us out of here!" Whiplash's second in command yelled out in the ship that remained up while Whiplash's was going down right in front of Death. His pilot grabbed the sticks of their ship and the back of the plane started glowing much brighter green than before as they got ready to blast out of there.
A wall of water shot off the surface of the sea and got thinner and thinner as it kept up its initial escape speed. Mark treaded at the top of the sea with both arms raising higher and higher above him, and he pierced the final ship through the center and up out of the top of it with a huge spike of water. That final ship started dropping down to the water too just like the one Whiplash had been in, but just like Whiplash's ship the villains inside that one were not done yet. The doors opened on both of those ships that fell ahead of all the AoD members, and the villains inside bailed out and used their jetpacks or Quirks to start flying away farther south over the Mediterranean.
"When will they give it up?!" Darling yelled out frustratedly, panting and feeling like she did not have much left in her to keep going here.
Two of the men shooting away from them over the surface of the water turned around as their comrades rose higher up. They aimed their green cannons back and fired at Death and Darling who were farthest up towards them. The two chasing after them had been using their Quirks for too long, and Zach flapped his wings down below him harder to try and avoid the blast while Darling had to force out hotter flames from her self-created jetpack too. The two of them got hit by the edge of the blasts, which just resulted in them getting more pissed off as they redirected south and shot after the remaining seven villains trying to escape from them.
Gentle bounced up into the air after tossing all the unconscious villains near him on top of the ship landed on the water. He swung an arm behind him and kicked his legs off the Gently Rebound he made there, and he bounced again to catch up with Death and Darling right as they started to speed up after the villains still moving quickly away from them with that tech that had allowed them to stay ahead all the way to the coast from initially outside of Cazzitanno. "They are not getting away this time," Death said in a low voice to the two on his sides.
"Get them!" La Brava yelled out to her friends she spotted on the single drone image they had out in the water that far. The image popped up on the front windshield of the Cloak's bridge that everyone on the support team and watching from their headquarters stared at anxiously.
Exodus stepped forward closer to the screen with both arms in slings over his chest, his forehead wrapped in a white bandage, and his eyes narrowed at the screen in an intense way. "I believe in you, Death."
"Take them down!" Access yelled out.
Mark shot out of the water after diving back down below the surface, and the three ahead of him glanced back in surprise for a moment at the sound of that huge splash. Out of the surface rose a massive giant made of water who rose over a hundred feet tall in a couple of seconds. It lifted its right arm it pulled back far, and it swung it forward releasing its fist off its arm when it had thrown at full speed. It looked like a huge sphere of water flying towards the other three Army of Death members first, but that sphere transformed mid-flight with Mark in the center of it and a bubble of air around him. "Water Armor: Form of, Phoenix!" Mark yelled out, and the twisting sphere finished taking form of a huge bird with wings extended out just like Zach's dark form flying through the air now to Mark's left.
Darling frowned while looking back and to her right towards Mark. She did a spin in midair while dipping down a bit underneath a beam of green that flew back at her, and she yelled towards him, "You could have picked any bird, why pick a fake one?!"
All seven of the villains ahead of them spun around at the same time and fired in a combined attack that would be harder for their pursuers to dodge. Zach's body turned more fully into Death, while Darling forced her skin to turn into steel all over for a moment which dropped her down almost to the surface though did protect her from the bullets that slammed into her and broke through her outer armor. Gentle surrounded in Elasta-Armor that made bullets bounce off, though he did swing a Gentle Rebound in front of him and bounce away as two explosions of green Plasma erupted almost in his face.
Mark's bird of water got shredded though by green explosions and shots, and Darling's taunting expression went away as she started raising back up to chase the villains who spun away again in fear as Death had gotten even closer without being slowed down by their attacks. "Mark!" Darling yelled towards the man she saw drop into the water with all that destroyed armor falling in around him.
"Damn it!" Zach yelled, flapping his wings down harder behind him and forcing out even more Death. I might have to use Trigger here to catch them! How much energy do they have?! I thought it was limited-
Zach's head spun to the side and he stared back with his eyes huge, just as Darling and Gentle did as a much bigger sphere of water suddenly shot out of the surface than the one the giant had thrown a minute ago. The villains who looked back stared at the sphere in shock too as it transformed back into a bird but even larger than before and with less water falling off of it. Zach's wide eyes stared in even more shock as it looked to him like the wings were steadier this time, no longer dropping as much excess water on each flap, Just like how I let less wisps of Death off when I fly now- He's getting the hang of it so fast though!
A natural, Gentle thought, staring ahead towards Mark with an amazed look he was glad the American man could not see behind his helmet.
Darling's eyes were wide too and she could not say anything this time like the taunt she made because of her frustration as to how Mark was flying more like Zach than she was. Mark shot past her this time in his huge water bird and neared Zach who had moved so much faster so he was right behind the villains now in an even larger Death bird-looking form himself. "This is why it's a Phoenix!" Mark yelled out, and Darling's lips curled up into a smile.
Zach grinned too, right as Mark came up on his right side. The two of them both flapped their wings again to the horror of the villains just ahead of them who found their gear dimming in its green light. "VILLAINS!" Zach roared at them in Italian, his voice deep and booming out of his helmet. "FALL!"
Mark and Zach shot forward and slammed into the group of villains together who yelled out-
Click.
Zach woke up in his bed in his Yutapu apartment. His eyes opened up wide, A dream? Then, the sound he heard that woke him up echoed through his head with every single warning signal going off in his body.
He snapped up with his body surrounding in darkness, I don't dream- His legs were swinging off of the bed, but his reddening eyes bulged even wider as the wall ahead of him near his door was breaking inwards. The red light glowing on the other side of the cracks on his doorway glowed much brighter in the next milliseconds as his feet were still dropping to the ground at the left side of his bed. His head was turning more to that side, his eyes getting redder and more darkness surrounding his body. The wall on his left side cracked while the ceiling from his door all the way to the wall on his left side got a huge fissure in it and then a dozen other branches off from that. The door flew at Zach, breaking apart but coming at him fast with the growing fireball expanding at him on the other side. His wall crashed inwards and the foot of his bed rose up from the force of the blast. The sound blew out Zach's eardrums while he rose his right arm to protect his neck and face that were still covering in Death. His body rose off the ground as the force and the debris slammed into him, his reddening vision turned bright orange as he was engulfed in the explosion-
BOOOOOOM!