Aria twitched on the floor, the teleportation hallway had apparently used up enough energy teleporting the heroes that she herself had failed to teleport. Instead, she had only been partially teleported with large chunks of her body just vanishing, leaving her lying on the floor while her body desperately tried to repair itself. She must have been lying there for a few hours at least, by the time she had been able to move. She had no idea where the heroes might have been transported, but given the fact that the teleporter had been malfunctioning, she doubted they were where the villains intended to send them. They could also have been killed instantly instead, either way, she was now alone in the hallway.

She gave her body a stretch, feeling joints and her back pop in multiple places and tender muscles being worked. When she was confident she had regained her mobility she continued down the hallway. She eventually found herself at a door that was welded shut, so she simply transformed one arm into a giant claw and ripped the entire door frame out of the wall. A few seconds later she was hit by multiple explosives and bullets, the explosions burning her clothes to ashes, only slightly burning her skin and knocking her backward with the majority of bullets whizzing over her head. She got her feet, ignoring the bullets, and charged through the doorway, an explosion of blood pouring out of her skin and her remaining articles of clothing being torn to pieces. All that mattered was killing her old captors, finding her husband and child, and then leaving everything behind; if that meant butchering an entire complex of people, what did that matter?

She tore through the line of villains with ease, their bullets, explosives, and quirks doing little to slow her. She burst into a hallway and came across some kind of strange creature, it was all black, with four extremely muscled arms ending in giant pincers, six spindly legs with some sort of carapace on them, two scorpion tails dripping a ghastly purple liquid, ten eyes, and a huge maw of spine-like teeth. Every joint slowly leaked blood which was pooling on the floor and had a mass of thin purple hairs all over. That didn't bother though, what was bothering her was the fact that as soon as she had ripped the metal door from its housing she had suddenly developed an inexplicable headache. The creature also seemed to feel some kind of a mental shock because it jerked and took a few steps back when the door had been removed.

They stood staring at each other for a few seconds, then it released a chittering cry and charged her. She caught the thing with her claws but it was its momentum was too great and it forced her backward. Eventually, she managed to arrest its charge, and with a massive flex of muscle, she threw it to the ground. It landed and then it suddenly jerked and it put its legs underneath of itself and like some kind of grasshopper, launched itself at her. It slammed her to the ground, bringing its four pincers and scorpion tails down at her. The tail barbs hit her chest but failed to penetrate her skin, while the pincers closed around each limb and started clamping down with all their might. Aria howled in pain, she could feel her bones screaming in protest, on the verge of snapping. The pain, the headache, and her own panic overwhelmed her and all that was left was a bestial rage. Blood exploded from her head and formed into the mutated shape of a bear and wolf. She opened wide and clamped her giant maw around the entirety of the creature's skull and punched through the carapace with ease. Cold blood gushed from the stump and head into her mouth and she accidentally ingested some of it. The creature went limp and sagged on top of her.

The cold blood slid over her now large and sensitive tongue and she stilled. The second the blood hit her tongue her headache pulsed in a sudden burst of pain, then it abruptly faded. She knew instantly why this creature bothered her so much. It was born of her blood, the cold blood reeked and tasted of her own but with a bitter acrid taste to it. This was one of the Hounds of Zeus. She felt her instincts roar to life and every part of her demanded she drink more of its blood. In a fit of wild urging shedrank of its blood and she felt the insectoid essence within the Hound suffuse her entire being. Her mutated quirk factor assimilating, converting, and then attaching the repurposed DNA to her own. She pushed the dead Hound off of her and felt her tail morph and change, the tip becoming scorpion-like and now able to inject venom. She also felt she do more in the way of changing, but limited it to the tail. The carapace would only hamper her mobility.

With the new ability, she felt a rush of adrenaline and energy now coursing through her body. She used the excess energy to push back the oncoming blood frenzy and stilled her bestial instincts as best she could. She didn't change her form though, she let her instincts guide her movement and fighting. She never stopped moving, she kept pushing deeper and deeper in the complex, slaughtering everything that got in her way.


Todoroki groaned as he flipped over onto his back, he wasn't sure what had happened but it was as if every inch of his body had been punched by Kirishima at his strongest. He opened his eyes and it took him a moment for his eyes to adjust, but when the world came into focus his eyes widened and he sat up looking all about him. He wasn't in the villain's base anymore, instead, he was lying in the middle of a forest. He reached for his radio but when he went to key it on nothing happened. He looked at it and saw that it looked like it had shorted out, bits of plastic had melted and it had some minor scorch marks on it.

He sighed and got his feet, brushing himself off he stretched his back some, then blasted himself into the air with a pillar of ice then went higher using his fire. He looked around the area, the night vision contact lenses enabling him to see the surrounding terrain in enough detail to realize he was now several kilometers away from the mountain. He could see the walls of ice he had erected twinkling in the moonlight in the far distance. It was a relief to know he wasn't on the other side of the world or something. So, with an objective clear to him, he blasted off towards it.

It took him far longer to get to it than he had initially estimated, he must have been flying for almost 15 minutes before he finally got to the tops of the wall. He looked down into the area and he could see the QSU moving about, securing the area, taking inventory of the supplies on the surface, and setting up their own base camp. With nothing out of the ordinary, he assumed they must not have realized that the breaching team had been teleported out of the base. So he jumped off the wall and fell towards the command tent that had been erected, using his fire to slow his fall. As he deployed his fire, there were shouts and he saw several of the QSU members get behind cover and train their weapons on him. He made sure to keep his hands raised as he slowly descended.

As he touched down on the ground he shouted, "I'm Shoto Todoroki, my team was teleported out of the villain's base. I saw the ice walls I made and sped over here, I need to talk to your commanding officer."

Not one of the QSU operatives moved at first, then he saw a woman walking towards him from the command tent. She removed her helmet as she did so which revealed, short-cropped black hair, and some kind of mechanical eyepatch affixed to her left eye. She also had the unmistakable scars of lightning stretching over the skin of her face, outlining part of the skull beneath it. It was a frightening visage, to say the least.

"I'm GochōAhmya, how can I help," she said.

"Well, for starters I'm going to need a new radio, mine was rendered inoperable due to the teleporter. After that, we'll have to focus on finding the rest of my team and ensuring they make it back here," he replied.

GochōAhmya grunted and turned around, gesturing to him to follow. He followed her into the command tent, where a communications hub had been set up and was now connected to the H.A. and to the QSU headquarters in Mufustafu. She walked over to a crate, grabbed a radio, and tossed it to him. He caught it easily and after messing around with it for a bit managed to get it synced up. The moment he was finished he heard a familiar voice come out of it.

"-s hero Creati, I have been cut off from my squad and am currently stranded in an unknown area. If anyone can hear me please respond."

Todoroki quickly pressed the button on his radio and replied, "Momo, this is Todoroki are you ok?" he anxiously waiting for her response, which wasn't long in coming.

"Shoto! Oh, thank god you're all right, where are you right now? Oh, I'm fine by the way." she said, the relief evident in her voice.

Todoroki felt relief wash over him, while he had avoided thinking about it, he had been extremely worried for her safety. There had been no way of knowing if the teleporter had affected everyone equally.

"I'm back at the base camp the QSU have set up, I got a new radio since mine died, and was hoping to hear someone on the line." As he talked he walked out from under the tent and launched himself into the air in a blast of fire, going as high as he possibly could.

"Fire up a flare, I'm currently several miles above the ground, once I see it I'll head over and pick you up."

"Got it," came Momo's response before the line went silent.

There was a minute of waiting while he slowly turned in a circle when he noticed a flare get fired up from out of the tree line far to the south of him. Upon seeing it he blasted off towards it, putting as much flare and light into his fire as he did so, hoping that one of his other friends might see him above the tree line.

Fortunately this time, he only had to go for a few minutes before he landed in the forest next to the flare. As he landed he saw Momo sitting on a fallen tree nearby. The moment they saw each other they ran at each other and embraced.

He never wanted to let her go again, just wanted to stand there and hold her forever, but they had a job to do. They broke apart and Momo formed her flying traversal gear on her body and a moment later they were off. As they flew back to the camp, Momo fired off periodic flares high into the sky and towards the direction of the camp. Leaving a trail for anyone else nearby to follow.

When they finally got back to the camp, Momo instead landed on the top of one of the ice walls. She immediately began creating a fireworks launching system. When she was done, she formed a few rounds and fired them off into the sky. It was a combination flare and firework, the flare bit lingering in the air for a while, while it released a deep boom that echoed across the mountainside. She kept doing it periodically, and after several nerve-wracking hours, everyone except for Bakugo had managed to find their way back to the base.

No one was hurt, fortunately, but everyone's radios had been thoroughly destroyed by the teleporter. They kept waiting for Bakugo, but as another hour ticked by, it became clear he either couldn't see or hear the flares Momo had been firing off periodically.

"We're going to have to press on into the base without him." Said Momo reluctantly.

"But we can't just leave him alone out there! He could be injured!" said Kirishima, the anger and pain he was feeling being shared by the rest of them.

"I'm sorry Kirishima, but you know we can't drop this mission. Until we're done, Bakugo is going to have to manage on his own. Besides, knowing him he's probably blown a crater into the earth out of frustration by now. He'll be fine." Said Momo.

Kirishima was about to open his mouth again when Ashido put a hand on his arm. He turned toward her, and she gave him a shake of her head. It was clear Kirishima was struggling, they all were, but each and every one of them knew deep down that they couldn't help Bakugo. They had a mission to complete, and they would do what needed to be done.

They left instructions with the QSU to coordinate with headquarters to form a plan to find Bakugo, then went back into the villain's base. They were surprised to find that the hallway they had been in previously was like a burnt-out lightbulb. the panels were blackened and the smell of ozone and charred metal and electronics permeated the air, but in the middle of the hallway where they been roughly standing was a giant explosion of blood, as if someone had been turned into a bloody paste. It was quite disturbing, but not a sight unfamiliar to all of them. Gigantomachia had turned several 1A class members into a bloody paste when he had been teleported to where they had been training in the mountains during the start of the war.

Todoroki shook his head to clear it of that memory, he had a mission to accomplish, and dwelling on the past was only going to distract him. As they continued on, they didn't have to go far to see that something had beaten them to the punch. The entire doorframe leading into the base proper had been ripped out of the wall entirely and tossed aside. Inside the next room, there were at least a half dozen corpses all torn apart. The blood was everywhere, and large rents were torn into the floor all over the place. They quickly went past that room into the upcoming hallway only to stop short at the sight of a giant scorpion monster with its head ripped off. It didn't look like any Nomu they had encountered in the past, either it was newly made or it was something else entirely.

"Looks like that Aria woman got here before us. We would have seen her enter the base from the surface so she was probably already gone inside by the time Todoroki got to the base camp, or she never got teleported, to begin with. The blood in the hallway must have been from her, it probably didn't teleport her fully." Said Momo as she surveyed the carnage.

Kirishima gave a low whistle, "Damn, that was a lot of blood, she must be insanely durable and have some regenerative abilities to suffer that level of damage and still be able to butcher these guys."

"She must not have been lying when she said she was a prototype for a new type of Nomu, she must be as strong as a high-end if not stronger." Said Shinso.

After Momo took a few pictures for future reference, they continued on into the depths of the base. The story of the upper level was repeated as they descended, corpses torn apart, and another 2 monster creatures all in varying states.

They got to the 4th floor when they started to hear noise ahead, distant roaring, screams, and the unmistakable sound of a pitched battle being waged. They all looked at each other for a moment before dashing ahead. They hadn't gone far though when all the noise suddenly ceased, minus the now diminishing screams of those in pain. They stopped at a corner and Todoroki eased his head around the corner.

The hallway opened up into what must have been a cafeteria or assembly room, he could see the corpses of several villains, pieces of them scattered about and two more of the creatures of they had seen previously. One was unmistakably based on a bear mixed with lizard, while the other was some kind of bird-like creature merged with a sea-anemone? He stared at the strange creatures before his eyes alighted upon Aria.

As he watched he saw her bestial form start to slough off in large chunks and collapse into blood around her. When the last of it had fallen away, he saw someone clad in western medieval armor made of red light holding out their left hand which had a string of golden light coming out of it and connecting to Aria who was on her knees looking at the figure. He couldn't see her expression though as her back was facing him.

He turned back to his friends and quickly told them what he had seen.

"Kirishima, Ashido, and Shinso, you take the bird creature. Momo, I, and Tokoyami will take care of the bear thing. We gotta take those things out asap and then stop whatever that figure in red armor is doing." He said to them.

When none of them raised objections, he gave them a nod and turned back to face the corner. He counted down from five with his fingers then they sprinted around the corner and engaged the creatures.

They went down surprisingly easily, they had already been beaten badly by Aria and were far too slow and weak to fight them. He froze the bear creature solid and then Momo blasted the thing into shards of frozen gore with her gauss rifle. Kirishima tackled the birdlike creature full tilt, and then Ashido threw a wave of acid on top of them. The bird creature dissolved quickly while Kirishima held it in place, the acid doing little to him at his maximum power. Then Ashido washed him off with a spray of nullifying acid. Shinso used his quirk to control the remaining villains and then sent them at the figure disabling Aria.

The figure looked up, saw them bring down their allies, and sent a huge wave of golden light at Aria before breaking the connection. Then pulled out twin weapons which glowed with a sinister red light. There was a flash and the discharge of energy and the villains Shinso had sent at her disintegrated in a flash. Todoroki sent a jet of flame at her which hit some kind of energy barrier, and just split around the figure. After the flames subsided, the figure waved at them then sank into the floor.

They all stared at where the figure had just sunk into solid matter, not burrowed or anything like it, but actually phased into it. They had never seen anything like it before, but they didn't have time to dwell on it long.

Aria gave a shriek of pain and then curled up on herself, shaking so much it was as if she was the epicenter of some great earthquake. She curled herself into a ball and gripped the sides of her head while blood started to ooze from her. She started to run her hands over her head with enough force to draw blood which only made the blood oozing from her pores rush out faster. Then she screamed again and blood burst from her nose, eyes, ears, and mouth. The blood started to coagulate on top of her and formed a giant shaking mass of bloody goop.

Then the shaking quieted down to intense vibration, increasing in intensity until it hit a peak. Then the massive ball of goop exploded outward, two giant arms and legs emerging, then a body forming where they all met. She increased in size until she filled almost half the room. A giant roiling mass of blood-like liquid muscle, then black fur formed over the top of it all. Then she stilled, massive deep breaths echoed through the room as Aria drew in huge lungfuls of air.

Todoroki could only describe her as the second-largest creature he had ever seen. He got the impression that this wasn't even the largest she could become, that she was still containing herself. Her massive arms were the size of tree trunks like a Gorilla, ended in giant massive clawed hands that wouldn't look out of place on a dinosaur. The legs were large and compact, similar in shape to that of a Tiger, ending in clawed feet like a super-sized velociraptor. She also had a large long tail made entirely of silvery bone and ended with a large serrated spike that dripped with a toxic-looking black liquid. The back was arched like a cat and serrated silver spikes jutted out from it along the spine. The neck was the size of Todoroki's entire head, with the head itself being three times the size of his own. The head was shaped like a giant amalgamation of bear and wolf. Aria had two giant elongated eyes the were a foot long and stretched from the front of the face like a human then stretched back to the sides like a herbivore and were multifaceted like an insect and glowed with a deep purple light. The open mouth revealed a front row of large teeth like a wolf but also had a second row of needle-like teeth behind them. The mouth also stretched from the front along the sides almost all the way back to the jaw hinge. The end result was that Aria had taken on the appearance of some kind of black shadowy monster, something out of a horror movie made manifest in reality.

No one moved at first, but Todoroki took a step forward. The moment he took that step Aria swung her head around to face him and let out a low growl.

"Ar-" his voice was cut off when Aria lunged at him like a coiled spring. He reacted instinctively, erecting an ice wall in front of him. Aria hit the wall but didn't have enough force to break through it so instead, she brought one hand back and punched through it. She started to rip it open wider and force herself through when she was met with a jet of flame in the face. She roared in anger and recoiled from it, then was hit in the side multiple times as Momo fired round after round from her gauss rifle into her side. The giant projectiles sticking halfway into the flesh and causing pain as Aria moved around. Then she was assaulted from behind as Kirishima ran into one of her legs and caused her to lose her balance. She snarled in anger and kicked the red-headed man who went flying into the far wall. Then a giant wave of acid-washed over her and she roared in pain as it started to eat through her flesh and try to work through her bones. She flailed about trying to shake off as much of the acid as possible and then bolted for the hallway that lead back up to the surface.

They tried to stop her retreat but she ran far too quickly for any of them to follow.

"That woman did something to her mind, I could feel it briefly. There isn't any semblance of human rationality or thought left just strong bestial instincts. We can't leave her be, she'll probably end up attacking the QSU operatives on the surface." Said Shinso

Todoroki, in a rare moment of agitation, swore and started to run back the way they had come, with the rest of the class following shortly thereafter.


To say that Bakugo Katsuki was angry would be an understatement. After getting torn apart and put back together by a malfunctioning teleporting hallway or whatever it was, he had promptly woken up after being unconscious for who knows how long, thrown up the entire contents of his stomach, realized his radio was busted, and to top it all off he was completely lost.

He looked at his surroundings, just trees, trees, and more trees. He let out an angry string of curses. Then he blasted himself up high into the sky and gave the surrounding area a look. He was still on the mountain, he could see that and the barest hints of light were starting to form on the horizon. After looking about carefully it was clear he must have been sent onto the opposite side of the mountain. So he started blasting his way steadily over the mountain. When he finally crested the top of the mountain, he looked down the other side from his airborne vantage point and could see bursts of light far below him. Jets of flame were periodically going off and the light was being reflected by the walls of ice surrounding them. A battle was going on at the base camp and he'd been KO'd for who knew how long.

Letting out another string of curses he shot downward toward the battle below. As he got closer he also started to hear the telltale noise of gunfire and explosives and with the flashes of light he could see what it was they were fighting. A giant black monster, only a bit smaller than the size of Gigantomachia was rampaging. Blasts of fire and ice were keeping it at bay while the QSU and the others threw everything they had at it to little effect. The creature shrugged off the attacks if they were little more than pillows being thrown at it.

Bakugo couldn't help but smile, he had a wonderful advantage over the creature. He hadn't done with maneuver in a very long time, almost 2.5 years actually. He started pooling as much sweat as he could into his suit, and it stored them in small capsules that ringed the entirety of his body. He could either remove them entirely and use them as grenades, or he could funnel all that stored sweat into his gauntlets and fire it all out in one giant payload. He sped down towards the creature and as he got close, he angled upward in a sharp turn and then fired his explosions at the creature back on a timed delay explosion. After another three seconds, which gave him enough time to get clear, the sweat detonated. A colossal explosion erupted across the creature's back, blowing apart its spine and most of its back flesh as it was forced into the ground from the explosion.

Bakugo came to halt in the air and looked down, only to be unpleasantly surprised when he saw the creatures back start to reform. Though he did notice its size had decreased as it did so. Everyone took advantage of the opportunity and threw everything they had at it, but Bakugo couldn't see Kirishima, Ashido, or Shinso anywhere nearby. He threw a couple more explosions at the creature as he landed next to Todoroki.

"The fuck is going on!" he yelled at him over the noise.

"Aria got hit by some kind of mental attack and has gone completely berserk. She ran outside and got attacked by the QSU. She managed to kill a few before he got back to the surface and equalized things. She's incapacitated Kirishima, Ashido, and Shinso so far but Momo's suffered some serious lacerations so she'll be out soon too." He roared back as he poured a veritable river of fire into Aria.

Bakugo cursed and shouted back, "Then we can't waste any more time on this! We're going to have to go with Flash Freeze and Howitzer like we did with Gigantomachia!" He roared back as he threw several arcing explosions onto Aria's back.


Todoroki grimaced but nodded, and stopped with the fire. He closed his eyes and focused all his energy on his ice quirk. His right side exploded into ice which slowly began to encase him fully, ice-covered him like a cacoon, and he glanced at Bakguo whose armor was glowing with an orange-red light and steam poured off of him like a cloud. Bakugo looked back at him and nodded.

Todoroki looked at Aria who was starting to right herself and then went the next step into his attack. His ice penetrated into his left side and froze his very cells. The quirk factor in them being frozen solid. For a moment, he experienced a partial death. Then the fire-aligned quirk factors reformatted themselves to be ice-aligned like his right side.

Super Move 1: Flash Freeze

His body came back to life and now with his ice quirk's power doubled at the cost of his fire, he unleashed the pent-up power. In the span of a heartbeat, he had frozen everything in front of him. From Aria to the ground, and past that onto the mountain slopes. A third of the mountain was frozen solid, and then he collapsed to the ground as the feedback hit him. His body, forcing itself to adjust and realign his quirk factor into the correct configuration. The pain blinded him and he was forced to close his eyes and grit his teeth and the spasms of pain racked his body. He managed to open his eyes enough to see Bakugo flying in the air towards the now frozen form of Aria.


Bakugo spun through the freezing air towards the frozen form of what was once Aria. He pooled all the sweat he could into his hands and when he collided with her chest, he unleashed it all.

"TWIN HOWITZER IMPACT!" he roared and then the world went white.

The explosion blew the frozen form apart, sending shards in random directions and the shockwave blowing everyone off their feet and upending several buildings and tents that were nearby. Fortunately, the command tent was set up at the entrance to the base.

Bakugo hit the ground and stood up. He took a look at his handiwork and couldn't help but smirk. He walked forward some, combing through the wreckage and frozen debris to ensure the job was finished when he saw a partially frozen and charred ball of red muscle. He made his way over to it and as he approached he realized that it was actually missing half of it, with it being upended on the flat side. He grabbed one edge and flipped it over, revealing the interior.

Aria lay inside it, her true body protected by the super dense ball of muscle. Half of her was revealed, with a good chunk of her back and left side still lodged inside it. As he looked her over he couldn't help but feel his stomach churn at the sight of her body. The scars, the obvious signs of rough and uncaring surgery which had removed her breasts and implanted several more hearts. Then he saw one eye open slowly, then after a few seconds slid lazily to look at him. As he gazed into her eyes, he could see the lack of anything in them. Glazed over, she stared in his general direction, unseeing. He couldn't help but feel his smugness at having won, fading away until a deep sense of pity filled him. She was dying, that much was obvious, and without having found her husband or child. Bakugo and the rest of 1A knew though that they were almost certainly dead. If the woman had been put on ICE for almost a year or more, with the base abandoned, then they were likely disposed of at the time.

Then the woman twitched and started to move her free hand slowly up to grasp at her neck, but when she felt nothing there, he could see a single tear roll down her cheek. He glanced around and saw the woman's scarf and shattered necklace next to it a few steps away. He walked over, picked them up, and went back to the woman. He placed the scarf and rings just below her collarbone, and then put her hand on top of them. She fumbled weakly for a moment before managing to get one of the rings on her left ring finger. Then she brought the scarf and remaining ring close to her face and just rested her head against it, tears rolling down her face into it as she closed her eye.

Bakugo watched, as her shallow breaths slowed, and then stopped. Another innocent life was taken and shattered by villains, another face was added to haunt his dreams.