Ch. 13
UA, Main Entrance
The students and teachers who remained were on high alert, anticipating the Zombies' next attack.
"Shoto," Iida instructed, "Put some ice around the intruders. The cold air should keep them relatively dormant and prevent them from moving."
"On it," Shoto responded, letting the ice on his right arm and leg crystallize, before letting it move across the ground and ultimately form around the Zombies' corpses. It was a relatively thick wall of ice, and against villains, this would have resulted in some sort of a temporary freezing paralysis...but these were not regular villains, as they soon would see.
"Now to take care of the veins blocking the entrance," Iida spoke as he made his way over. He took a better look at the obstruction to the entrance and discovered that these veins all had white, black, yellow, and purple cycling through them at the same time, emulating the same energy that initially silhouetted the Zombies.
Iida attempted to kick the capillaries down, but they were solid as rock, so they would not break despite his attempts.
"Hey, let me help with that," Kirishima ran up, using his Quirk to harden his skin and try to punch the veins, but he too had no success.
"Dang, these things are too thick to punch through." Kirishima said in frustration. Okuyasu tried to help too, using The Hand to scrape away at the space, but this was futile as well, as the space seemed to automatically correct itself.
"How is this even possible?" Okuyasu questioned. "The space keeps coming back."
"I'm guessing it's probably just another weird, freaky thing Zombies could do," Joseph said, his hands on his hips. He then turned his attention to his mentor, standing silently, glasses on, as the wind blew lightly. "So why did you have me stay with you, teach? What's the big deal with that?"
"Well, it's to simply balance out the amount of Hamon users we have in each section of campus," she spoke. "Not to mention, you still have a bit of training left to do in terms of both Hero and Hamon work."
"I thought Caesar was still training too!" Joseph rebutted, "Why does he get to go on his own?"
"He isn't. Will went with him. You know he's Caesar's grandfather, right?"
Momo was standing nearby, preparing something with her Quirk, when she heard Lisa Lisa's remarks, to which she responded, "Really?"
"That's right. Both Will and Caesar are members of the Zeppeli lineage." Lisa Lisa looked to see Joseph stunned at this revelation.
"Wait...that's the William Zeppeli who Caesar kept talking about?!" Joseph remembered Caesar's constant mentioning of his family and ancestors, but he wasn't able to put 2 and 2 together until just now.
"Precisely," Lisa Lisa remarked, "I'm surprised it took you this long to figure it out."
"...and finished!" Momo called out, rolling out a cannon from seemingly out of nowhere. "Everyone get back!" She warned the Heroes trying to break the hardened blood vessels.
"WOAH!" Joseph yelled almost right after the cannon had been spawned, "So your Quirk can make weapons like that?! And here I was thinking it just created stuff like staffs and Bandaids."
"My Quirk can make any non-living object so long as I know its chemical composition," Creati spoke, further aligning the cannon for a clear shot. "Now get ready!"
"Wait," Lisa Lisa instructed, moving her hand towards the cannon. As she touched it, she discharged a bit of Hamon, giving the cannon a bit of charge. "Try now, Creati!"
With the go-ahead given, Momo pulled the string which fired to cannon, and watched as the cannonball, which had Hamon coursing through it, came into contact with the veins, ultimately destroying them. Now the entrance was free from any obstruction.
"Great!" Uraraka cheered, "Now we can get outside and help the others."
"Shoto," Froppy suggested, "You should probably melt the ice so Lisa Lisa and Joseph can finish off the Zombies."
"Good idea" Shoto commented, moving his body to face the large block of ice encapsulating the undead foes.
All of a sudden, a sharp object pierced his left arm. It was a sharp pain, one which lingered for a few seconds. He looked to find one of the veins formed an actual needle as it pierced Shoto's skin. Like the veins which blocked the entrance, the one which stung Shoto pulsed with different colors.
Immediately afterwards, the ice which Shoto created began to crack, revealing the Zombies underneath. The purple and white energy with which they originally appeared flowed even brighter around their bodies.
The Zombies let out wicked laughter as they seemingly predicted the future.
"It doesn't matter i-if you kill us now," Plant said, still staggered by the effects of the ice.
"For n-n-now we hav-ve completed the work Lord Dio asked of us." Page finished Plant's thought.
"Against him humans like you possess no chance-" Their combined words were smoldered by Shoto's flames as well as the toss of Joseph's clackers, the final bit of heat needed to dispatch the Zombies. The last of the flames dissipated as the last of the Zombies' ashes scattered into the winds. The flames also set fire to the vein, as it quickly cracked under the intense heat.
"Shoto!" Iida called out, "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine!" Shoto called out, as he let the flames on his left side cool down. "It felt just like a bee sting. The pain should go away soon."
"Just to make sure..." Lisa Lisa came to Shoto, letting her Hamon flow naturally around her hand as she inspected his arm. She could sense no traces of Zombie material within the impaled area, so the flames must have incinerated it. Just to make sure, she sent a full spark through his body to remove any further impurities.
"You're cleared," Lisa Lisa said, "If you feel any pain later on, let me know and I'll take care of it."
"Thank you," Shoto expressed his gratitude.
"Mr. Aizawa," Iida asked, "Are you going to come with us?"
"I'll stay here to make sure there aren't any Zombies remaining on this side of campus," Aizawa laid out his plan, "Then I'll meet up with Mic and the rest of the class."
"Understood," Iida said, "Now then, let's get going." He zoomed far ahead the rest outside the UA gates and down the walkway. A few seconds behind, Joseph was running at his top speed, yelling "IIDA, WAIT FOR MEEEEEEEEEEEE!" and a few seconds later, the rest of the group, minus Aizawa, made their way onto the streets.
Ground Gamma
Many of the large, silver, industrial pipes which dotted Ground Gamma, had numerous dents and dings which covered them. Some of them were also scattered along the ground, all from Ectoplasm and his clones beating the Zombies and sending them flying.
The fights continued as the real Ectoplasm turned around to find many of the Class 1-B Students, Trish, Yukako, Caesar, and Avdol coming to his aid. Only Kendo, Tetsutetsu, Pony, Manga, and Bondo were separated from their class, having gone with the remnants of Class A towards Ground Beta.
(Author's Note: I'm aware I said Will went with Caesar earlier. The best explanation I can give is that at some point Will and Caesar split off as did Avdol and Polnareff. This was a mistake I felt was difficult to fix. I apologize for the inconsistency. It won't happen again.)
"Glad you could make it," Ectoplasm said.
"No problem!" Vlad King expressed in a serious tone.
"I've been fighting them, but they haven't stopped moving," Ectoplasm spoke, as the same wave of Zombies got up from their umptenth assault and groggily made their way towards the group.
"Leave it to me," Avdol walked forward as Magician's Red was summoned. And as he had a clear shot with all the Zombies in line, Magician's Red finished channeling some fire into his mouth, all in preparation for the command to fire to be given.
"CROSSFIRE HURRICANE!"
The fire within Magician's Red shot forth at a surging heat, whilst maintaining the shape of an Egyptian ankh. As it reached the Zombie army its shape dissolved and simply disseminated across the Zombies, instantly burning and melting them. All the while the nearby pipes too began to melt under the extreme heat of Avdol's flames.
As the flames settled and ashes scattered, Avdol called back Magician's Red and turned around to once again be greeted with amazement on the students' (And Vlad King's) faces.
"Wow, your flames really showed those Zombies who's boss!" The energetic and spiky brown-haired Tsuburaba shouted.
"You just might be able to defeat Endeavor in a fight against him," Vlad King mentioned to Avdol before breaking out a new pun, "fuego a fuego style!" The Class, Ectoplasm, and Caesar, all let out a sigh at this horrible attempt for a joke. But not Avdol. Avdol laughed at such a joke, before returning to his stoic demeanor and saying, "You're very generous, but Endeavor possesses much more experience than I do. I doubt I could win something like that at the moment."
It was then that the group heard a distant, but loud, crunching sound, as if something was crushing the pipes which dotted the grounds. As the crushing sounds grew closer, Caesar warned the group, "Something's coming!"
"Get ready," Vlad King ordered his Students, who began to take on their fighting positions. The crushing began to not only get closer, but began to sound like crunching, as if something was chomping on the metal pipes. Finally, the pipes closest to the students and staff were crushed under the intense weight of the wide jaws of the undead enemy.
The creature possessed light green skin, a wide broad figure, and glaring purple eyes. Taking the jaw shape like that of a crocodile, his teeth were small, but numerous, with two canines right above them. Towards the top of his head, two very little antennae sat.
The white energy around the two Zombies at the gate was the same around this Zombie as he let out a menacing roar.
"In the name of Lord Dio," this crocodilian Zombie announced, "I, Jones, will defeat you all and provide your corpses as nourishment for his ever growing power! It is futile to resist!" Jones's mouth was immediately shut by some sort of lasso doused with fire, whilst another one wrapped around his body, pinning his arms to it.
These flame lassos could be traced to Magician's Red once more, with the ends of this fiery rope firmly grasped in the Stand's hands. It was a technique referred to as the Red Bind.
"I guess right now," Avdol commented, " I could say the same thing about futile resistance. Now Caesar!"
With haste, Caesar clapped his hands together, then slowly pulled them apart, revealing the thin layer of soap which covered them. As he pulled them apart, that layer expanded into a wobbly, bubbly mass. In a technique Caesar referred to as the Bubble Launcher, the mass of soap popped to reveal many smaller soap bubbles, which shot forward towards Jones. The bubbles popped on the Zombie's skin, tearing into him a little, as these bubbles channeled Hamon in each and every one of them.
As Jones was bound by the Red Bind and pummeled with the onslaught of Bubble Launcher, the white energy circulating around his body began to push off the attacks, as the antennae on his head grew themselves to reveal his veins, which grabbed onto the nearest section of piping, and detaching it from it's nails and ramming towards the two's direction. Luckily, they were able to dodge, but doing so not only freed Jones from the bind and bubbles, but sent it towards the direction of Class 1-B.
"Look out!" Vlad KIng yelled, and all the students moved out of the way...except for Trish, standing confidently as lifted her hand out, like an extended punch. It was suicide, the pipe was going to hit her at an alarming speed, enough to bash her skull in!...When all of a sudden, the pipe changed shape upon contact with her fist, becoming soft and stretchy like rubber.
As the pipe fell vertically onto the ground, it once again took its hard metallic form, and Trish's Stand revealed itself. The figure was covered in numerous shades of pink. It had a slim feminine figure, and had addition signs all over its body and a division sign on its head, similar to the mathematical signs on Trish's Costume. Its upper body was covered in yellow squares, with pink metallic tassels on its torso. On its face, black streaks ran through its eyes, parallel to each other, whilst its green pupils shone brightly in the night sky.
"Woah!" the scale-covered Setsuna Tokage exclaimed, "Is that your Quirk Trish?"
"Indeed," Trish replied, "This is my Quirk, Spice Girl. She possesses the ability to soften any object that comes into contact with any of us."
"I sensed no hesitation in that punch," Spice Girl replied back in a relatively monotone manner, "You really have grown Trish."
"It can talk?!" Nearly everyone in the area (with exception to Jones because he didn't care) reacted with shock to this revelation of the Stand's independent thought abilities.
Fascinating, Avdol thought to himself, I was aware Trish had a Stand, but I had no idea that it had sentience. I'll have to ask Bucciarati and Jotaro about this later.
"Well, well, well," Jones blurted after freeing himself from his predicament, "Looks like I'll have to do things the hard way!" The veins on his head extended such far distances, but went in two different directions, each blocking the entrance of the grounds and exit of the pipe alley, trapping them in.
"There's nowhere for you to run," Jones continued, "Now then, the pink-haired girl with the floating ghost shall be my first sacrifice!" As he tried to leap forward towards Trish, Vlad King's gloves ejected tons of blood, wrapping around Jones and freezing him in place. Ectoplasm sought to contribute by using some of his clones to kick and punch Jones in his face.
But this halt in movement was only temporary, as Jones lowered his mouth and began to consume the frozen blood. Vlad King and the others stood in shock. The blood began to crackle apart as his teeth set him free, and returned to the chase, hitting Vlad King to the side and destroying the Ectoplasm clones. Each of the students tried to put up some sort of fight, but Jones merely tossed them to the neighboring pipes.
Yukako wrapped her hair around a melted pipe and threw it at his face, Jones did not deter. Silver-haired Reiko Yanagi threw pipe remnants with her Poltergeist abilities, Jones did not deter. Shishida's hands met Jones's fists in his Beast mode, but the latter overpowered the former after an intense struggle. Any attempts to keep Jones from Trish were ineffective.
Once he got closer to his target, Jones lept high up in the air and opened his jaw as he yelled, "Get ready, girlie! I'll make good work of your carcass before shipping it to Master Dio! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Upon his descent, some relatively-large object, about the size of a baseball, came from behind a large pipe and tore through Jones's jaw, knocking out many of his teeth on both sides of it. Slowing down slightly upon impact, the object ended up being a steel, green ball, with a hexagonal shape on the sphere's two poles and lines connecting the two shapes together.
After colliding with the Zombie's jaw, the Steel Ball took a heavy curve past Trish and the other students, colliding and breaking the vein wall at the entrance to the grounds, before completing its revolution and coming back to its origin point...or rather its person.
In front of the entrance, a figure rode upon a brown horse that had a green eye mask. The figure upon this beautiful steed had a calm and stern look, his brown cowboy hat sitting comfortably on his head of long, blond hair. As he caught the ball in the air with his right hand, he looked up, his green eyes shining in the night sky. His purple shirt was dotted with green orbs and gloves greatly contrasted the green belt buckle around his brown pants and American Western boots.
As he finally entered the grounds, the horse neighed and came to a halt before its rider finally stepped off. As he stood and looked the damaged Jones in the eye, he smiled wide enough to show his teeth, covered in gold with the words GO! GO! ZEPPELI.
"Well look who it is," Avdol commented.
"It's about time you showed up," Caesar remarked, "Gyro."
Gyro Zeppeli kept his golden teeth showing as he let out a great laugh.
"Nyo-ho-ho!"