Chapter 26
Present Day – Day 18
Asami's body goes flying as she smashes into the ground. She rolls to a stop with a groan as the pain finally registers in her head. She moans as she grabs for her head, saturating her fingertips in her own blood from an unknown source on her scalp. She groans as she looks around to gather her surroundings, when she's struck with the sight of an all-out war unravelling before her.
Her wide incredulous eyes survey the area around her to see that she's in an unknown city crumbling all around her as masses of people scream in every direction. She lifts her body to her feet as she remains frozen at the sight of absolute destruction surrounding her.
She hears the whooshing of fire in the distance, and when her eyes land on the scene, she notices the heaven piercing wall of blue flames a few blocks away from her as it battles what appears to be an ice dragon flying in the sky.
"Dabi," she releases with a wavering breath as she tries to find the source of the flames, but she can't see the fire user past the cityscape.
Her heart begins to race as the realization strikes her that no one from the League is around her. Her head begins to shoot back and forth as she tries to find the location of each member. They are all focused on fighting against what appears to be the followers of the Meta Liberation Army.
This is it! This is it! This is fucking it! My escape! My way out!
Her heart beats so wildly in her chest that she feels like she's going to throw up from excitement. She can't see any of the members of the League and neither of them can see her. They are all too focused on fighting back against the Meta Liberation Army, that they haven't even noticed that she's been released from her imprisonment.
This is her only shot. If she's in Deika City she's far from Endeavor or Hawks, but she can at least make her way somewhere where she will find a pro that will help her get back to them.
This is it!
She needs to act fast because if any of them see her outside of Compress's Quirk, she will be returned and monitored more carefully. And if any of them see her trying to escape… she shudders at the idea as Dabi's flames rage in the horizon, acting as a warning for what will happen to her if she's caught.
She begins running as fast as her legs can take her. She curses herself for wearing a short skin tight skirt and thigh high heeled boots in a moment like this. She can't help but think about the panic after the Billboard Charts when she was running in the crowds as Endeavor and Hawks fought the High End Nomu. She remembers her panic in that day as her fear was eating at her chest and drowning her in the crowds.
She swallows down that fear, not allowing it to drag her down. She will not lift her hand out for that bastard to pull her into his sickening villainous grip again.
Asami runs away from the fire walls of blue flames bellowing behind her, figuring that the farther away she's from Dabi, the better. She doesn't know where the rest of the League is, as none seem to have as overwhelming of Quirks as Dabi's, but she makes sure to stay away from the screams of battle erupting around her.
She runs the streets of the city, not allowing her mind to linger on the destruction around her. She can tell that Shigaraki has walked these streets and lain waste with his Decay Quirk. Bits of ash and body parts litter the ground below her as she keeps her eyes on the horizon towards her escape.
She quickly gets trapped in a crowd of people that are forming a wall of bodies towards the outskirts of the town. She pushes herself against the bodies as she attempts to wedge her body between the barricade of limbs, but they are so tightly stacked against each other, that she can't seem to force her way through.
She glances up at the faces of the people that hold the wall to see they are all lifeless and expressionless. She shudders at the image, figuring this must be someone's Quirk that's making them stand as an unshakable blockade.
The group begins charging and Asami is quickly dragged against the bodies of people as if swept away by a wave. She desperately attempts to keep her head afloat as her heart races in terror that she will be trampled as she almost was back at the Billboard Charts. Only this time, she can see the flames of her savior back then, and he is nowhere near her to pull her out this time.
Asami hears the shrill cry of people screaming around her. Her head shoots over when she sees the black cloak of Shigaraki launching towards the crowds of people, using his decay Quirk to deteriorate the bodies of mindless people into nothing but ash. Asami's heart pounds wildly in her chest as he approaches the group of people that she's trapped in. If she doesn't wedge herself out, she will soon join the casualties.
She begins kicking and fighting against the crowd as she wiggles her way out of their hold. Her wild wide purple eyes remain on Shigaraki as he comes barreling in towards the crowd with no regard to the lives that he effortlessly snuffs out.
She punches and pushes and kicks her way out of the crowd, lifting herself above their heads as she steps on their backs to pull herself out of the sea of bodies. She finds herself feeling no regard for their lives as they insensibly press towards the insatiable need to trample Shigaraki. She won't allow herself to see these people as humans with lives and families in this moment. She just closes her eyes and focuses on using their bodies as stepping stones to save her own.
She launches herself out of the pile of bodies right as Shigaraki presses through the crowd, ravenously deteriorating them into a pile of ash. He doesn't seem to notice her as he continues onto the next crowd of victims.
She swallows the lump in her throat as her mouth dries at just how close she was to death. She doesn't let herself focus too much on the fact as she reminds herself that she needs to find a way out of here.
Asami continues to run in the opposite direction of Dabi and Shigaraki. She notices that the entire city is being barricaded by a blockade of mindless bodies that act as fodder to Shigaraki's Quirk. Dismay stacks on her chest at the realization that she's not going to be getting out of here as easily as she may have initially anticipated.
She turns down the smaller alleyways of the city, knowing that she will need to stay away from big main streets where Shigaraki and Dabi are located and being attacked at. She glances back up in the sky, seeing the wall of blue flames attacking the ice user in the sky. Dabi is so distracted and evenly matched with his target that he won't notice her gone for a long time. Now is her chance, but she can't help but feel a strange sting of hesitation in her chest slugging down her movements.
"Toga!" she hears the unmistakable sound of Twice's frantic voice calling out just a fence away from her. "Not happening! Not happening!" she can hear him panicking on the other end.
She winces as she finds herself stopping in her tracks. She tries to will her legs to continue moving and run towards her escape, but she can hear the hurt and terror lacing his voice. She knows something's wrong with the girl based on the frantic sounds of his voice.
She bites down on her lip and shakes the hesitation from her head. They are villains, she reminds herself as she continues to press on towards her escape.
"Toga!" she hears the man wail in pain.
Asami groans as she continues to force her legs to move forward. "They are villains," she now tells herself sternly. "They will kill you any chance they get!" she grumbles under her breath.
"Toga! Please!" the man cries with a desolate cry that sounds like a desperate lover beseeching them to return.
Asami's legs involuntarily stop moving her body, and despite how much she wills them to continue their pursuit, she is trapped and frozen.
"She's a seventeen-year-old girl that's part of the League of Villains," her conversation with Dabi rings in her ears. "She just wanted a friend in me, and I made her believe that she needed all that makeup to look pretty."
Asami turns her head towards the dismayed voice of Twice calling out to the girl. She tightens her fists and shakes her head. Guilt stacks against her chest as she hears the man crying out to the girl who was so sweet to her and saw her as a friend. She gave her everything that she asked for without requesting anything in return, all for the hope that they could be friends.
Asami groans as her legs begin moving, and without thinking anymore on the situation, Asami runs towards his voice.
"Twice!" she calls out to him as her voice cracks in her throat. She tries not to think about how she is throwing away her only chance at escape. She tries to keep the idea down in the depths of her stomach that she may never see her friends every again. Tears threaten to press past the barricades of her lashes but she swallows that all down to take control of the decision she has made for herself.
"Asami?" he perks up as she turns the corner, seeing the man cradling the bloodied and beaten blonde.
"What happened?" Asami asks wide eyed as she tries to grasp what's unravelling before her.
"She's still breathing!" he excitedly announces. "No, she's not!" he returns in a darker tone. "Her face is beaten up. It's the enemy's blood!" he says hopefully. "No, it's hers," he counters himself. "Let's clean you up. Remember the hankie you gave me?" he asks her. "Betchya forgot," he snidely retorts. "You gotta live!" he cradles her. "Give it up, she's dead!"
"Twice!" Asami snaps at him. "Pull yourself together!" she says as she kneels down next to him. "Let me see her," she begins as she opens his arms and allowing her to examine the girl.
"A washed-up outcast like me…" Twice sniffs as he watches the unconscious and bloody girl in his hands. "You were the only one who… who made me feel needed," he begins to cry. "I'll rip those zealots limb by limb for this!" he growls to himself.
Asami looks up at the man, seeing him not only torn in his normal way, but in a more emotional way. He truly cares about this little girl in his arms, and she cares about him as well. She can't help but feel a need to help them. They are like anyone else. They may be villains, but they are people still. And they need one another.
"Twi—Jin," Asami begins with a strong tone. "It's alright," she says looking up at him with strong conviction in her eyes. "She will be alright," she promises him.
He smiles at her when something behind him catches her eyes. She looks over to see a group of people approaching them. "We need to go," Asami's voice shakes, realizing that she can't do much against these men without her Quirk, and handicapped further with Toga passed out and Twice losing sense of himself.
When the men reach them, Asami's heart races wildly when she notices they are all clones of the same blonde man. Asami figures this must be someone's Quirk at play and tells Twice again that they need to leave, but the man is frozen in fear.
"We need to go, Jin!" she yells at him now with more anger lacing her tone. "If we get to Dabi we can—" before she can finish, the men begin charging at them. She panics when she sees them coming after them. They grab hold of Twice, who hugs Toga close to his chest in an attempt to keep her safe.
Asami staggers back into a crawl as she kicks herself away from the men that frantically claw at Twice. He begins yelling when the men start pulling at his mask. He squirms and thrashes in their grip as he yells wildly at them until his mask is completely off and reveals to Asami that the group of men are clones of Twice.
The clones of Twice begin attacking the three of them. They tear Toga out of Jin's grip as he wildly yells for them to return her to him. They pin down Jin as they hold him down from reaching the blonde girl. And they grab Asami, holding her down as she thrashes madly in their grip.
"Jin! What's going on?" Asami asks frantically trying to understand what's happening.
His eyes, however, are focused on Toga as the copies of him begin grabbing at her head and pulling at her neck in an attempt to decapitate the girl.
"No!" Jin yells out. "That's me! That's me killing her! Toga!" he cries out wildly as he watches the men pulling at the girl.
"Jin!" Asami yells over the men that tear at her arms painfully. "Look at me!" she yells at him. "LOOK AT ME!" she commands him with a feral tone in her voice.
His wet eyes blink over at her, but his head is still pointed at Toga. "That isn't you," she tells him sternly. "Those are clones!"
The clones holding her down grab onto Asami's purple hair and slam her face into the ground. She grunts in pain as her eyes slam shut to avoid the pavement and debris from entering her eyes. She opens one eye to look onto Twice in hopes to get him to make a move and get her out of these clones' grip on her.
"No! No! No! NO! NO! NO!" he frantically spills out as his head thrashes back and forth. "I'm the clone! I'm not real! It's me killing her!" he cries. "I need my mask! Or else… or else I'll split!" he cries wildly. "TOGA!" he screams. "She gave me the hankie to cover me up! Agh! I'M SPLITTING! I'M NOT ME! I'M NOT THE REAL ONE!"
Realization strikes Asami at Twice's hysterical cries. "Your Quirk!" she yells coming to a consensus on what it is. She writhes under the clones, scraping her face against the asphalt as the clones keep her face down on the ground.
"You can create clones of yourself," she begins with a strong tone over the feral cries of the man before her. "Jin, you are not a copy! YOU ARE REAL!" she tries to reason with him as he shakes his head at her.
"I'm splitting apart! I'M SPLITTING APART!" he trembles on the ground as the clones hold him down.
One of the clones begins twisting Asami's arm uncomfortably behind her back to the point of breaking and she cries out in pain. "JIN STOP!" she yells at him as tears begin obscuring her vision. "I need you!" she yells at him. "WE NEED YOU!"
"NO! NO! That's me! I'm killing Toga! Asami! THAT'S ME KILLING THEM!"
Asami growls to herself, figuring that this is not going to resolve itself without her own intervention. She kicks one of the clones in the shin, releasing his hold on her arm. Once her arm is free, she punches the other in the face with her newly free hand. Once she's out of their grip, her heart races as she runs towards Jin. She kicks one of the men off of him, while the other pulls at his arm.
She lifts her leg, to kick off the clone off of Jin, but she accidently ends up kicking Jin in the arm instead. The blonde wails in pain and she ignores his cries to kick the clone off of him.
"Ow, that hurt!" he cries out.
"Pull yourself together, Jin!" she yells over her shoulder as she kicks the clones away from him. "I can't do this without you!" she growls at him.
Once the clone is down, she turns to the blonde, falling on her knees to be at his level. "Jin, listen to me," she says grabbing his face. "Dabi's fighting over there," she says pointing at the colossal waves of blue flames filling the sky. "Shigaraki is fighting over there," she says pointing towards the sound of people wailing and crying. "Spinner and Mr. Compress are fighting too! We're all fighting for each other! And I'm not gonna die by the hand of these Liberation freaks!"
"Look at her, Jin! Look at Toga over there!" she commands him with a destitute tone as she lifts herself to her feet. "They're going to kill her! They're going to kill her and you can stop it!" her voice cracks at the perilous situation. "Stop them, Jin! I BELIEVE IN YOU!"
"It hurts! Ugh it hurts," he says cradling his arm before he finally grows stiff in the shoulders. "It hurts?" he questions, looking up at her with soaking eyes. "IT HURTS!" he announces excitedly. "Do it again!" he commands her.
"What?" she's taken aback by his command. "I'm not—"
"Do it again!" he roars at her and she shuts her eyes as she launches her foot into his other arm, wincing at the accompanying crack of his bones.
"Oh, it hurts!" he cries out. "It hurts! Hurts! Hurts! HURTS! It hurts like hell! BUT I'M STILL HERE!"
Asami watches the villain with wide fearful eyes as she staggers away from his manic episode. She thinks about running, figuring that he's lost it and Toga's a gonner as well, but before she can think to move, Twice releases in a dark grey goo, an army of copies of himself.
Her mouth falls open now as the copies begin running towards Toga and her assailants. "My Quirk is Double," Twice announces menacingly at their foes. "And you're gonna learn how terrifying it really is, Liberation Army!"
"Let's do this, Twices!" Jin cries out as the sea of bodies comes crawling over one another to save Toga from her attackers. "It's slaughter time!" they begin yelling out in a jumble of incoherent blabber as they start trampling over one another and the civilians that fight back against the hordes.
"Protect Toga!"
"Protect Asami!"
"Kill them all!"
"Where's Dabi?"
"I'm hungry!"
"Compress!"
"Your savor is here!"
Asami is quickly swept away by a group of Twices that lift her up and crowd surf her through the masses of bodies that trample their way towards the rest of the fighting league. Her heart races wildly as the wind blows through her purple strands and obscures her vision from where they're going.
"Twice?" Mr. Compress calls out over the racket of the mass wave of bodies. "What about your trauma?"
"Love and courage were just what the doctor ordered!" Twice responds with a thumbs up. "Also, Asami kicked us!" another Twice adds.
Compress quickly pats his pockets to notice that the marble is gone. "She's right here!" another Twice yells as they lift her over the crowds of Twice copies and into the view of the two villains.
"Butterfly, what the fuck are you doing?" Dabi growls at her as she's lifted to him. The Twices launch her onto the ground as she wobbles to gain her footing. She tumbles forward from the harsh momentum the Twices dropped her at, and she falls into the scolding arms of Dabi.
She instantly reels away from him, hissing in pain at how hot his skin is. She looks up at him, cradling her arms as she notices the steam lifting off of his skin and through the slits where damaged and undamaged skin meet.
"Are you alright?" she asks him, seeing how much pain he must be in.
His eyes widen at the sight of her. Her hair is matted and disheveled, her clothes are stained and torn, but most infuriatingly is the scratch on her forehead above her left eyebrow and down her cheek. He lifts his calloused hand up, brushing the wound lightly before his facial expressions contort into a raging fury.
"I'll fucking kill them all," he promises her, knowing that he will lay waste to this entire city for harming her. "I'll fucking kill every last one of them!"
"Dabi—" she tries to calm him but he speaks over her.
"Get back in the marble now!" he barks at her with a feral look in his eyes. "Compress!" he hisses at the man.
"Dabi no!" she snaps back at him. "I can help!"
He can't even respond to her because a colossal wall of ice emerges around them, destroying the city and a large cluster of Twice doubles.
"Does this town manufacture ice or something," Dabi growls to himself as his hot skin sizzles at the cold pieces of ice snowing down on them.
"As I mentioned, I manipulate ice," the man in the parka atop an ice sculpture informs them from above. "That includes controlling the ice's temperature! So, by shooting some ice into the water supply and cooling things down, I can now extend my power over the water as well!"
"Ugh, why not lead with that?" Dabi groans to himself. "So obnoxious," he grumbles as he instantly turns to Asami, seeing the trouble that she'll be in if she stays. "You need to get out of here. You'll only get yourself hurt if you stay!" he commands her with a stern tone.
"I can help!" she tells him. "I brought Twice—"
"Don't fight me, Butterfly!" he growls at her and she can see the wild look igniting in his turquoise eyes. "I can't protect you," he says quietly, as if he's ashamed of that realization.
"I'll stay out of your way—"
"Get outta here before I get Compress to shove you back in the marble!" he snaps at her and she figures that's as close as she's going to get to having him allow her to roam freely.
She looks in his eyes, seeing the seriousness in his tone. "Okay," she lets out, knowing that he won't let her fight him on this. "Just… be careful," she tells him sternly as she turns away from him.
Dabi smiles to himself, seeing the need in her eyes… the desperate need for him to make it out alive. And with that excitement fluttering at his heart, he turns to this guy and gives it his all.
Asami turns away from him, knowing that she's no good in a fight and has to be helpful in other ways, just as she was with Twice. She begins running, knowing exactly what she needs to do.
"Twice!" she calls out to one of the many copies, unsure if he's even the real one anymore, but it doesn't really matter if he is or not. "Twice, can you copy other people, or just yourself?"
"I can make whoever you want!" he announces. "I just need an image in my head and their exact measurements!" he says pulling at the tape measurer on his wrist. "Why? You want a Dabi clone? Because that one's sure not gonna make it!" he animatedly adds.
"No!" she begins with a frustrated tone as she shakes her head at him. "I need to get to Shigaraki! I have an idea!"
A/N: Thank you all for the engagement on this story! It means so much to me. Let me know what you think of this chapter and the story so far. So much more coming on the horizon!