For the second time in my life, I'm going to make a content warning. If you have problems with fire and fire related injuries, it's probably best to skip this chapter.
Shin - Apparently it was mentioned in an early concept for the detective, but never confirmed in canon, now that I read about it. Sigh. So either it was seen as too op by the author, or its Mandela Effect in... effect. Damn.
(***)
The police cruiser was rolling down the street in the Marukane Ward when suddenly someone stepped onto the street in front of it.
It was a relatively calm evening. No firefights between the Shie Hasseikai and the police today. The growing police presence in the ward seemed to have begun to seriously change the mood among the citizens, although they were still rather wary of unknown people. And now that the night was about to start, everyone has clearly retreated to their homes.
The empty streets were rather eerie. And that's before a guy in a leather coat showed up in the middle of it, fifty meters in front of the car. And then simply stood there. Watching the police car in silence.
The guy looks scarred. Hard to say details from this distance. But if what they see is correct, that guy needs a lot of plastic surgery to not scare women off with his face.
"So…" One of the police officers says.
"Looks weird enough to me." His partner replies, before switching on the radio. "Dispatch, we have eyes on some odd-looking guy. A leather coat, extensive scarring, is standing in front of our car. He isn't making any moves, but please inform the Assistant Commissioner."
They aren't buying the explanation that Aizawa gave them. There have been a lot of bets at the precinct over what it really is all about. Neither of them took part in it, though. They aren't THAT interested in knowing.
"Acknowledged." They hear from the radio. "Do not approach. Reinforcements en route."
They need reinforcements to deal with a single odd-looking man. What's going on in Japan nowadays?
"So…"
"Not leaving the car, dude." His partner replies again. "I'm not going in blind. We're waiting for the back-up to arr…"
Unfortunately, the scarred man refused to wait any longer.
(***)
The biggest hurdle of having to operate alongside police was mobility. Or, to be exact, the differences in it between some superheroes and the police officers that were set to accompany them.
Uraraka discovered that when she was called to rush to assist the police patrol that went dark right after reporting contact with some odd-looking guy. In the end, officer Kaniyashiki tells her to just go on her own, and use her own judgment until she arrives.
Singularity does just that. So she gets there first. But rather than get too close to the last known patrol position, she makes herself weightless and quickly scales the building next to it.
She can see the burning mess that used to be a police car. And a figure in a leather coat standing next to it.
Singularity takes off her rifle. Alchemist's Baby #4.
"Uhm, I can see the car." She says to 'her' police officer through an earpiece (a gift from Alchemist to the local police, it really helps with the whole police/superheroes cooperation). "It's on fire. The person they reported is standing next to it."
"Apprehend him." She hears the answer. It's short, but on point. The time has come for Uraraka Ochaco's first job as a superhero.
Don't mess that up, Ochaco. You want to be a part of it. You want to be a part of the Network. You want to be a part of… ugh, of whatever you can. No going back to that forest. Not going back to where she was before that. Enough is enough.
The gun she has looks distinctly cyberpunkish. It even fits her colour scheme (Alchemist is absolutely insane, but in a good way). Two firing modes, one that shoots bullets with normal speed and one that shoots much slower projectiles. So that even if you fire a stun bullet, you don't accidentally kill someone if you hit them in the head.
It's awesome.
But when she points it towards the figure in the leather coat, the man suddenly raises his hand towards her.
She dodges. On instinct. Or, perhaps, because she knows that in the world of meta-abilities, something like that might mean danger. Especially when the man doing this is standing right next to a burning police car.
The burst of blue flames that erupts from him melts the roof tiles around the place where she was a second before. She dives behind the building for the time being. What on Earth was that attack?
"Ah, shit." She can hear Alchemist, her mission control, in her helmet. "Fire control, at least 2000 degrees Celsius if the flames are blue. It's hotter than lava. If it hits you, its instant death."
That's bad news if she ever heard one.
"Ideas?" Uraraka asks while clinging to the wall with one hand, the other one still grasping her gun.
"Eclipse is opening her warpgate." Mei replies after a few seconds. "We're sending Defiant. Keep your eyes on the villain, but stay at a maximum distance and make sure you don't get hit."
She can do that much. She just has to be super careful.
She jumps two buildings away and then hops back to the rooftop. The villain is running away, deeper into the Marukane Ward. She immediately raises her gun and fires a stun bullet at him.
The sudden burst of blue flames melts it mid-flight. Then he fires several blue fireballs at her, not stopping his run for a second. She dodges them and fires again.
He is fast. And she can stand in one place to aim carefully, or she'll get burned. It's no good at all. Worst of all, there are cars parked there, and the villain is running behind them. They obstruct her vision and make hitting him even harder.
"I don't think that I can stop him!" She shouts back to Alchemist. "I'll try to slow him down as much as I can!"
She keeps following the villain through the rooftops.
(***)
Mei is an attentive girl. But there are things she doesn't know, and things that she fails to notice. She is, chief among all, an engineer and a scientist. Not a tactician. If Defiant or Assistant Commissioner Aizawa were the ones sitting in her seat, they would have realized what was happening much earlier.
Why did the villain wait near the destroyed car until the hero arrived? Why was he running away, but without fighting Singularity seriously? Why didn't he try to disengage more seriously?
Eclipse had just opened the warpgate to Marukane (near the place where the villain ambushed the police car) when Defiant finally asked for the full situation report. It took him less than twenty seconds to realize what was happening and yell to Mei to tell Uraraka to disengage immediately.
Mei relayed the warning ten seconds too late.
(***)
"It's a trap!" Alchemist suddenly shouts to her through the comms. "Go back, n…"
Uraraka has no time to respond to that. Because the trap mechanism decided to finally spring to life at that very moment. Although the first three words made her dive towards the nearest cover a second earlier.
The next building in a row had an accessible rooftop. The door was suddenly kicked open, and a man stepped out of it. A young man with messy white hair and a gas mask steps out, two open bottles of water in his hands.
He points them at the superhero and then squeezes them. Rather than a slight blurt of water, the result is a concentrated jet burst of water. Strong enough to cut through steel.
One misses her head narrowly and slices through her rifle. The other goes right through her upper right arm. It pierces through the suit, skin, and the muscles underneath. If the trajectory of the attack was slightly different, it would have severed her arm entirely. Instead, only her biceps muscles are cut apart.
She yells in pain and dives behind a rooftop air conditioner unit.
(One kilometre away from the battlefield, Izuku Midoriya Ignites. To the vocal displeasure of his passenger.)
"She is down!" The water villain shouts. "Duststorm, go get her!"
She isn't going down like that. Her right hand might be useless and her rifle won't work, but she still has a pistol… and left hand.
She pulls the gun and stands from behind her corner. There are two villains on the rooftop now, the water one (he is pulling another bottle of water from his backpack), and some blue-haired man her age, with a hoodie and another gasmask. The latter is running towards her, his hands raised.
She fires at him, but he is quick. He doves behind one more air conditioner unit. His companion doesn't bother hiding at all.
"You aren't going to shoot me, hero." He says, the last word accompanied by a derisive snigger. Unfortunately, he is right. He doesn't shake even when she fires at the wall right next to him, hoping to intimidate him.
He opens another water bottle, this time making a vertical move while unleashing it. The resulting water sword slices her cover apart, and she only barely avoids getting severed in half as well.
Duststorm is closing in, using every cover he can. His companion pulls out another bottle from his backpack. The situation is critical. Her arm is bleeding heavily, and the pain is only kept at bay by adrenaline. And… where is the flame villain?
Then she hears a loud whoosh. Something flies past her. The water villain is sent back to the wall right next to the rooftop entry door, electrocuted by a small object that attached itself to his chest.
Izuku is here.
Uraraka was never this happy to see someone.
"Defiant is here!" Duststorm yells from his cover. "Jetstream's down! Dabi, move your ass over here!"
Dabi? It means Cremation. Must be that flame villain's name.
"Singularity, go back." She hears Izuku's voice. "I'll take it from here."
She'll only be a burden to him now. It's not the time to be a h… no. It's the time to be a hero. But for him. She should listen to him and get out as soon as possible.
She makes herself weightless again and jumps away. Not directly along the same route she came here. She makes some distance between herself and the street. Who knows where Dabi is?
(***)
Izuku is furious.
He almost lost a friend due to such a dumb thing as not asking for the situation report earlier. If he did… if he didn't waste so much time… she wouldn't get hurt. So he is not only angry at the villains but also at himself.
The water villain is down. What's left is the one with an unknown power, and the flame one that he has no idea where has gone, but was probably heading here. Unless the other villain's shout was a deception.
They are also all wearing gas masks. Either Mustard is around, or they are trying to make him think that he is.
You can do it, Defiant.
He fires one of his stun tools at the other villain (Duststorm, according to what Mei is telling him over the comms, which is a completely nondescript name that is telling him nothing about his power).
The villain moves fast. He touches Mei's Baby #1 mid-flight, and it promptly turns into dust. Without firing its electrocution.
Matter disintegration. Either five finger point contact like Uraraka, or on touch like Overhaul. It happened too quickly for him to notice the details.
Not dangerous, at least against Defiant. Terrible match-up, quirk-wise. He just has to keep the distance.
"Anything more, hero?" Duststorm taunts him. "C'mon, get closer. I want that sweet EXP."
That bastard tried to kill Uraraka and is treating this like a game? If Izuku was furious earlier, then now he was absolutely livid. He grabs Duststorm and slams him into the wall right next to the unconscious Jetstream.
"What, is that all?" Duststorm seems unfazed by that. "All that scary power of yours and all that you need to counter it is to fill your clothes with pillows? This is pathetic. You heroes are total pussies, you know th…"
Duststorm has a point, however this infuriates Defiant right now. He can't just manhandle the villain by ramming him into the wall a few times, hoping that it would mysteriously make him fall unconscious. Human bodies don't have a health bar and humans don't drop unconscious once you deal them a set amount of damage.
You accidentally make someone's head meet an edge of something, and suddenly you have a kill under your belt. Izuku wants to avoid that.
Unfortunately for the villain, Izuku knew it was a problem for quite a while. Baby #1 was only one approach to dealing with the issue. He has another one in store. Especially now that he can more or less control himself while Ignited, even if it occupies a lot of his attention.
Duststorm's taunts are cut short when Defiant controllably Ignites. The villain braces for an impact, but none comes. Instead, the superhero extends his right hand towards him and then clenches his fist.
That's when Duststorm realizes he can't breathe.
(stealing Darth Vader's signature move is a bit of a dick move, but it makes sense. And with Ignition, he can apply carefully measured pulls to things that he doesn't see and things that normally would be impossible to pull - now he grabs the front of his neck and pulls it in, towards his carotid artery, while using another pull on the back of his neck to keep it in place)
Duststorm grasps at his neck. His hoodie and gas mask partially disintegrated accidentally. Izuku pulls him up a bit, just enough to make him unable to run away while holding his head in place - he needs him immobile. This is some very precise manipulation.
He is almost down for the count (it shouldn't take more than ten seconds to knock him out) when someone intervenes.
"Where did you hide Eri?" Izuku hears an unfamiliar voice asking from behind the entrance door to the rooftop.
"I've hidden her i…" Defiant finds himself answering before he panics and slams his mouth shut with telekinesis. He is still ignited, so it's much stronger than he thought. His jaw hurts. But he strangled the words out of himself.
Shit, another villain?
"IT DIDN'T WORK!" He hears a yell. It's the same villain that asked him the question. He must have been reporting that to someone. Dabi? Mustard?
The Defiant's grasp of Duststorm failed, and the villain is now on the ground, coughing violently. For as long as he moves like that, Izuku can't force choke him again. It requires too much precision not to accidentally damage the windpipe, he should try to immobilize him again but…
He feels the Ignition dying down slowly. A second later, a blast of blue fire. Not directed at him. But it brings his attention. Mei's drone, giving him the information advantage over the enemy, was destroyed instantly, dropping to the ground like a ball of fire and half-melted metal. Dabi is now staring at him from the rooftop on the other side of the street.
He can't win that fight.
Plan B.
He catches an unconscious Jetstream with his telekinesis and throws him back. After maybe twenty meters of free-flight, something suddenly grabbed him.
Tsuyu, still under her camouflage ability (and still naked), hops back as fast as she can, with the captive held by her tongue. Carrying him like that will quickly tire her, but she should be able to make some distance. They need to at least arrest someone tonight, and…
Dabi's flames erupt. He isn't attacking Tsuyu. He isn't attacking Defiant. Instead, he propels himself over the street with his flames, landing in front of Izuku, with his right side towards the hero.
His leather coat and hair are on fire. It's not the blue flame, merely a normal, red-to-orange one. The flames are licking his skin. It should be burned instantly, but instead, it's only growing redder and redder - and only in the places that aren't already scarred.
The flames illuminate his face as it turns towards Izuku. In his eyes, madness. Not the cold and ruthless sociopathy of Overhaul, but a maniacal desire to see the world burn.
He doesn't change his position. Instead, he only raises his right arm, pointing it towards Defiant. And towards Kappa, fleeing through the rooftops behind him.
"Prominence…" Dabi speaks. Slowly, savouring his every letter. The blue flames erupt from his body, concentrating in front of his extended hand.
"TSU, DODGE SIDEWA…" Izuku yells while doing so himself.
"... Burn."
The sun rises in the Marukane Ward ahead of schedule.
(***)
The street by which the fight was occurring was a straight one. On its both sides were apartment blocks, built according to a similar design. Identical height - which saved many people when Dabi unleashed his strongest flame.
The lance of concentrated blue flames missed Defiant. It also narrowly missed Tsuyu, who went plus ultra and jumped off the rooftop entirely after she heard Izuku yelling at her to dodge.
It still partially melted almost a kilometre of rooftops. And after that, it pierced through two slightly taller apartment buildings. With enough heat to ignite everything even remotely flammable… such as quilts with sleeping people under them.
Only then did it finally dissipate, scattering bits of flames over a small and overgrown park. Which, naturally, was set aflame.
(***)
"Wh… What?" Izuku mumbled to himself. He was still floating in the air right next to the rooftop, trying to puzzle up what had just happened.
He turned his head just in time to see the devastation of Dabi's attack. The line of fire over the rooftops and then a melted hole in an apartment block.
"How do you like my flames, hero?" Dabi's voice is strained and coarse. Izuku turns his head towards him and he almost vomits at the sight.
Dabi's right hand wasn't burned. It melted off. The liquified flesh was still dripping off the stump of the arm. His right leg looked barely better, with charred flesh and exposed bones.
His entire right side was exposed, his clothes incinerated in the blast. The rest of it was still on fire, slowly blackened and shrivelled by the flames. The exposed skin was covered in third-degree burns, that alone enough to drive someone into vomiting.
"A bit too strong for my body." Dabi speaks as if nothing happened. "But that's no longer a problem with Overhaul to heal me. And with his little superpower altering my nervous system so that I no longer feel pain, I can go all out. Like I always wanted."
Izuku is still frozen in horror in the air. A man in a plague-doctor-like suit walks out through the rooftop doors and helps Duststorm to stand up.
"And just to keep our manners right…" Dabi grins at him. It's the smile of a madman. "... I'm Dabi. The Arch-Arsonist of Musutafu. And the men behind me are Duststorm and Inquisitor." He chuckles. "I even named my attack. We're all men of culture here, aren't we? Hero?" He says, prolonging the last word for what feels like an eternity.
Then he ignites a small ball of blue flames over his healthy hand. The silence makes the sound of raging flames in the background almost deafening.
"Let's keep dancing together, Defiant." Dabi smiles. The corner of his mouth closer to the burned side takes that moment to start dripping off. His eyes are dreamy, and if Izuku could read minds, he would know how immersed he was in the sounds of fire dominating the background.
"For as long as the music lasts."
Izuku turns his tail and flees the battlefield.
(***)
The biggest positive of actually having control over the local superheroes, in Aizawa's opinion, was that the local fire brigade was notified by him the second he heard the words '2000C' coming from Alchemist's mouth.
Unfortunately, that concluded the list of positives for that night.
It was going to be a long night for Takoba city.
(***)
Dabi's Prominence Burn was powerful and loud enough to yank officer Monika Kaniyashiki out of her present activity. Which was vomiting onto the pavement. She had the misfortune of seeing the Arch-Arsonist's handiwork up close when she came to inspect the burned police car.
Being burned alive inside your car was bad enough. Being dragged out of the said car, having three car tires shoved onto you, being soaked in gasoline and then being burned alive was several orders of magnitude worse.
(***)
Chiyo Shuzenji doesn't enjoy being woken up by the phones in the middle of the night. Especially right after her shift ended.
But when it's Mirai who is phoning her… well, she doesn't like it twice as much. Because she knows he wouldn't do it if the situation wasn't truly terrible. He knows how grumpy this makes her.
She is practically living right next to her hospital. But this doesn't mean that she is a workaholic who actually likes situations like that.
"Yes?" She asks into a phone.
"Singularity was wounded in combat." Mirai replies promptly. "She'll be dropped into your hospital through a warpgate in several minutes. Make sure her life isn't in danger and then get ready for a wave of patients with third-degree burns."
"What happened?" She says, while practically jumping from her bed. She is old, but she knows when she is really needed elsewhere.
"Villain with a powerful flame quirk." Mirai replies. "Temperature above 2000C. He practically melted some apartment blocks in the Marukane Ward. Firefighters are rushing onto the scene now, but the Assistant Commissioner expects dozens of victims."
Shitshitshitshitshitshit.
"I'll call in everyone I can." They'll need as many doctors and nurses in the hospital as they can to deal with that.
This brief heads-up might have saved a lot of lives.
(***)
No, Dabi with his Mysterious Backstory (TM) isn't a dream boyfriend material. Neither in canon nor in Dead on Arrival (except in the latter even more).
And if Izuku was a hardened superhero like Batman, that remains to be moved by anything (well, almost) that happens in front of him, he'd probably continue fighting, seeing as Dabi incapacitated himself. Unfortunately, he isn't a hardened superhero, but a kid in a costume. The next chapter(s) are at least partially going about him trying to piece himself together after this.