I have decided to not hold myself to deadlines; they screw me up so bad.
Jesse had kissed her lover before he went off with All Might to be a hero. In her hands was her wave-patterned Jian, Mo Ye. Anima found and gave her the blade for their twenty-first anniversary while he kept Gan Jian, the other blade in the set, for himself. The familiar wooden grip calmed her as she confidently walked out to assist the heroes and her students. Kicking off the ground, the she-wolf launched herself at a nomu going after Froppy.
"Kero!" the frog girl croaked in shock. "Jesse-san…"
"Like hell I'm going to let my kids fight while doing nothing. Besides, My orders of engagement haven't been revoked yet." she grinned.
"Then go help Invisible Girl! We're good right now!" Grape Juice shouted while chucking his balls at every nomu that got in range. Jesse nodded before running off in a beautiful and bloody dance of claw and steel.
Death.
That was the first image that came to Deku's mind as he saw the man with the metal apparatus, All for One his instincts told him, decimate the surrounding city blocks with sheer brute strength. But even that wasn't the scariest thing.
The mage that was with him was.
Even as he wore a black tie and vest over a charcoal shirt and a well-made coat, the tainted magic was palatable for the teen even with his subpar mystic awareness. Black veins covered his sickly pale skin and his eyes were sunken like a corpse.
If All for One felt like death, the mage felt like Pestilence.
Luckily, support came in the form of his two teachers. Fiara landed first before going after the closest one, the magic user. The mage blocked the strike with the surrounding earth… and then braced? Deku filed the fact away for later.
"Y-y-you s-sure got, got here f-fast, Ba-Battle Wolf."
"That magic... you should have died, Iskander." Deku heard the familiarity in his teacher's voice. Where did they meet?
"I d-don't-t want, want to here th-that f-from you. You and y-your p-prize were b-b-born with what, what humans c-c-could only DREAM OF!" the named Iskander shouted before the earth rippled. Stone, dirt and gravel formed spears that lashed out at the werewolf. Fiara jumped on the lowest ones before striking at his opponent again. Twice the earth blocked before Iskander responded. Then Fiara did something Deku hadn't seen him do in combat.
He drew his sword.
It was a large Miao Dao with a bone handle and steel fittings. On the blades right flat was a vine with six leaves while the left flat had a phrase which was the sword's very name.
Memento Lapsis; Remember the Fallen.
Deku pulled his gaze away to examine All Might and All for One's fight and saw the other two titans giving and throwing some of the strongest hits he'd seen to this day. All for One was throwing hail marys and using insanely powerful quirks left and right to keep All Might on him and away from Tomura. All Might, however, hadn't been friends with a martial artist for over a year with nothing to show for it. Using a low stance, the symbol of peace was deflecting heavy blow after heavy blow while countering with fast and controlled punches. Izuku kept cataloging every piece of information he could behind one of the only pieces of cover in the area while waiting for an opening of any variety. Moving now would make him a target, and with the large clearing around him, everyone would notice. For now, he'd keep in touch with Ingenerate and help him and his classmates rescue and keep the civilians out of the crossfire.
Fiara dodged another batch of earth pillars before running behind Iskander. That thought still troubled him. Iskander Archibald was a student of Alexander Grey, another Outlier. The feeling of wrongness in his aura told Fiara just how far he went for his so-called "perfect immortality". The Iskander he remembered was of Indian descent, not British like his facial structure is now. With how damaged his soul felt, Fiara could safely bet he relocated his soul into another host, but he put his worries away. This was a fight, and who his opponent was is irrelevant.
Memento Lapsis screamed at his friend's student once again and was blocked by the barrier of earth once more. His blade glowed red hot from the friction of biting into stone. He really liked how well martin repaired it. His trusted sword, ever since the metallurgist reforged the broken shards with Hephaestus all those years ago, never again needed to even be honed. Without being made from the best materials by the best blacksmiths, the glowing hot blade would have snapped long before now. More earth was thrown at him, and again he twisted out of the way of the spires he could while deflecting what he couldn't. He didn't avoid them all perfectly though, and the werewolf's upper thigh muscle was ripped from his body.
Fiara gained distance while holding his guard up, letting his body repair the damage in under three seconds. Iskander then decided to pull a fucking revolver and pointed it at Fiara.
"You and I both know that won't work." he stated.
"On you." the mage said matter of factly before pointing the gun at a random civilian in the way. Fiara rushed over to protect the kid and saw the warm glint of metal in the cylinder.
'Fucker brought silver rounds' Fiara took the first bullet to the left shoulder, breaking through skin and muscle with ease and burning all the way and stopping at the bone. Gritting his fangs, the werewolf ignored the disproportionate pain silver had on him.
Iskander's defense was next to impossible to get through. His blade would sink into the rock before the mage could even register his attacks. Moving half the speed of sound meant nothing if it was blocked. There had to be a way around it, he just didn't know it yet.
All Might was scared beyond belief. He felt the embers of One for All fading rapidly, and he couldn't hold his muscled form any longer. With a hissing of steam, the symbol of peace returned to his haggard self. He deflected another strike, but with his lesser body mass, he was sent flying. Trying to regain his bearings, he saw backup in the form of Gran Torino. All for One Managed to grab the elderly hero before forcefully activating his jet quirk. Dodging his backup, while thankful for the moment to catch his breath, All Might decided to go for broke. Planting himself firmly on the ground, All Might used his strongest move. Stamping down to generate extra force like Anima showed him, All Might called his last gambit.
"UNITED STATES OF SMASH!" the impact ripped the crater apart once again, probably catching Fiara and Iskander in the blast radius. Puking up blood and falling to his knees, All Might breathed a sigh of relief.
*step, step, step*
'No!' All Might looked up to see All for One walking towards him heavily battered, missing his headpiece.
"You did good, but it seems the embers have left you for good now. Goodbye." it was so sickeningly polite, All Might couldn't help himself but glare.
Deku saw what happened, and time slowed down. First, All Might's final attack was massive and created a dust cloud twenty meters in diameter. Second, a random piece of rubble had actually struck Iskander in the arm with enough force to bruise if not outright break it. Third, All Might was down, and Fiara needed to deal with his opponent fast. Deku saw his opportunity and jumped on it. Picking up a rock, the green-haired hero threw it at the mage as fast as he could, activating the man's defense and catching him by surprise.
"Fiara-sensei! His defense is based on intent!" Deku shouted before doing something he was sure to piss both of his teachers off; he charged All for One. Using One for All 20% and reinforcing himself with chi as much as he could even at the cost of self-harm, the only thing running through Deku's mind was keeping his hero alive, even for a moment using 100% of One for All's power at the moment of impact.
'I don't care what I have to give, I'm not losing him!' with that thought, Deku didn't notice the green flame covering his left arm, or the dark wisps that accompanied it.
"Get the hell away from him!"
Hearing his disciple's words, Fiara couldn't help but grin at the child's ability to analyze. The werewolf lined himself up with the mage and shut the world out.
'When thoust knowledge exceeds thy sensing, one will no longer be deceived by the illusion of thy senses.' the internal phrase was a form of self-hypnotism he used. Shutting out every sound, every sight, every feeling, every smell, and every emotion, Anima went through the kata he made and tried to perfect through the centuries. A cut from mid-torso to left hip, and a mirror of a strike to the right followed by a cut straight down in a single moment. He could never capture the three stroke kata on camera, nor could many people understand what he did, but with near perfect movement with the blade he had before he was a hero, Anima seemed to move in three places at once with naught but pure skill and finesse. When his senses returned, Fiara saw that Iskender had avoided the strike from left to right, sporting the two cuts from right to left and straight down. Even through the mages grimace of pain, the awe in his eyes at the strike was unmistakable, as was his laughter.
"Hahahaha! L-l-looks lik-ke i-it's my, my loss. I sh-shall ret-t-treat for now." Iskander fell backward into his shadow and teleported away to lick his wounds. Fiara turned to check on the other fight in the area and promptly froze at the sight of the green and black fire in izuku's off hand.
"Nonono DEKU, STOP!" his warning was too late however as Izuku did something monumental reckless. Fiara knew the technique, as he used it before, but on someone purely human like his student, it would cause insane amounts of self-damage.
"Get the hell away from him!" Deku shouted before unleashing hell on the multi-quirk monster. Even All Might's united states of smash paled in comparison to the hero in green's punch. What would normally have been an impact on the scale of a half-ton of TNT, like his mentor could unleash, was charged with the power of sacrificing his arm into a force with the kinetic equivalent of a Tomahawk air missile. Thankfully, Deku aimed the blast at what Fiara, Iskander, All Might, and All for One had already destroyed, so no civilians were put in harm's way.
"fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK! Deku, DEKU!" Fiara charged where he last saw his student.
Deku was glad that he got to All Might in time. He felt drained, even though he was only in action for a maximum of twenty seconds.
'Chi manipulations can do that to you' he reminded himself. Over the ringing in his ears from the blast, his blast, Deku heard Fiara coming towards him while calling his name.
"I'm here, sensei." his voice sounded so distant like he was across the room from himself. Fiara appeared from the dust in the air back in his human form.
"I'm going to get on your case later, but how are you? Your arm in particular." it was an odd question to the teen, but he guessed that it was borne of worry.
"I'm fine, I don't even feel it." something was off about his words, but with the setting exhaustion, he couldn't grasp why.
"Shit." Fiara apparently did and was beating himself up over it. "Let's get you to a hospital then. Don't know what they can do, but it's worth a shot. Until then, get some rest, you've more than earned it." Deku nodded absently before succumbing to the pull of Morpheus with the helicopter overhead.
Fuck yeah! That was an epic showdown! Now before you ask, yes, Archibald is a mix of ideas I got from the fate series to make my own. Deku saves the day, and this will change things in the background. I'll probably do a wrap up of this arc in the next chapter before starting my own arc (and I am doing that). I feel like I could have done better from All Might's side, but for now, it's like that. Give me a review if you want and I'd be happy to read it, praise or criticism. Till next time!