Deika City(Long Story Short, I Joined A Cult) Pt.2
Wind whips through his long green curls, the slime that engulfed his vision mere seconds before gone as he topples through the clear blue sky. Red and white and green and blue all mix together as he falls, disoriented and—
Float activates in a burst of yellow light and a strong humming sensation in his body that makes his fingertips tingle.
The Quirk jerks his body to a stop so abruptly that his chest constricts, and he retches violently, both gasping for air and trying to cough, resulting in a choked wheeze. He drops to the cool ground, wet leaves sticking to the dark material of his hero costume as he coughs up the remaining slime in his throat, the texture far too reminiscent of the Sludge Villain.
At least it doesn't taste like sewage.
Izuku grimaces as he swipes a gloved hand across his mouth, finally registering his surroundings through watery eyes.
He's currently on the edge of a large, deserted clearing. Trees tower over him, their bare branches all tangled together as they lean slightly, as if to form an impenetrable wall from...something. The smell of ash and smoke sits heavy on his tongue, along with an underlying twang of something sharp and coppery. Like dried blood that had become a faint, long forgotten stain in the corner of a shady alleyway.
Tomura.
He'd used Decay on something close by.
The green haired boy twists around, eyes widening as he's met with the rest of the clearing.
It is, in short, destroyed.
Scorch marks litter the soil, the blacked earth a sure sign of Dabi's Quirk. Spiderwebs of cracks and mini-pitfalls make it clear that Tomura was using his Quirk liberally. Unfortunately for him, his Quirk worked slower on the ground—hence the preference for direct contact with the source of his ire—and he had to stay in one place to make it effective to any extent.
Why was he using it on the ground? He knows it's less effective that way.
His green eyes scan the clearing for a moment before landing on something that makes his blood run cold.
There are huge, deep gashes in the ground. It looked like something large had hit the earth with great force, force that was enough to send shockwaves out, enough to make even the trees bend away.
What were they fighting? Are they still fighting it? Did it kill them? Are they okay?
Izuku rises to his feet, wildly looking around himself for any sign of the League or the thing that they were facing, and oh god what if they're deadandI'mtoolateandTomuraHimikoCompressShuuichiMagneDabiJinJinJIN—
Stop.
The green haired boy stops, the silence of the clearing only interrupted by the erratic beat of his heart and the blood rushing in his ears. The colors flickering around him slow as he takes a deep breath.
Think. Jin is in danger, and the League needs help to find him.
He isn't the reinforcements Spinner wanted, nor is he particularly ideal in this situation—considering he's a first year hero student with a finicky Quirk and very little information about what's going on—but from what the Doctor said, he's all they're going to get. He needs to find them and figure out exactly what happened, who the enemy is, and how to save Jin.
Think.
Izuku exhales, the panic in his chest replaced with a cold sort of calm, like the surface of a lake. It doesn't matter what's under the current. All that matters is keeping everything calm on the surface. No ripples or tremors. No disturbances.
Nothing. But. Calm.
Bright green eyes open and begin to flicker over the clearing, an intense focus in them as he catalogues every detail, searching for clues.
First, I need to find them.
Darkness wraps around him, a warm, familiar companion. Sleep clings to his eyelids, a sign that the required amount of time hasn't been reached yet. Yet...as he drifts into a deeper slumber, he hears something...familiar. Something he can't ignore.
"—stillsmokingandconsideringthecooldowntimeofhisQuirk—"
Every cell of his body vibrates with joy when he recognizes the voice.
Lord has come back!
As Izuku is investigating a smoking patch of ground—clearly caused by Dabi within a timeframe of two days, since fire as hot as his took time to cool down, even without fuel—Danger Sense flares, making him stiffen.
Before he can move, the ground beneath his feet rumbles. Eyes wide, he turns around to see a giant person rise from the middle of the clearing, dirt raining off of them as they get to their feet. They take a deep breath as Izuku does his very best to hold still and not be noticed.
Could this person be what caused the gashes in the ground? Were they and the League fighting? Why?
White eyes meet green.
A smile spreads across their craggy face.
"LORD HAS RETURNED!"
The rocky person reaches out—
Bing!
But he's already gone, lighting dancing around his body as he soars through the air, using Float and the base strength enhancement to get as far away as possible. As he flies away, the anguished cries of the rocky giant die in the wind. Thankfully, he'd managed to get some information before the person had interrupted his investigation. Judging from the size of that person and how much damage the League had done to the forest around them, he's pretty far from civilization, which means that he doesn't need to worry about someone seeing him flying.
The downside to that is he has miles of forest to cover and no idea where to start. Izuku frowns, wishing that he'd done some sort of research on tracking, or had more time at that clearing, or even just had a tracker attached to one of the League—just something to make finding them faster.
Something shiny flashes in the distance.
The green haired boy's eyes sharpen, and he floats back down to the trees—could it have been one of Himiko's knives? Mr. Compress' random assortment of microwaves he liked to drop on people's heads? Dabi's staples?—his heart beats wildly in his chest as he runs through the forest, hoping, praying that he'd find the League, safe and together and—
He skids to a stop right before he runs off of a steep hill.
But that's not what has his attention.
What he's looking at is the town spread out beneath him, surrounded by mountains he vaguely recognizes from Katsuki's boasting about mountain climbing. In the center of this town is a huge tower, and right below him is a section of one of the only nationwide roads in Japan. In the distance, he can make out a fence around the edges of town.
His observations screech to a halt when he sees a block close to the edge of town on fire. Except it isn't normal fire. It's brilliant blue flames that send up dark smoke that he can smell from here as they burn brighter and hotter than ever before.
Dabi.
Dabi crouches behind a half-melted car, careful not to touch the warped metal or the puddles of rubber that were once tires as he stifles his coughing into the sooty collar of his coat. Everything around him burns, the blue flames devouring the buildings and raising the temperature to a hellish degree. The seams of his burns are red and irritated, little droplets of blood leaking out and fizzing when they make contact with the softened concrete. Purple is starting to creep past his staples, and smoke fills his lungs—lungs that were made for the creeping cold of ice, not this godforsaken fire that consumed and ate at everything, even his own flesh—making it difficult to breathe.
When the League was ambushed, he'd been separated from the rest of them because some asshole wearing a parka had decided that they needed to fight. Apparently, they'd known about Dabi's Quirk beforehand and wanted to have a battle of strengths. It was annoying, but they were evenly matched, and he was forced to find an advantageous spot as Parka Fucker and several dozen others chased him through this godforsaken city.
It had taken half an hour to neutralize the person's followers—mostly because Parka Fucker didn't seem to give a shit about their allies and just positioning himself near one of them would get them caught in an attack—but by then, he was exhausted from running around. His staples were torn and loose in several places, and he hadn't even managed to land a hit on the asshole. So, in an attempt to neutralize Parka Fucker's ice Quirk, he'd set the block on fire—not his smartest idea, but honestly, he was exhausted and annoyed and just wanted to find Jin and kill the long nosed bastard that had dared to kidnap him—and stretched himself past his limits—
Only to find out that Parka Fucker could control water, too.
All he'd done was annoyed the asshole into another rant about 'the Grand Commander' and their 'survival of the fittest' mindset, and how they didn't go to school or something? Dabi had been too tired to really listen at that point, and had taken shelter behind a car to avoid dodging Parka Fucker's attacks.
"WHIRLPOOL OF DESTRUCTION!"
His eye twitches.
The names of the attacks had only gotten more obnoxious as time wore on—which, coming from him, was a pretty high bar considering his father's attack names were overy grandois and full of themselves, much like the man himself—and if he hears the phrase 'GODLY ICE DRAGON OF WRATH' ever again, it will be too soon.
"There you are! I never thought someone with such a powerful meta-ability would act so cowardly, but I guess my prowess was too much for even you to handle." He can tell Parka Fucker is grinning, and it annoys him. "What a shame. I'd hoped you'd be a truly formidable foe, but you're nothing more than a waste of a good meta-ability."
"A Quirk like that is wasted on someone with such a fragile body."
For a moment, Parka Fucker and his father blend together—
Idiot. They're too short to be Endeavor.
Dabi rises to his feet, limbs feeling like jello as sweat trickles down his back—his body telling him that it's at it's limit, like so many times before—and glares at the person mere feet away from him. They're still in their parka, and seem entirely unaffected by the hellscape he's created.
Droplets of water begin to rise and gather around the short person, gathering and forming into spikes.
He knows he won't be able to dodge this attack.
The burned man is slow on a good day, and relies heavily on pissing off his opponents into charging him and then cremating them once they get close. The only other option...
Burn. Burn it all, until there's nothing but ashes.
Dabi bares his teeth at his opponent, blue flames licking high above his burns as he stands his ground, eyes glowing a brilliant turquoise.
I'll burn it all to ashes, even if I have to burn too.
Parka Fucker cackles, raising their arms towards Dabi—
"GODLY WATER DRAGON OF—"
Black tentacles wrap around the person's waist, and a dark blur slams into him, slamming them into the ground. The water spikes drop to the ground, evaporating the instant they make contact with the concrete.
Dabi's fire flares in response to the new party, the smell of burned flesh filling the air as he peers through the heatwaves and smoke to see a person in a dark green jumpsuit and a metal mask covering the bottom half of their face.
A hero?
He stiffens, about to roast the person—only to see green eyes peering at him with concern.
"...Izuku?" The burned man rasps, eyes widening.
The familiar green eyes light up, and he can feel the pipsqueak smile from here. The blue flames die, leaving behind reddened skin and confusion.
Am I hallucinating from smoke inhalation? Or did the heat waves create some sort of illusion?
Can either of those things happen? He thinks they can. His legs wobble, and he tips forwards, face quickly approaching the concrete that bends and shifts beneath his weight like mud.
Someone catches him and holds him up. When he looks up, he's met, once again, with a pair of vibrant green eyes.
"I've got to be hallucinating." He mutters to himself as the hero student sets him down and starts checking him over.
"You aren't." Izuku—because, somehow, illusions can talk now and maybe he's already dead and someone is just fucking with him—says, voice muffled from behind the metal mask. "Do you have any sort of injuries aside from ripped stitches?"
"Bruised ribs, but the swelling went down a couple days ago." He replies numbly, watching as the boy—this can't be a hallucination, it's too real, he can feel the gentle pressure from his hands—pulls a tissue out of his belt and dabs at one of the bloody stitches on his left arm.
"You're...real. Why are you here? How did you get here? How did you even find us?" The questions spill out of his mouth like water, making the boy pause.
"I'm here because Spinner called me and told me to call the Doctor for backup. They said that they'd send someone to check on you all and then used this weird slime stuff to warp me here. I accidentally found this town while walking through the forest, and then I saw that there was blue fire and..." Izuku waves his hand at Parka Fucker, who he's pretty sure has a concussion from that brutal takedown.
Dabi nods, and relaxes, watching the boy look around at the hellscape that the one pretty neighborhood had become.
Houses and storefronts are charred and burning, their glass windows melting and pooling on the ground like water. The cars are charred and warped too, their tires long liquified from the indirect heat and glass dripping down the sides of the dented and sagging metal. Everything is collapsing in on itself from the heat, even the concrete beneath them.
"Are there any civilians in these buildings, or did the heroes already evacuate them when you and the person in the parka started fighting?"
Dabi snorts at the hero-in-training's question, but quickly devolves into a violent coughing fit. It takes a moment to pass, but when it does, he gives Izuku a grim smile.
"I wouldn't worry about that."
The green haired boy's eyebrows furrow.
"Why?"
"This entire city is a cult."
Kurogiri sips the tea in his hand slowly, flipping to the next page of his book. Though he technically didn't need to eat or drink anything to survive, a cup of tea was always enjoyable(especially when you didn't have seven people to monitor and keep entertained).
Beside him, Sensei sits, his own cup of tea in his hand, still untouched as he looks out at the view.
They're on the highest floor of an old hotel building on a balcony facing the ocean, which glitters under the early afternoon light. Indistinguishable laughter and chatter floats up from the narrow street below them, punctuated by the occasional ringing of a bell. It's been a couple days since the festivities took place, but people are still in high spirits.
The misty man isn't entirely sure why Sensei had joined him on the balcony today—he seemed somewhat light averse, which was most likely due to his injuries—but he served the man tea and didn't ask questions.
Though his employer is mere feet away from him, he thinks that this is the most relaxed he's been since Tomura had come into his care.
Sensei has been as low maintenance as he'd expected, and after he'd helped Azuki settle in and warped the man to the site of the package they'd come here for, he was free to do as he pleased. So far, he'd been reading every book he could get his hands on—whether from bookstores or from warping into the local public library after it closed and 'borrowing' a few books—and he was thoroughly enjoying the experience. Some were good, some were mediocre, some were so bad that he'd regretted buying them(namely a few romance books from the pre-Quirk era), but the feeling of being able to just read without someone breaking something or a fight starting is absolutely heavenly.
Kurogiri has been slowly working his way through at least two books a day, and since Sensei was off supervising Azuki and her gift, he was given peace and quiet for the first time in over a decade.
Today is the first time he's seen Sensei out and in the sun, but he doesn't mind all that much. The tea is excellent, and he's sure the older man needs a little sunlight.
As he goes to set his tea down on the small table beside his chair, something tugs in his gut. He pauses, head lifting as he goes to set his book down—only to remember that the League is hundreds of miles away on a diplomatic , granted, could lead to trouble, but most of Sensei's followers were reasonable and highly talented people that would see the merits of joining a well organized group like the League of Villains. And once Tomura confirmed that the group had Sensei's backing, it would be the end of the conversation.
He nods to himself and picks up his book again, unaware of the man beside him watching his movements carefully.