Hi everybody! Here with this month's update on Empyrean Rising! Yes, these are going to be monthly. I'm trying to ration out what prewritten chapters I have so that I have time to finish the newer ones on time (hopefully). I figure a monthly but relatively steady supply is better than me dropping off the face of the earth every few months or more right? Right. Onward!
Review Response: Dear AyameKitsune, hello! Glad you enjoyed! I hope this next chapter is just as exciting!
Dear Dragon Lord Draco, hi! I'd reply to this ... but I'm pretty sure I already covered (probably to the point of death and zombificaction) that question in your PM...? I hope you like the update though!
Dear greenwatch 7, greetings! Thank you!
Dear Jaakusan, hey there! (offers marshmallows) cool, welcome to the campsite, just ignore the Plot Bunny infestation over there. Unless it has wings, then hide, because they also breathe fire. Also, beware of coffee-stealing Ninjas. Enjoy the update!
Dear wolfsrainrules, hello! You have no idea how pleased I am that you like this. Hopefully this lives up to expectations (because I have so many head canons about this now, SO MANY AND THEY ARE ALL YOUR FAULT YOU WONDERFUL PERSON).
Dear Frolicks for Fun, hi there! Cool! I love it when someone likes more than one of my stories. Well, in this story there will be curses because Bakugo, but I try to censor them, so I hope its still enjoyable. Really? Huh, I wasn't able to find any of those ... ah well, glad mine is still an interesting take on the idea.
Author's Note: So, as stated above, this will be getting monthly updates. I forgot to put that in the author's note of the last chapter I think, but that's the schedule I've decided for this thing. For those who came here from my other stories - the next chapter of AUW is in progress. The next chapter of AMOSC is ... two-thirds done, I think? Something like that. The next chapter of Ballad is also in progress. No ETA on when any of those will be done and ready to post, but I am still working on them. Also, if any of you are AMOSC readers, I have a poll up in my profile that I would be very grateful to get some more votes on. You can choose up to three options and the poll's description will tell you what you're voting for. With all that out of the way, onward! To the chapter!
Sun
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The entrance exam into U.A. was a nightmare. People shouted and screamed and there were villain machines everywhere. Izuku felt like his senses were being pulled in a thousand different directions at once and the only thing keeping him from snapping and unleashing Epic Violet Violence —Kacchan's name for it, not his— was the Harmony effect of the amber side of his fire quirk.
It really, really didn't help that he had gotten separated from Kacchan because now he had to deal with the feelings of frustration-anger-worry-not-right-not-right-kill-kill-kill- Kacchan was throwing his way on top of Izuku's own separation anxiety and the chaos going on around him. Everyone in their neighborhood had learned early on after Izuku's quirk had manifested that separating Kacchan and Izuku for long periods of time was a Bad Idea. Kacchan's temper would go from snarly to murderous and Izuku would go from shy but friendly to an absolute bipolar mess within hours, minutes if something stressful happened to either one of them.
Add on top of that an unknown amount of distance, no way to regroup until after the fighting was over, and the rampant chaos of the test battlefield? Izuku would be genuinely surprised if none of the other testers in Kacchan's arena ended up hospitalized just for breathing in Kacchan's general direction.
Izuku whirled around another robot, orange fire dancing along his palms and his eyes shining purple as he slammed one fist into its metal side. The robot exploded spectacularly, the propagation factor of his amethyst fire enhancing the strength of his punch enough to easily puncture through its armor while his amber fire lit the fuel and other fluids it used to function. He rocked back on his heels, dodging the shrapnel with the ease that came from training against Kacchan's explosions for ten years. That makes twenty-five points.
His lungs burned in his chest as he turned away from the wreckage of the robot and took off down a random side street in search of more. In the back of Izuku's mind, Kacchan's thrill over being able to really let loose pulsed like a second heartbeat and his rage at being separated threatened to spill into Izuku's veins like a second source of adrenaline.
Izuku kept a tight rein on the bond, it wouldn't do to let Kacchan's emotions overrun his own and make him lose his head. Kacchan might have been an instinctive fighter, but Izuku preferred to strategize and be able to think rather than just trust his gut for everything.
Two more robots rumbled into view and Izuku focused, fire dancing up his wrists until it singed the sleeves of his jacket. The first of the robots fell to two swift punches, while the second was taken out by another tester before Izuku could get to it. Twenty-seven. Izuku nodded to himself, he was racking up a decent amount of points, had yet to melt into a puddle of nerves and fear, and had yet to receive any injury more serious than bruises and scratches. All things considered, everything was going well.
Then suddenly it wasn't.
The ground beneath his feet began to shake and groan. Up ahead, people started shouting and Izuku suddenly remembered that there was a zero-point obstacle robot hidden in each arena. Izuku pounded forward, coming out of the alley onto the main street where most of the other testers were crowded, and looked up. Horror, disbelief, and the realization that the test proctors were insane rippled through him, because surely a several story robot that couldn't even fit in the street was major overkill.
From the feelings he was getting from Kacchan, Izuku could only assume that all of the other arenas had just had their "obstacle" unleashed. People screamed and terror overcame adrenaline-induced confidence as everyone began to run away. Izuku half-turned to follow them —there was no point in fighting something that dangerous for no points— when his instincts screeched and dragged his attention back over his shoulder in the direction of the robot.
There was a girl trapped under the rubble that had come down when the robot first appeared.
He didn't know her. He had seen her in passing on his way with Kacchan to the lecture hall, but he didn't know her. He didn't know her name, didn't have any association with her. They were complete strangers. A part of him said to keep running because he didn't know her and it wasn't his problem and surely the proctors wouldn't actually let anyone die in these tests right? The robot would stop before it crushed her, or turn aside, or-
Tearful, terrified, helpless eyes looked up and locked with his and suddenly all Izuku could think about was that he knew that terror, he had seen those eyes before, where had he seen those eyes before-?
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Rage turned to terror as the third man held out his pointer finger, the barrel inside it extending with a click so that it was pressed against Kacchan's forehead while the second man kept his hands pinned to the ground and Izuku realized that Kacchan was going to die.
Kacchan was going to die.
Izuku didn't want Kacchan to die.
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The man snorted and raised his hand again. Izuku, his head lolling back from the pain, opened tear-filled eyes and locked gazes with the horror-stricken Kacchan.
Red eyes locked with amber-tinged green, the world slowed for a moment once again, the knives came down for the kill…
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Izuku ran.
Pavement crumbled under the force of his steps as he hurtled forward. Everything narrowed down to the roar in his ears, the girl in the rubble, the robot looming closer-closer-closer-. Too close, too close, won't make it in time, it's already starting to drive over the rubble, need to move, need to make it stop-! Orange fire tinted purple and green eyes shifted to a mix of amber and amethyst as he lunged.
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"What in the name of-?" the surprised exclamation drew Yagi Toshinori's attention away from one of the other arena cameras and to Arena A. For a moment, he didn't understand what he was seeing. The zero-point obstacle had ground to an awkward halt, left tread still rumbling forward for a few more feet before it stopped for risk of overbalancing. Did someone take out the right tread? How did-? The dust of the rubble began to swirl clear now that the machine had stopped and Toshinori felt himself stand up in shock. He wasn't the only one. All eyes snapped away from the other arena cameras and disbelieving exclamations filled the air as everyone stared at the lone figure holding back the robot's enormous right tread.
Orange and purple … were those flames? swirled and flared around the figure, burning away his jacket and most of his shirt as he struggled to hold back the tread of the robot. Why is he-? Toshinori focused on a spot just below the youth and spotted the girl struggling to extricate herself from the rubble. A smile began to tug on his lips, a rescue. His smile dropped in favor of a slacked jaw as, with a flare of purple, the boy suddenly pushed up and forward, toppling the massive robot back and to the left into some of the buildings.
He knew it had been a long time since anyone tackled the obstacle robot head-on, more since anyone destroyed it with one hit, but he had never, ever heard of someone knocking it over from ground level.
What happened next, was arguably even more impressive.
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Izuku screamed as he released Violet Violence and threw the tread back, away from the girl, mine-mine-mine-don't-touch-what's-mine- The machine tipped over with a shriek of metal and a crash as it collided with the buildings on the left. Izuku cratered the rubble beneath him as he jumped, surging onto the robot's side and running up its length toward the head as it struggled to right itself. One huge metallic hand swept by as it flailed and the glancing blow threw him into the air. Izuku heard rather than felt several of his ribs break, but ignored it completely as he twisted in the air with spurts of flame.
He hadn't mastered using his flames to truly fly quite yet without compromising his ability to fight in mid-air, but he could steer for short periods of time without a problem. Orange jets burst from his hands, propelling him even higher and still forward until he was suspended just above the robot's head. Izuku let himself fall, gravity pulling him faster and faster to the slowly rising metal head as he channeled as much amethyst fire as he could into one foot while flinging out one hand and igniting a single jet of fire from it.
He fell in a twisting torrent of flame, momentum and power combining into a devastating force as his fire-enhanced foot rammed into the robot's head. The head exploded instantly, setting off a chain reaction through the rest of its body so that the entire thing went up in flames even as the sheer force of his kick sent the remains flying in every direction.
A hail of hot shrapnel ripped through his clothing and skin and something hard bounced off of his head, dazing him. Izuku gave a cry as he found himself falling and amber spurted unsteadily out of his hands as he tried to change his fall into a more controlled descent despite the whirling in his mind from the earlier impact. He only partially succeeded, crashing to the ruined pavement in a painful heap of limbs and shrapnel.
The ringing in his ears tapered off enough that he could hear his own frantic heartbeat and the distant buzzer that signaled the end of the practical test. In the back of his head, Kacchan was going ballistic, worry-anger-stupid-Deku-stupid-Deku flooding the bond. Izuku coughed, tasted copper, and mentally repeated Kacchan's favorite curses.
Just as he was struggling with what to do and why his head felt swimmy, the smoky sky above was cut off from his view by a tearful face, "Don't die, don't die, you can't just save me and then die!" The tears dropped onto his ruined shirt while shaky hands frantically patted and poked his body. Izuku felt his amber fire reach out to the girl and he tried to reassure her that he was fine, or at least, he hoped he would be, but no words came out.
The girl gave a chocked off sob as her fingers brushed against something other than his midriff and Izuku realized with an oddly blasé feeling that there was a sizable piece of metal sticking out of his torso. Oh. That … that could be a problem. Grey crept along the edges of his vision, Kacchan had reached the point of straight-up panicking instead of his usual tsundere worry-rage, and someone was shouting for everyone to get out of her way right now.
Izuku closed his eyes for a second. He knew better than to give in to the urge to pass out, but that didn't stop him from feeling abruptly exhausted from the adrenaline dump and blood loss. The girl from the rubble took it the wrong way and shouted, "No! No, wake up! Wake up!" Something sparked where her hands were pressed against his side, there was a flare of warmth-stubborn-heal-stay, and he felt something settle into his amber fire with a click he'd only felt once before just over ten years ago.
Izuku's eyes snapped back open with a gasp. His gaze locked with shocked, gleaming yellow eyes and in an instant he knew that whatever had happened between him and Kacchan had just happened between him and the girl. It felt the same as when he had bonded with Kacchan, but also completely different.
Kacchan had been a protective storm that roared and snarled but would only ever fight for Izuku, never against him, someone that would shield Izuku in the eye of his fury. This girl felt like sunshine and open fields and cheerful smiles that would cheer him up when he was sad. It felt like gentle hands bandaging his hurts without judgement. Somewhere to which he could retreat when he needed to heal, someone who would protect him from harm if she could and heal what hurts she could not prevent.
Something inside him warmed, felt more complete, better, stronger, and Izuku opened his mouth to say … something. Anything.
But then an old lady shoved the girl aside and Izuku's world dissolved into a blur of shouting, pain, stretchers, and an ambulance.
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Uraraka Ochako had grown up with fairy tales. Stories of might and magic, heroes and villains. Adventures that ranged from whimsical fantasy to the real yet still unbelievable stories of heroes like All Might.
But her favorite stories, the ones she had begged to hear again and again, had been the ones her Obā-san had told her of the First Quirks.
Ever since Ochako could remember, her Obā-san would sit Ochako on her lap and tell her about how long, long ago, there was a time when there were only seven quirks in the whole world. There were more than seven people who had them, but there were only ever seven quirks.
The quirks looked like multi-colored fire, but did things no normal fire quirk could do. They could only be manifested in times of unbelievable peril and were meant to work in harmony, with the six balancing each other out in some way and the seventh serving as their center, their heart, their home. For this reason, the quirks were all named after the weather, with the central, most important quirk being called The Sky.
Obā-san had told her about how back then, most of the people in the world were Quirkless. Because of that, anyone who had possessed one of the seven First Quirks hid in the Underworld and kept their powers a secret while searching for others to balance out their quirk. While searching for their Sky. Obā-san told her of how, as years turned to centuries, other people began manifesting quirks that were not the original seven. Some being born with the new quirks, or awakening them at random when they were children.
So, as the world grew more and more accustomed to the kinds of quirks Ochako or her parents had, the Will and the passion needed to manifest one of the First Quirks faded. People stopped trying to manifest them, stopped searching for their Set and their Sky. Eventually, the secret of the First Quirks was forgotten entirely and the First Quirks were forever lost beneath the swell of modern quirks and a society of heroes and villains.
But, her Obā-san had whispered to her, someday a Sky would rise once again. A Last Sky who, together with his Set, would save the entire world from a darkness even the heroes would be unable to stop.
Ochako had loved those stories, had dreamed of someday unlocking one of the First Quirks and finding the Last Sky. Of how they would Harmonize and they would save the world together alongside the other five First Quirks. But then the realization of how hard her parents struggled to make ends meet forced her to mature and she pushed those dreams aside in favor of becoming a hero with her real quirk. When her Obā-san passed away in her sleep one night, Ochako had stopped believing in the stories entirely. She had forgotten about the First Quirks.
Until she had gotten trapped under some rubble during her entrance exam to U.A. and had felt death loom over her in the form of a giant robot about to heedlessly run her over. She had been terrified. She had cried, she had pleaded to live, to survive because she had to live, she had to, for her parents, for herself, and she-
She didn't want to die.
Please, please, I want to live!
Her teeth were rattling in her skull at that point from how close the robot was, its shadow swallowing her whole and she squeezed her eyes shut because this was it and she didn't want to see how it ended-
Then there was a wave. A wash of warmth-safe-protect-don't-touch-what's-mine that sank into her skin, soaked into her lungs, and wrapped protectively around her very core. Metal screeched overhead and the air turned hot in response.
And death did not come.
Death had been denied.
Ochako opened her eyes then, twisted around as best she could and saw. Amber and amethyst twisted in the air, creating winds that stirred dark green hair and burned away his already tattered jacket as he held back death with nothing but his bare hands and his will.
"It wasn't just any will," Her Obā-san whispered in her memories, "It was Dying Will. The Will to turn mountains to dust and sink islands into the sea, because there was nothing left to do but fight to survive the impossible." The boy screamed in defiance and suddenly flung the robot —so much bigger and stronger than he was— back onto its side. Amber seared against her core again and Ochako struggled, kicked and clawed at the rubble that trapped her while her rescuer surged up the side of the robot and obliterated it with a flaming kick to the head.
She finished wiggling free of the rubble and watched, gasping, awed, enchanted at the firestorm high above her head that finished the fight. Awe turned to horror as her rescuer fell to earth in a flurry of barely controlled fire bursts, landing right on top of a piece of one of the smaller robots that everyone had been destroying earlier. No! Ochako scrambled to him, crying and demanding and pleading as she ghosted her hands over his body, over the gashes and scratches and the giant piece of metal protruding from his torso. She felt sick, sick in a way far worse than when she overused her quirk because she did this. This was all her fault. If she hadn't been too slow and gotten trapped under that rubble then he would be okay, he wouldn't be bleeding out and her hands wouldn't be coated in his blood and why was he closing his eyes?
"No! No, wake up! Wake up!" Something burned inside her, desperation and adrenaline coalescing into the Will to save her rescuer. He had to live. He couldn't die because of her, she wouldn't let him, she-wouldn't-let-him-die- something snapped inside her and for a moment her grasping hands glowed like the sun. Yellow tugged desperately on flickering amber and in an instant there was a connection, an inaudible click as her entire world shifted.
It was like coming home to her mother's hugs and her father's laugh. It was like drifting on clouds without a worry in the world. It was like someone wrapping their arms tight around her and making everything better, everything right inside her even though she hadn't been aware that something was wrong until it had been fixed.
Amber eyes snapped open and stared at her and time seemed to slow as his mouth opened to speak. But then Ochako was roughly shoved to one side by a little old woman in a nurse's outfit, "Move aside, young lady! E.M.T.s! I need E.M.T.s over here!" Everything blurred into chaos and shouting and Ochako found herself gently but firmly pushed away from the boy as he was loaded onto a stretcher and taken away.
When her mind cleared again, Ochako was standing in the middle of the arena with blood on her hands and her heart in her throat. A tenuous bridge of warmth stretched away in the direction they had taken her savior, bringing home the reality of what had just happened.
The First Quirks were real. She held a First Quirk, she had found the Last Sky.
And he was dying because of her.
Someone took her by the shoulders and began to gently lead her out of the arena, but Ochako didn't notice. She was too busy clinging to the slender bridge of warmth in her chest and praying that legends would not come true before her eyes only to die soon after.
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Preview: Izuku blinked in confusion, "Sun? Sky? I ... I don't think I understand. I have a multicolored fire Quirk. Not ... not a Sky Quirk."
Uraraka-san stared at him in disbelief and Izuku could almost hear pieces to some puzzle falling into place in her mind, "You mean ... you don't know?"