Humid heat coupled with cool contrasting winds roll down from the hillside as Izuku weaves his motorbike through the terrain. Road dust flares with a stench of oil from the cycle's exhaust as the chained treads for tires pick up dirt. Wildflowers burst from the shrill sweep of shredding spikes on gravel to grass, the saw bar steering the vehicle, slicing through a shady scented forest. The bike beneath Izuku rumbles, vibrating with his own body, moving in sync with every shift or turn. It's a beast of a machine growling as it drives into the undergrowth.
A modernized horse, grooves grinding into the ground harder than the pound of any hoof, gallops along the land. When Izuku accelerates, the rumble of the motor moans and bites and burns with a vicious velocity. It sways with the boy's sideways turns, shifting to his movement to dodge trees or bend around cliff corners. A brattling chainsaw mounted to its base mimics the brattle of every other gear or cog turning in its complicated composition. It runs smoothly nonetheless, the loud roar a mighty and proud one more than a strained sound.
Izuku grips the handlebars hard, his fingers curling over to tighten as much as they can. Wielding a chainsaw after he's become one himself feels foreign, but it does help that he's able to drive it the same way he carries himself when in such a familiar form. It shakes his system to the core the way Pochita so often does. The flux and the flow ebbing into his chest as he lays against the front of the vehicle reminds him of the chainsaw channeling in his heart. It makes him drive faster, press harder into the drift of the mechanism.
Afterall, his friends are waiting for him.
He can feel the heat rolling off of his own explosions now, palms picking themselves apart as they blister and burn. Flames flash and flare as they always do but they're brighter than before, his retinas sting and his eyes want to close when staring directly into the harsh orange glare of light. He almost does, or almost blinks at the very least. He realizes his burning lungs are the only thing keeping him from passing out as much as they're the thing trying to put him to sleep. And it's also then that he realizes he isn't flying in a dream-like reality with his hand explosions. But rather, he had been thrown by his own detonation.
Bakugo flails from a shockwave of his own design, weightless in the air, before attempting to right himself and consecutively ungracefully diving into a groove within the mountain that's blackened by soot from previous explosions like the one he let off moments ago. The impact is harsh on his calves as he crouches, knees popping as they strain to help him stay standing. His body isn't just sore, everything feels broken, especially his shoulders where rotator cuffs may as well be dislodged. The recoil from his quirk is harder to handle at the rate of his current output. It makes him bitter. Bitter and angry that he has to struggle this much to fight someone and barely manage to hold on.
Meanwhile, the muscular villain seems unbothered by how much their brawl is brewing up in terms of effort. Every blast that Bakugo hits the man with, each one bigger and hotter than the last, only somehow spurs him on. He's even popped in a cybernetic eye where there had been an empty socket to fight at his full force. It's been Bakugo's goal ever since to scar the sonova bitch as badly as that wound managed to ingrain itself. Firepower unprecedented and insurmountable from the boy only damaged muscle fibers built up as armor. Nothing really left a lasting mark on the guy. Not yet, at least. Bakugo swears that he's not finished until he hurts the fucker, along with a few other choices of swearing.
The boisterous blondes throw themselves at one another, with reckless abandon. A slew of curses come out of Bakugo's mouth when a heavy set of knuckles slam into his gut. The punch bends him inwards, folding his form until he's hoisted up by the impact of the blow; only when he lifts up and off of the villain's fist does he start to arch back. Saliva stretches in a long stream from his mouth as all the breath he has gets knocked out of him. Bakugo flies backward yet again but this time lands flat on his back. He tastes blood and dirt in his mouth. He can hardly flex his jaw to spit it out or swallow it down.
The villain goads Bakugo, begging him to get up so they can continue having some fun – if getting slammed across a mountain is anyone's idea of fun – while Kota cries and pleads for Bakugo to stay down this time. Bakugo hisses, blood seething through his teeth. A frustrated fist smacks the grimey ground before it pushes the boy's body up. He refuses to go down. "Your parents didn't call it quits until after they were done and dead…", he feels his left eye twitch and can tell there's a bruise there about to blind it so he uses his right side to glance back at Kota, "If a couple of low tier heroes like them had the guts to do that then you can sure as hell count on me to do the same!"
Kota watches with tears welling up in his eyes as the back of Bakugo stands in between him and the villain who murdered his mom and dad. It starts to make sense to the kid why his parents sacrificed themselves the way that they did. They had a reason to fight. To protect him. To keep people safe. The match to see who has a stronger quirk to prove who is right and wrong starts to make sense to the young boy. So he raises his own hands, capable of shooting out jets of water instead of detonating explosions, and uses his own quirk to fight. He cries out as courageously as he can while spraying the villain in his eyes.
The muscular man shouts as he's temporarily blinded. It opens an opportunity for Bakugo to strike. He takes to the air again, this time with a circular motion propelled by discharges made to formulate a flaming tornado. The spiral of fire builds a current of oxygen to fuel a bigger blast than all of the others he's thrown at the villain. "Howitzer Impact!", Bakugo makes contact with his target like a missile launched through a ring of fire and sets off the impending explosion. An ignition much larger than a spark destroys the entire side of the hill. Heat surges forth and flash burns the forestry within the blast zone's radius.
Smoke engulfs the cliff, a thick black smog wafting all around. Kota shields his eyes despite shutting them as tight as possible. When he feels the coast is clear, he slowly pries them open and fans away some of the fumes with the same hands he was using for cover. Through the clearing of ash and soot, he can see two large shapes still opposing one another. Kota can't contain a gasp of horror and shock when he makes out the bigger shape as the villain who is still standing. Bakugo staggers back a step, blood sopping out from his hands that quiver with the rest of his bruised body.
"Not bad", the villain wipes a speck of blood off his chin with his thumb before grinning. The muscle fibers he had used to protect himself rip and peel away, charred and blackened, but new material manifests to replace what's been lost. "Not bad at all…", the villain cackles as he flexes his muscles until they're bugling bigger than before, "Is that all you got though?!" A crazed look crosses the maniac's eyes as he glowers down at the two boys.
Bakugo chokes on his own gasp when the villain reels back with a cocked fist. He hardly has time to react to the primed punch. Though there's just enough an amount of seconds to do SOMETHING. Bakugo creates a sphere between his two hands, not quite an explosion, but rather the shimmering start of one. A large scale flash has the effect of a stun grenade, the bright light blinding the baddie just long enough for Bakugo to get out of range of the man's attack. The villain's fist leaves a crater where the hero hopeful formerly was.
Bakugo grabs Kota and leaps away a second time to avoid getting grinded into the ground when another punch follows the first. Dirt flies with the two boys as they're launched by an uptake of dust. They grunt and separate on landing before looking back to see the villain is still coming for them. "Move!", Bakugo fires off a desperate detonation to slow the bad guy down long enough for Kota to get up and run but the explosion is much weaker when compared to all of his others; he winces when pain laces through his hand because of how damaged it is, "Dammit!"
He hates to admit it, but he's much too weak to stand a chance anymore. He throws a frustrated fist at the villain but it's more pathetic than his last explosion was. The monster of a man who shows no mercy grabs Bakugo's second swing and squeezes; the boy's forearm snaps with a sickening crunch that's satisfying to the villain's ears. Bakugo yells, lungs burning more than they ever did as he exhausts himself screaming. "Oh yeah", the villain slams the boy into the ground while using the broken limb as a griphold, "That's what I love to hear!"
Kota scrambles to find his footing before charging the mighty menace. "Leave him alone!", he smacks the man's leg with wild swipes even wimpier than Bakugo's punches had pounded against the villain's bulk. The hits do just about as much as nothing as those hits had. It's a sad sight to see. A futile effort.
"Wait your turn, kid!" The muscular menace doesn't even have to shove all that hard to get Kota off of him. The small boy is knocked off his feet, flipping from the ground, and lands on his rear end. "I'll kill ya later! Promise!", the villain laughs as he disregards the child who proves powerless to stop him.
The criminal then proceeds with slamming Bakugo back and forth, lifting the boy's body like a ragdoll to suspend over his head and then swing back down on either side of him. The battered and bruised blonde is beaten harder with every impact against the earth. When he's raised by his limp arm to an even level, the villain having lost interest in just throwing Bakugo around, Bakugo does his best to formulate some sort of speech. "Kota… Don't watch…", part of him regrets not telling what he believes will be his killer to 'fuck off' or something but the other part of him knows that the words aren't wasted if they mean sparing a kid watching something traumatic.
The muscular villain's face curves into a nasty and wicked smirk showing yellow tainted teeth. He brings his free fist forward into Bakugo's stomach for extra measure. A projectile of vomit surges from the blonde boy's mouth, his dinner mixed in with blood and spit. Knuckles grate against Bakugo's ribs, cracking some bones. When he's finally released from the torturous blow, Bakugo falls to the ground, unmoving and wheezing desperately for an intake of air. There's no strength left in the hero hopeful to budge a muscle. Not even a finger twitches as he lays in a heap of his own tenderized fleshy form.
As he lays there in a crumpled misshapen shape of himself, Bakugo reflects on his regrets. It's not quite what people say dying is like, your life flashing before your eyes and all, but rather an intrusive memory or two. The auditory reception of familiar noises like a chainsaw running. A remembrance of something visual like an overpass dimming the sky's natural lighting. As Bakugo lays there, beaten into the ground, he wonders if this is how Deku – Izuku – felt all those times. When his blurry vision focuses on what's hanging in the sky above him, he realizes that it's not a bridge but a motorcycle; what he heard, a chainsaw's running motor, is coming from the bike as it descends. Izuku – He's here!
One of the muscular villain's arms are lobbed off by the cycle chopping inwardly before it touches down completely. A shower of red covers the cavernous cliffside while Izuku's bike drifts and turns to skate and skid across the rocky land. The bike bends as it continues to slide sideways, carried by momentum until coming to a stop by steering rather than braking. Izuku sits atop the saddle, chainsaw protruding from his metallic skull the same as his vehicle. Bakugo and Kota share a gawking reaction as the villain that had given them so much trouble roars with agonized anger over losing another body part.
"Looks like I got here just in the knick of time", Izuku sits up a little straighter to survey the scene better. What he just rode in on appears to be a bloodbath. Quite literally in a sense now. Muscle fibers wriggle as the dismembered arm from the villain flops around as though it's a reptile's severed tail. That same villain clutches the stub from which blood pours continuously. The environment itself is just as damaged, indents from explosions and cracks in the cave portioning of the mountain leaves it all in shambles. Not to mention Bakugo and the kid looking rough next to a set of crispy tree towers.
"Dek–", Bakugo rasps the start of something before catching himself and starting over, "Izuku.. I need to apologize for–"
"Shut up", Izuku snaps at his childhood friend and bully, "Nobody cares!" He can see the blonde is on the verge of death, and while this might be some attempt at retribution in what the idiot perceives are his final moments, Izuku won't allow it. Besides, even if he did, now isn't the time for that shit; the muscular villain that he just peeved off is starting to recuperate from the shock of losing a limb.
"No! Listen to me!", but Bakugo won't let it go. He strains his voice as much as his body, tears flowing from his bloodshot eyes. "What I said about you and your quirk was awful – I was wrong!", Izuku isn't sure where the apology is coming from but he can hear the sincerity in the boy's voice enough that he spares at least a glance to listen fully as the blonde says, "Be brutal! Fuck this guy up!"
And that's enough to make Izuku grit his pointed teeth into a grin. Maybe a boot camp was what Bakugo needed all along. Maybe some time apart from one another. Whatever happened, maybe that kid standing close by behind Bakugo, it's better than nothing. And while Izuku may not be able to fully forgive the jerk for bullying him his entire childhood just yet, it is enough to get his blood pumping to his chainsaws. "That's the plan", Izuku revs both his motorcycle and his weaponized body before driving forwards into the now charging muscular villain.
"Come on! Come on!", the muscular villain hypes himself up as well before throwing his remaining arm under the motorcycle and pushing back. The force of the tackle lifts the front of the bike so that Izuku pops an unplanned wheelie. Shoving even further rather than backing off, the monstrous threat presses his shoulder into the push and fully tips the bike so that it backpedals completely.
Izuku is shaken while the vehicle whinnies and sputters. He capsizes as the villain plows through and begins breaking the bike apart. Dirt drafts across the area as the boy falls and rolls. Again, David Shield's gift is destroyed. Izuku refrains from cursing while getting to his feet for a fight. Wind carries across the mountain, whistling at a sharp decibel when Izuku's chained saws shriek from being revved up.
Izuku dashes at the menacing musclebound beast opposing him. The villain intercepts.
Ojiro reels from the giant sharp object that his opponent keeps swinging wildly at him. He almost loses his balance by pivoting out of range from the attacks, but his tail acts as a crutch to carry him every time that he nearly trips. That doesn't help for long though, the overreliance on his quirk leading to a misreading of movements; the lizard-like villain swipes across seemingly at the blonde boy's chest but the blade instead plunges into Ojiro's upper arm.
A shout and a splash of blood disturbs some birds so that they flee from their nests in the trees above. Or, at least, whatever trees aren't being burned by a blue blaze currently. The fire is spreading, surrounding the two until they're in a ring of flames. Ojiro sways side to side but finds himself trapped between the reptile's sword and an intense inferno. He dives to the left but gets forced back to the right. A swerve and a step back keeps him alive but the heat is making him sweat more than the exertion of his energy to keep dodging.
Ojiro dives, both charging in and ducking under a heavy swing of the villain's sword. He's met with a kick to the chest. Ojiro falls on his back, gasping for air. He only has a fraction of a second to tilt his head forward to see the broad blade heading for his face before rolling out of the way so that it impales the ground instead. The sword sinks into the dirt like a shovel before sliding out just the same.
Ojiro bats the blade away before it can get enough power to its swing to do any real damage. His tail does the rest, taking out the scaled villain's legs from underneath. They both crawl around in the dirt for a while before ramming into one another. What started as a sophisticated fight turns into a messy struggle. One tackles the other before being tossed over and losing their advantage. It's not until they get back on their feet that they assume a proper stance again.
"Not bad", the Stain knockoff huffs in between heavy intakes of air, "Not bad for a fake!" He regrips his makeshift sword before cutting down. Ojiro moves away and he repositions to swing the sword upwards instead.
"Does THIS feel fake?!", Ojiro drives his palm into the lizard man's snout. It's not quite a smack or a punch but it does enough harm to make the villain flinch back. The blonde bounces on his heels in case he receives a counter. He doesn't.
Stain's fanboy screeches, aggravated. His swings become more sporadic, increasingly wilder than before. It's easy to dodge the frantic flings of the blade but the fast flow is a tempo Ojiro isn't prepared to keep up with at the rate he's losing stamina. Hoping to close their competition sooner rather than later, the karate kid kicks out and nails the lizard man in the side.
The giant sword passes over the blonde, clipping a few hairs off Ojiro's head. The drawback leaves a gash on his cheek as well. Ojiro fights the urge to touch the fresh wound. He instead focuses on defending against another attack. And another. And another. The villain is relentless, not giving him a moment to recover. He retaliates, delivering a solar plexus strike.
When he's slashed along his shoulder, Ojiro knows for a certainty that the battle of endurance is one he can't win. He restrategizes, determining he'll have to end their fight quicker than intended. Like, right now. Even if it costs him a few more scars. He moves in closer, taking a cut by his abdomen. But gets payback with a blow to the villain's own torso.
Ojiro risks it all, flowing with his fists and body as one. The villain dodges two punches and blocks the third with his blade, Ojiro's knuckles bleeding when making impact with the hard metal. The blonde follows through with his tail, hoping to land another hit. But that proves a fatal mistake. The swordsman slashes the appendage clean off, slicing it before it can connect.
Ojiro cries out, losing a literal part of himself. In a flash of anger and desperation, he drives his forehead into the lizard man's snout. They're both rocked by the collision. Ojiro throws a wild punch, one his karate instructors would criticize if they saw it. But it lands. And it does the job, knocking a tooth out of the villain's mouth. He does it again, a sloppy swing with his other arm, and it connects again.
Both the villain and the hero hopeful go down. Except, the would-be hero isn't so hopeful anymore. He knows that without his quirk, without his tail, there's no more chance for him. He looks over at the villain responsible, grateful that he could at least stop just one bad guy before throwing in the towel. When he succumbs to unconsciousness, he hopes to dream of a fantasy where he's able to stop more of them.
Without stalling, the chainsaw Izuku plunges into the villain's muscle fibers rotates and carves into thick meaty tendons. The second limb with spinning blades connected to it slices at equally as deep a hide. Blood surges forth, straight shooting streams flying every which way. The villain's screams are coupled with laughs; he's enjoying himself despite the pain. Izuku figures that thrill will wear off once he cuts the loon down to size.
A hefty heave of the man's fist is brought down on Izuku's back, bending his spine as he's driven down into the ground. The chainsaw boy chokes out a pained grunt but pulls the ripcord attached to his chest to keep himself going. The saws scream for more, inviting the villain to keep attacking. Muscle fibers fly off, scraped and severed. It's like producing cold cuts from a slicer, just much messier.
"I'm gonna gut you out like the pig you are!", Izuku swings a saw blade so that it carves up the mid section of the villain. A dark hue of red gushes out before the wound recloses.
"Yap! Yap! Yap! That's all I'm hearing from you, pup!" The fiendish foe is just as feral, foam flying from his mouth as he laughs some more. He's entered a berserker mode, lost in the joy of fighting. His eyes roll into the back of his head, his mind absorbed by ecstasy.
The earth they're on cracks and crumbles when the villain brings his fist down upon it. The hill collapses in on itself, rocks rolling over and dirt flowing from every crevice. Izuku jumps off the piece of unwedged stone that he had been standing upon. He essentially flings himself at the villain responsible for the small landslide, tackling the man so that they fall into the avalanche together.
Kota wails as he grabs ahold of Bakugo and they fall off the opposite end of the collapsing hill. It's a shorter fall but just as rough a landing. They're fortunate enough to have some bushes to brace them. And they're even luckier that they aren't buried by the caving in mountain. Dust fills the area, blinding them the way a sandstorm would if one were to blow through.
Izuku straddles the muscular villain with his legs while waving his chainsaw bound arms at the man's chest. They spiral and twist, crashing through undergrowth and slamming through trunks of trees. Splinters shower them as bark breaks upon every impact. When Izuku gets tossed off, he only bounces once before righting himself and charging in again. The chainsaw boy cackles, tongue gyrating; he lets loose, enjoying having an enemy he can chop up without having to worry about killing them right away.
The villain takes a swipe at the boy but his fist passes overhead, Izuku ducking down and delivering a slash at the man's legs. Tendons tear, more blood spits and spatters from openings in the guy's ripped muscles. Izuku spins around the back of the villain, sliding a chainsaw across the man's sacrum. A bellow and then a guffaw comes from the maniac before he retaliates with a punch that sends Izuku reeling back.
His shoe outsoles scrape along the dirt, trailing a small path from his unfirm footing. He hops off his heels to stop the drift backwards and stomps down. Izuku raises his head, chainsaw motor whirring. Across from him, the short space a gap unclosed, the muscular villain wraps his hand around a nearby tree and tugs. Roots are ripped from the earth as the plant is torn from the ground. It's a big tree too. Izuku gawks at the size of it when it's chucked at him like an impromptu spear.
Rather than ducking or dodging though, Izuku instead opts to thrust a chainsaw mounted arm forwards and intercept the tree. He saws through the trunk straight down the middle, cutting it apart as it passes by. Two ends fling behind the boy as he dives ahead. The muscular menace responsible for tossing the tree at him waits on the other end, throwing a strong swing at his head. Izuku bends back, sliding under the punch and coming up behind the villain. There, he brings both chainsaw mounted arms down upon the guy's back.
The villain roars, reaching behind him. Izuku twists with his enemy's turn, chopping down again whilst he does. Some more fancy footwork helps the boy to cut with his chainsaw below the bad guy's armpit next. Being shorter in this case works to his advantage, a real David and Goliath scenario playing out – or maybe Jack and the beanstalk with the way he's cutting this giant down. Some slices here. Curvature cutting over there. Blood follows in every direction.
Izuku braces for impact before getting sent by another one of the brutish bad guy's punches. Some of the hits are so powerful that he can feel bones breaking upon connection. Every time that his body can't handle it, he gives his sternum's string a good tug for another jumpstart to his system with a boost of hasty healing. The only problem with that is that he's starting to lose count of how many chainsaw revs he's got left in him before he sputters out. It's kinda hard to keep track when there's a hulking sonova bitch swinging his fist at you.
Izuku leaps over the next punch, spinning his body while he does. Mid air, he extends his leg and kicks the villain right in the face. A nice crunch comes with the connection of his shoe against the guy's nose. The blonde brute snorts, blood shooting from his nostrils. Before Izuku can land back on his feet, the villain grabs the extended leg and uses it as a handle to slam the rest of Izuku into a nearby tree.
Izuku gets spun around and whacked into another, this time breaking the bark of the trunk he collides with. His back is bruised badly when he's brought down into the ground too. This is much what Bakugo felt like getting ragdolled. Completing the nostalgia of tossing a teen around, the villain clenches his fist to break the limb he has a hold of. Izuku doesn't scream as loud as Bakugo. Wanting to remedy that, the villain proceeds with slamming the boy into trees and the ground some more.
Izuku uses one of his trump cards, springing a chainsaw from the leg that the villain is holding; the bladed long bar chops off the man's fingers and shreds his palm. Free at last, Izuku spins his body to do a cartwheel and lands as gracefully as possible in such a predicament. From there, he shoves his forehead forward so that the chainsaw there can stab through the villain's knee. It's the bad guy who's screaming now and Izuku who's cackling with glee. Izuku twists his neck side to side, sawing apart the man's leg until it's mangled enough to separate from the rest of the guy's body.
A leg for a leg since the baddie already lost an eye, he figures. The villain falls to one knee, getting level with Izuku. He grinds out a growl and tries fighting still, throwing a headbutt in. That's a big mistake. Izuku has a chainsaw protruding from his skull. Brain matter splatters everywhere. Much to the villain's credit though, he does manage to dent the metal helmet covering the chainsaw boy's head. Both bodies topple over from the impact, bouncing off the other.
Izuku falls on his back, staring up at the starless sky. Smoke billows overhead from the burning forest. He can smell it getting closer. He can even hear screams. As his vision darkens, probably not just from the night or the smog, he just hopes that none of the screaming is coming from Kyoka. And maybe if it isn't too much to ask for, that whatever is going on with that crazy blue fire, can get resolved somehow while he sleeps for a bit. Just a nap is all he asks for, actually. He can save everybody when he wakes up.
The shifting shades of the color spectrum between orange and blue cast a light show within the flaring of flames that gather higher and higher. Fighting fire with fire never seems like a good idea but Shoto found using his father's quirk to be a more suitable force to ward off the villain's hotter spell than instant evaporation of his mother's ice. It does cause quite a destructive dilemma though. The arena in which they compete is melting away around them. Everything burns. Including themselves. The purple welts on the villain are spreading and Shoto is starting to get his own patches of seared skin or smoldered flesh.
Blue blooms across the villain's arms at a higher degree. The staples holding his sagging skin together begin popping out. Blood oozes out from the self inflicted burn wounds. But all the while, he's got a wide grin on his face. "Seems like Endeavor's perfect creation can't handle the heat!", the villain taunts Shoto with a display of power from what's been built up.
Shoto barely meets the fire with his own flames. He's been able to cool himself with his mother's blessing of her quirk but that's only been aiding him so much as well. He's gradually losing and the villain can see it. "What's it matter to you anyways!?", Shoto shouts at the villain with some hope that getting the guy to talk will buy him time.
"EVERYTHING", a much louder shout makes Shoto wince. The scream is followed by an even greater rush of flames. It's overwhelming to the point that Shoto is knocked off his feet. The villain advances, drawn in by the small victory; he plots to capitalize on it by going for the full win.
Until, he hears the crackling sound of ice. A cold gust of wind mixed with frost particles brings some relief to the burning bad guy's body but he knows he has to counter with more fire if he doesn't want to be flash frozen. A collision of contrasting elements creates an explosion that rocks the earth and uproots a good portion of trees. The small sinkhole the two fighters make draws them in until they're falling into a cave system.
Shoto stretches out his hand, and pretty soon, they're no longer falling. They tumble a bit before sliding down a sudden makeshift stretch of ice; the steep spiral carries them deeper into the rabbit hole they've discovered. It deposits them at the bottom. They hit the rocky floor roughly. Shoto shakes himself as he gets up and glances around, searching for his enemy. The villain covered in burns ran into the shadows of the cave, nowhere to be seen no matter how much the boy squints.
"It means everything to me", Shoto pivots quickly when he hears the villain's voice coming from behind him. But then he realizes that what he heard was just a misplaced echo. It's just as hard to locate his opponent even when the villain is speaking. The cave is vast and carries all sound in various directions. "You and Endeavor dying, being proven as weaker than me, means everything…" And yet, the eerie disembodied voice sounds closer than ever.
Shoto flits his gaze back and forth to watch out for any surprise attacks. In doing so, he spots something sparkling by his feet. A staple. His eyes narrow. The blood that had been gushing from the villain's wounds left somewhat of a speckled trail. Red spots dot the cave's floor in a particular direction. Slowly, Shoto edges towards where the path leads.
"His perfect little creation… If he loses you first and falls into despair, that'll be just worth watching!" The voice is easier to locate now that Shoto has a sense of direction to follow it. Even so, he continues to listen and keeps his movements steady so he can maintain an elemental advantage if the villain doesn't realize yet what he realized. "And then after he's lost his favorite son – BOOM – I'll return, his greatest failure to compare to you as a failure!"
Shoto pauses before taking his next step. He feels a chill run down his spine and it's not from his mother's quirk. What the villain just said implies way too much for his liking. "Who are you?", he dares to ask the question that's been bothering him since they began this fight. He just hopes for an actual answer now that the villain is more talkative.
And he gets one. When he sees movement coming from behind a rock, Shoto emits a spread of ice to capture the source. The ice is met by flame, dissipating into a spray of water. It washes over the villain. Black dye streaks down a face that would be familiar if not for all the scars covering it. Spikey white hair is atop the head of the fire starter. He grins, cocking his head to the side. "Don't you recognize me, little brother?" Touya Todoroki greets his sibling.
Shoto stumbles back. Suddenly, the cave seems smaller. Darker. It's harder to breathe underground. He thinks about how he'd been fighting his lost sibling, in a burning forest the same way he lost his brother. Touya should be dead. Touya became a villain. It throws Shoto off balance. He staggers. His head spins with his vision like he's been hit physically but the mental blow is just as damaging. "Touya.. ?", his mouth feels dry despite the humidity of the cave and all of the sweat pouring from his pores due to the flames earlier.
"If you're having that kinda reaction then I can't wait for dear old dad's!", Touya's grin grows even wider before he rekindles the flame of their fight with actual fire. Shoto moves back, taking to the cave's terrain to avoid getting burnt.
"Why… ?", that seems like the next logical question for Shoto to ask as he works through the shock of seeing his supposedly dead sibling somehow survived. And came back as a VILLAIN trying to KILL HIM.
But it's rather illogical to ask. "You're really asking why?", the counter question Touya throws at him making Shoto stop and hold still. It makes sense. The way dad treated them. All that happened. All that was swept under the rug and covered up as a dirty little family secret.
"That doesn't make it right though!", Shoto blurts out the first thing he can to ward off his intrusive thoughts. Those dark impulses. The hatred he has for his father. It's all stuff he thought he dealt with. He looks at the hand that he can use to create fire. His father's quirk. He was supposed to see it as his own but seeing Touya all but confirms the inheritance is a curse.
"Right and wrong", Touya scoffs, "Who cares? I just wanna make dad suffer for making me suffer!" A blue blaze engulfs the cave. It's thicker down here. Hotter. There's no sky for the smoke to rise. It burns brighter. The dark shadows Shoto had to hide in are gone. He's exposed and coughing up a storm.
"Don't do this", Shoto pleads for his brother to stop the madness.
But it doesn't help. "I'm not doing it cause I have to… I WANT to do this", Touya is too far gone to be convinced. He unleashes a fire hotter than hell's that may as well make the cave hell itself.
Shoto stares at the incoming wave of blue fire. It's a perfected version of his father's quirk. Not even Endeavor could create a flame that hot. So he raises his other arm instead. He counters with his mother's quirk. A full force attack. He makes the biggest glacier he ever has. He goes all out. Even if it means losing his arm from frostbite.
Maximum output on either end decimates the cavern as both brothers release their rage.
Shedding sleep from his bleary eyes proves as difficult as shedding the weighted blanket casted over him. And, boy, is that warm comfy cloth heavy. All of his movement eventually disturbs all that surrounds him. Izuku feels something pressed up against his chest, something just as soft and fluffy as the blanket; it stirs as he does. He tilts his chin down until it brushes across a mossy texture of fur. Pochita! He holds the dog closer to him, glad to cuddle the adorable pup. Behind him, he feels a person's warmth holding HIM. It takes him a moment to recognize the touch but smiles fondly when he does. Mom.
"It's time to get up, Izuku.." He leans into her soothing voice, remembering the sound of it well. He doesn't want to get out of bed yet though. Laying here cuddled up with the ones he loves is pure bliss. It'd suck to let that go. His smile wavers.
"Can't I just stay here with you?", he tries to keep the desperation out of his tone but his voice can't help but quiver. His hands hold onto Pochita, pulling the dog closer to his heart. Behind him, he pushes his back closer to his mother to be held tightly too.
But Inko's grip slackens as she sighs. Izuku doesn't need to look behind him to know that she's shaking her head sadly. Tears prickle in his eyes before she tells him the answer that he already knows will follow his question, "Not yet", she pauses and says kindly, "There's still a lot left for you to do, son."
Izuku sniffles. And blinks to dispel the tears that threaten to slide down his cheeks. "But I'm all alone..", he tries to turn over to see his mom as he speaks but that darn blanket is so heavy that it holds him back. He looks down at the dog in his arms instead. Pochita stares back, a sad twinkle in the canine's eyes.
"Oh, sweetie…" Inko's voice grows distant and closer at the same time, an impossible contradiction that scares Izuku when he finally does flip himself around in his bed. "You're not alone at all – You have friends waiting for you", his eyes widen when what he sees is his bedroom door creaking open instead of his mom. He thinks momentarily that she's leaving him. But then she says, "Here's one now", and he realizes that she's letting somebody in.
A light brighter than the sun covers the room in pure white. It's so blinding that Izuku has to let go of Pochita and cover his eyes. When he does, he feels the dog's fuzzy coat of warmth burrow deeper inside his chest. His heart beats a little faster. His eyes shine a lot brighter.
Himiko hunches over what she recognizes as Izuku. The boy is bloodied and bruised. Just the way she likes him. He's even hotter than how he looked during the Sports Festival. He's … Sexier. Himiko squats down to straddle the boy. He may be unconscious, but she feels a poke under her skirt, and that makes her typically present blush burn a redder shade. Her mouth waters as she leans down to stretch across his stomach. Her hands roam across his pectorals and she can't resist groping them at least a little. She slides forward somewhat and then back. A moan escapes her fanged mouth. She wants to grind him harder. There's a wild instinct to ride him. But when her breast presses up against his, she doesn't feel a heartbeat as frantic as her own. She doesn't feel a pulse at all. That stops her mid motion.
"Izukun?", she breathes a sultry whisper when she leans in closer but doesn't see any ears anywhere on his motorized head to confirm he can hear her. Her hands slide from the sides of his abdomen to the center of his chest to check for a heartbeat again. Still nothing. Her head tilts to the side, a few stray strands of blonde hair coming loose. She knows he can't possibly be dead. She just knows it. Her fingers curve inward, nails slightly scratching the boy's skin. Her arousal diminishes at the thought of Izuku actually being dead. That just won't do. The girl arches back to inspect the unconscious state of the boy a little better. He's as pale as a ghost. That's it. That must be it. Himiko grins broadly when she deduces the problem is that he requires blood.
The femme fatale reaches for the pouch that's strapped to her thigh so that she can retrieve a spare boxcutter she keeps handy. It'll be more than sharp enough to slice through skin and shed a few drops of blood. The blonde girl giggles at the thought of sharing some of herself with Izuku; she then thinks that she'll have to make him take responsibility later and share some of himself in return. Himiko digs the boxcutter's blade into the palm of her hand before dragging it across her flesh to tear a seam in it. Red oozes out immediately, the liquid leaking from her self inflicted wound that's fresher than a squozen tomato. The blood bends in various directions as it separates into streams. But Himiko holds her hand over Izuku's open metallic mouth so that the blood all winds up at the same destination.
A familiar taste fills the boy's maw. Blood runs across his elongated fangs and courses down his throat. He can't quite put his finger on the familiarity though. Not until he feels his hand risen gently so that his finger can actually be placed somewhere that he recalls. It's a bite he committed to his memory. Himiko Toga. She's wedged his finger between her teeth, and he now comes to his senses enough to remember her. He still needs a jumpstart to fully recover but he knows who's reviving him. He knows everything except what the hell she's doing here.
But by the time Himiko reignites the blood flow needed to get his chainsaws running again, she's vanished as quick as she appeared.
A chipmunk leaps from branch to branch alongside a squirrel. Birds glide overhead, passing through low hanging limbs and brushing past leaves to take to the sky. A deer bounds over a toppled tree trunk that's been lit ablaze, flames licking the animal's hooves. Kota communicates to them all the dangers of their home being burned to the ground. As a hero student, he may not have a lot of experience rescuing human lives, but he surely can evacuate the wildlife of this habitat.
Or so that had been what he'd hoped to do with his life. Unfortunately for him, his time is cut short. A laser passes through the boy's stomach, burning a hole in one end and coming out the other side. Flesh sizzles while what remains of Kota's intestines sloppily slides out from marred meaty tendons. Kota gasps while gagging on his own blood, mouth agape when he turns around to see the culprit of his murder. Aoyama, his classmate and who he would have considered even a friend, stands with a smoking belt made to strengthen the power of a laser quirk.
Ashido comes running through the underbrush of the forest with Sero around the same moment this betrayal transpires. She too gasps, shocked and horrified. Tears well in the girl's raccoon eyes while she brings her hands up to her mouth to stifle a sob. Beside her, Sero can only gawk with an appalled expression. The traitor turns to face them, anguished by the fact that he's been caught in the act more-so than by what he's done. A brief exchange of their eyes meeting conveys all that they need to say without even uttering a word.
Sero lassos Ashido with a tape line from his elbow to swing her to safety before a laser beam can put a hole in her stomach too. As she's thrown over Aoyama by the sticky string, the pinkette uses her own quirk to secrete acid and shower a hot spray of the liquid upon the now revealed villain. Goop lands on the traitor's support gear and begins burning it. He reacts by quickly removing and discarding the device. Sero seizes that moment to wrap the villain in tape to securely capture him.
Aoyama struggles against the binding material but to no avail. Sero hoists the line over a branch so that the traitor can hang in suspended animation. "How could you.. ?", he asks his former classmate a question that he doesn't know whether or not he even wants an answer to.
Aoyama stops resisting, going limp. He hangs his head, suddenly sullen. "I had no choice", is all he has to say for himself. He doesn't elaborate but that wouldn't matter after what his previous peers found. Kota's body lays lifeless on the sidelines.
"We always have a choice", Ashido chokes out a bitter bite when she clenches her teeth to prevent a sob, "You just made the wrong one!" But then she's back to crying. Sero pulls the girl into a hug so that he can hold her while she breaks down.
Sero closes his eyes to prevent his own tears. And, he also doesn't want to see the corpse of his friend. He just hopes that when he reopens them that there won't be any more bodies to find.
Purple gas continues to obscure their vision as they venture deeper into the woods. The fact that it keeps getting thicker though is a sign that they must be nearing the source of it all. Or so Yaoyorozu hopes. She follows behind her sensei with Kyoka closeby. The two of them take turns alternating between looking for any allies and any enemies. So far, it's been only them. The screams and the sounds of combat that had been terrifying to hear before are now absent and the silence aside from burning nature is unsettling. The girls exchange a look. They're thinking the same thing. And there's no knowing what their teacher is thinking.
Aizawa breathes with the aid of the gas mask that his students supplied him with. He'll have to remember to praise Yaoyorozu for her fast and rational thinking. Later though. Right now, all he can focus on is finding somebody else. It's difficult to navigate in the dense smoke that's polluting the environment and he feels he's been turned around a dozen times by now. Where his fellow teachers are or the rest of his class, he has no idea. He'd settle for either at this point. Heck, he'd been contemplating settling for coming across a villain. So long as there's an end to his wandering and wondering.
As though to answer what the three have been internally asking about, they stop when hearing the crunch and snap of a twig. That's not the sound that draws them in though. What they hear that really catches their attention is the constant buzzing of a bladed chain on a saw bar. The rutter of an engine running is all too familiar. And then they see the silhouette of a figure coming forth, the source of sound belonging to that shadow. Kyoka moves past Yaoyorozu and Aizawa, squinting through the eye lens of her mask to make out the incoming shape.
"Izuku?", the girl is hopeful as much as she is heartbroken when imagining the look of a familiar face. Even if obscured by this mist, she has to see him. She steps closer. She can't hear his heartbeat over the pounding of her own but she passes that off as just fine since she'll hear him more than well enough when they hug like the reunion fantasy in her mind.
"Hang on, Jirou…" Aizawa holds out a tentative hand but it doesn't reach the girl as she keeps moving forward to meet the approaching figure. The underground hero glances back and forth, wary of what he's witnessing. The long protrusions on the silhouette seem similar to Izuku's chainsaws and so does the noise but there's something … off.
"I don't think that's…", Yaoyorozu follows behind her friend with a skeptical expression under her gas mask too.
But no warning could have prepared Kyoka for the sudden dash that the chainsaw figure makes toward her. Nor could she have been ready to dodge the chainsaw that the being swings at her. Spinning blades slice through mustard gas, cutting a clear path between the girl and her attacker. Kyoka sees not the face of Izuku Midoriya, but a Nomu with its brain exposed like the one at the USJ. She trips back, scared more than she is startled, and that's the only reason that she doesn't get decapitated.
Her topknot, on the other hand, is fully removed. The free haircut also comes with a downward swipe of that same chainsaw towards her face. Aizawa grabs Kyoka in time to pull her away alive, but not in time for her to come away completely unscathed. A scream resounds through the forest. Red liquid meshes with purple gas. Kyoka's arm is torn partially by the rotating blades, the chainsaw coming loose with Aizawa's tug.
As though hearing her cry and empathizing with it, a roar follows suit. Yaoyorozu's head turns and, this time, Izuku Midoriya does come barreling through the mustard gas. The boy crashes into the Nomu in a frenzy, more blood wetting the dirt beneath them. Izuku slashes upwards, diagonally, vertically, downwards, across, every way that he can. The Nomu shrieks as it's torn into and swings its own chainsaws in retaliation. Their built-in weapons clash with eachother but Izuku proves the more experienced one in combat as he continues his charge.
Aizawa pulls Kyoka away from the clashing of the chainsaws. As he does, he can see she's closed her eyes, deliriously lolling her head around. "Stay with me", he gives the girl a shake but she's quickly losing consciousness, "Jirou! Stay with us!"
Izuku spares a glance in their direction, concerned and then outraged. He jams a chainsaw directly into the Nomu's throat, not caring that its pained screeches are agonized gurgles now. He hacks at its arms next, dismembering it limb by limb. Full power swings take its legs off. And before it can regenerate, he destroys the vital spot atop its head. A double bladed chop shreds the creature's brain.
He takes only a second to feel hatred for Shigaraki, for not only creating a Nomu in his image but that it was used to harm Kyoka, and then he's running to the injured girl's side. "Kyoka!", he drops to his knees when he sees her mangled arm. Aizawa is barely holding the limb together.
"I hate to say it but we're going to have to amputate", the underground hero analyzes the serious injury and makes a tough judgment call. Yaoyorozu looks as pale as the girl who's about to lose her arm. As for Izuku, "And I hate to ask you of this but you're going to have to be the one to finish the job while I hold her still", he winces with sympathy for the kid.
"I- I can't–", he starts to protest because of course he would.
"Do you want her to live through this?!", but Aizawa knows there's no time for that. It's unfair for children to be put in such situations. Himself and other adult heroes when enduring moments like this had it hard enough. But there's no time for second guessing.
Izuku looks up at his teacher, or rather, former sensei. And after a second more of hesitation, he gives the man a shaky nod. "I'm … I'm so sorry, Kyoka…", the boy tries turning his head away so that he doesn't have to watch his own action but he's forced to look so that he doesn't saw the wrong spot.
Kyoka comes out of her unconscious state just enough to scream. She isn't aware of her surroundings or what's causing her such severe torture but she is aware of the PAIN. Yaoyorozu sobs while Izuku contains his own cries. And the boy keeps cutting. He fully removes Kyoka's arm so that it's properly amputated. Aizawa quickly gets to work on stopping the bleeding and applying the proper first aid. But that doesn't mean Kyoka isn't still in sheer agony.
To make matters worse, more silhouettes are starting to appear in the shadows of the dark misty mustard gas. And while they're not Nomus with chainsaws, they are enemies. Lots of them. Plenty of them. Aizawa and Yaoyorozu recognize them all as clones of the guy who they warded off earlier. He must have been following them and waiting for an opportune moment to strike.
"I can't leave her–", Aizawa grits his teeth as he tries to hurry up with the process of mending Kyoka's injury.
"I've got it", but Izuku lets him know there's no need to rush when he stands up to fight in the man's place. "Focus on saving Kyoka", the boy pleadingly looks down at the underground hero as he asks, "Please…"
And Aizawa nods. As does Yaoyorozu. The two work on tending to Kyoka. While Izuku faces the army of villains.
Darkness flares like the flames. Tokoyami screams, paralyzed within Dark Shadow's rampage, despite the light casted by the fire diminishing his sentient quirk's power. He has no control in his combat against the villain bound in leather. He's merely an observer. It's been a while since he was last in a situation such as this. He had thought his training to be a hero would have helped him overcome such an issue. Seeing now, experiencing firsthand what a disaster he can still be when losing control though, he knows better. In the back of his mind, he contemplates throwing in the towel; afterall, a hero who can't keep their quirk in line poses more of a problem than an aid to society. Tokoyami is just grateful that he had the chance to figure this out now out in the middle of nowhere instead of within a populated city. Still, that doesn't make quitting his dream of being a hero any easier of a decision. And that's if he even comes out of this alive.
Spear-like fangs elongate and rapture around Dark Shadow; some of the villain's teeth extensions are acting as spider legs, the supports lending an assist to the pincer parts. It's crazy how durable the teeth can be and yet how they still slice through trees like sharpened steel. Pieces of uprooted wood fling up and fly over them as they tackle one another relentlessly. Dirt surmounts in massive mountainous clouds when they burrow into the ground per turns shoving the other. But eventually, something's got to give. And with the advantage of the night on Dark Shadow's side, Tokoyami watches as his sentient quirk overtakes the villain. Fangs fluctuate before they shatter and the darkness swells before surging forward to take advantage of the criminal's moment of weakness. More dirt and tree bark shower overhead with the tremendous slam.
Running through the foliage of the forest, tripping over ruptured ground, two of Tokoyami's classmates find themselves beneath the giant shadow. One of which is Shoji, the boy creating additional mouths with his quirk in an effort to be heard from such a vast distance, "Tokoyami!" Dark Shadow swerves to see them and shifts a little closer. Tokoyami strains and struggles, screaming in protest out of fear that his quirk will lose control and harm them.
"Why don't you just stop this already?", the other boy with Shoji cups his hands around his mouth to also be heard by the massive form of Dark Shadow.
And the sentient quirk speaks for itself with a loud booming voice that doesn't require any amplification at all to be heard, "Stop? I'm just getting started–"
Only for the voice to get cut off. And Dark Shadow despite saying that it'll keep rampaging, does stop. Because of Hitoshi Shinso's quirk. The boy grins, glad that his brainwashing ability was able to stop Dark Shadow. The darkness begins shrinking until Tokoyami is back in control.
"Let's not go through that again", Shoji breathes out a relieved sigh as he steps forward to put a hand on each of his peer's shoulders.
Tokoyami grits his teeth within his beak, nodding firmly. "Not to worry..", he looks at them both as he promises, "It won't happen again."
Uraraka and Asui slam into one another, pulled by a magnetic force that leaves them inseparable. The two girls came across another villain when fleeing from the reptilian one. This villain proves just as dangerous.
"Hold on!", Asui warns Uraraka that she's about to use her tongue as a grapple system. It stretches and wraps around a tree to pull them away from the villain swinging a giant magnet at them.
"Do I have much of a choice?!", Uraraka screams as she's forced to fly with Asui to the opposite end of their miniature battlegrounds.
Asui takes initiative and uses her frog-like legs to bounce them away from a followup attack. The greenette continues to spring from tree to tree, the brunette attached to her shrieking all the while. "No offense but you sure do add a lot of weight..", Asui barely avoids getting struck by the villain's magnet due to how much slower Uraraka is making her.
"None taken", Uraraka says despite pinching some of her stomach and wincing at the way it squeezes between her fingers. "I've got a remedy for that", though the contact is meant to be much more than just judging herself; she uses her quirk and upsets the balance of gravity.
Asui's bounce begins carrying them higher as though they're on the moon instead of earth. "Nice!", the greenette gives her friend a thumbs up. The two combine their quirks to flee from the villain that keeps trying to kill them. And they're just about to escape too… Until…
The villain uses their magnetic quirk to draw them back in, an invisible force dragging the girls towards a heavy blunt object. It slams into both of them and they hit the ground. Bruises and dirt cover their bodies upon impact.
Blood would have covered them too. If not for a different invisible force interceding. Hagakure sneaks up behind the villain and shoves them into the undergrowth. Where Sato waits with a muscle powered punch to render them unconscious.
"Are you two okay?", Hagakure runs over to her friends to check on them.
Asui gives a shaky nod, "Y- Yeah.."
As does Uraraka, "We'll be alright."
"Good", Sato sighs while joining the girls, "Because this isn't over just yet" He points towards a steady stream of purple smoke that's mixed in with the ash of the forest fire.
"We should probably head in the opposite direction of that stuff", Hagakure thrusts a thumb over her shoulder despite nobody being able to see the gesture.
Even so, the other U.A students wholeheartedly agree with her sentiment.
Gray goop substituted for blood splatters in every direction. Up, down, left, right. Slicken with sweat and the strange substance, Izuku continues slashing at the army of villains relentlessly charging at him. They multiply every time that he cuts one down. It'd be annoying if he didn't need an outlet for his rage over Kyoka's severe state of injury. One of the bad guy clones impales itself on Izuku's right armed chainsaw. Then another takes his left side. He realizes that they're trying to pin and restrict his movements. So he swings the chainsaw atop his head. It carves through them just as savagely as the chainsaws on his arms.
More copies of the villain topple over themselves in an effort to outnumber Izuku. He untethers the chains rotating around his arm bars and lashes out so that the armada gets diced up before they can even reach him. An environment in which he can use the trees as support structures to attach the chain lines to helps him create a fencing to steer them as he so pleases. It becomes a little more manageable then. Like leading cows to a slaughter house. Even so, he needs to reignite the blood flow to his motorized head to keep himself running, every so often giving his starter string a tug.
A clone crosses through the chain system, splitting itself in half. Another uses its fallen brethren as a stepping stool to climb over. Izuku pivots, hacking at the invader of his safety zone with the chainsaw attached to his skull. He beheads the next intruder. And mercilessly drills through the one after that. Soon though, Izuku's defenses fall and he has to push himself back to regain his footing. The number of copies of the villain continues growing in numbers. He grits his teeth while searching for any sign of the original.
He chops at each one that enters the vicinity of his chainsaw chopping range. Despite the dismemberment of their copies, they just keep coming. He realizes it doesn't take much to melt them down and they're fearless for the fact of likely feeling no pain. So he simply has to locate whatever guy is hiding farthest back most probably. Izuku slashes at them like one would swing a machete at undergrowth in the jungle. But he isn't able to dig as deep as he'd like to get through them.
"Yaoyorozu", he glances back at Kyoka's friend to see she's still producing bandages and other medical material for Aizawa. "Can you make gasoline and a match for me?", he returns his gaze forward to keep an eye on the villain clones pushing in.
"Sure?", the girl hesitates but only for a second before producing the requested equipment with her quirk. "Are you going to light them on fire?", she presumes to know his plan while nervously glancing at the fire that's already eating away at the forest that they're in.
"Not exactly", but Izuku's grin fluctuating to a more feral form indicates she has no clue as to what he's going to do. Especially when what he does is light himself on fire rather than the clones. She shrieks and Aizawa is just as baffled when they see him burning in a blaze of orange flames.
Izuku cackles like a demon as he runs into the wave of villain copies. Any time a clone touches his burning body, they melt away. His flaming chainsaws carve through the rest like they're made of butter. They aren't able to snuff him out nor are they able to bury him at the rate that they desolidify. And all it takes to keep the fire going are some good tugs to his ripcord. The chainsaws rev and brattle with a mechanical roar that comes from deep within the boy's chest and out his throat as a bright burning bellow.
"What the hell are they teaching him over there… ?", Aizawa knows for damn sure that Izuku never learned such insanity from U.A.
"Terrifying..", Yaoyorozu trembles from chills despite the heat wafting from the burning boy's massacre.
Izuku rips his way through the villains, tearing them down the middle. Until he finds one at the very back who's stumbling over himself in an effort to turn and run. "Found you!", Izuku's tongue slathers out in a spray of spittle along with some specks of ash and sparks from his burning form. The original villain screams with all the air that he can muster in his lungs before he's shredded apart. This time, red liquid surges out from the body instead of gray goopy stuff.
"Midoriya!", Aizawa and Yaoyorozu are both horrified to watch Izuku murder a man in cold blood. But they're even more horrified when a villain drops out from the trees above them to sneak up on the boy from behind. "Look out!"
But it's too late, the villain miniaturizes Izuku into a marble. "Oh dear..", he glances around at the graphic grounds before pocketing the captured boy. "This is surely quite the scene I've found myself in", and then dusts himself off as though feeling dirty just by looking at the mess.
"Yao–", Aizawa pushes himself up onto one knee but stops short when he sees another villain stepping out from the shaded area of the forest. This one holds a gun, aiming it at he and his students.
"No sudden movements", the voice is filtered through a gas mask but he can tell that it's still young. The gunsman is likely no older than the kids in his class.
Yaoyorozu steadily leans back, her hands behind her as she does. Aizawa catches in his peripheral vision that she's using her quirk to create something. She's not planning on just sitting by and letting the villains do what they want.
"I thought the extraction point was supposed to be here", the villain holding the gun spares a quick look at his partner.
"It is", the other villain checks his wristwatch before leaning against a tree and crossing his arms, "We're just a tad bit early.."
Hearing that they're running out of time before the villains make an escape, Yaoyorozu acts now. She creates a smoke bomb and tosses it at the dynamic duo. That results in the gunman taking a blind shot. Aizawa springs into action in that same instance, swinging a leg over to kick the boy across his head to knock his gas mask off.
The underground hero turns, bringing an elbow into the face mask of the other villain. The guy drops down, his top hat falling off and his face covering cracking. Marbles fall out of the villain's coat pocket and roll in various directions. Aizawa is about to grab for them but then he hears a wheeze for breath coming from behind him. He turns around to see that stray bullet from earlier struck Yaoyorozu.
"No!", he runs over to his student's side to see she's been shot through the stomach. He doesn't want to risk moving her but does so anyways to check if the bullet went straight through or not. When he sees that it did, he can count his blessings for that, at the very least.
But to make matters worse, a blonde girl in a school uniform who doesn't belong to U.A has arrived. She crouches down to retrieve a marble and what must be the villains' extraction exit appears behind her as a warpgate similar to the ones he saw at the USJ.
"Put that down", Aizawa glares at her with a red glow to his quirk activated eyes.
The girl grins and giggles. "Nah!", and then she's cartwheeling backwards into the warpgate behind her. A moment later, before Aizawa can even consider to get up and pursue her, it closes.
Aizawa swears under his breath, returning his gaze to the two injured girls on either side of him.
Darkness swallows the room whole. What would usually provide a view of the city is closed, the window completely covered by a blinding shield. It takes time for his eyes to adjust, and even when they do, the only thing luminescent enough to really be seen are Makima's eyes. The yellow sheen to them and the red rings rotating to their epicenter like the iris of a storm doubled makes Hawks imagine the rumbling of thunder. Or maybe that isn't his imagination at all. There's no way of knowing whether or not it's raining outside. All he does know is that there's a glare to those eyes.
The hero gulps, partially to swallow his pride. When he hangs his head, he also bends his body to bow. "I apologize for allowing Midoriya to go unsupervised, Miss Makima" He starts by saying sorry but partially raises himself back up to add, "However – Since Midoriya was placed under my care – I deemed it acceptable under these circumstances" Makima's eyes are unblinking and unwavering in the dim darkness. It's hard to see her face to tell what kind of expression the woman is making.
"He had successfully defeated the Katana Nomu like you wanted and I believed that warranted some extent of freedom to operate as he chooses", Hawks feels his feathers rustling restlessly as his flight or fight response warns him that something about Makima's silence is bad news, "His friends were in danger and I believed he would have disobeyed any orders to not go anyways–" Hawks stops short and waits for a response but the director doesn't say anything. "It was the only way to keep his trust…"
Another lapse of silence makes Hawks uncomfortably shift side to side. "I really am sorry for not receiving your authorization first, ma'am, but I stand by my decision that allowing Midoriya to confront the League Of Villains was the best course of action. It would have happened eventually anyways and it's better that it happen sooner rather than later. Especially when it can save lives. The lives of U.A students who happen to be Midoriya's friends", he finds himself rambling and avoiding eye contact now.
When Makima does make a sound, it's an unsettling shush. She hushes him with a finger to her lips before leveling it out to point at the hero. She aims like she's got a gun. Hawks stares into Makima's eyes, his own widening with horror.
"A corpse is talking", is all Makima has to say in response to all of what he said.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
I wanted to celebrate the 50th chapter milestone with a long one full of craziness & long anticipated payoffs.