Hello again, everyone. Well, this week certainly didn't turn out the way I'd expected. However, after having gone through a handful of previous chapters in the Hokkaido Arc, specifically Chapters 72 and 73, and either removing certain scenes or retooling them to help add more impact to later scenes, I actually have to say I'm happier with how they've turned out now. I've already replaced the contents of chapters 66, 67, 68, 72 and 73, the latter two in much less subtle ways, so feel free to have a read through them again and see if it makes the overall narrative flow work better for you all and let me know in a review. Hopefully from here I can get back into the forward motion of planning out future chapters and then writing them once again.

I'd like to give a big thankful shout-out to my beta readers and consultants, Mizu and Jonny for their support; reviewer kurtzmichael3 for ultimately pointing out this narrative dip in quality I'd unknowingly taken; thus motivating me to go back and ultimately make it better; and artists syyndev and Akane Kahomi for making supporting artworks like chapter covers for this story on my DA account, 'ubasnaga.' Feel free to check those out in the chapter links on that account if you're interested.

My Hero Academia is the property of Kouhei Horikoshi and Shonen Jump. I only own my original characters, the original events surrounding them, and the alterations of established events that occur because of them.

A/N: [[]] indicates that characters are contextually speaking Russian.

Chapter 75

Tower Battle

(Битва На башне)

Asahikawa City, Hokkaido, Friday September 12th

The city of Asahikawa was quiet and peaceful this morning, as it had often proven to be, thanks to the due diligence of its local Hero Agency, the Fubuki Hero Agency. As such, the citizens were all able to go about their daily lives and business with little to no cares, instead relishing in the pleasant morning chills that signified the return of autumn.

Of course, such peace of mind was what kept anyone from ever taking the time to look up to the roofs in the downtown area of the city, wherein at that moment, four young foreigners had nearly instantaneously warped there; among them being the dark-haired, bearded Romanian Marius Lazarescu; the long-haired Hungarian Gazsi Istvan; the curly-haired and goateed Slovakian Jozef Mečiar; and at the head of their group, looking as spry and ready to move as ever, the shorter lavender-haired Estonian Tuule Koppel.

Tuule herself was simply popping the joints in her shoulders and stretching her legs out, while her three comrades were currently hunched over, trying to catch their breath and ride out the motion sickness. [[Look alive, you guys, we're here and racing against the clock, remember?]]

As soon as she addressed them, the three younger men took in their new surroundings, with Marius even giving an impressed-sounding whistle. [[My God, from the hospital all the way to here in less than a minute. How are you able to move so fast and so accurately like that, Gust?]]

Tuule's mouth formed an especially proud smirk, as it always did when someone complimented her efficiency with her Quirk. [[Just because you guys never actively looked to practice your Quirks before doesn't mean I wasn't. I could move all around this whole island in the span of a whole day, so I liked mapping out all the cities and towns I could find so I'd always know the best spots I could warp to the easiest. Put in enough practice yourselves, and you can be just as useful.]]

Jozef let out a woozy-sounding moan, drawing Gazsi's attention. [[How are you feeling, Spitfire? You think your head's all the way back in order?]]

It had thankfully taken less time than Jozef had feared for the language scrambling that Leonid Viktorovich Briner had done to him to wear off, but his head had still been feeling especially light and muddled. Shaking his head roughly once more, his vision was fortunately cleared as he gave his shorter partner a thumb up. [[Yeah…yeah, I'm okay now, I think. What about you? You think your shoulder's finally all better?]]

Gazsi cast a glare to his once-injured shoulder, giving it a couple of rolls just to make sure. [[Yeah, doesn't feel nearly as stiff or sore anymore. Even if it weren't, what difference would it make? We don't have the luxury of idling time away with training anymore, you know?]]

[[Hey, I think I see the target already. Up ahead.]] Marius suddenly pointed out, and as his comrades all followed his finger, Tuule's icy blue eyes narrowed at the sight of an especially tall thin tower that protruded almost higher than the rest of the buildings making up the downtown.

[[These people should really know better than to make such valuable targets so visible. You guys still got all your equipment on you, just in case?]] As soon as she asked, the three others pulled off their respective backpacks, opening them up to reveal a single black mask with a red cross hair on the forehead for each of them; two machine pistols each, with two extra magazines each as well, and two plastic explosive charges and corresponding detonators inside.

Satisfied, Tuule began limbering herself up again while Marius, Gazsi and Jozef began similarly bracing themselves for the run they would need in order to get from here to the Hero Network Hokkaido tower without risking being caught out in the open on the streets.

[[Alright you guys, you already know what to do. As soon as you have the tower down, hit the callout button on your earpieces so I'll know to come back and get you to headquarters. I gotta get Grenadier and Scythe over to Sapporo now if we wanna get this all done at the same time, so…good luck to you all.]] With that, Tuule practically warped away, leaving the three young men to look back to their ultimate target, more than ready to bring the whole thing down and help the rest of their comrades in fulfilling their own missions, all so they could all finally move on to Pietro's ultimate objective.

…

On the other side of the downtown area of Asahikawa City on the streets, Momo was currently busy patrolling in her red, sleeveless and opened-chest Hero costume, right alongside her two fellow interns from Class B, similarly dressed in their own Hero costumes: the snidely grinning Neito Monoma in his black tuxedo-like suit with a belt of three stopwatches; and right beside him, walking with her arms bent at the elbow with her hands just limply dangling forward in a manner more resembling a ghost or a zombie, was the grey-haired Reiko Yanagi, who was dressed in a pale purple knee-length kimono with a white fur collar, three dark straps around her waist, black knee-high socks and black sandals, and a black face mask that covered her face from the bridge of her nose down, revealing only her right blue eye, as the left was constantly hidden under the bangs of her hair.

"Do try to keep up, you three. We still have quite a long day's work ahead of us."

And at the head of their little line was their shared Pro Hero mentor: a young adult woman with long silky smooth snow white hair that went down to her lower back, tied at the end with a dark purple ribbon. Her skin was flawless and nearly so white that it could have been described as porcelain, with an angelic womanly face with a pointed kitsune-like smile adorned with only a touch of an icy blue lipstick in the center the same shade as Nejire Hadou's hair (at least, that would have been the first comparison Momo would have made if asked), a pair of warm apple-red eyes, and with short but thick circular-shaped eyebrows that gave her a very old-school Japanese kind of beauty.

Her Hero costume looked very much like a snow-white kimono, albeit made with a far thicker, almost furrier material, adorned with patterns of snowflakes and wind. Her hands were bare, with tiny and weightless flurries of the smallest snowflakes always floating around them, and her feet were dressed in icy blue socks on white elevated platform sandals. Anyone unfamiliar who saw this woman would have immediately mistaken her for one of the Yuki Onna of old Japanese folklore. However, the people of Asahikawa, Hokkaido, and the three Yuuei interns behind her knew far better.

This was the Number 71 Pro Hero on the Japanese Ranking Boards: the Blizzard Hero, Whiteout; and right now she was continuing on her way with a professional yet easygoing stride to her step, as she beckoned her one personal and two substitute interns to follow her; having had to take on Monoma and Reiko alongside her personal intern in Momo for today, after their personal mentors had both been sidelined with extra nighttime work, leaving them indisposed for the daytime.

Of course, such a change in their internship routine posed no problem for the two Class B interns. If anything, Monoma seemed to be relishing in it, as his eyes were still burning into Momo's back; that snide smirk on his face only seeming to grow more and more as he saw how her cat-like eyes were constantly observing their surroundings. "You're going to run yourself ragged even faster looking everywhere for the first thing to jump on, Class A! By all means, go ahead; the faster you tire out, the sooner we can finally knock you off that damned legacy pedestal your class keeps getting put on! Being brought together is just Class B's chance to finally outshine you right in front of everyone!"

Momo was completely ignoring the blonde boy's taunts, however; having long since figured out how to do so, but that still didn't stop him from nearly cackling in assurance to himself, only for Reiko to give her classmate an unreadable sideways glance, barely muttering under her breath: "The way you're always going to such excessive means to rub your confidence in Yaoyorozu's face, Monoma; you're likely bound to exhaust yourself far sooner than she ever will."

"Emily-chan is right; you really shouldn't be teasing Creati-chan for her due diligence, Phantom Thief-kun. If anything, you should be learning from her example." Whiteout called back, referring to all the interns by their Hero names, and rendering Monoma silent in the process, albeit begrudgingly that someone was yet again coming to Class A's defense.

Never missing a beat, the Blizzard Hero continued as they went on their way further into the heart of the city. "Today may have started off rather exciting, but something you all need to remember is that when we aren't rescuing civilians from danger or fighting Villains, then Heroes need to also serve as ever-present pillars of their community, always looking for the first sign of anyone needing help with anything at all."

Indeed, at the start of their patrol, things had gotten off to a pretty lively start when they had heard from police of a couple families having their cars get washed up off the side of the river outside the city as a result of a rather nasty cloudburst in that region of Hokkaido the previous night; thus giving all four of them a chance to get involved in rescuing said families, thanks to Momo creating a winch to reel the vehicles back onto solid land, and Reiko using her Poltergeist Quirk (and Monoma doing the same through his Copy Quirk) to bring up enough of the debris to provide traction, while Whiteout used her Quirk to provide a cold enough breeze to freeze the river's current enough so that the interns and aid workers weren't fighting against it to get the vehicles out in the end.

From there, however, it had simply been a case of patrolling further back into the city itself, and helping people with every day civil services, and while the lack of any chances to really step out and outshine Momo left Monoma internally agitated; the ponytailed girl herself was as attentive as ever, especially now when listening to their mentor's sage advice.

"Yes, Uwabami-sensei taught me and Kendo-san how Heroes also lend their patronage and sponsorship to businesses of all sizes as well, in order to help bolster the economy whichever way we can." To this, Whiteout gave a genuinely amused chuckle.

"Yes, that is exactly the kind of non-field-based work that Heroes like Uwabami-san and I both specialize in, among others; but we mustn't turn our noses at the prospect of providing our services in ways that don't necessarily involve having our faces plastered all over them, either. For example, do a little research and you're bound to find a staggering number of different charity organizations all across Japan that are put together entirely by Heroes in order to provide for reconstruction or relief services for people who perhaps lost their homes in a disaster or as a result of a Villain attack.

"Certain kinds of construction projects also require the touch of certain Heroes in order to make them the best they can be as well, or even reforestation or irrigation work in areas that don't have immediate access to such resources. Emily-chan's Quirk, for example, could work wonders for such projects, including overseas as well. I have likewise used my Quirk in order to provide the proper conditions for many of the skiing facilities across Hokkaido in our warmer winters, in order to attract the seasonal tourist populations back, so that way the people who rely on such things for their livelihoods need not worry about being able to provide for their families. As long as you all take the time to really think about the ground-level effect and benefit your services provide for the people, you'll find there's no such thing as a wasted effort for a Hero, kids."

While Reiko's one eye made it impossible to read her reaction to Whiteout's lecture, Momo's gaze was surprisingly distant. She had indeed been giving her all to listen to every word; but the truth was that her mind, for once, was not 100-percent in this moment.

"Creati-chan! Did you hear me?" Whiteout's voice spoken with a touch more volume finally shook Momo enough that she finally realized that she had actually been genuinely zoning out.

Blushing with immense embarrassment for such an unprofessional display unbefitting of her position, Momo hurriedly bowed her head deeply in apology. "Please forgive me, Whiteout-sensei! I am immeasurably grateful for all of your teachings! As much as I appreciated what Uwabami-sensei taught me in her way, it is very refreshing and encouraging to get genuine field training like you've provided so far!"

Of course, while the Pro Hero herself gave her original intern a gentle nod of forgiveness with a slightly embarrassed smile at Momo's verbally extensive apology; Monoma was nowhere as accommodating; his condescending gaze burning with contempt that oddly matched the grin on his face. "You've got a real kind of nerve about you, Class A! Because you've had so much experience and consistently good grades, you suddenly think you're too good for the lessons of your own internship mentor? Such a disgraceful sight to see! What kind of Pro Hero could you possibly become that way, huh?"

The only reason he didn't go any further beating Momo down with his words was thanks to a timely elbow to his ribs from Reiko, who otherwise showed no outward reaction to what her loud-mouthed classmate was doing, once again quietly muttering from under her mask: "You won't necessarily become a great Pro Hero if you keep jumping on every chance to mock them, instead of focusing on your surroundings. That's literally what Whiteout-sensei was just saying. And Yaoyorozu, how is it you could actually be daydreaming, or did you perhaps see something? Like, an apparition?"

Reiko couldn't help but let her own imagination start taking the wheel as she tried actually addressing Momo; letting her secret love for horror stories and the paranormal out for but a moment. All the while, Whiteout had her red eyes focused on the still-worried glimmer in Momo's eyes. "I have to admit, it is rather surprising to see you, of all people, actually drifting in your attention like that, Creati-chan. You've been proving to be such an attentive and quick-to-learn intern thus far. If something is truly troubling you, you know you can share it with me. I may be your mentor, but like I said: it's always a Hero's duty to help one with their troubles, whatever it may be."

Momo felt a great weight rise from her chest at the genuine kindness in her mentor's soft voice; smiling just as much as she once more bowed her head in regret. "I know, and I am very thankful for that, Sensei. I'm sorry; it's just that…well, three more of my classmates and friends are similarly interning at another Hero Agency in Arakisu City a little ways from here.

"I know that the three of them are more than capable of handling themselves in the face of danger, especially when fighting together. However, I just can't shake this worried feeling in my gut that maybe; just maybe, they may come across danger in the course of their work that they may not be fully prepared for. Our classes' experiences thus far this year have left me feeling cautious of such things whenever any of us are apart for a while. As their friend and vice president, it's only natural for me to want to take care of my classmates, teach them properly and worry for their well-being, is it not?"

At this, Whiteout stepped forward and placed a calming, albeit slightly chilly hand on Momo's shoulder, the same assuring smile of light blue on her face. "Of course it's only natural. I may have never gotten to become president, lead or vice or otherwise, back in my Hero school class, but the one who was, likewise felt such selflessness and emotional attachment to all of us. It's understandable for you to be worried for the people you care about, but you mustn't let it drive you into an obsessive state of worry, either. Let this be of reassurance to you, Creati-chan: if ever your friends were to come across considerable danger, they would hardly be left helpless. Follow me, all of you."

The fact that she was still able to say all of this so confidently spurred the three interns to do as she said, following close behind. After a good few minutes of navigating their way into an especially bustling part of the downtown area; Whiteout turned back to look at her three young charges, while opening her arms in a grand gesture towards an impressively large and intricately constructed mix between a radio/TV tower and an all-around straight antenna extending towards the deep blue sky.

Almost immediately did it occur to Momo exactly what their mentor was showing them, as she looked to Whiteout with notable amazement on her face. "S-Sensei, is this…?"

With another amused chuckle, the Blizzard Hero answered: "That's right. This is the Hokkaido Central Tower for the Hero Network." It was quite pride-instilling for her to see Momo was clearly well-informed enough to already know of the Hero Network, but when seeing the looks of total wonder and cluelessness on Monoma's face, with the same unreadable look in Reiko's eye, she continued:

"If ever a situation was to arise wherein your classmates would end up in trouble they couldn't handle themselves, then the Hero Network allows us Heroes to contact one another in an instant, across all other Agencies, to either request immediate help; or in the case of organizing a more elaborate mission that requires certain Quirks that immediate Heroes don't possess; recruit other Heroes even on the other islands. These towers specifically help us with that, keeping us connected to the network on all the other islands, which all have a central network tower of their own for the same interconnection purposes. All the Hero Agencies here on Hokkaido are pretty tightly knit together, so if ever something were to happen, we would all be alerted of it in a heartbeat. I hope that helps ease some of your concerns for now, Creati-chan."

To her delight, Momo let out a heavy sigh with a visibly calmed smile on her face. "It does, actually. I was aware of the Network's existence before, since my family's company is intrinsically tied with much of Hero society, but I wasn't entirely sure of the details. Thank you, Sensei."

BKOOOM!

Not a moment after Momo had finished thanking her mentor, the air shook with a powerful ripple that nearly knocked the four off their feet, while doing so to several dozen of the civilians all around at that moment; all punctuated by a deafening explosion that shattered multiple windows in the surrounding buildings and released a terrible burst of heat that washed across the scene for a second.

Once the initial shock of this disturbance in the peace had passed, all four of the Heroes immediately looked to the source of it, and were all stricken with the sight of a terrible fire and a billowing tower of black smoke emanating from halfway up the Hero Network central tower at the other end of this specific square; its steel columns mangled and blown outward from the explosion, and with multiple large pieces of it already flying through the air and plummeting down to the ground below.

And not a moment after they had finally seen this immediate oncoming danger, the sound of groaning and snapping metals quickly followed, as the few remaining supports for the tower began to break. It immediately became obvious just what was happening, and more specifically what they needed to do: the upper half of the tower was about to plummet down on the buildings and people below, and they all needed to stop both it and the debris from crashing into the buildings or landing on the civilians.

"If you can't stop the debris, get the civilians out of here!" Whiteout's command was instant and indisputable, as she immediately released a powerful frigid wind from her hands and feet, propelling herself straight up at incredible speed, releasing further precise vortexes as she flew towards the nearest large pieces of tower rubble, freezing them to the point that a single precise strike from her shattered them into millions of much smaller pieces, almost to the point of being practical dust.

Momo was taking off just as immediately as her mentor was, as she quickly created and pulled from her stomach, a moderately sized industrial heater with its vent pointed upwards, and a small mounted fan attachment immediately after, which she placed directly over it. The moment it started bellowing out its heat waves straight up higher into the air thanks to the fan, she proceeded to create a person-sized foldable kite she harnessed to her back, using the heat in accordance to propel herself up right alongside Whiteout.

'I only have a few precious seconds to do this all right, or else who knows how many people will get hurt, or worse?! I hope Monoma-san and Yanagi-san are managing with evacuations!'

This was all Momo could think to herself as she acted on pure reflex and split-second planning, hurriedly focusing on one creation after another, using her Quirk continuously in record time as she created a grappling hook gun and a tape-shooting gun from out of both her arms.

With the former, she went on to sling herself at high speed with the flight of her kite to aid in her control, while using a combination of her tape gun, and a multitude of glue bombs from her utility belt she had specifically made for the sake of Villain Capture, to bind all the pieces of falling debris she could find either to the sides of the nearby buildings, or to the body of the tower itself.

All the while, as her blizzard winds continued to help her fly and destroy all the debris in her sight; Whiteout's aim and power was a marvel to behold, as in a matter of seconds and at the speed of a veritable human bullet, she unleashed a number of freezing vortexes from her extremities, that ultimately managed to encase both ends of the collapsing half of the tower in a veritable iceberg; one stuck to the rooftops of the two buildings at either of its sides, and the other to the bottom half of the tower from which it had broken apart.

Between her efforts in either freezing the debris to the sides of the buildings, or freezing and smashing them into dust; and Momo's efforts in binding the rest to keep from falling on the streets below; the Blizzard Hero and her original intern had managed to help avert a potential calamity of collateral damage.

However, while the civilians still below were already starting to express mass relief and applause for the quick-acting of their local Top Pro Hero and her intern together; neither Momo nor Whiteout were about to simply write the situation off as resolved. Once they'd finally landed on one of the nearby rooftops, the young girl had to catch her breath from such instantaneous mental stress, continuous Quirk use and fast-acting to avoid herself or anyone else getting hurt.

"Excellent work, Creati-chan. Such a matter of little to no time to think would have easily overwhelmed nearly anyone else your age." Whiteout immediately congratulated her upon landing, but even as Momo was back to normal and bowing with an enthusiastic "Thank you very much, Sensei,"; her eyes quickly returned to the site of where the tower itself had blown up, now encased in a huge chunk of ice.

"Sensei, does the Hero Network tower run on any kind of fuel lines that would pose an incendiary risk like what we just saw?" The moment she asked, she could see that Whiteout had the same troubled look in her red eyes.

"No, the towers are all solar powered; an explosion shouldn't have been possible. This only could have happened through human means." As Whiteout explained this, leaving Momo with her hand tucked over her mouth in thought; Reiko and Monoma both suddenly came propelling up over the edge of the roof to reunite with their fellows, much to their visible relief.

"I saw how you two were handling evacuating the civilians through all that time; very well done, Emily-chan, Phantom Thief-kun." No sooner than Whiteout had praised the two Class B students, did Monoma start cackling in pride and start rambling off another continuous diatribe behind Momo's back of their accomplishing the ultimately more vital task.

However, Momo was once again tuning him out, as once she looked back to the site of the explosion once more, a passing glance to the further rooftops brought her to an immediate halt; doing a double take once she spotted the distant sight of three unidentified masked figures actively jumping from one roof to the other, as though deliberately fleeing from the scene.

"Everyone, please stop and look over there," she immediately alerted the others, and as soon as they all looked and spotted the distant strangers, Whiteout followed up: "What are you thinking, Creati-chan? You think those might be our elusive bombers?"

"I don't want to jump to conclusions, masks or not; but they could have, at the very least, seen something suspicious beforehand. We should at least go to them and see if they can answer our questions." Without any further convincing needed, Whiteout was already summoning up a strong wind from her hands to launch herself and Momo alike, turning to address Reiko and Monoma: "Emily-chan, use your Quirk to keep yourself and Phantom Thief-kun close to us, but nobody act unless I say so. We don't know what exactly we could be running into just yet."

Reiko gave only a single understanding nod before focusing on the very same metal pole she and Monoma had flown up here on thanks to her Poltergeist Quirk; her ability to telekinetically lift, move and throw objects, as long as their total weight didn't exceed that of the average fully-grown person.

With that, Whiteout launched Momo and her kite harness up into the air and immediately took off on her own frigid breeze right alongside her, with the two Class B students following close; all headed straight for the fleeing trio ahead.

Several rooftops ahead, Marius, Jozef and Gazsi were near to breaking sweat once they'd started fleeing with all their speed and strength upon detonating their explosive charges on the Hero Network central tower. They'd thankfully had enough momentum and physical fitness between them to be able to go fast enough to actually make such jumps, as long as they were over narrow alleys and nothing as insane as a major street, but that still didn't make their escape any less taxing.

[[Dammit…why is it taking Gust so long to get here?]] Jozef wheezed between gasps for breath as he continued to run in tandem with his two comrades, all of them rhythmically hitting the buttons on their earpieces like the Estonian girl had told them once their objective had been completed.

[[I don't know, but we can't just sit here and wait for her. There's no doubt the Heroes will be looking for anything suspicious after what we just did.]] Marius explained, the intensity in his voice already half-expecting such trouble to present itself, just as Gazsi instinctively looked back and nearly jumped at what he saw.

[[Heads up, guys, we got company!]] The moment his warning reached their ears, Jozef dug his heels in, straightened the gun barrel fingers on his hands and immediately spun around until he had them aimed straight at their oncoming opponents, focusing and opening a full barrage of live fire their way.

Even from the distance they were at, Whiteout and Momo immediately realized what was about to happen, and thus the black-haired girl immediately threw her center of gravity to her right, flying off in a hard right turn, while Whiteout just as quickly diverted the same way after her, summoning up a last second high-speed wind to practically ensnare Reiko and Monoma behind her and tow them along out of the line of fire.

The moment they landed on a lower rooftop nearby, all their hearts were once more racing from the revelation of having just barely escaped getting gunned down out of the sky from out of nowhere. Of course, once that initial shock had worn off, all their brows immediately furrowed with the same troubled realization that Whiteout expressed: "Looks like we already found our culprits, after all."

"An actual Finger Machine Gun Quirk…what kind of bold-ass Villains are we dealing with that would so blatantly do that kind of thing to a bunch of Heroes in broad daylight?" Monoma didn't specifically ask any of his fellows, sounding as though he were actually mocking the stranger who had just attacked them.

However, his arrogant grin was masking his residing sense of shock, while Reiko was still as straightforward, if quiet, as ever: "Regardless, they're undoubtedly working on some kind of plan, to still be together as they run after blowing up the tower. According to the schedule at the office of which other Pro Heroes go where in the city, none of them would be able to get here in time before they'd potentially escape. We need to stop them from doing so before anything else."

At this, Whiteout got back to her feet, her eyes focusing on exactly where their escaping trio had just been. "You're right…this is it, you three: your chance to truly put your training and your Quirks to the test. Keep your distance from me, and don't act unless I say, understand? We still don't know what kinds of Quirks the other two have."

Without another word being said, Whiteout proceeded to once more propel herself up and over; with Momo, Reiko and Monoma quickly following after her, while still keeping her words of warning in mind.

Further ahead, after having momentarily scared their pursuers off, the three young foreign boys were once more taking off, this time with far greater urgency, as Jozef muttered: [[Aw man, if we already got Heroes chasing after us, then there's no way we can put up a constant fight!]]

However, Gazsi was far less shaken, shooting an especially intense glare at the skinny Slovakian beside him. [[What is the matter with you, this is what all our training has been preparing us for, remember? Your Quirk and mine practically go hand-in-hand. If those Heroes didn't get the message before and still come after us, we'll make them regret it!]]

[[Yes, remember what Commander Pietro said; they may be Heroes, but they're not ours! If they try to get in the way of our grand mission, then that makes them our enemies, and we can't afford to show them mercy if that's the case.]] As Marius echoed this from mere steps ahead; neither of his comrades could even ignore the intensity in his own voice. He was right, after all, it was exactly what their leader had told them just this morning, as he had in all the time they'd known and trained under him. It was exactly what he'd trained them for. If anything, trying to avoid the chance to put that training to use would have been an insult to his efforts and theirs.

However, they wouldn't be able to ruminate on this for long, as another momentary glance back made Gazsi come to a skidding halt, thus prompting Jozef to do the same: [[Comrades, they're back! Jozef, do your thing! Hurry!]]

Looking back, Jozef could feel his stomach twist with nervousness at the sight of the returning Heroes headed their way at breakneck speed, but his encouragement from his comrades and leaders' words together filled him with focus as well, as he once again raised his Finger Machine Guns at the woman with white hair in the lead and proceeded to let loose another ten finger bullet barrage, burning through more of his stored up energy from his last meal in the process.

"FREEZE STIFF!" Seeing the attack coming this time, Whiteout's forward flight came to an immediate mid-air stop, upon which she quickly brought her hands forward and created two opposing polar vortexes from out of her palms, creating an instantaneous whirlwind at her immediate front that combined the moisture in the air, her own winds and snow together to create an instantaneous wall of ice where the oncoming bullets had just been, completely engulfing and stopping them in their tracks.

With that, and the resultant silence that followed as Jozef had burned through too much of his energy at once, Whiteout quickly rounded her ice barricade, staring the three visibly shocked adversaries before her down. Upon seeing they were all visibly of foreign origin, she immediately switched to English on instinct: "I don't want to hurt any of you if I don't have to. Give yourselves up, and I promise I won't, and you'll be treated fairly."

However, with her words falling on deaf ears, Gazsi suddenly brought his arms up and forward, almost in a gesture as though showing he was asking to be handcuffed. However, Whiteout was quick to notice that he wasn't even looking at her…but at the ice wall that was now behind her.

And that's when she began to hear a slight but quickly growing cracking sound from within the ice itself. Chancing only the slightest glance back over her shoulder, just at the same moment her three interns were finally reaching the same roof, she immediately saw that all of the bullets inside the ice were actually burrowing their way out back the way they had come, almost as though their previous trajectory was literally being rewound through time.

At the moment the bullets had finally exploded out of the ice, Whiteout had immediately acted on creating another immediate, but less thick, ice barricade behind her back, with many of the small lead bits pounding into that as well. However, her defensive coverage unfortunately wasn't wide enough, as in the middle of it all, she felt a piercing and intense pain flare up through the back and out the front of her right shoulder and across her right leg, knocking the Blizzard Hero off balance and onto one knee, already able to feel the warmth of her own blood run down her leg and soak into her costume.

The moment they saw their mentor go down, the three Hero interns instantly scattered; setting their eyes on their respective targets in the immediate situation, with Reiko instinctively sending herself and Monoma higher up into the air through the same metal pole she was transporting them by, only for the blonde grinning boy beside her to just as suddenly let go and send himself free falling, to her one visible eye's momentary shock.

As he fell, Monoma's eyes were focused squarely on the standalone assailant with the gun barrel fingers, viewing him as the much more immediate threat. "WATCH AND BEHOLD THE SPIRIT AND COURAGE OF CLASS B! WE SHOW NO FEAR, NO MATTER WHAT!"

Down below, Jozef could hear the quickly approaching young boy's voice coming from up above, but before he could fidget in panic upon seeing him free falling towards him, he quickly found himself getting yanked forcefully aside, as Marius threw himself into his comrade's place, just as Monoma miraculously managed to stick the landing with his legs bent; his grin stretching from ear to ear as he and the Romanian locked gazes.

"EVEN SUCH VALIANCE WON'T HELP YOU AGAINST THE TRUE HEROES HERE!" He was riding an all-time high of determination to outshine his Class A counterpart; instantly throwing both his arms forward, palms open in preparation to land a debilitating strike into his new opponent's solar plexus, ready to start cheering for his own victory once he saw he was unquestionably going to connect.

WRAAM!

At the very next moment contact should have been made, Monoma felt all the wind get blown right out of his lungs, his blue eyes nearly bugging out as he felt the very same force of two open hands thrown at full speed and strength that he was throwing, connect fully and directly with his own solar plexus instead.

This sent the arrogant Class B student tumbling and rolling at great speed across the roof like a ragdoll, nearly feeling like he was about to vomit from the pain just before he wound up going over the edge, grabbing onto it with one hand with what strength he could muster on such short notice; all while Marius simply stood victorious with nary so much as a thread of his clothes out of place.

Before he could advance on the downed Hero student, though; Marius was suddenly cut off when Reiko came down from the sky and landed clean on her feet as well, this time wasting no time on taunting before she began motioning her hands, lifting up several of the ice chunks from the blown apart original wall left by Whiteout

She then proceeded to send them all flying at fastball speed towards their three opponents, this time managing to successfully hit the one she had seen send her classmate flying without even moving, even as he had his arms up in defense, and sending the shorter one who had retracted the bullets that hit their mentor, ducking down to the ground.

Unfortunately, before she could redirect her multiple projectiles around for another pass, she glimpsed the skinnier one with the gun fingers lining up another shot on her, forcing Reiko to drop her projectiles and hurriedly scramble behind a nearby AC unit for cover, knowing the ice chunks were too far away for her to bring them up for cover in time. The resulting gunfire barrage bit right at her heels as she ran, blasting holes and blowing chunks of the roof apart with every step she took before ultimately diving down.

While Monoma and Reiko had tried to immediately deal with their assailants, Momo had immediately decided to dive in down from her kite and move right for Whiteout herself, hurriedly creating an easy slip-on harness she fit around the Pro Hero's midsection, before hooking up the hook for her grapple gun around it and firing it off towards the next door rooftop, hitting one of the two buttons on its side to help retract the line and thus get their mentor off the rooftop and out of the line of fire.

Of course, Reiko had just dived behind cover by the time Momo was sure Whiteout was out of harm's way for now, and thus she now found herself in all three of her opponents' sights, but she was quick on her feet as she hurriedly tossed a smoke bomb from one of the pouches of her belt behind her back, momentarily cutting off their line of sight, allowing her to make a mad dash for where she had seen Monoma go over the edge.

Momo already had her tape gun at the ready, firing it to the side towards Reiko's hiding spot just as she jumped over the edge, grabbing a momentarily surprised Monoma by his free arm. With the push of a button, just like with her grappling gun, the tape line began to retract, reeling Momo and her fellow intern right along with it, straight past Reiko's hiding spot.

At the sight of her two fellow interns speeding out of the site of battle, the grey-haired girl hurriedly followed after them, jumping down over the edge of the roof just like they did once they reached it, as Momo cut the tape line once they were there, preventing them from being caught in mid-air and out in the open, as the smoke had already started to clear.

Thankfully, Momo's quick reaction times continued to save the day, as the moment they had started to fall, she'd once again fired another tape shot straight up from where they'd jumped, thus providing a makeshift repelling line with which she could control the speed of their decent back down to street level in the narrow alley down below, where Whiteout was already sitting against the wall, using her Quirk to freeze her bullet wounds over; visibly relieved to see her interns all still in one piece. "Oh, thank God. Those three are proving a much tougher bunch than I'd expected."

"Yes, they are proving quite adept and persistent alongside each other. Are you okay, Sensei?" Reiko immediately asked, to which the Blizzard Hero gave a slight nod. "Yeah, all things considered. This isn't the worst injury I've sustained in my experience so far…but it still hurts like crazy. Give me a minute or two for the ice to settle in and stop the bleeding; then I'll be good to go again with all of you."

"We may not have that kind of time though, Sensei. First of all, are you both alright? Yanagi-san? That was a pretty bad hit I saw you take back there, Monoma-san." Momo immediately asked with undeniable concern for her fellow interns.

While Reiko gave a single assuring nod of her own condition, Monoma was still feeling at his midsection with a pained grimace, although he was still trying to hide it behind his cocky grin, even waving Momo's hand away when she tried to reach to check him.

"That one with the full beard has some kind of Refraction Quirk, something that transfers blows right back to whoever throws it. It felt exactly like the blow I know I was gonna hit him with, myself! He caught me by surprise…but the real Heroes always learn from these kinds of mistakes! I didn't need your help, Class A!"

Given the severity of their situation, all three female Heroes knew this wasn't the time for Monoma to start letting his ego and his Anti-Class A obsession start taking the wheel; thus his quiet classmate swiftly planted a silencing hand over his mouth, muttering: "It looked like using my Quirk on the ice chunks managed to still hit him, though. Maybe his Quirk doesn't work against projectiles. He's still really dangerous, though; same goes for the two with the Rewind and Finger Machine Gun Quirks, too."

The mention of the latter two and their Quirks she had likewise witnessed, had already crossed Momo's mind, hence she was already focusing her own Quirk; soon creating four sets of what looked like bulletproof vests, handing one to each of them before turning her back to them and removing the straps of her costume off her shoulders, letting it drop down to her waist before fitting her own vest onto herself, and finally fitting her red Hero suit back over her chest properly.

Once that was done, she began producing one capsule-shaped bomb from out her shoulders, stomach and chest after another. Despite how much Momo struggled to catch her breath after using her Quirk so extensively in such a short amount of time, she began passing a handful of said bombs to Reiko and Monoma both, before fitting the rest within her utility belt.

"These vests are Kevlar; they'll help us against the ones using their Quirks around bullets, but we can't let ourselves stay still so they can get an aim on our heads all the same. We need to try and separate them from each other and take them on one-on-one. These bombs should help disorient or misdirect them so we can herd them apart successfully. Sensei, please forgive me, but right now you're not in any condition to throw yourself into a battle like this. Please, allow us to handle this situation together as we see fit. We promise we won't let you or anyone else down."

Whiteout had already come to know Momo well enough by now to know she wasn't the type of girl who was so headstrong that she would just wing it in a situation like this. She was too smart for that, a real strategic genius when certain situations needed such a mind. Hence, she knew that her intern was only requesting they be given the go ahead to act, because she had a plan she felt a great degree of confidence would work, when taking all their Quirks and those of their enemies into consideration.

"Alright, Creati-chan, Emily-chan, Phantom Thief-kun. As your mentor and a Pro Hero, I give you all permission to get out there, and bring those three to proper justice. But the moment you think the situation has gotten out of hand, I want you all to double back; don't do anything stupid that could get you seriously hurt just because you want to show off, understand?"

It was easy to tell she was directing the last part specifically towards Monoma, but nevertheless, all three interns gave a solemn nod of understanding of Whiteout's instructions. And thus, the Blizzard Hero focused through her pain, and within seconds, another frigid whirlwind was kicking up and rising from beneath all their feet, soon blowing with enough force to send the three upward to the rooftop once more.

The moment they crested over the edge of the roof, they spotted their Villain trio once more dashing for the next rooftop over, and quickly realizing the return of their young pursuers as well.

The moment they all landed back on the roof, Monoma instantly dashed to the right, while Momo and Reiko were both already reaching for their own bombs as they tried to close the distance.

[[Goddammit, don't these idiots ever take a hint?!]] Gazsi fumed as he hurriedly reached an arm back and clenched his fist, pulling back as though he were towing something along behind him. Behind the two girls' backs, the rubble from the roof that had been left behind from when Jozef had been firing after Reiko, all began to fly back to their original spots of the roof, with Momo and Reiko right in the middle.

Fortunately for them both, they quickly realized the danger they'd ended up in, and quickly ducked down out of their trajectory, allowing the chunks to settle back into their original place without further harm, but still stopping them both long enough for the three Villains to gain that much more distance.

"YOU'RE NOT GETTING AWAY IF I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT!" The righteous intensity of Monoma's voice came echoing from up and over to their right; drawing all three of their gazes that way just in time to find him atop the roof of the small outcropping for the roof access door.

With a victorious laugh, the blonde-haired boy threw two of his bombs right in his enemies' path, producing two thick and expanding clouds of purple smoke and pepper, creating a kind of pepper spray cloud that left the three hacking, coughing and teary-eyed, before Marius ultimately declared: [[They've got trap bombs! Quick, circle round! We'll try and lose them that way!]]

Without missing a beat, the trio hurriedly began running and leaping off the edge of the roof for a lower rooftop across, with Jozef barely managing to catch onto the edge before his comrades helped pull him the rest of the way up. As the three Heroes regrouped and continued to give chase, Momo took a quick look at the surroundings of the area up ahead, as their enemies continued to move in the same direction and overall arc. It quickly became clear: "They're heading back for the site of the HN tower! We need to stop them before they get there!"

"She's right. These guys must have a clear understanding of how Heroes are supposed to act. If they get to the tower site, they might try to break the ice or bindings and send all the debris crashing the rest of the way down to the streets below. There's bound to still be civilians and emergency workers there right now." Reiko surmised in full agreement; and for once even Monoma couldn't come up with an instinctive boast for his classmate's speedy reasoning abilities. The stakes for the potential civilians in the crossfire were too great for it.

As such, Momo hurriedly created two moderately-sized spring platforms from out of her back, tossing them to the ground ahead of them, allowing herself and her fellows to bounce high up into the air off of them, and providing them an overhead view and aim for the path ahead of the fleeing Villains.

With careful timing and precision granted by the few precious seconds they had in the air; the intern trio all proceeded to throw every one of the bombs they had in the same general area all around their targets, engulfing them in a huge multi-colored cloud of various incapacitating fumes and substances that completely threw them all off, losing all sense of direction and space from one another.

[[Shit! They've got us spotted! All you guys scatter! We'll try and regroup once we take care of these assholes! Keep contacting Gust if you can! She can still get us out of here if we keep moving!]] As soon as Jozef commanded this with surprising alertness, he and his comrades hurriedly took off apart from one another, all of them erupting from out of the roof-engulfing cloud in three separate directions.

Knowing that Momo's initial strategy had paid off, the three Hero students knew they likewise had no choice but to separate as well if they wanted any chance of stopping these three Villains from escaping. So the moment they came into a rolling landing on the rooftop into the already thinning smoke, they took off after the three individuals they'd had their eyes set on, with Momo specifically going after Marius as he dove across another small street and rolled onto the rooftop of a lower building across.

Momo came gliding in on another momentarily created kite harness, detaching it just in time that she could come in just in front of her intended target, rolling and turning herself mid-roll so that when she came skidding to a stop on her feet, she had her eyes meeting the Romanian's dead on.

[[You really think you'll fare any better than your chucklehead partner, girl? Go ahead and try it, see what happens!]] Even in the language Momo immediately recognized with surprise as Russian, she could tell an especially cocky tone when she heard it. Indeed, after seeing how Monoma directly attacking this one had gone, and after hearing what Reiko had observed, Momo knew she couldn't afford to just charge in blind and get engaged in close-quarters fighting.

That was never her forte to begin with. Her abilities for on-the-fly planning and creation had been improving exponentially, as this fight had already proven earlier. Now she just needed to keep that up while avoiding getting the ever-loving hell kicked out of her in the process. So, standing up tall once more and reaching behind her back, Momo proceeded to create a long and sturdy metal pipe from out the palm of her hand, grabbing onto it with the other and bringing it forward with a precise spin, silently making it known she meant business.

'If I can at least make him throw his hits and miss, it may be able to tire him out enough he doesn't think to use his Quirk in time. Of course, with this staff, I won't be physically hitting him directly with my own body, so his Quirk might not even go into effect this way to begin with. If nothing else, I could even keep him distracted long enough to detonate more of my trap bombs and blindside him. That should be enough.'

Momo was thinking her way through this in record time, as Marius personally wasn't about to waste precious time by just standing here and staring the ponytailed girl down. And so, without a word of warning or even an arrogant smirk, he hurriedly dashed forward towards her, forcing Momo to leap back three strides before ducking and rolling underneath a swift kick he aimed for her head. The moment she was behind him, her motor reflexes kicked in as she swept her leg back, trying to kick her opponent's legs out from under him; only to immediately feel the same hard strike resonate and shoot up her left leg.

'Dammit! Remember exactly who you're dealing with here! You need to be more observant!' Momo mentally cursed to herself in frustration before diving forward to avoid a heavy stomp Marius aimed for her stricken leg. Fortunately, she was as quick and precise on her feet as a cat, as her keen eye managed to read the Romanian boy's body language and shifting of weight just barely quick enough to know which way to move herself so as to avoid getting hit full on.

Granted, there were some moments she found herself getting cornered or rushed, which led to her getting more than a few harsh sideswipes and scratches along her arms, sides and even one across her left cheek. However, she refused to back down or flee. She'd already been forced into that position too many times as it was, and she knew she couldn't allow this guy to reach the tower site and try anything clever to force her or her partners to back off.

After a good couple of minutes of continuing to unconventionally guide Marius along with his continues rapid strikes and misses, Momo could swear she was starting to see his movements slow, or his breathing grow noticeably heavier. It was about the best sign she could ask for. 'This is it! Just one more missed strike big enough for me to get behind him, and I should be able to incapacitate him!'

Marius was all but telegraphing the two-hand clasped swing he was going for, swinging his joined fists straight for her head like a human Morningstar, to which she easily managed to duck and roll under. [[Stop all your fancy dodging and dancing shit and fight me like a Hero, dammit!]]

As Marius shouted this in great frustration, Momo expertly rolled back onto her feet, and with her eyes focused on the one spot she knew for a fact would take all the fight out of him that was left, she proceeded to jab the end of her steel pole right for the base of his neck.

BAM!

Momo didn't even have time to mentally process what had just happened when she felt the very same physical blow ring out from the base of her own neck, effectively knocking her lights out as she collapsed hard to the ground, her eyes nearly rolling back in response. Even in his own state of exhaustion, Marius knew what had just happened and began to laugh. [[You seriously thought that would work? A direct physical blow is still just that if you're the one physically making it happen with your own body! That's why you Heroes will never stand a chance against someone like me!]]

With that especially cutting taunt, Marius proceeded to start making a run back for the nearby fallen tower position, while Momo was already trying to get through the pain wracking her whole body in order to get back on her feet, cursing the fact she actually hadn't thought to create some kind of cushioning for those very same sensitive nerve points on her body. Of course, she couldn't let herself dwell on that any longer, as she quickly began to give chase once more.

…

On the next higher roof over, Monoma had just managed to overshoot the Hungarian Gazsi as he tried to flee for the nearby fire escape, cutting him off with the last of his trap bombs, releasing a cloud of tear gas that sent the shorter young foreigner back; hacking, wheezing and crying against his will, while the young Hero before him began reaching for his own makeshift Capture Tool behind his back, a pair of handcuffs attached to a retractable line.

"There's nowhere further for you to go now, Villain! It's best you just get down and admit your defeat to the truly superior Hero here!" However, while he may have been able to finish his latest taunt, the laugh that was to follow immediately died in his throat when he saw his opponent suddenly reach into the pack slung over his shoulder, pulling out what looked like a pistol with an extended magazine, just at the very same moment he'd been about to throw his handcuffs.

With his teary and bloodshot eyes spotting the blurred image of Monoma right in front of him, Gazsi let out a furious battle cry as he hammered his finger down on the trigger, releasing a spray of bullets that the Class B boy barely managed to dodge in time as he ducked behind the corner of yet another roof access outcrop; the bullets chipping and blasting away at it in a merciless hail, before the clip ran dry in a matter of seconds.

With his sense of courage emboldened by his quickness on his feet and the disadvantage the Villain had now put himself in, Monoma hurriedly ran back out into the open and wasted no time throwing his handcuffs with impressive precision, with both cuffs managing to find their mark and snap shut around Gazsi's wrists.

With the flip of a tiny switch on the back of his belt, Neito began reeling the line in, pulling Gazsi along fast, and preparing a good clean right hook to take him out for the count.

Unfortunately, Gazsi's reactions were just as on point, as with another outreach of his arms and subsequent shutting of his hands, all of the scattered rubble from his firing away at the wall seconds before, all began to converge on the same corner Monoma was now standing in front of en masse, flying in with such speed and force that they not only managed to slam him right up against the wall and nearly plaster him in place against it, but also managed to cut through the line connecting his cuffs to the boy himself.

The force with which he'd been hit, thrown back and slammed against the wall left Monoma's head spinning momentarily, but by the time he'd regained his senses, he spotted Gazsi once again running for everything he was worth, fighting against his handcuffs the whole way there; prompting the increasingly frustrated young Hero to run after him, now knowing he had no Capture Tool or any more trap bombs to work with…at least, not yet, if all went well.

…

On the next rooftop over between Momo and Monoma's positions, Reiko had likewise found herself in a standoff against Jozef, who after realizing how much he'd depleted his own internal energy with his Finger Machine Gun barrages, had also found himself resorting to the use of his machine pistol, once again forcing her to move with great swiftness; but in the process granting her a great deal of makeshift ammunition of her own, using the kicked up rubble and even his own bullet casings as mini projectiles to keep him distracted, blinded and on the defensive. If she were to keep it up for just long enough, she knew it would give her a chance to close the distance, take the skinny Slovakian to the ground and have him apprehended.

They were just on the edge of the tower site at this point, she could see some of the smaller pieces of landed debris from the explosion scattered about. She was literally fighting her pick of these Villains right at his proposed finish line. She could only make the assumption that her partners were handling just as well with their own battles as well, especially when a lucky hit from an especially large projectile of hers managed to stun Jozef with a blow to the side of his head, staggering him.

However, just as she began to make the mad dash to take him down, Reiko could feel that instinctive sensation that she was being watched intently. She didn't realize in time that Gazsi had managed to flee his way onto this rooftop, and upon seeing his comrade in trouble, was already using his Quirk to rewind all of the tower debris on this particular rooftop behind her back, sending it all flying full speed towards her.

With all her own rubble ammunition sent too far for her to bring back as a defense in time, and with not enough time to actually get down and out of the way, Reiko was unable to avoid getting smacked in the midsection hard by a large piece of metal, knocking her flat on the ground and winded.

At the same time, Jozef was finally shaking off the stun from getting hit in the head, which of course flared his anger back up something ugly; to the point where once he saw Reiko on her back on the ground squirming, he didn't even hesitate to bring up one of his hands flat, not even minding the further energy expenditure as he fired a full set of rounds from his five fingers, each one pounding hard against the grey-haired girl's torso, sending her writhing and gasping for breath.

Fortunately for her, the timely intervention of Gazsi calling out to his panting comrade: [[Spitfire, grab onto one of the tower pieces! We're regrouping there!]], managed to catch Jozef's attention, as he hurriedly grabbed onto a passing piece of metal flying by thanks to the Hungarian's Quirk, both young men flying away towards the prone body of the Hero Network tower still essentially hanging on its side, supported by two buildings, over the still semi-packed square below.

And in so doing, he never stopped to look and see that Reiko, while still royally hurting in the chest from the sheer physical impact of his bullets, was ultimately still okay thanks to the Kevlar vest under her costume. She would be dealing with some really nasty bruising afterwards, assuming the best, but even an inexperienced young Hero like her knew that was vastly preferable to the alternative.

After all, in a moment of sheer reflexive brilliance, just before she'd gotten hit and knocked down, Reiko had the ingenious idea of using the last of her provided trap bombs to be carried along with one of the flying pieces of debris, primed to go off in just a few more seconds. From the speed they and the fleeing Villains were going, she had a gut feeling the timing would be just right, as at that moment, once she was trying to get back up, she looked back and saw that, indeed, all three adversaries were already converging atop the body of the tower.

BOOM!

In a cloud of bright green smoke, a large cloud of yet more tear gas erupted at the point the three young men met. Reiko could already hear their anguished cries and gagging from where she stood, but wasted no further time before using her Quirk to pull up yet more nearby debris for her to ride atop of on her way to get the drop on them.

At the same time, trying so hard not to breathe more in than he already had, Gazsi came stumbling further up the fallen tower's body, gasping for actual air to breath, only to notice mere seconds later, that the same rubble he had rewound back to its original position in order to escape, now all seemed to be re-rewinding itself back to its other previous position, back on the same roof he had just tried to flee from, with him helplessly caught on top of it, just before a smaller wayward piece managed to knock him upside the back of his head, almost knocking him right off.

Looking all around in pain and total confusion as to how this was possible, his eyes soon landed upon the distant form of a widely grinning Neito Monoma on a rooftop overlooking the whole scene; his arms extended towards the scene from which he was now pulling his target away from, and his hands clutching into fists against the air just like the Hungarian himself always did. "Like I said: the true Heroes always learn from their mistakes! This is why Class B shines the brightest over all others!"

Unfortunately, his instinct to boast at the first sign of gaining an advantage was quick to prove Monoma's undoing, as a momentary glance back to the tear gas cloud revealed to him that not only was it already dissipating, but that the Villain he knew had the Finger Machine Gun Quirk had him square in his sights; and with an expression twisted with rage, had his machine pistol and free hand all aimed his way, already firing before the blonde-haired Hero intern could even swallow the nervous lump that had just jumped into his throat.

However, just as he was about to try and duck out of the way and get behind cover again, Monoma suddenly found himself getting grabbed by the collar of his costume and pulled closer, as Momo had seen the danger her two partners were now in, and had come rushing in with the save as she planted the large riot shield she had created on her way over (hence a large split in the back of her costume and vest alike; now only being supported by her shoulders) right in front of them.

At the very same moment, for the sake of buying the two other young Heroes just a little more time, Reiko had applied all the focus of her Quirk on all the bullets flying their way, and managed to stop them all in their tracks as she descended from up above, hurrying behind Momo's shield before releasing her Quirk's hold.

While those rounds subsequently fell harmlessly to the ground below, their hair-triggered opponent was showing no signs of stopping, as he was now blind with frustration at their constant interfering, firing from hand and machine pistol alike at full blast, not even stopping to think about the physical toll doing so was taking on himself anymore.

As the bullets continued to hammer relentlessly against Momo's shield, Monoma had finally managed to catch his breath enough to look the black-haired girl in a glance. "You Class A lot may be a bunch of attention-seeking blowhards, but now it's Class B's turn to save the day!"

With a wince of intense focus, he suddenly began to create a capsule-shaped bomb from the palm of his hand just as Momo could, already pulling the pin from its handle before tossing it high over the top of the shield towards Jozef mere feet ahead. The grin on his face couldn't have been prouder: "All I had to do was think of a bomb filled with pepper spray. With them all separated thanks to Yanagi's intervention before, it should be enough for us both to at least take that one down for good."

POP!

Instead of the burst and subsequent hiss of smoke he'd been expecting, the bomb he threw instead let out a small pop, and a small cloud of normal household pepper. It still left Jozef hacking and coughing with severely irritated eyes, but it ultimately didn't stop him from continuing on with his suppression tactic.

The fact that Jozef was still firing away at their only current cover made it clear to Monoma that something in his strategy had gone wrong; and Momo wasted no time before explaining it for him, while still applying her physical strength to withstanding the lead assault.

"I know your Quirk allows you to copy those of whomever you make contact with to their fullest extent, Monoma-san, but my Quirk doesn't work exactly the same way as many other physical Quirks! I'm only able to properly create things I know the complete chemical makeup of. Just because you were thinking of a pepper spray bomb, doesn't mean it automatically comes if you don't know what all the components are made of at their most basic level!"

The moment he was once again about to tell her off for daring to try and lecture him, Monoma's eyes looked just over Momo's right shoulder, just in time to see Gazsi had indeed landed back on the previous rooftop he'd tried to flee from, but now he had his own machine pistol aimed right at her exposed back.

In a flash, with a loud tear of the fabric of his own Kevlar vest and his costume itself, the Class B boy hurriedly produced a large riot shield of his own and slammed it just in the way of the resultant free fire barrage; the resultant cacophony of bullets against steel shocking Momo at just how close she had come, and how thoroughly she'd allowed herself to get distracted from her surroundings. This time, even Monoma couldn't maintain the typical arrogant grin on his face as he stared her down: "Should I assume that's good enough for your oh-so-high standards, Class A?!"

"Oh, please, you two, we don't have time for this." Reiko muttered with a notable frustrated edge to her quiet voice that thankfully managed to reach them both.

With an apologetic nod, Momo's brow furrowed as she tried to focus on the one remaining plan she could reasonably rely on, reaching up and grabbing another three capsule bombs emanating from her stomach area. "Yanagi-san's right. These Villains are too quick with their reflexes for us to keep relying on things like pepper spray, tear gas or glue bombs. We're going to need to use something much more debilitating."

As soon as she handed the second and third bombs to Monoma and Reiko respectively, Momo pulled the pin and tossed hers high over her head and over their riot shield wall, prompting the two Class B students to do the same.

BOOM! BOOMBOOM!

With three consecutive blasting sounds, three blinding flashes of light shone from behind the three students' cover, with three respective cries of shock and pain immediately following. Momo felt the slightest relief, knowing that her flash bangs seemed to have done the trick. It was taking all the focus and energy she had left to stay on her feet after creating so much in so little time.

That was why she knew they had to take this chance. "Open up and move forward! We have to get them down before they can regroup!"

With that, she and Monoma pulled their shields apart from one another, and the whole trio quickly began making a mad run for their three adversaries, with the two shield-bearers keeping their shields up once Jozef was barely able to make out their oncoming shapes through his pained eyes, and began firing from his pistol and fingers together again.

At the same time, while Reiko was just about ready to send the several pieces of rubble she'd picked up along the way with her Quirk flying towards Gazsi; a moderate distance away atop the tower with Jozef; Marius had likewise started to make out the female Hero approaching his Hungarian comrade, and thus instinctively pulled out his own machine pistol and began firing his entire clip her way.

Reiko was just barely able to catch glimpse of the Romanian aiming at her before he began firing, and thus once the bullet spraying started, her gut reflexes drove her to drop all her previous projectiles and focus all of it towards the multitude of bullets flying her way. However, this time, the use of her Quirk came on impulse, not foresight, thus it was born completely out of a reaction of self-preservation that drove her to simply focus on redirecting the bullets away from herself.

It wasn't until after she knew she'd done so, that she realized exactly what she'd just done, with a horrified twisting in her gut as she saw the bullets all now flying directly towards Jozef, who was still focused solely on Momo and Monoma.

Just before she could try to use her Quirk to fully stop the bullets this time, a colossal vortex of pure snow suddenly erupted up from the ground between her rooftop and the prone tower overhead, sending countless wisps of pure Arctic winds flying from all around it, forcing her and her classmates to duck down to avoid getting hit.

This sudden intrusion had caught all three of the foreign Villains completely by surprise, but the three Heroes already knew: Whiteout had finally managed to recover enough, and had arrived with the save just in the nick of time with her own special move: "WINTER'S CYCLONE!"

In a matter of seconds, with all of these branching off winds shooting this way and that from the main body of her snowy vortex, Whiteout managed to not only freeze all of the wayward bullets together and stop them dead in their tracks, but she had likewise managed to freeze all three of her interns' adversaries directly to where they all stood, giving them no feasible means of fleeing anymore.

Just as quickly as it had started, the vortex dissipated, leaving the three Yuuei students to slowly lift their heads back up and breathe a collective sigh of relief as their mentor was once again standing on her feet; her shoulders just barely trembling from that level of exertion after having gotten shot twice.

Having witnessed the entire scene play out before her intervention, Whiteout instinctively turned her red eyes to look at Reiko to her left; a reassuring blue-tinted smile on her snowy white face. "I saw what you were trying to do just then, Emily-chan. I'm proud of you; of all of you. As Heroes, you all must always remember that, unless there is absolutely no other option when it comes to guaranteeing the safety of the public and your partners, you must never act in a way to deliberately endanger another's life…even that of a Villain."

"Yes, Sensei!" All three interns answered, still overcome with relief that, with her return, the fight seemed to finally be over. As Reiko was about to rejoin the others, however, a momentary glance behind Whiteout further down the body of the tower made her come to a stop, needing to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks on her, because reflecting off the sunlight, it looked as though the ice around Marius and Jozef's body was actually dissipating, or rather…rewinding back into snow and vapor the way it had come, quickly helping them free.

Upon glimpsing the same reverse transformation drifting through the air from over her left shoulder, she immediately turned back to find the same thing was happening to Gazsi's ice entrapment as well, all because his hands were still extended forward and not encased in the ice like the rest of him, thus granting him the chance to still use his Rewinding Quirk.

Thankfully, it didn't take long after Reiko had first noticed this change, than Momo and Monoma did as well, while Whiteout still had her back turned to the two formerly trapped Villains up the tower. As such, once Marius knew he was free again and was reloading his machine pistol to unload in the Pro Hero's back, Momo immediately grabbed onto the collar of her mentor's costume and pulled her back, planting her riot shield in front just in time to meet the flying lead head-on, while Monoma hurriedly dashed around them both, keeping his own shield up to take on the gunfire; Jozef having been forced to get down on the ground to avoid getting caught in the crossfire, and thus unable to aim and shoot the oncoming Hero in the back.

The moment Marius ran out of ammo, Monoma immediately threw his shield aside so as not to encumber or weigh himself down any further, knowing this was his chance to close the distance and finally do something to help end this fight once and for all. 'Ignore your racing heart and frigid sweats, dammit! It doesn't matter how scary this whole situation is! You're the true Hero that rises up to shine and put an end to the dangers that others face! This is your chance to finally take the stage and reveal yourself as the true star of the show!'

At the same time upon hearing the gunfire stop, Whiteout all but flew up and over from behind Momo and her shield, ready to hit Jozef and Marius with another freezing vortex to keep them from doing anything further. However, after seeing her step out into the open, and especially upon seeing Monoma actually stumble and trip forward in his mad rush, Marius was ready to finally put an end to this whole confrontation the only way he realistically knew he could, starting by buying himself a few extra seconds by throwing his empty machine pistol right at Whiteout herself, forcing her to bring a hand up to freeze and shatter the empty firearm in mid-air.

But that was all the time the Romanian needed, as the moment he had thrown his gun, he had immediately taken off into a ravenous sprint of his own, right for Neito Monoma where he was currently on his hands and knees, trying to scramble back onto his feet, only to lift his head and see the mad look in his opponent's eyes, just as Marius was rearing a steel-toed boot back as far as it could go, ready to drive it and all the weight behind it straight into the still-grinning blonde boy's mug.

Even with that smile still on his face, Marius could easily read the fear evident in Monoma's blue eyes, thus he had half the urge to laugh as he finally threw his enraged foot forward into his face with everything he had. 'Once I knock this shithead's lights out, I can use him as a shield! These Heroes are always so predictable, there's no way they'd risk one of their comrade's lives trying to get to me. I could be able to buy all our tickets out of here with just one person!'

WRAAM!

Every thought racing through Marius' head was instantly blacked out the moment his foot finally connected with Monoma's completely exposed face…and he felt every last ounce of that weight, that force, drive straight into his own face dead center; his nose and several teeth cracking underneath the power of the impact, while the power fighting against his own forward momentum ultimately threw the Romanian's whole body backward into a flip from the head first, sending his body tumbling up and over several times across the tower's body before finally coming to an unceremonious stop.

Marius Lazarescu was completely out like a light, and the sight of that made Monoma breathe a sigh of great relief, especially as he took that moment to glance down to his waist, specifically at the three stopwatches lining the front of his belt, just as the watch on his right had finally reached zero at that moment. 'Ha…what perfect timing! Had he been a moment slower, my Copy of his Refraction Quirk would've worn off. Then I'd really be in trouble, wouldn't I? Fate is truly smiling on Class B today, isn't it?'

At the same time as Monoma was reveling in his hard-earned victory, Jozef had likewise witnessed what had just happened, as did Gazsi while in the middle of playing a mid-air tug-of-war of several sizeable chunks of debris to use as projectiles, between his Rewind Quirk and Reiko's Poltergeist Quirk, leaving it all hanging still.

With the realization that their primary power house member was taken out, their shared confidence plummeted, especially when considering just how vastly outnumbered and out-gunned they metaphorically were, especially now that Jozef knew he'd depleted virtually all of his energy for his Finger Machine Guns, as well as both clips for his machine pistol.

Both young men knew now what their only feasible means to achieve victory was, and that was to run for everything they were worth, which they both did once Gazsi finally let go of his Quirk's hold on the debris between himself and Reiko, catching her by surprise as it all came flying for her in the process, buying the Hungarian the seconds needed to leap onto the next roof over and run, prompting Jozef to hurriedly do the same, jumping from the edge of the sideways tower and just managing to make it past the edge of the next roof, hurriedly running to re-converge with his comrade.

At the same time, similarly inspired by Monoma's last-second maneuver to take one of the Villains out; Whiteout, Momo and Reiko were just as quick to give chase to their two remaining fleeing opponents, as Momo hurriedly created another kite harness just in time for Whiteout to launch herself with another vortex, and propelling the black-haired girl right alongside her, while Reiko was riding atop the same debris she'd just been fighting over, using her Quirk to have it carry her over the streets below to rejoin her partners in pursuit.

Already, they and their enemies alike could see that the Heroes were steadily gaining on them. With no energy for fighting on Jozef's part, and no remaining bullets for their conventional weapons; all the two young foreign boys could do was simply try to run even faster, their chests feeling as though they were on fire as they kept hammering away at the buttons on their earpieces, especially as Momo and Reiko were just about at a good enough distance for the former to create some tethering lines to wrangle them with.

THOOM!

The instant Momo lifted her eyes back up from creating her line in order to aim hers and Reiko's throws, both girls were suddenly met (with only the slightest sound of something disrupting the air) by the sight of another clearly foreign teenage girl in the air before them, with icy blue eyes and short, blown back lavender-colored hair, with a couple sizeable bruises on her especially angry-looking face, while she stared both Heroes before her down with violent intent.

BAM! WRAM!

With insane precision for being in mid-air, the mysterious intruding girl proceeded to throw her body weight around so that Momo and Reiko were about to run straight into the soles of her boots, and from there she proceeded to kick back directly into their midsections with all her strength, effectively using the two female Hero students as springboards to propel herself right up to her two comrades, snatching them both before all three of them instantly vanished.

Whiteout's immediate instinct upon this new face's arrival had been to try and entrap her, but upon seeing two of her interns starting to free fall now that their momentum and focus had been broken with those kicks, she immediately swooped right down after them and quickly summoned up another chilling vortex to rebound off the ground, slowing Momo and Reiko down so that they were able to land on the ground much slower and safer, with their mentor touching down right beside them before helping them both back to their feet.

"Sensei…were you able to stop them?" Momo immediately asked as soon as she knew she and Reiko were both all right. However, seeing the Blizzard Hero gravely shake her head left them both with a horrible chill in their stomachs. "I'm sorry, Creati-chan, Emily-chan; but that new friend of theirs came in too quick for me to react, and saving you two was a bigger priority."

"Hey, are you all okay down there?!" The echo of Monoma's voice came down from the tower over their heads, and as they all looked up to address him, they saw him grinning bright as he stood tall with his foot perched on the still-unconscious, now-restrained Marius. "Looks like, in the end, Class B finally manages to do what Class A couldn't, does it?!"

An immediate lifting snow vortex from Whiteout brought her and the two female students right back up to the same level as the boy in question; the latter two looking at their one obtained Villain, while Whiteout herself was addressing Monoma personally: "You did exceptionally well, using your Quirk against this especially troublesome one of the bunch, but now's not the time for further gloating, Phantom Thief-kun. We may have captured one, but it would appear our mysterious young foreign Villains have more friends than we thought…and they were able to escape because of it, after all."

Of course, with that being said, they all knew that was still not the extent of their problems, now that they were looking upon the downed tower they were all still standing upon; while the echoes of countless sirens of police and emergency vehicles began to fill the square down below.

While they had been able to capture one Villain, and keep any civilians from getting caught in the crossfire, it didn't change the fact that, from the very start, they had ultimately managed to land an especially hard blow on the Hero Agency setup of Hokkaido as a whole. Until the tower would get repaired, the different Agencies weren't going to be able to communicate with each other nearly as efficiently as before…and it definitely wouldn't take long for that fact to settle in, and Heroes across the island would start seeing bold spikes in Villain activity in all different cities and towns as a result.

"Sensei, there's something else." Momo muttered this with considerable hesitance, but she knew she couldn't possibly keep what was on her mind to herself a second longer now that the battle had ended. "I think…I may have an idea where those three came from originally."

She could just feel the curious gazes upon her, and thus she clenched a determined fist, looking her mentor and fellow interns in the eye. "What I was saying earlier, about my classmates interning in Arakisu City; the truth is that they've been specifically working in a small town in their teachers' jurisdiction, made up entirely of Slavic refugees with Quirks.

"After their first day over there, they'd told us about a handful of individuals they had met that were part of some kind of local security force for that town, as well as all their Quirks. And these four we just ran into…their Quirks matched up exactly with four of the people they described then."

Just as she had expected, Momo's news left Whiteout looking especially surprised and pensive, while Reiko's one eye reflected only the slightest change in expression as she was taking it into consideration as well. All the while, Monoma was looking at the Class A vice president almost accusingly. "And you really didn't think that was something worth sharing with us sooner?! You really think the rest of us to be so incapable of working with such information as your class is?"

"That's enough, Monoma-kun! This isn't the time or place for this squabble of classes you seem so hinged upon." Whiteout's scolding, elevated by referring to her male intern by his actual name, thankfully managed to convince Monoma to back down, while her red eyes were seriously focusing on Momo herself. "Yaoyorozu-chan, with everything you just described, am I correct in assuming these classmates of yours are interning at the Kapenta Hero Agency?"

"Y-yes, Sensei." The moment Momo gave her answer, a fortunate spark of familiarity flashed across the Blizzard Hero's eyes. "Ah, yes, I'm quite familiar with them. They're the only Agency in Hokkaido with the distinction of having this refugee community of Slavic people, Gagaringrad, fall under their watch, as you said. If your suspicions are indeed correct, then that's most likely where our escaped trio of Villains came from and returned to. Of course, our unconscious friend here may be able to help clarify the muddier details once he wakes up in police custody."

However, while Whiteout sounded especially confident in this next step in their new agenda, and Monoma and Reiko both looked fairly assured by it coming from a professional, Momo looked increasingly uneasy, which her grey-haired partner was quick to notice: "Is something else wrong, Yaoyorozu?"

Momo's gaze fell to one of the pouches of her belt as she instinctively answered: "Sensei, would the Hero Network tower being down effect our capabilities of contacting other Heroes through the phone lines? If these people did come from that town to do something like this, then my friends in the Kapenta Agency may be in trouble, or they could at least be able to help us conduct a thorough investigation."

"No, the phone lines and the Hero Network are completely separate. Go ahead and call them, Creati-chan. We need to go down and discuss the details with the authorities before we do anything else, anyway." The moment Whiteout gave her permission and beckoned the three interns to follow her back down to the square to speak to the police and get their injuries looked to; Momo immediately grabbed her phone and hit the video call option, speed-dialing Mina, Nikolay and Kyouka's numbers together; every second that passed as she waited for a ringtone feeling as though it were passing at a snail's pace.

The moment the screen of her phone reflected a 'no signal/disconnected number' message, Momo felt her heart momentarily seize with far greater concern than she already had. Nikolay and Kyouka were one thing, but Mina was never the kind of person to not answer a call when given the chance, and especially not the kind of person who would straight up abandon their phone or leave it completely off if there was the chance a friend would call. Now it was more than suspicion: now Momo knew something was wrong over in Arakisu City.

However, with no way to race over there, and knowing she still had a responsibility to stick with her fellow interns and mentor until they could properly mobilize, she went with the next best option, and hurriedly hit the speed dial for Tenya's number. She wasn't sure exactly how in this moment, but she just felt a fair degree of confidence that he would be able to get some kind of answers as to what was going on, assuming he didn't somehow find out about it himself already.

One ring…two rings…three rings; every one that passed without an answer was leaving Momo almost shaking with unbearable worry. However, at the fourth ring, she was finally answered with the click of the other end of the line being picked up, prompting her to not even wait to start speaking with urgency: "Iida-san, thank goodness you're there! I'm sorry, but something has just happened here that—"I know, Yaoyorozu-san…I just saw the news talking about it over here! We've just had a situation occur in Sapporo as well! I think…*gasp* I think something much bigger is going on all around Hokkaido right now! I just tried calling the others at the Kapenta Agency, but got no signal from there! What about you? Are you and your partners alright over there?"

Even as Tenya began to run free with explanations and questions, Momo was immediately able to pick up not only the distinct sound of her fellow president being clearly out of breath and in pain, but also a similar wall of different siren noises in the background. Between what had just happened here in Asahikawa, to what Tenya was telling her had happened in Sapporo, to neither of them being able to get in touch with their friends in Arakisu, the timing was simply far too closely knit for it all to just be a coincidence.

Indeed, something far bigger than any one of them could guess was happening right now, and even in the state he was in on the other end, Momo knew they both had a full mind to move out and get to the bottom of it all, starting with reuniting with Nikolay, Mina and Kyouka in Arakisu City.

…

A good ways outside the Asahikawa City limits, Tuule had finally stopped her continuous warping ahead, allowing Gazsi and Jozef to both finally collapse to the ground in order to catch their breaths from all the exertion they'd just gone through.

Of course, even seeing that their speed freak comrade was likewise trying to catch her own breath, as well as sporting a number of bruises on her face and across her arms and legs, barely even registered before Jozef angrily got to his feet, looking back the way they had come. [[I can't…I can't believe we did that! We just left Blowback behind like dead weight! We have to go back for him!]]

[[And what exactly do you plan on doing if I do take you back there? More and more Heroes and the authorities are bound to congregate to the scene, if they haven't already, and you can barely stand up straight, Spitfire. Clearly you've used your Quirk as much as you can right now.]] Tuule's response was concise, and especially biting as she looked the skinny Slovakian boy over, taking particular note of his body swaggering as he tried to maintain his balance in the drained state he was in.

She could see a similar look of regret and anger on Gazsi's face as well. With that, the Estonian girl let out a heavy, tired sigh. [[I don't like the idea of leaving Blowback behind any more than you do…but the fact is that, in the state we're all in after what we just went through, the longer we stay outside of Gagaringrad, away from the others; the more chances we risk taking. Right now, we've all accomplished our goals, and we need to get back to headquarters. Surely Commander Pietro will already have the next step of our operation planned and ready for us when we do. Everything we've done today is sure to draw the attention of every Hero in Hokkaido towards us, and eventually the rest of Japan as well, and we need to start preparing for that.]]

Fortunately for her, she could see that Jozef and Gazsi were both clearly coming around to her more practical way of thinking, instead of letting their initial emotions take full control over their decision making.

As Jozef began to finally turn back so they could regroup and continue the rest of their way back home, Gazsi suddenly piped in: [[Wait a second, you were supposed to be the ticket home for the others back in Arakisu as well! If you're still here with us, how are they going to get back without getting cut off by those damn Heroes?]]

Looking back towards Sapporo where she had come from, Tuule confidently answered: [[Ocean Master volunteered to head there himself through the canal to extract the Giver-apprehension team, after getting me, Grenadier and Scythe out of the tunnel once we busted it open. I'm willing to bet he's already beaten us back to headquarters by now with them in tow. That's why we shouldn't keep him and the Commander waiting any longer than we have to. Now come on.]]

Visibly relieved by the sound of both other teams' apparent success, Jozef and Gazsi hurriedly grabbed onto Tuule's hands, and with a prepared inhale of air, she proceeded to send the three of them warping ahead twenty meters at a time, ready to finally reunite with the rest of their comrades and relish in their mission's all-around success, while they all knew in their guts that the Heroes they'd all left behind in their wake would be stewing in a complete air of defeat.

And there it is, everyone: the new chapter for this week. After the behemoth that was the Kapenta Hero Agency siege last week, I can only imagine what a breath of fresh air a chapter of this length is. I hope you all enjoyed it, and if so, please be kind and let me know your thoughts in a review. After the events of this week, my belief that reader feedback is essential to writers approaching their fullest potential has never been stronger.

I hope you all have a great rest of your week, and I will see you all with the next chapter on 05/07!