Ochako was sitting at her desk puzzling over the most recent assignment she had been given in one of her general education classes. Despite being in a school for hero's they were expected to learn other basic information like the kind most other students would learn in any other high school. She wasn't the biggest fan, and she never did a knack for the more complex math equations that Momo and Bakugo seemed so adept at solving. Granted, the amount of the assignments and classes she had, had been cut for more hero oriented work, but when she had to do that general kind of work she would always be wishing to do anything else.
"ahhh... I give up." Ochako bemoaned, leaning back in her chair and staring at the ceiling. "I'll just come back to it tonight, maybe I'll ask Momo for some help later."
Ochako pushed away from her desk, got up, and stretched. She'd managed to finish some other work so she figured she could take a break and go train some until dinner. She looked at the clock on the far wall by her window, it read 2:13. She'd been sitting at her desk for an hour and a half. She had plans to have dinner with her parents later, they had made a surprise visit to celebrate her third year.
"Now where did I put my water bottle..." she murmured to herself as she started searching her room.
Eventually, she found it in her bathroom by the sink, "There you are! All right, time to go train, there'll probably be someone else around I can practice with."
She started towards her dresser to get out some more appropriate clothing "Now where did I-"
her musing was caught off when a siren started blaring from her phone, then she heard it coming from the city proper, she felt her blood run cold. She dashed to her phone and checked the screen.
In big red flashing letters, the words
MAJOR VILLAIN ASSAULT IN PROGRESS, PLEASE HEAD TO THE NEAREST SHELTER.
The words repeated and she could only stare in shock for the first few seconds. Then her brain clicked into gear and she dashed out of her room at the same time others were careening out their dorms and dashing towards the locker rooms. She started dashing there as well, running alongside Momo and Jiro who were just ahead of her.
Then they were at the lockers, all struggling to put on their gear like the hounds of hell itself dogged their footsteps. Eventually, they all got their gear on and as they started to make their way out of the building they could see some of the boys were right up beside them, coming from their locker rooms no doubt.
Eventually, they all burst from the dorm's main entrance, just as Aizawa, several other teachers, and the rest of class 1-A made it to the dorms.
"Good, you're all geared up." Said Aizawa after doing a quick survey of everyone.
"The League of Villains have assaulted the north end of the city and are on a warpath towards All Might park. Class 1-A has been tasked with overseeing the evacuation and safety of civilians making their way towards a shelter near there. You will NOT deviate from this mandate, Bakugo, Todoroki, Tokoyami, and Yaoyorozu will be with me to establish a front-facing perimeter should the villains decide to make a move through that section of the city. Everyone else will aid in evacuations and protecting the civilians. NOW MOVE! Vehicles will be transporting us there from the entrance of the school!" Aizawa all but yelled at the end.
Like a well-oiled machine, they all made their way to the entrance of U.A., where they discovered several pick-up trucks waiting for them. They all clambered into the backs and held on as the trucks pelted down the streets with sirens attached to them blaring out as they went.
Ochako looked far ahead and realized just how dark it was, apparently, some rain had decided to come by from the north and now the dark clouds covered the sky. Despite the gloom, she could still see well enough though which she thanked the gods for. The last thing they needed was reduced visibility during this madness.
She hoped her parents were safe, but their hotel was located outside of the initial strike point. The heroes should be able to contain the fighting to the initial strike point without problems.
They should have time to get to a shelter before anything happens if villains started to get close. Ochako told herself, she couldn't afford to get distracted if they got into a fight.
After only a few minutes they realized just how serious the situation was, they could see the smoke in the distance and as they got closer could hear distant explosions or other sounds produced from quirks. They took a few turns until the trucks stopped and they all clambered out. The scene was straight out of a nightmare, they had seen the chaos on the streets as police tried to keep order and guide people to shelters, but this was far worse. Much closer to the action now, the civilians were all in an absolute panic.
Some were pleading or raging at the police, while still more desperately tried to cram their way into the shelter. Ochako could even see members of the Quirk Suppression Unit on the outskirts forming a perimeter in case any villains made their way here. She stared at them for a bit, she had never actually seen them in person. Members of the police force specially trained to deal with quirk users were just as impressive as they were absolutely terrifying. They were all in blacks, blues, and greys, sporting heavy weapons and combat armor of all kinds. She couldn't see any of their faces as they all wore combat helmets that seemed to have electrical functions as well. She could even see what looked to be a small group of them in the back of the pandemonium setting up a mobile command base of some kind. No doubt after the evacuation, they would be sent out to subdue villains outside of the main body currently rampaging through the streets.
"Everyone! cover your ears!" Yelled Present Mic. Everyone clapped hands to their ears as Present Mic started shouting over all the noise.
"Everyone! Please remain calm! Heroes are here to help make sure you all are safe! Please listen to us as we make our way through the crowd and guide you towards the shelter! Again! Remain calm please!" Shouted Present Mic, silencing the crowd with his sheer volume.
Present turned to the class and lowered his volume while motioning for them to uncover their ears. "All right, everyone move ou-"
and then the world turned white.
Ochako cried out and started to fling her hands in front of her face, the light was incredibly blinding, and then the explosion came. The noise was louder than anything she had ever heard and she screamed both in pure terror and shock. She crouched down with her hands over her ears in an attempt to reduce the ear-splitting noise, far worse than what Present Mic could dish out. Then she realized that the screaming wasn't hers anymore.
Then just as suddenly it ended, the massive flash was gone and so was the worst of the noise, but smaller flashes of light and smaller explosions could be heard. Ochako looked up to the sounds of screams and screamed again as she gazed into the face of hell itself.
Everyone and everything was burning, people were screaming and flailing about, bolts of lightning rained down from the sky and would strike anything nearby. A burning woman ran out of the fire before collapsing on the ground, just twitching, no longer screaming. Others she saw seemed to have melted somewhat, the flesh falling off the bodies before starting to re-solidify. Others were just blackened husks, with only portions of their body even remotely recognizable as being human anymore. The initial blast had been hot enough to ignite the concrete and blacktop and the blaze was immense. Those who didn't die to the lightning would simply burn to death.
Ochako could only gaze in horror at the scene before her, and then she doubled over and wretched. Even after she had expelled everything in her stomach, she kept dry heaving. She could hear others doing likewise. Eventually, she looked back up and froze. A figure was floating in the sky above the grisly scene, looking down on them. Lightning crackled all around him and sometimes bolts of it would splinter off and strike a building. Held aloft by nothing but lighting he seemed to be akin to that of a god. He was looking directly at them now, and while she couldn't make him out clearly, she could tell he was smiling. Then he turned around and in a blast of lightning and thunder, he launched himself into the sky and eventually into the clouds.
No one had moved, no one had said anything, they had all just watched in pure terror and horror.
Ochako awoke with a start. She simply lay on her bed panting for breath and control as she felt herself shaking uncontrollably. She curled into a ball and sobbed as she panted with cold sweat trickling off her. She had fallen asleep after reading the part of Zeus's dossier that detailed his debut attack on the shelter. The event had been fresh in her mind as she went to sleep last night, and her nightmares had apparently decided to remind her of the event.
Hours later only having managed some light dozing after the nightmare, Ochako yawned as she waited for the water to boil. She ran a hand through her hair and took a shaky breath. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see her parents burning faces or the burning and melting bodies of the people of the shelter. Her failure to save them haunting her nights, she awoke a lot during the night because of it. She'd barely gotten any sleep the past week. Around this time of year, with her mind constantly reminded about her parent's death, she also dreamt of her other failures. She needed something to calm her nerves, and tea always helped after a bad night. Eventually, the nightmares would diminish in frequentness as she moved away from the anniversary of the event, but for now, she was just going to have to deal with it all best she could.
A few minutes after having a cup of tea and some breakfast, she was sitting down at her dining table with another cup of tea and Zeus's dossier. She decided to read through Zeus's dossier so she could start thinking of any ideas on how to deal with him and his forces. She had witnessed first hand just how strong he was, they would need a specialized team to deal with him.
Ochako sighed and stretched in her seat and cracked open the quite full dossier, and brought out a notebook and pencil to make notes on. She was going to be here for a long time... At least she had the patrol that night with Momo and Todoroki to look forward to.
Eight hours, two breaks, and two meals later Ochako had crashed into her bed. She had been pouring over the dossiers for hours and her brain felt like mush. She hadn't felt like this since she'd graduated from U.A. Now she needed to rest for a few hours until round Eleven o'clock, then she'd don her hero suit and meet up with the others for a night patrol.
Getting to sleep, however, proved difficult because her brain kept drifting back towards the dossier on The Hunter she had been reading just before. Apart from reports of the scant few sightings of him prior to him taking up residence in Mufustafu, there wasn't much to go on. They knew he had an informant both in the police and the association, but there were no good leads on that front. His identity was a mystery wrapped within an enigma. He had some kind of defensive quirk that allowed him to take a moderate amount of punishment, which also doubled as an offensive quirk given he was wicked fast and very strong. To make matters worse, he was also a trained swordsman and knew a few martial arts based on a few recordings of him fighting with villains. His appearance was also assumed to be tied to his quirk, a mutation type quirk that altered his appearance and body drastically enough to not be able to form facial recognition based on photos. All attempts to trap him or apprehend him had been met with failure every time. He had an in-depth knowledge of the city layout and of the ruined sector that let him evade authorities. That being said, he had never been chased by any particularly fast heroes or heroes with enhanced mobility. He may good at dodging heroes, but against herself, or any of the heroes from class-1A, he was going to be in for a shock.
Eventually, Ochako did manage to fall asleep, and she blessedly didn't have any dreams. So it was that five hours later she had geared up and jumped out of her apartment window to fly over to her rendezvous point with Momo and Todoroki. It took her a few minutes but eventually, she settled down near the gates of U.A. She was, naturally, the last one there and for the first time in a very long time she got to see the others new updated wardrobes, wardrobe* she mentally corrected herself. Todoroki had barely changed at all, he sported the same style of hero suit but with a few added bells and whistles. A radio embedded into his collar and earpiece to pair with it, instead of white highlights he sported red highlights, combat pants and boots with graphene weaved into the entirety of the suit. It wasn't a bad design honestly, he retained high mobility and defense and the red highlights served to help him stand out in a crowd. She also suspected his boots had shock absorbers in them as well, but without ripping them open it was just speculation.
Momo however had changed a bit more heavily. She no longer had to show a lot of skin as she had years ago, her new suit was instead skin-tight but allowed for the transmission of her quirk through the material. The result was a red suit with black and white highlights in geometric lines going from the neck to the boots. The suit didn't provide much in the way of defense but it was a marked improvement from what it had been years ago. The ability to use her quirk from any part of her body also meant she could form extra defenses anywhere they were needed on the fly. Ochako also knew Momo had gone through extensive training in the support department to help acquaint herself with as much technology as she could. Every piece she memorized she could then re-create within seconds. The only downside to such rapid construction was that integrity was reduced. Most of her tech would only last a couple of uses or seconds before breaking apart. Finally, Momo had taken up practicing with the bo-staff, so she had a permanent collapsable staff strapped to both thighs. In pockets located on her waist, she also had specially engineered food to replenish her lipid supply very quickly, for either in an emergency or in prolonged encounters. Apparently, she had even undergone experimental gene modification treatments to increase her digestive rate to inhuman levels, Ochako suspected she could probably eat an entire cow in one sitting. All in all, it was a vast improvement over her past suit and she had only become even more formidable since.
"Ochako! glad to see you!" said Momo as Ochako touched down beside them.
"Nice to see you two as well, I thought I might end up running a little late actually. I forget how fast, flying can be sometimes." Said Ochako with a small laugh. "I really like your hero suits, by the way, they really do suit you!"
"Thanks, I tried to convince Shoto to change his look some but he likes the simple effectiveness of his tried and true suit design," replied Momo with a small sigh. "I like your new suit as well, definitely looks better than the suit you were wearing during the war. reminds me of the suit designs you had during school."
Ochako looked down at herself, "Yeah, I just want to forget that suit, so I figured something more like my original suit would be best. Of course, it's been pretty heavily upgraded since then."
Indeed it had been upgraded severely. She had decided to keep the same colors of her first few suit designs and instead had focused on having the new suit streamlined. She had ditched the old bulky pieces that had just jutted out awkwardly and just interfered with her mobility. Her new suit instead utilized geometric patterns and lines to give a spacey impression, usually accented with green dots or small lines or rings of varying colors. She had ditched a bulky helmet in favor of a headpiece that covered her neck and stretched to cover her ears. They aided in audio isolation and hearing things at a greater distance. The choker style of equipment around her neck acted as a microphone to transmit her voice to whomever her telemetry system was linked to at the time. Usually, people in her squad, or the association if they were providing support. The equipment around her ears could also connect together around her mouth and nose to filter toxins if she had to fight in a hazardous area. Apart from the head, the rest of her suit additionally had an interlocking plates/scaly appearance upon much closer inspection that served to grant additional defense and force-deflection, while tapering off near joints so as to retain as much mobility as possible. The suit was strong enough to deflect/stop 9mm bullets fired from almost any firearm and could withstand an enormous amount of punishment without losing integrity. It wasn't a stretch to say that her suit was top of the line. Of course, it still paled in comparison to the suit she had used during the war with the league, but she wanted to forget as much about the war as possible and the new suit was one of the bigger steps towards that. She'd also grown out her hair some during her time of not doing hero work, and now it wasn't that different from when she was a student, just a longer version essentially; she debated going back to the old shorter style she had in her school days but hadn't been really inspired to revert back to it.
Todoroki for his part had been looking at his PDA that had a map of common patrol routes while Momo and Ochako had been talking. He put it away and cleared his throat interrupting suddenly. "It's about time we got going, I'd like to do a full patrol of the sectors bordering the ruined areas if there are no objections."
Momo and Ochako glanced at each other and then looked back to Todoroki, "Sounds good to me, securing the borders will be key to working against Zeus and his ilk." replied Momo.
"I was thinking the same thing, it's also been where The Hunter has typically been most active," added Ochako.
"All right, we'll start from the left and work our way around the perimeter. I'll record anything of significance and note any areas that may prove to be weak points to an attack." Said Todoroki
Ochako and Momo nodded in assent, and as one they started on their patrol. They fanned out in a wedge formation keeping a fair distance between each other at all times while traversing the streets from the rooftops. They would stop every few buildings and do a general sweep of the area before moving on to a new section.
While they were traversing some of the buildings, Ochako would look up into the night sky from time to time and try to pick out constellations and other celestial bodies that she could see. During her therapy, her therapist had advised her to take up a hobby. She'd liked astronomy when she was young, and at her therapist's advice, she'd started to look into it again. Ironically, while the war had ravaged so much of the urban centers of Japan. They had also reduced light pollution as well. The result was that the night sky had never looked so full and beautiful before. It was perhaps one of the only things she had liked to see come out of the war.
