The wind rushed around Uraraka's body with such strength that she was unable to hear anything except its sound. Her vision blurred momentarily due to the acceleration but cleared quickly enough. Her sight was focused on the target.
Still, she didn't miss when many of the other villains started throwing a variety of projectiles at her. They were getting in the way, and that was unacceptable. Uraraka raised her right hand in the air, fingers bent into the shape of a claw.
She swept it down at the last moment, her hand dragging the wind with it, breaking through each and every one of the projectiles. Yet that had also slowed Uraraka down, so her momentum wasn't enough to reach Shigaraki.
Her flight was almost at its end, and a bunch of villains was waiting next to her landing point, waiting to attack. Somehow that made Uraraka even angrier, there were so many things trying to keep her from reaching Shigaraki.
Uraraka pulled back her left arm and clenched her hand into a fist. She punched as she was reaching the ground, and for a moment, Uraraka felt her fist grow hot before it impacted.
It was like a falling meteor hitting the ground. The very earth seemed to disappear into nothingness faced with that overwhelming power, creating a crater that expanded like an explosion. All of the closest villains were pelted with bullets of rock and shoved away by the rush of wind.
Uraraka raised her head. Now her path to Shigaraki was unobstructed, she pushed off the ground and launched herself at him, pulling back her right arm and sending it forward with a full-power punch.
Her sight was completely focused on her target, and she was about to hit him when something got in the way.
It was a very large villain, but Uraraka didn't expect him to be able to actually block her, so she simply resolved herself to hitting him along with Shigaraki, who was so close.
So it came as a huge shock when her fist hit the enemy's flesh and stopped without any impact.
"You have a pretty strong quirk." Shigaraki spoke in a conversational tone "This should be a good opportunity to test how the Noumu does in combat. Also some warmup before All-Might gets here."
The mention of the word "test", plus the plain tone of voice of her enemy accomplished something Uraraka had not realized was even possible, it made her even angrier. Pulling back her left hand, she extended her fingers and put them together in mimicry of an arrow point.
Then she thrust that hand at the opponent's neck, willing it to pierce.
Yet once again, her attack did nothing. It was as if she had hit a soft mattress, all power completely absorbed. And before Uraraka could process that, the "Noumu" raised a fist and brought it down on her.
She punched the fist, unwilling to block or retreat, and felt that her power hadn't been negated that time, but there was no time to think about it, as the Noumu punched forward, forcing her on the defensive once again.
Except it was different. Lacking a solid footing, Uraraka was knocked off her feet by the punch, which the opponent followed up by taking a step forward and trying to stomp her.
Panicking, Uraraka did the only thing she could in that situation: She elbowed the ground, thus creating a shock wave and breaking apart the earth, causing the Noumu to lose his footing.
She got back up as quickly as she could, but the Noumu had already managed to recover and punched out at her again. For a moment, Uraraka thought about blocking it again, but since it wasn't working, she ended up doing something completely unexpected.
She launched herself forward at full strength with both feet, managing to pass just under the punch. Usually such an uncontrolled dash would be a bad idea, but the Noumu's shock absorption powers worked against it, catching the young girl in the middle of his chest and completely negating the impact.
And at the next moment, Uraraka used that chance to unleash another piercing blow, but this time she aimed straight at the opponent's right eye.
Only for her attack to stop harmlessly like all the other times.
Uraraka's heart froze, but she didn't have any time to react as the Noumu smashed another punch at her, far too fast. All the girl could do was raise her left arm and put what power she could into it to shield herself.
It was far from enough. With no time to muster significant strength, nor any kind of footing to brace herself against, the impact of the punch affected Uraraka far more than the previous attacks.
The hit sent her flying, she bounced on the ground with a painful impact and her world turned into a whirlwind of colors as she rolled for five painful seconds before stopping.
Then the pain in her arm hit and Uraraka couldn't help but bring her other hand to it almost unconsciously. And after a moment she realized that her arm wasn't broken, but it was painful to move it.
"Ochako! Stand and Bow!" A voice suddenly shouted at her.
Due to years of conditioning from classrooms, Uraraka immediately leapt up and bowed without even thinking about it.
Then she realized what had happened and turned her head in surprise to look for the person who had shouted.
It was professor Aizawa. He had managed to break into the encirclement of villains somehow and was already quite close to reaching her.
"Teacher?" Uraraka was even more surprised by his appearance.
However, since it was clear that he was trying to reach her, Uraraka momentarily forgot about the whole situation and took a step towards him. Then she noticed a bunch of villains were rushing her from the other side. She didn't know what the Noumu was doing, but he wasn't there to block her attacks, so there was nothing stopping her from dealing with them.
With an open right hand, she swung as if slapping the air, channeling the power of One for All and creating a shock wave that sent the villains flying away before they could get within ten steps of her.
Then her arm felt as if it had suddenly caught on fire.
"Ghh... Wha?" Uraraka didn't understand what happened. Her own power had harmed her, even though she had just been using it without consequences just before.
And at that point Uraraka finally realized. She had been using her power freely. Somehow or another, Uraraka had managed to channel One for All to a high extent without hurting herself, and she had no idea why.
But perhaps even more pressing than that, was the fact that she understood that in her anger, she had done something very stupid, and now Aizawa was risking his life to save her.
However, the situation was far too dangerous for her to be able to freak out, and thankfully the adrenaline still running through her system helped her shove the nascent nervous breakdown to the back of her head.
Uraraka tried to move her right arm and discovered that it was just like when she punched during the training exercise: Her arm still worked, but another attack like that would disable it.
Soon after, professor Aizawa managed to get through the last few villains and arrived before her.
"Teacher-" She started to say.
"We can talk about it later. For now, we have bigger things to worry about." He said, indicating the many villains around them "First, how were you able to use your power without hurting yourself?" He asked.
"I don't know, and it just stopped working." Uraraka said, frowning.
"Understood." Aizawa said "About the other students, I told them to spread out into teams around the center to force the enemy to split their forces. Also Ashido managed to escape to be able to call reinforcements, so we just need to endure until then."
"Teacher. They have a guy called Noumu who is very strong, fast, and could somehow nullify my attacks. From what they said, he is meant to fight against All-Might." Uraraka told him.
"I saw you fighting him, and I tried but his powers seem to be mutation type, so I cant' erase them. So, they want to fight All-Might..." Aizawa looked thoughtful for a moment "Did you notice any weaknesses?" He asked while looking around to erase the power of a villain that was about to attack from a distance.
"The only thing I did that even inconvenienced him was attacking the ground." Uraraka said "But... When our fists met, he didn't absorb the impact, just when I attacked his body."
"Makes sense, he wouldn't want to absorb his own impacts." He shook his head "Anyway, we don't need to beat him. We need to wait for the reinforcements. Don't lose your focus, this is not going to be easy."
"Understood." Uraraka replied.
She was nervous when she heard he say that it wasn't going to be easy, but she would do her best, regardless of what happened. And she hoped her classmates would be alright.