Chapter 7: Picking Up The Pieces
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UA Principal's Office
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Nezu and a deflated All Might were calmly sitting in Nezu's office while drinking a blend of the that Nezu had just recently imported from China. It was during this time of peace and tranquillity that the phone to Nezu's left started ringing, indicating an unknown caller.
Picking up the phone, Nezu answers in a calm and professional tone. *"Good afternoon. This is principle Nezu of UA High. How may I be of service?"*
*"P- p- principle Nezu. It's me, Izuku Midoriya."* The strained voice of Izuku comes through.
*"Ah, hello Mr Midoriya. Is your class not currently participating in the Rescue Trial? Anyway, how may I be of assistance?"*
*"P- please, principle Nezu. W- we need help."* That got the attention of the quirked animal.
*"Mr Midoriya, please calm down and tell me what occurred."*
*"Y- yes principle. When we arrived at the USJ, a group of more than 100 villains were warped into the facility and attacked us. Right now, Aizawa-sensei and Thirteen-sensei are injured and unconscious. The villain with the warping quirk seriously injured Shoji-san and the rest of the class is currently facing off against the last of them, but one of them is as strong as All Might."* As Izuku continued speaking, Nezu grew paler under his fur while his fur stood on end.
*"Please rest assured that help will be on its way as soon as possible. And please, do not give up."* With his peace said, he puts down his phone.
*"Toshinori, head to the USJ facility right now. The class has been attacked by villains and both Aizawa and Thirteen are down. They require help… especially since, according to Mr Midoriya, one of them should be as powerful as you."*
Those words terrified All Might. Eyes wide, he stands up with his chair being flung to the opposite wall. Without another word, he simply entered his All Might persona and ran…straight through one of Nezu's bulletproof windows. He could not care less about its cost, Nezu could just deduct it from his next paycheck. His students and successor were more important. 'Hang in there, students. I'll be there as soon as possible.'
Nezu stared at the destruction All Might left in his wake, but then decided to leave the repairs for later.
He reached over to his phone and pressed a button labelled "Intercom" and spoke. "Attention. All active-duty hero staff members and Recovery Girl. Please make your way to my office immediately. We are currently experiencing a stage 5 emergency."
With his peace said, he prepared the fastest vehicle he had that could transport as many people as would be arriving and made another call. He dialled the number he had memorized long ago and waited for the phone to ring for three times before it was answered.
*"Greetings, principal Nezu. It has been quite some time since we've last spoken. How may I be of assistance?"* The one on the other side of the call answered.
*"Greetings detective Naomasa. I wish this was a social call, but it is not. There's been an incident at the school. I have just received information that at least 100 villains have managed to infiltrate the campus and have confirmed injuries. Please bring a few squad cars and a medical team. I will have someone direct you to the site."*
*"Very well, Nezu. We'll be there within the next ten minutes."*
During the conversation, the pro heroes he had called, starting with Hound Dog and Recovery Girl and ending with Midnight, arrived in his office, each and every one of them starring at the broken window.
"I am glad to see you all made it in such a timely manner. As you all may know, class 1A has travelled to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint for rescue training. During this time, it seems that villains have made their way onto campus and attacked them."
Cries of outrage followed this announcement.
"Excuse me, principal." Midnight interjected. "Do we have any information on how these villains managed to get through the barrier and how many we will be facing?"
"Indeed, we do. I have received a call from Mr Midoriya, and he has given clear information on our foes. One of the villains has a warp quirk and was their most likely mode of transportation. The villains number approximately 100 with one of them rivalling the strength of All Might." Shock and fear for the students and their colleagues at this declaration and before anyone else could recollect themselves, Present Mic shouted, but luckily not with his quirk.
"What about Aizawa and Thirteen?"
"From what I've been told, they are both injured and incapacitated along with one other student. As you can see," Nezu gestured to his window, "I have already had All Might go ahead. Our transport should be waiting for us outside. We will be moving out right now to provide assistance."
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USJ Gates
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All Might had just reached the gates leading into the USJ. The burning anger he had been feeling when he heard the news had turned into a cold fury as he travelled. He drew his fist back and charged a portion of his power before throwing it forward. Both doors were flung off their hinges, kicking up dust that clouded his vision.
"HAVE NO FEAR… FOR I AM HERE!"
He made sure to keep his voice as even as possible. His students needed to feel reassured by his presence. They needed to feel that there was hope at the end of the day, otherwise they would fall to despair. While the dust cleared from his vision, he tried to put on his signature grin but could feel it slip from his face a few moments later.
When the dust cleared, he came face-to-face with his students, each of them ready to fight.
Out of the twenty students that he knew were there, he saw only eleven and each one of them looking close to collapsing. They could barely stand as they were, some were hanging off whoever was standing next to them while some had already fallen to a knee. He could see how the boys were barely keeping their eyes open and could see red eyes and tear stains streaking down the faces of the girls. He became more furious.
After several seconds in which the team of students just stood there looking at him and not recognizing him. They held their crumbling fighting stances, their legs having just enough strength to keep their bodies from falling to the ground.
He noticed recognition spark within the eyes of his pupil. "All Might-sensei!" And like that, the tenson within every other student dispersed. They let their bodies relax and nearly all of them fell to the ground with only Momo, Izuku and Kouji having enough strength to stand Ichigo and Ochako were caught by Momo and Izuku respectively.
All Might glanced to his left. In a pile, he saw approximately thirty villains, all except one taped up and secured to the floor with Mineta's sticky balls, with the one that was not tied up having a large pool of blood around his body, but he could not see a wound from his position. As he walks closer to his class of students, he got a better view of the facility. To his right, he sees the incapacitated forms of eight of his students along with the gloves and shoes of Tooru Hagakure, indicating that she was sitting on top of Mezou Shouji. This led him to see the serious injury that he had received. To Shouji's side, were the bloodied forms of Eraser Head and Thirteen.
He felt his panic spike in worry and rushed to check on them. Thankfully, each of them still had an easily detectable pulse. Sighing in relief, he stood up and turned to the rest of his class and spoke. "It is good to see that you are all relatively safe." He then feels a small form wrap around his leg and feels his suit growing wet in a small area and when he looked down, he saw nothing other than a small indentation in his leg muscles and assumes that Tooru was hugging him. Slowly, he lowers his hand to where he assumes the top of her head should be and luckily does so without accidentally rubbing his palm in her face. "You've all done well in this ordeal, and I am proud in what you all have accomplished. And I would like to apologize to you all. I should have been here for you all. I was scheduled to be present during this trial but due to my own actions, I was unable to arrive in time to stop this from occurring to all of you. So… please forgive me for my actions that have placed you all in mortal danger." As he said that, he lowered his head and bowed at a ninety-degree angle.
Everyone that sees this is stunned into silence. Being the one who had spent the most time in All Might's presence, Izuku is the first to react and stutters out, "P- please All Might-sensei. T- there's no need to bow to us. There was no way for you to have known that this could have happened." He receives nods of agreement from many of his still awake classmates, while others made their agreement to the statement evident vocally.
"Thank you, students… Thank you." With these words, All Might wiped away tears that had formed and raised his head to look at his students once more. As he looked through the crowd of students, he could do nothing but gaze upon them with pride. 'Not even a full week and they are already strong enough to survive a villain attack of this magnitude.'
He looked down toward the rest of the plaza and could only stare in shock at the level of destruction displayed. When a few pieces of scrap metal fell from above and caught All Might's eye, his attention was directed upward towards the large gash in the roof of the building. He let out a long whistle but then continued his observation of the battlefield. From what he could count, there was between fifteen and twenty villains.
"Young Midoriya. I was informed that there were about 100 villains present but I'm only counting fifty."
"We were divided into the separate training areas where we were assaulted by more villains."
"I see. Thank you Young Midoriya… Hmmm, what may that be?" All Might asked as he continued his observation. In the distance, he could see another villain with a large volume of blood, even larger than the former, laying on the ground with a ball shaped object only some distance away from his body. Deciding to investigate, he ran to the villain and saw that the round object was the head of the villain. A shiver ran down his spine at the death of the villain. Even with all the death he had seen throughout his entire career, seeing this death only reminded him how easily his students could have died. He looked at the wound dealt and narrowed his eyes. 'This was done by a bladed weapon. From what I've seen, Kurosaki and Yaoyorozu are the closest ones to have a sword in their arsenals. But I don't remember seeing any blood on Yaoyorozu that would indicate her having done this and Kurosaki's sword did not have an edge. We will need to review the camara footage to see how this happened.'
During his observation, the rest of the reinforcements that had come from UA High had arrived at the door. They had split up into three groups. The first was simply Recovery Girl, Midnight and Nezu who had gathered up all the students and started healing those with less severe wounds. The second and third teams split up, with All Might joining team two, and entered the separate disaster zones to capture the remaining villains. The only resistance that the heroes had discovered was in the Mountain Zone, where it seemed that none of the students had been warp to and thus was the only area with villains still in fighting condition.
When most of the villains were gathered outside the USJ, the police had arrived in a team of fifty squad cars and ten ambulances. They parked in a wide arc surrounding the entrance. From each car came two officers, fully suited in armoured vests and with their weapons drawn. From the centremost vehicle, two officers that could easily be distinguished from the other officers exited their car. The first was a tall, dog-headed man wearing a white button-up shirt, a polka dotted necktie and a black suit and brown shoes. The second was a slightly shorter man, wearing a white button-up, blue necktie, dark grey pants, brown shoes, gloves and light grey trench coat and fedora.
The trench coat wearing man scanned the surroundings and shouted, "Split into two teams. Team one is to get every one of these secured and make sure none of them escapes. Team two is to enter the facility and assist the heroes present in capturing any villains that are inside. Medics, split up as well. Some of you, make sure that the villains aren't too heavily injured, and the rest are to focus on the injured students and heroes."
"Yes sir!" came the call from all his subordinates.
While his subordinates went to complete their orders, the two officers approached the students, instructors, and medics. "Hello again, Nezu. Recovery Girl… Midnight." He nodded towards the other two present UA staff members.
"Welcome detective Naomasa, you as well police chief Tsuragamae. Thank you for arriving so soon. Though I was unaware that you were in the area."
"Greetings to you as well principle Nezu, Midnight and Recovery Girl, woof." The police chief spoke. When he received greetings from the other two heroes, he continued. "I was in a meeting with Detective Naomasa about the sudden decrease in criminal activity in Musutafa over the past month, woof."
Naomasa continued speaking, "We suspected that a new criminal organization had started recruiting everyone they could off the streets. It seems that our conclusion was correct. Most of the ones I've been able to identify are ones we've been keeping an eye on from Musutafa."
"Could you tell us what happened here, principle Nezu, woof?"
"I and my staff have only arrived here after the battle had concluded." Nezu spoke. "I would be happy to give the police force any video footage the camaras had been able to record, but for a more accurate statement, it would be best to get one from the students." Nezu then turned to Midnight. "Midnight, could you please collect the class president."
"Yes, principle."
As Midnight walked off to fetch Momo, the three continued their conversation.
"Is there any information that you currently do have that can prepare us for what we will be hearing?" Naomasa questioned.
"Yes. Just before I call you, I received a request for aid from Mr Midoriya, the one with the green hair and freckles." He spoke while gesturing over to where Midnight had walked off to. "I was told there should be more than 100 villains present, but it seems that he had underestimated their numbers."
And indeed, from what they could count, the number of villains was closer to 200 than 100.
"There should be a villain present with a warping quirk, which was also the way they were able to get past the barrier. Another interesting point is that there was supposably a villain with the strength to rival All Might."
"So, All Might already took care of him, woof?" asked the dog quirked police chief.
"I am not entirely sure, but I am inclined to believe so as I had him go ahead of myself and the others. As I've stated earlier, the battles have already concluded by the time I arrived here."
Before they could continue, Midnight had returned with Momo at her side. "Greetings, principle Nezu." Momo said while bowing to the animal. She then turned to the police chief and detective and bowed again. "Greetings to you as well, though I cannot say to know your names."
"Hello, Mrs Yaoyorozu. These two are the Hosu Police Chief, Kenji Tsuragamae, and Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi. We would like to hear a quick overview of what had occurred today. Though later they will still call you all in for questioning to receive your statements."
"Yes sir. Almost immediately after we entered the USJ, the villains warped into the plaza and spoke about how they were planning to kill All Might-sensei. Aizawa-sensei ordered us to retreat with Thirteen-sensei, but Kurogiri…" she then gestured at the villains, "the one with the misty body, he is the one with the warping quirk, appeared in front of us and warped everyone to different areas around the USJ. I do not know what happened to everyone in their various areas, but when we all reunited, we saw that Aizawa-sensei was heavily injured and Ichigo-san was fighting the Nomu."
"If I may interrupt, what is this Nomu you're talking about?" Naomasa asked.
"According to the leader of the villains, it was biologically engineered to be as strong as All Might-sensei."
The three did not even bother to hide their shock as their eyes grew wide and Naomasa's face grew visibly pale.
"Mrs Yaoyorozu, in your opinion, do you believe that this Nomu is strong enough to rival All Might, woof?"
"My apologies but I honestly can't say, sir. We had several of our class fighting it, but they were barely holding it back at the start and nearly lost at the end of the battle. The only reason they won was because Ichigo-san had a sudden increase in strength and defeated it."
"Very well, Mrs Yaoyorozu. We'll look at the footage and decide from there." Naomasa spoke. "Could you please continue from where you left off."
"Yes, detective. As I was saying, when we reunited, Ichigo-san was busy fending off the Nomu. We went to help him and with the information Ichigo-san had, Midoriya-san and I arranged teams to take on the remaining villains. We had Todoroki-san divide them so they could not interfere with the other battles. The first one to be defeated was the leader of this group, Shigraki." She then pointed to the villain with the multiple hands over his body. "The next one to be taken down was Kurogiri. As for the Nomu, I do not know what happened during the initial parts of the battle, but after Ichigo-san activated a hidden aspect to his quirk which formed a mask over his face, he…" she paused.
"What happened?" Nezu questioned.
"He… he killed one of the villains that were in the area of their battle and…"
"Do you know why he did so, woof?"
She shook her head. "No, sir. I do not."
After a moment of contemplation, Naomasa spoke up. "We will need to speak to him and review the footage then. Ok, is there anything else you believe necessary, Mrs Yaoyorozu?"
"Yes, Ichigo-san was able to become strong enough to either completely destroy the body of the Nomu or was able to launch it out of the facility." She said while pointing towards the hole in the roof of the USJ. After that, while everyone was distracted, a villain managed to escape Sero-san's tape, and tried taking me as a hostage to escape. But Ichigo-san used his highspeed technique to come to where I was, and killed the villain that was holding me. Afterwards, he had attempted to kill all the villains we had captured, but then suddenly seemed to have an argument with himself before he ripped the mask off. Afterwards, he returned to how he normally acted."
"I see, so the mask influenced his personality. We will need to confirm this with Kurosaki-san. Is there anything else?" When Momo shook her head in a negative, Nezu continued. "Very well. Thank you for the information, Mrs Yaoyorozu. You may return to your classmates and await Recovery girl or the medical team to treat any injury you may have.
When Momo left, an officer that had been standing to the side approached the three and stood in a solute. "Sir, we have 80% of the villains ready for transport but we have reached maximum capacity. Requesting permission to call in for more transport vehicles."
"Make the call for five trucks. Empty two squad cars and have them accompany the medical team to the hospital. When everything is ready, transport the villains to prison." Naomasa answered.
"Yes, sir." With that the officer went to complete his orders.
Five minutes later, all the ambulances had left with the injured students, teachers and villains, along with the bus that transported the rest of the students to the main campus building. An hour later, the police had collected and transported every villain out of UA.
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1A classroom
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Every one of the students that had not been taken to the hospital were sitting in their desks. Several minutes later, Midnight walked into the classroom immediately getting everyone's attention, not even needing to crack her whip. She scanned the crowd of students before her, noticing how downcast some of them were.
"I know that all of you are tired and wish to go home, but we will need you to remain here for some time. Detective Naomasa and a few other police officers are waiting in the faculty room to take your statements and ask various other questions. I ask that you please be honest and tell them everything that occurred from your perspective. Do not speak about anything that happened to anyone else unless whatever occurred had a direct impact on what happened to you. I will be leading each of you to the faculty room individually for your questioning. We'll be following the seating arrangements so first is Mina Ashido. Please follow me."
With that, for the following two hours each of them was taken out of class, questioned, and allowed to go home afterwards.
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UA Security Room
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After questioning the class 1A students that had not been hospitalized, Naomasa and Tsuragamae had followed Nezu to the security room to review the footage. They split the multiple screens into various angles and catastrophe areas. Everything they had seen so far had been following the statements of the students.
When Kurogiri had warped the students, they could see where each of the students had landed. Nezu paused the footage on every screen other than the one facing the entrance of the USJ.
They watched the battle between the mist villain and Ichigo and Shouji. They watched it in its entirety without speaking a word. When they reached the point where Ichigo performed first aid on Shouji, Nezu paused that recording.
"So that's how that happened. Seeing it occur is much different than how Kurosaki-san described it, woof." Tsuragamae stated.
"Where did learn how to perform first aid with that level of precision. Kids of his age typically don't have the training to perform any type of medical practices, even if it's only first aid. And he's handling blood quite expertly." Naomasa said.
When he heard the question, Nezu pulled out a file containing compiled documents of Ichigo and handed it to officers. "That is Ichigo Kurosaki. Son of Isshin Kurosaki and Masaki Kurosaki. He has younger twin sisters, Yuzu Kurosaki and Karin Kurosaki. He lived in Karakura town until last year when he moved into an apartment here in Musutafa. Father is a doctor working in a clinic built into the side of their house. I suppose he must have gotten experience helping with the patients."
"What of his mother?" Naomasa questioned.
"She was an elementary school teacher. Six years ago, a group of teenagers stole a car and got drunk at a club. They decided to race throughout the city and hit her while on her way home from a parent-teacher conference. She died not long after the incident was reported."
"I see. Well let's continue with the recordings, woof."
The next screen to start was that of the flood zone. They saw the trio of Shoto, Asui and Mineta fall into the water. They could not see what had occurred underwater, but Tsuyu first extracted Mineta and then Shoto. Shoto then froze the upper layer of the water and ran to safety.
"Mmm. Were we able to capture those villains that were trapped underwater, woof."
"Yes. The ice was only thick enough to withstand a few strong blows. By the time we got there, All Might had just blown a hole through the ice, and we extracted everyone." Naomasa answered.
"All right. According to Minoru Mineta, Izuku Midoriya had caused massive damage to the area and the surrounding villains. Could we please see that recording, woof."
Just as the police chief finished speaking, Nezu clicked a button to enlarge that specific screen and pressed play. And just as Mineta had said, Izuku had needed to throw a punch strong enough to generate a large amount of air pressure which cushioned their fall. This however did destroy the ground below them and create multiple small highspeed projectiles.
"That is quite a strong quirk that boy has, woof." Tsuragamae commented. "What did the reports from that area say?"
A grim Naomasa answered. "Of the twenty-seven villains that you see on screen, fifteen were heavily injured, while the rest had died."
"I see. Mr Midoriya will require a psychiatric evaluation when he returns to classes."
BZZZT
BZZZT
BZZZT
Naomasa reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "Excuse me. I need to take this." With that he stood up and left the room. After a minute, the two within the room heard a loud smack of flesh against stone and assumed that Naomasa had hit the wall. Naomasa then came back sporting a visible frown.
"We've got a problem. The team transporting the villains to prison were attacked. The two that had been identified as the leaders had escaped."
CHAPTER END
