The lineup of food was awe-inspiring. Several tables had been set up by staff members while everyone had been pre-occupied in the pool. From purely vegetarian dishes, a small meat array that even Bakugo was impressed by, and several more complex dishes there was enough food to feed them all and then some. Several comfy chairs designed for outside use had been set up in a circle with a large circular table in the middle with filled wine glasses at every spot. It took them all a few minutes to get their food, but before long they were all seated at the table. They all started diving into their food in earnest then. Ochako nabbed a seat between Tokoyami and Bakugo and turned to Tokoyami.
"So, what brought you to Musustafu last month? Apart from Tsu I mean," she asked Tokoyami, she was curious why he might have been in the area.
Tokoyami seemed to choke a bit at that last remark, but since he lacked the ability to blush, trying to read him was extraordinarily difficult. She got the faint sense that it had indeed flustered him somewhat but only her personal familiarity with him granted her that insight. He had cultivated quite the poker face over the years, which made it even harder but he had his weaknesses.
Tokoyami cleared his throat and answered, "Nezu wanted me to help him with a project of his. He didn't want the H.A. getting their fingers in it so he had me conduct some clandestine investigations on his behalf both within and outside the city, and no, I can't disclose the nature of the said investigations." He replied as he continued to eat.
Ochako mulled that over while she was eating, then replied, "It's about his new initiative to start getting more heroes to fill our depleted ranks, isn't it?"
A small laugh sounded right in Ochako's ear and she jumped, swiping a hand out to touch whoever it was out of reflex. Only to realize that Dark Shadow had snuck up behind her.
"Dark Shadow, you should know better than to sneak up on people here. If it were Bakugo or Todoroki then the entire table would have been destroyed." Tokoyami admonished his quirk.
Dark Shadow merely cackled and said, "Oh lighten up, we're supposed to be having fun."
Tokoyami merely sighed, "Very well, but do keep it under control."
Dark Shadow gave a smile, then turned back to Ochako. "Well to answer your question you'd be correct."
"SHADOW!" Said Tokoyami sharply.
"It's fine, she already knows it exists, but she doesn't know the details. Do you?" said Dark Shadow looking back at her.
"Well... no, I don't," admitted Ochako. She had to admit that Dark Shadow had become quite intelligent over the years. Compared to what it had been like during her school days, it had advanced quite far in both body and mind. Tokoyami had trained both himself and Dark Shadow exceptionally well.
"See? It's fine, I know what I'm doing." Said Dark Shadow with a smirk.
"That's what worries me..." grumbled Tokoyami, but he did ultimately go back to his food. At least until he got into talking with Tsu who was next to him.
Dark Shadow for its part floated from Ochako's shoulder to shrinking in size and laying down in front of Ochako on the table. It reached a handover and picked some food from her plate and ate it.
"Do you even need to eat?" she asked curiously.
"No, but it tastes good," it said plucking some food from Tokoyami's plate.
"How does he have a sense of taste? Does he have a stomach separate from Tokoyami?" Wondered Ochako, the many mysteries of Dark Shadow continuing to plague her.
"So, I've been wondering, how did Tokoyami and Tsu end up going out?" she asked, figuring that Dark Shadow would know everything.
"What's there to tell? Tokoyami was going in and out of the school and wanted to catch up with Asui. They hit off while they're there, and the next thing you know their kissing and dating." Said Shadow with a shrug as it continued to steal food from a variety of people's plates.
Ochako couldn't help but grin at the answer.
Honestly, she didn't know what else she had expected from Shadow. They all knew he wasn't particularly interested in their inter-group gossip or relationships. It was more like Bakugo in that regard, mostly single-minded but unlike him, Dark Shadow enjoyed playing tricks and small jokes on people. Despite that, however, they had all grown fond of it. Its playful nature during the daytime had helped raise people's mood during the war. It was very attuned to how Tokoyami was feeling so it had probably started doing it to help Tokoyami.
The conversation stopped after that as Dark Shadow moved on to others to have fun with, so she went back to eating for a bit after that. Ochako again marveled at the food, it was incredible but that was to be expected of the Yaoyorozu staff. She didn't go out to eat so this was a rare treat for her to be able to enjoy such amazing food and have as much of it as she wanted to boot. Granted, she could afford to spoil herself more, her income was excellent after all but years of frugality ensured she lived quite the spartan lifestyle. Comparing her lifestyle to the opulence of the mansion it was like night and day.
She remembered coming here twice in the past for study sessions with Momo and some other classmates who struggled with studying. Between Bakugo and Momo, no one class had truly terrible scores come exam time. She smiled remembering such carefree moments, they were in precious short supply nowadays. Which made this reunion all the more important to all of them, a moment in time to forget the outside world and for a few days be those teenagers of the past, untouched by the horrors of war and the evil it had contained.
Ochako looked across the table at everyone, her friends, her family. Seeing their happy faces, their joy at being together again, knowing that despite the harsh reality of the world around them they could still share moments like this. She felt a lump form in her throat and tears began to slide down her cheeks. She loved them all so much, and she knew she would do anything for them.
"We'll protect them. We aren't losing any more people. Not to Zeus, not to anyone or anything ever again. Even if we have to damn ourselves to do it because we're the only ones who can make that choice." Said Bakugo quietly.
She looked over at him, he was studiously looking at his food and eating. She and Bakugo had an odd sort of relationship. They held a great deal of respect for the other and that made their friendship all the stronger. She had also come to realize though, that unlike all of her classmates, Bakugo was probably the only one who could truly understand her choice to join the Angel Project.
"What would you have done in my place? If you'd been given that choice instead of me." She asked quietly, as she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
"The same," he said simply.
They fell into an amicable silence at that, even as the table was engaged in a chorus of noise. After that, she got into a couple of more conversations, and just enjoyed spending time with everyone. After a while, everyone stopped eating for the most part and was just enjoying chatting with everyone.
She could see that people were starting to get a bit sleepy, a few yawned every now and again and were leaning back in their chairs as they talked. Ochako herself didn't feel too tired, but everyone else except for Jirou and Kaminari had much more demanding schedules than Ochako did. A period to relax and release stress hadn't been available to any of them for a long time. She figured people would probably turn in early today and make up for lost sleep while they were here. They certainly deserved it after all.
At some point, a butler came through and put filled wine glasses in front of everyone, before exiting. After the wine glasses had been placed in front of everyone, Momo stood up and the rest of the table fell into silence. Momo looked at them all and then raised her wine glass. They all understood without her having to say anything. They all raised their glasses and as one downed them in one.
Ochako frowned and looked at the wine, it tasted poor which was in contrast to everything they had up till now. She looked up to see other people's reactions when she heard the shattering of glass. She looked over to Momo who had dropped her glass and was clutching the table. Then to Ochako's utter shock, everyone else started to sag in their seats as well. In the span of a few seconds, everyone had collapsed into their seats, onto the table, or onto the ground unconscious. Only Tsu was still conscious, her amphibious nature granting her a resistance to poisons. She remained open-mouthed at the scene before her until her brain finally clicked everything into place. Then she felt a sharp pain in her neck, and she snapped a hand to the spot and removed a dart that had just hit her. She looked up and saw Tsu going to grab a similar dart sticking from her neck but the extra application proved too much for her and she toppled to the ground.
Ochako flung the dart aside and dove out of her seat, putting the table between herself and the direction the shot had come from. She touched the ground and sent a pulse through it, she sent cracks through the concrete by applying an upward force of gravity separating them all into smaller slabs, then ripped the broken slabs of concrete out of the ground along with the stone benches nearby and formed a barrier around her and her unconscious friends.
She crouched behind the barrier as she tried to feverishly work through events. Their food and wine had been drugged and she had just been hit a dart meant to put her under. Her body however broke down the anesthetic before it could affect her and so she remained the only one conscious. Trying to wake her friends would likely fail until the effects of the drug had passed. Her panic was building and she felt sweat trickle down her face. She couldn't think of any solutions to her current crisis. She had no visual of her assailants, on their numbers, or how well equipped they were.
She glanced over to her disabled friends and felt a swelling of fury rise inside her.
"How dare they touch them; how dare they think they could take them away from me." She thought,her anger building.
Images of the past flashed through her mind. Of burning battlefields, bloody streets, and the broken bodies of her classmates. Darkness settled over her and a black hand gripped her heart. The desire to strike these monsters down rose within her, old instincts raged inside her.
The desire to kill.
"Come on out Uravity, there's no use in hiding. You can't escape either, we've sealed off the entire area. Come on out and surrender, we assure you we won't harm anyone here." called out a voice from behind the barricade.
"Surrender? To them? To villains? The audacity, the arrogance, they must be brought to heel. They must pay for their crimes!"
She knew how to deal with villains like these. The scum of the earth and enemy of all she held dear. But she was not without mercy, she would give them an opportunity. A single opportunity.
She stood up and walked out from behind her barrier. There they were, 21 of them. All in black military gear, bearing military-grade weapons, or in a few cases melee weapons.
"So, you've decided to see sense, good. Now just submit and let us put you under and you'll wake safe and sound exactly where you are now." Said their apparent leader.
He was woefully unremarkable, no different than people she had passed on the street if not better dressed than the average person. He alone wore no armor and bore no weapons. Clean-shaven, with short-cropped auburn hair, and a soul patch. He stood behind his soldiers who had formed up in front of him and then had spread out to form a concave around her. Their weapons aimed directly at her with their melee users upfront ready to contain her should she try something.
She also saw someone floating in the pool, which was unusual.
"Fools, they actually think they can fight me." she thought scornfully.
"I have a different idea; you surrender to ME instead and I won't kill you." She snarled, her hate and anger obvious, with her eyes fixed on the leader.
Their leader for his part merely smirked. "have it your way then." and he snapped his fingers.
The report of a gunshot echoed against the walls. But Ochako merely stood there as the deformed bullet tinkled against the concrete. Then there was another, followed by another until eventually, the entire group had opened fire on her.
Bullets sliced through the air and simply bounced off of her. Deforming upon impacting her and simply falling to the ground. Her own force of gravity projected outwards forming a layer of armor around her preventing the bullets from penetrating and simply deforming on her skin.
Eventually, the gunshots stopped and the ones with melee weapons rushed at her since it was obvious bullets were useless. One simply took a single step toward her and he was suddenly in front of her swinging a metal bat at her face. She shifted her gravity and, in a heartbeat, had crushed his throat with a well-placed palm strike before his swing even finished. As he fell backward, she pulled the bat out of his hands and shot it like a bullet at the mercenary coming from her left. The mercenary wielding a glowing purple rod of energy, merely knocked it aside as he closed the distance along with 3 others.
Ochako shot forward and grabbed the wrist of the closest mercenary, and with her gravity-fueled grip crushed it in her hand. The mercenary screamed as he dropped his machete, but was short-lived as Ochako grabbed the machete out of the air and stabbed him with it. Then the other two were on her. She was forced to give ground as the rod of energy came at in a flurry of swings while the other made rapid stabs at her with dual knives to keep her off balance. The small one with the knives seemed to be leaving behind after-images, making pinpointing his exact location difficult.
After a brief stint of her avoiding their attacks, she rushed forward during a lull from the energy rods attacks, deflected the knives away from her with palm strikes, then followed by grabbing the mercenaries front and shoving him bodily into the mercenary behind him. While they tried to get off of each other, she performed a stationary flip at lightning speed and brought a devastating gravity-fueled dropkick onto the front-most mercenaries' face. His skull caved in and hedied instantly. Keeping the body pinned to the mercenary beneath, she reached down and pulled the knives from his hands, and then shot them through his corpse into the mercenary below him with her quirk, piercing his heart and lungs. The mercenaries struggling stopped abruptly.
She launched herself backward then, as a moment later two grenades landed on the corpses and detonated. Bits of shrapnel and viscera went everywhere as she simply glided at high speed back to where she had started. She reached down and touched the ground, extending her manipulation to include the ruined bullets from earlier. Then she had to propel herself upward when a variety of attacks came hurtling at her. Lasers burned through the air, razor-sharp wind blades whirled by, bullets made of pure force impacted the ground and a variety of other energy-based attacks hit where she had been a moment earlier. Then she was dodging in mid-air as the veritable storm of destruction shot through the air at her. But she had a lot of experience in air dodging and managed to avoid them all by a hairbreadth. All the while she got her attack in place. The bullets she had affected earlier floated up some from the ground, then when she had aimed them all as she desired, applied a massive gravity force on them. They tore through the air even faster than when they had been fired originally. Punching through the mercenaries' armor like paper, and killing most of them instantly. She made sure to spare the leader though, he deserved something more personal and painful.
With the mercenaries in disarray, she sped down to the ground and engaged in close quarters combat with the rest. All the while dodging attacks from the windows of the mansion behind her. She sent some choice attacks towards the attackers in the way of whatever was available to her. Before long the mansion had lost several windows and walls, but the mercenaries located inside were likely dead as the attacks had ceased. She dispatched the remaining mercenaries locked in melee combat with her and then turned towards their leader who had a surprised look on his face.
She took a few steps towards him and he shouted "Beast!" His fear and panic were obvious as he stared at her.
She blasted towards him, her hand outstretched and was mere centimeters away when something crimson exploded out of the pool and before she could dodge had smacked her away and through the brick wall of the mansion.
The impact, that she felt even through her gravity armor and would definitely bruise, brought some measure of lucidity back to her. The haze that had seemed to cloud her mind lifted and she shook her head. Through force of will, she forced IT back causing the manic smile that she had also been wearing to recced. She clambered out of the hole in the wall and looked over to see what had hit her.
Not too far away, she saw the mercenary squad leader standing where he had been previously with a nervous smile, fully aware he had been mere seconds away from death. Beside him and closer to Ochako, a woman with elbow-length, blood-red, silky shiny hair stood staring at her. Her eyes were disturbing, the whites of her eyes were instead black with bright red irises, and large oval pupils that she was sure could become slits. She wore no actual clothes, instead, she bore an ornate grey patterned scarf that looked like it could be made of Cashmere hanging loosely around her neck with a dark red stain on it. She also wore a large black choker underneath the scarf that definitely looked out of place. Most curious and out of place of all though, was the small metal chain around her neck with two gold rings hanging off of it.
She wasn't nude, however, rather she wore extremely tight-fitting, thick black leather-like bindings that had multiple metal links hanging off of them. As if she had just been released from either an overly elaborate bondage system or from extremely strong restraints. She assumed the latter was more likely in this scenario.
The woman's eyes though were hauntingly familiar to her, she hadn't actually seen the woman before but the blank emotionless expression and the deadness in those eyes she had seen many times. She had seen them in the mirror and in the faces of countless others during the end days of the war.
"Excellent work beast. Now, go and capture her, or failing that bring her body back in one piece." said the man.
Ochako had barely a second to register the fact that the woman had moved before she felt another impact against her chest as she was sent through two more walls. She ripped herself out of the wall slapping it with her hand as she did so. A pulse ran through the wall and across everything in the room. A tide of wood, metal, and glass rushed through the hole in the wall just as the women ripped the hole even wider with two massive and terrifying claws of black muscle, silver bone, and inconsistent patchy red fur. Ochako also noted with some trepidation that each claw was larger than the woman's entire torso. Then the woman took the tidal wave of debris full in the face and she cried out as she was pushed out of the room.
Ochako took the opportunity to rush up to the ornate support pillar in the center of the room (which was for show, rather than necessity) and ripped it out of the floor and ceiling. Then she twirled it around and shot it at the woman who was trying to rip the swarm of debris around her to shreds. The pillar slammed into the woman and was sent through the opposite wall and an abundance of crashing and destruction could be heard. Ochako flew forward, touching the floor of the next room, sending the furniture and glassware at the woman. Ochako didn't really expect those to do much, but they would give her cover. She flew at the woman at full speed, turned in mid-air so that she was flying feet first, and smashed into the woman in a flying double kick. The woman was smashed through the next wall and through the exterior brick wall and back outside.
Not letting up for a second, Ochako grabbed more objects with her quirk and flew out of the house, only to have a massive claw fly out of nowhere and smash into the side of her face. This time she was sent through 4 different walls, several pieces of furniture, before finally leaving an indent in the fifth wall. She couldn't move, her head was spinning, her vision slightly blurred, and had a massive headache; she knew she had just taken a concussion. She felt blood slide down the side of her face that took the initial blow and felt at it. It wasn't pouring out, just a small cut. Her gravity armor preventing her entire skull from being caved in, or her body being beaten to pieces from being sent through several walls and pieces of furniture.
She just sat in the wall for several seconds as she recovered from the impact. This woman was absurdly strong, fast, and durable. It was like fighting that high-end Nomu all over again, and that was a really bad sign. Assuming the woman still had more up her sleeve, Ochako didn't fancy her odds. She'd have to try something really serious if she wanted to bring this one down. She touched the wall and sent out another pulse. She put everything she had into extending the range into as many nearby rooms as possible. Apparently, she was near the kitchen because she felt the presence of multiple knives and other implements. The room above her had a fireplace and several steel pokers. She grunted and pulled everything towards the center of the room. The walls and ceiling were torn apart as an insane assortment of objects came crashing into the room. She could hear the woman starting to make her way through the house towards her, and Ochako separated the sharpest objects from the pile and positioned them above her head facing the direction the woman was coming. The furniture she slammed against the far wall as a makeshift barrier, then she shunted the miscellaneous objects above her to act as another swarm.
The woman smashed through the wall and barrier with ease, only to be met with a swarm of various objects and broken furniture. The woman spun in a rapid circle, using her two giant claws to smash everything around her into splinters and tiny pieces, rendering the swarm useless in seconds. Then Ochako sent the sharp objects straight into the woman's chest or tried anyways. The objects hit her and pushed the woman back a little, but just stopped despite Ochako pushing on them with all her might. The woman simply brushed the objects off of her and was about to launch at Ochako again when Ochako's final trick slammed into her head. Two giant ornate pillars of solid wood smashed end first into either side of the woman's head. To Ochako's surprise, all it seemed to do was stun her for a second and she fell to her knees but wasting no time Ochako was on her.
She sent a veritable storm of gravity-fueled attacks into the woman's body. Punching, kicking, and anything else she could think of, she laid into the woman. The woman still stunned from the pillars tried to fight her off but was too slow and clumsy, allowing Ochako to dodge with ease. She had pushed the woman through several walls before the woman made an actual counter-attack. She tried to send a knee into Ochako's stomach, but Ochako merely turned sideways and slid up and away from the attack. She pressed the assault even heavier into the woman until she felt something grab her leg from behind and swing her into the wall. Then like a ragdoll she was smashed across the entire room at random, before being flung through a wall and crashing into what looked to be an indoor bar of some kind. Losing her ability to move freely from the fractures now across her entire body, she floated up and above the hole, using the dust as cover. The woman smashed through the wall a second later and scanned the room for her. Ochako floated down behind the woman wrapped her arms around the woman's head and twisted as hard she could. She felt her muscles and bones protesting at the motion but she ignored it.
The woman was fast though, as Ochako's hands wrapped around her head, the woman's right elbow swung back into Ochako's side. Ochako was sent flying away from the woman and into the corner of the room breaking part of the bar table into the process. Ochako however had managed to complete her movement and the woman fell to the floor.
