Traveling through the villain's mist was like falling asleep and waking up somewhere else. One moment Manami had been reaching for Izuku's hand and the next fighting the urge to curse as she tumbled out of a portal to gods-knew-where. She landed on her back and rolled for a few feet until her momentum came to a stop. The glass ceiling of the USJ gave her a perfect view of the clear blue sky, so peaceful while everything around her went so wrong. She sighed. At least she hadn't landed on her head.
'Tiny-eyes better not have gotten himself hurt running in like that.' The thought crossed Manami's mind as she rose to her feet. 'Izukun would be devastated. Now… Where am I?'
A quick look around told her she'd been moved just about as far away from the exit as possible—smack dab in the center of the Ruins Zone. She stood on the top floor of a half-crumbled building, or a replica that had been carefully constructed to give off that vibe at least. A large hole in the ceiling explained her ability to see the USJ's roof. A quick lean out of one of the broken windows revealed a fifteen-story drop into a ruined street, complete with broken-down vehicles in a facsimile of rush-hour traffic.
"Urgh…"
And apparently, she wasn't alone.
Shoto Todoroki's hero costume blended in easily with the rubble, being a similar shade of tan and white, so Manami hadn't noticed him when first looking around.
'Of all the people to… just my luck.'
"Are you okay?" She did her best to put on a friendly smile, holding a hand out for her classmate to take.
"I am fine." Shoto stood without her help, completely ignoring the hand she'd offered. Rather than huff in annoyance like she wanted, Manami settled for crossing her arms and nailed the ice-cold boy with a withering glare that would likely have made even him shiver had he deigned to look her way. It was gone by the time he'd turned around to face her. "We should proceed back to the others. The number of villains was—"
Whatever Shoto had been about to say would have to wait. Nearly a dozen portals opened up simultaneously around them, each depositing one to two villains onto the floor, their quirks and weapons ready for combat.
'Don't panic.' Manami took a hesitant step back before she realized what she was doing. 'The school is under attack. Izukun and the others might be in danger. This is no time to hesitate.'
Her mind dredged up all of the training Izuku had given her. Every stance, every takedown, every maneuver. All that would be for nothing if she froze up now, right? The villains invading U.A. would accomplish their goals and her classmates would be injured or worse. Manami knew she would never forgive herself if any of that landed on her shoulders.
'Now isn't the time for weakness.' She closed her eyes and took a breath, searching within for the power of her quirk, 'It's the time to prove that I'm a hero!'
'I can do this.'
"I am strong!"
As usual, the warmth hit Manami first, like a fire burning in her chest that she stoked with her emotions. She'd did her best to reign it in; her control over her power output was still tenuous at best. Izuku had been forced to snap her out of her quirk's influence many times over the course of their training. So far, she'd been successful at maintaining Love's power for fifteen minutes before she started to burn up.
With stability achieved, Manami opened her eyes. If the warmth wasn't enough of an indicator that her quirk was working, the pink vapor that rose from her fists was a dead giveaway.
'No time to waste.'
Before Shoto seemed to even grasp what had happened or the villains had the opportunity to plan their assault, Manami pulled Izuku's gift from her belt and flipped the switch on the grip. To the villains' surprise, the miniaturized warhammer rapidly expanded to thrice its size plus some, its full length only slightly shorter than Manami herself.
Manami leapt forward without further delay, finding that the villains weren't at all prepared for her sudden aggression. The closest enemy to her starting position, a grimy-looking man whose overall appearance indicated some type of mole-man mutation quirk, had no time to react as the red-haired heroine thrust the head of her enlarged weapon straight into his gut.
It seemed that wielding the newest addition to her heroic arsenal came naturally after all of the practice she'd put in; she made a mental note to thank Izuku for having the foresight to have her practice swinging a sledgehammer as part of her training. Enhanced by Love's power, the instrument of destruction felt no heavier than a baseball bat, but hours of pushing Izuku around with light touches told her the hammer would pack a significantly larger punch.
As she thought, the force was significant. The mole villain bent double over her hammer with the wind knocked out of him and was subsequently pitched into the wall where he crashed through the brittle plaster into the adjacent room. A battle cry rose from nearby; Manami turned to her right just in time to catch another thug attempt to blindside her with a crowbar. She ducked his sloppy swing and brought her weapon to bear on his unprotected ribs. He was launched in a similar manner to his compatriot, though this villain was lucky enough to have the wall hold instead of crumble under his weight.
'I did it…? I did it!'
Manami had little time to celebrate her first victory; heavy, thundering footsteps from behind alerted her to another attacker while a newfound chill in the air told her Shoto was most likely fighting his own battle on the other side of the room. She turned to face her next opponent, a tall, muscular woman wielding a set of brass knuckles. Thinking quickly, Manami gripped her hammer tightly and raised it above her head before smashing it into the floor with all her might. She jumped back just before the villain reached her.
"Missed!" the criminal gloated, winding her fist back for what would no doubt be a brutal right hook.
The villain stepped forward to land her punch, taking a step on the spot where Manami's hammer had struck. The red-haired heroine smirked.
"Bye-bye!" she gloated as the villain realized her mistake. The floor collapsed beneath her feet, crumbling away as the already weakened foundation caved in from the force of Manami's blow. She tumbled down with the tile and plaster and landed on her back with a groan.
"Alright, who's next?" Manami asked, looking around the room to find… the villains already frozen? The remainder of the almost twenty villains struggled wildly against the ice that slowly crawled its way up their bodies, freezing them to the floor. Shoto stood silently in the center of the room with his arms crossed, watching it unfold with a dispassionate gaze.
"The ambient temperature will keep you from any permanent damage, though I warn that you will not thaw before the authorities arrive." He explained, which only seemed to increase the villains' struggles. The rising ice stopped halfway up their necks, leaving them barely able to even turn their heads. Shoto turned to Manami, who stared slack-jawed at the scene. It was the combat test all over again. Shoto Todoroki was simply on another level.
"We should move on before more villains arrive." Shoto stated. He walked out of the room without turning to see if Manami followed, leaving frigid air in his wake.
"Hmph, show off." The heroine grumbled. She took a breath, sheathed her weapon, and deactivated her quirk before tip-toeing her way around the villain-cicles to follow her classmate. She still had a long way to go it seemed before she would be able to compete with the likes of Shoto Todoroki. For the time being, she was content to leave the crumbling building and make her way back to the others.
She could only hope Izuku was okay, wherever he was.
Izuku rolled into a crouch after he was thrown out of the portal, popping up with his fists ready for a fight. Heat licked at his skin and the general area was bathed in a red-orange glow; the nearest building—and most of the others in the area—were engulfed in flames. The Conflagration Zone. Though he saw no villains in the immediate vicinity, he maintained his stance, prepared for a surprise attack using the mist wraith's warping capabilities—it was how they'd entered the USJ in the first place, after all. Stendhal's voice repeated in his head:
'Assess, plan, attack. Know your battlefield, know your enemy, and know how you're going to take them down.'
A portal opened to his left, and Izuku turned to put his teacher's words to practice. Luckily for him, this one dropped a familiar face.
"Tokoyami-san! Are you okay?"
Fumikage nodded, though he seemed to struggle for a moment as he remained on the ground with his head lowered. After a few moments, he stood, his costume's dark cloak wrapped tightly around his frame.
"I am unharmed, thank you." He looked around, noticing the area they'd been dropped into, "We should try to leave the Conflagration Zone as soon as possible. The light from the flames will weaken my Dark Shadow." Fumikage opened his cloak; the manifestation of his quirk cowered in its darkness and seemed to have shrunk with so much ambient light in the area.
"Got it." Izuku acknowledged, already having planned to get back to the others regardless—not only was he worried about Manami, but the rest of his classmates as well. He would feel uneasy until he knew everyone was alright. "I'm pretty sure the closest exit from here should be to the south. If we get in a fight, we can try to lure them into some of the alleyways—it seems that the buildings have been designed with no windows on those sides so they'll be darker than the streets. The USJ's architects probably wanted those areas to be reasonably safe in case evacuation was necessary."
"Sounds like a plan. I'll follow your lead."
The two took off in a run towards the closest exit the Conflagration Zone's dome offered them, doing their best to avoid the intense flames some of the larger fires continued to produce. Were this any other day, Izuku would have loved to marvel at the ingenuity behind an urban block that constantly burned but never collapsed or burnt out. For now, he only had time to worry about whether or not the flames would slow him down in a fight.
As if fate had heard his thoughts, portals appeared out of thin air all around him and Fumikage, stopping the two in their tracks. Villains climbed out of the rifts in twos and threes, most brandishing weapons but some showing off their fire-based quirks.
"Not good." Izuku muttered to himself, taking stock of his opposition. 'Nine enemies. Four showing immediate signs of quirk use. Three with some variation of fire breathing and one holding flames in her hands.'
He resisted the urge to dive into the fray in an attempt to take them by surprise. Fumikage's weakened quirk would work against them in the flame-brightened streets; he wouldn't be able to protect himself against a blitz attack or back Izuku up. Running was an option, but retreating to the Conflagration Zone's darker alleys would be a death sentence versus opponents who could breathe fire down the narrow halls.
"I don't think we have much of a choice, Tokoyami-san. We're going to have to fight them here." It was suboptimal, but the safest course of action. Izuku could only hope Fumikage's hand-to-hand was up to snuff or Dark Shadow could power through for a few good hits.
The villains, having had their little patience quickly expired, charged in pairs. Izuku noticed that four maintained a perimeter in case they tried to run, including two of the fire-breathing criminals.
Izuku countered the sloppy punch his first opponent threw by diverting the man's arm and catching him in the nose with an elbow that sent him reeling.
'They're getting close to me.' He observed as he ducked under the second villain's opening swing with a rusty pipe. Izuku followed up with a kick to the man's midsection that forced him to stumble back, winded but still able to fight. 'All of the villains using their quirks to fight have fire-type abilities, meaning they knew the layout of the USJ and planned ahead. But maybe they don't have access to the student files? If they don't know what our quirks or equipment are, then…"
If he was right, none of them would avoid being grabbed or try to stop him from activating his quirk.
Another criminal had come to replace the first, but Izuku was no longer playing the defensive game. He rolled past his current opponent to grab the newcomer; he quickly twisted the man's arm behind his back and squeezed hard to activate the needles in his gloves. Satisfied that he was successful based on the man's grunt of pain, Izuku threw the villain forward, allowing him to take the full brunt of the overhead smash his cohort had been planning to hit Izuku with.
The others had by now noticed that Izuku had the upper hand in pairs. Two of the villains guarding the perimeter opened their mouths, blasting gouts of flame into the street that charred the pavement.
Izuku was forced to scramble to the side, along with the two enemies he'd been fighting. Another set of blasts kept him on his toes, the heat licking at his skin with a narrow dodge.
'I can't keep this up for long.' Not only was it taxing, but he was slowly being pushed towards another pair of villains, this one containing a woman who snapped her fingers to wrap her fists in flame. Deciding it was now or never, Izuku twisted awkwardly on his next dodge, buying him just enough wiggle room to bring a finger to his mouth and suck out the blood he'd siphoned.
Immediately he felt refreshed, any bruises he'd earned from sliding on the pavement disappeared as his quirk's energy ran through his system.
Izuku squeezed the straps of his gloves. Blood rapidly worked its way out from their inner workings and wrapped around his arms like tendrils.
The flame-fisted villainess leapt towards him, holding her hands up like a boxer. The first few jabs were easy to dodge, but she soon adapted to his rhythm and started to pressure Izuku. Her flames grew closer with each attempt to hit him, along with the heat.
He waited patiently for her to show an opening, making sure to keep an eye on the other villains, who continuously attempted to make their way into his blind spot. After almost a minute straight of perfect punches, the villainess over-reached and left her back foot off balance.
Izuku took quick advantage, extending his hand and a tentacle of blood with it that encircled her leg and tugged violently. She fumbled face-first to the ground, panicked and flailing at Izuku in a vain attempt to catch him before she fell. A war cry from behind alerted Izuku to the rest of the villains, no longer waiting for their moment now that their cornering strategy had failed.
The crimson tentacle wrapped around the villainess' ankle spun with Izuku as he turned to face the three men charging him. One opened his mouth to send another fireball his way, but the hero-in-training had other plans. Izuku flicked his hand out, palm forward, and directed the blood he controlled with it. The villainess wailed as she was sent careening into her comrades. She impacted all three at high speed and crumbled to the ground on top of them; all four were left out cold.
'That's five down…' Izuku counted, including the man whose nose he'd broken in their initial blitz and hadn't gotten up. He looked to Fumikage, who was grappling with his second opponent, one criminal already laid out on the ground behind him. The two clashed their hands together and struggled to overcome the other's strength. It seemed to be a stalemate until Fumikage's cloak parted and his Dark Shadow showed from within. The familiar shot a single enlarged claw out of its master's cloak, using what little power it could muster from the darkness inside to deliver a nasty blow that left the villain down for the count. 'Seven.'
Two more villains remained. They glared at the students from the opposite end of the street, opening their mouths for more fireball attacks that never came.
Izuku raised his hands and sent out twin splashes of blood that exploded at head level and wrapped around the criminals' lower jaws like a muzzle, snapping them shut. More blood followed, holding their legs and arms in place so that neither could move.
"Nine." He counted. With a clap of his hands, the villains sailed into each other and knocked heads. Both crumbled to the pavement, unconscious.
Izuku breathed heavily, double-checking that none of his opponents had gotten up or faked being down. When all of them were accounted for, he turned to Fumikage with a small smile.
"Great work, Tokoyami-san! Are you hurt at all?"
"Thank you, Midoriya-san. I am unharmed." The raven-headed hero murmured, breathing heavily, "But we should get moving. Using Dark Shadow in the light was very taxing."
"Right. The others will be waiting." It was the hope talking, but Izuku was sure that if the caliber of villains himself and Fumikage had faced was what they had brought to the table, then class 1-A and U.A. in general had been vastly underestimated.
'They obviously put some amount of planning into this, based on their choice to match quirks with location. But those villains were amateurs at best… I don't think more than three of them knew how to fight properly.' It worried him. If the villains had gone through so much work only to send untrained criminals against students of the country's top hero school, there had to be an alternative motive. 'The portal villain seemed to know what he was doing. And that huge one… they obviously came here expecting to win a fight, but they scattered the students and sent amateurs against us. That means they probably just want to keep us busy. But if we're not the targets… who is?'
It soon dawned on him that All Might had been meant to lead their rescue exercises, but had been missing after they got off the bus. Caught up in an emergency, maybe? Either way, he was the most likely target for an attack of this scale. Hadn't the mist villain said something about their leader 'dying' to meet the number one hero? That was far too ominous. If the villains were confident enough that they could take on the number one hero, then what about Manami-chan, Kacchan, Aizawa-sensei, and the rest of his classmates?
Izuku broke into a sprint.
"We need to move faster!"
"Die!"
Katsuki's palm exploded in another villain's face. Sparks sizzled into existence where the chemical substance that coated his hands touched the rain. Toru almost rolled her eyes; in spite of the use of his favorite threat, Katsuki's quickly-growing pile of downed villains were all alive, even if they had all taken an unplanned 'nap.'
Toru charlie-horsed her own opponent before knocking her out with a kick to the head. She then slipped back into the shadows, searching for her next target. The darkness of the Downpour Zone worked to her advantage, but when in the open the rain itself did not. Her invisible body was given visible shape by the heavy raindrops, vaguely outlined in the splashes and illuminated by the occasional flash of 'lightning.' If she stayed in the light too long, she would be easily spotted.
The villains had come out of nowhere by the dozen, attempting to overwhelm them by sheer numbers. Toru found it odd that not a single one had shown signs of using a quirk, especially seeing how rare quirklessness as a condition was in this day and age but didn't have time to think about it as she smashed the heads of another two together, stopping them from flanking her classmate.
Katsuki, being the visible of the two, was the villains' primary target, which allowed the invisible girl to prowl the outskirts of the battlefield and ambush unsuspecting villains once they'd dropped their guard. The smarter ones kept their heads on a swivel and listened carefully for the splashes her bare feet made on the wet pavement.
'Ugh, I am so getting a cold after this.' Her only saving grace was the temperature-controlled environment seemed to be set for summer rain, so the water at least wasn't freezing her bare extremities. Unfortunately, that didn't change the fact that her soaked hair seemed desperate to cling to her face and she got the chills when the circulating air brushed against her skin.
Toru ignored any discomfort to focus on the mission—that is, making sure Katsuki didn't get overwhelmed while he dispatched the brunt of the enemy forces. Punches and kicks from stealth were nice and all, but he could clear two or three enemies with a single attack and his quirk seemed no less strong in the downpour. She spotted her next target pulling a knife and charging at Katsuki's back. Toru stuck her foot out and yanked the blade from the criminal's hands while he face-planted into the street. She tossed the weapon into an alley with the others she'd acquired and repeated the process with the next villain she came across.
"Argh, dammit!" She turned her head in concern when Katsuki growled, voice tight with pain. He used a hand for each of the opponents he was fighting, both in front of him and one wielding a bat, and blasted them violently across the street. He spat a wad of blood to the ground and snarled at the other villains around, who took a step back at the furious look on the student's face. "I'm done with you shits."
Katsuki brought both his hands up, open palms facing each other; they started to throw sparks in rapid succession. Toru turned away, knowing from experience whatever her classmate was doing would be extremely bright.
"Stun Grenade!"
The space between his hands fizzled and popped, quickly growing in size and intensity. The villains had no time to react as the street was filled with a blinding light from the rapid confined explosions Katsuki had set off in his palms. Like the effects of the explosive for which the attack was named, stars filled their vision and a high-pitched ring claimed Toru's ears. Barely audible over the tone was Katsuki's voice as he called out another attack, though she couldn't make out the name.
She turned back in time to catch the payload from Katsuki's grenade gauntlet impact directly in the center of the stunned crowd of villains, who'd been effectively corralled into one large mass for fear of being picked off by Toru's ambush tactics. The explosion scattered them like shattered glass; villains were launched in every direction. Most simply lay where they landed unconscious, but a few remained awake and groaned uncomfortably, no doubt too injured to stand.
Toru shook her head, willing her hearing to come back faster even though the ringing had already started to fade. She wandered her way over to Katsuki; concern welled in her chest when she noticed him groaning and rubbing his eyes.
"Are you okay, Bakugo-kun?"
"I'm fine." He grumbled petulantly, "Still working out the kinks with that move." Katsuki's hands dropped away from his face, showing that his pupils were significantly smaller than normal to the point of nearly disappearing entirely. He blinked blearily, seeming not to see anything for a few moments. His eyes slowly focused in on Toru. "My eyes aren't used to—Fuck!"
Katsuki suddenly slapped a hand over both of his eyes and looked skyward; a red tint bloomed over his cheeks. Toru jumped back, startled.
"W-What is it, Bakugo-kun?" Was he hurt after all?
"Y-You…" he looked down at her once more, cracking a finger to let just a sliver of sight through. As soon as he'd done so, however, he snapped his fingers shut once more and groaned, his cheeks growing even redder. "Fuck!"
"Me?" Toru didn't understand. What about her? She hadn't been injured, and it wasn't like Katsuki hadn't seen the empty air that was her hero costume before. She looked down and saw the problem. "Ehhh!? B-B-Bakugo-kun! Please don't look at me!"
"I'm not, dammit!"
The disadvantage she'd taken for granted in combat wasn't so easy to ignore now that they'd dispatched their opponents. The water that clung to Toru's skin left a perfect outline of her body on display, which she supposed was what clothes did anyway, but knowing she was nude at the moment changed the way she saw it. It must have been the same for Katsuki.
"I can-"
"I know! I've never fought in the rain before, I didn't know it'd completely outline me like this!"
Katsuki furrowed his brow, but Toru wasn't paying attention. Instead, she scrambled for her gloves and sneakers, hoping any clothing would make her feel just a bit better.
"Oh, what am I gonna do? I can't go outside like this! People are going to stare! I hate it when they stare!"
"Invisalign!"
Toru turned around just in time to catch the object Katsuki threw at her with her face. She scrambled to catch it out of instinct, a fresh scolding on the tip of her tongue.
"Bakugo-kun, what the heck was-?" She stopped, finally realizing what she held in her hands: a carbon copy of the top Katsuki wore as part of his costume, red 'X' and all.
"Put it on." Katsuki commanded, still covering his eyes, "I keep a spare on me for emergencies."
"I… okay. Thanks." She wondered which pocket in Katsuki's outfit was big enough to contain an extra shirt, but she certainly wasn't going to complain about it; having only a top on would be small comfort, but she'd take what she could get. She pulled the garment on, looked down, and thanked her lucky stars for once that she was so short. It was practically a dress on her. "Y-You can look now."
Toru fidgeted a bit when Katsuki's gaze finally made its way back to her. Something about the way that he looked directly into her eyes was unnerving; she wasn't used to people being able to tell exactly where her face was. His cheeks were still dusted pink but nowhere near as bad as before and his usual scowl was back, somehow made more intimidating by his split lip and the bruise that was slowly blooming on his cheek. He cocked his head curiously, narrowing his eyes.
"B-Bakugo-kun?" She continued to squirm. He knew she didn't like it when people stared, so why did he insist on looking at her like that? After a few moments, he blinked rapidly again and rubbed at his eyes. That strange look went away, replaced by the standard-issue Katsuki Bakugo glare.
"If you're not hurt, let's get moving." He grumbled suddenly, turning on his heels to stalk his way toward the exit, "Those extras are probably getting their asses kicked; better go save them."
Thanks for reading part one of three of the USJ arc in spite of my ineptitude at writing these chapters in a timely manner!
We got some fight scenes, some flirting, and some set up for even more fighting to come next chapter, so I left it here in spite of waffling about for a bit wondering if I should add a fourth scene to keep track of what Aizawa is doing during all of this. I ended up deciding that it didn't fit the general feel of the chapter (the students taking on their first combat encounters) and so we'll catch up with ol' grumpy gills next time in a longer chapter to make up for this one only being 4800 words.
Speaking of fighting, I hope I kept up adequately. None of these fights mean anything, really, except for Manami's, so the cannon-fodder villains didn't get to be named or do much of anything but get beat by the better-trained students. They're a means to an end until I can maneuver the students into their important encounters. As always, I welcome feedback on combat as I feel it's my weakest point by far.
If you haven't realized by now, Katsuki and Toru are eventually going to become a thing. For the time being, I'm enjoying writing them growing closer in a much slower approach than I handled Manami and Izuku as an experiment in slow burn. You can probably guess where their arc is headed based on this chapter, though I've been dropping hints since their first interaction.
Next time on Bloodstained Hero: Aizawa vs Villains and Nomu, Manami vs ?, potentially more StealthBomber(TM) flirting, and a new challenger appears! ft Izuku.
Also: Special thanks this time to Dracopest who actually went back and reviewed every single chapter on their way in. Your comments warmed my heart! (It's totally Poppy's hammer btw, but Amy Rose works too!)
Please take the time to review if you have feedback or simply enjoyed the chapter! I read every one and they give me so much happiness and motivation. You all have been unbelievably kind to me so far and I'm always doing my best to improve and make this the best story it can be!
