A/N: Well, life has been crazy, and somehow it's been nearly four months since I've updated. While I promised to update once things settled down for me, believe it or not, I'm actually updating today because my life is about to get crazier - I recently accepted a promotion that will have me moving halfway across the country, and very shortly will have no time to write at all. Therefore, I decided that the only responsible thing to do was to use the free time I did have now to deliver the long-awaited update. Thank you to everyone who stayed interested in this fic, and I hope to find time to write again soon.
Move.
"Aren't there intruder sensors? Shouldn't the authorities be coming?" Yaoyorozu.
"They must have a jammer! I can't reach the school!" Denki.
"Sensei, your quirk is meant for one-on-one combat! You can't possibly nullify all of their quirks!" Midoriya.
A sudden feeling like I was drowning, my heart fluttering in my chest like a caged bird, a sudden shortness of breath from forgetting to breathe. Memories of choking on my own blood.
Move!
"You can't be a pro with only one quirk, kid." Aizawa's voice, confident and reassuring, clearly a lie.
"Kill him!" "Let's see you cancel a mutant quirk, Eraserhead!" "Gaaaah!" A mix of confident shouts and ugly jeers, punctuated by the sounds of violence, for as long as Aizawa-sensei lasted, anyways.
Move!
"Hurry up and evacuate!" Thirteen shouted, spurring me into the first semblance of activity I'd been able to find since the black mist first showed up. The thought of running-fleeing-escaping was enough to spur me to action I whipped around to look at the exit, only to see a wall of black mist coming up between us and the door. Despite the fact that we had only been stunned for a few seconds, a few seconds was more than enough for our assailants to have cut off our path of retreat.
"I'm afraid I can't allow that", an eerie voice stated, emanating from the mist. It was deep, cultured, professional, a voice better suited to a radio announcer or to a movie trailer voice-over than to a ruthless killer. "Greetings," the mist said urbanely, "We are the League of Villains."
"First 'Kurogiri', and now 'League of Villains'?" A voice said mockingly. "You people have no naming sense at all, do you?" As my classmates looked in my direction, a few with astonishment and others with smirks, I realized to my horror that the voice had been my own. Why the hell was I mouthing off to a Villain? Particularly one that had already talked about killing us all? Was there some chemical in the water at UA that inhibited common sense?
Yellow eyes in the dark mist narrowed at me. "Catchy names. Flashy costumes. The worship of the powerful as celebrities and the exculpation of their sins against the downtrodden. They are all symptoms of the societal disease that we are here to eliminate." Kurogiri paused menacingly, the black mist of his body roiling in place. I could feel cold fear-sweat trickling down my back, my hands shaking with raw adrenaline as I stared at him intently. "Curious, however, that you knew my name to begin with… ahh, I see. You must be the regenerator. I'll have to make sure to take special care of you." His words dripped with malice, and I started to feel lightheaded.
"Take special care of yourself first!" With a shout, Bakugo and Kirishima leaped forwards, while behind them Tobe shouted orders at his array of tools, sending a bola whirring ahead of them towards the apparent center of Kurogiri's body. Despite the suddenness of their coordinated attack, however, the blows just vanished into thin air, as if they were striking nothing more than smoke and mist.
Kurogiri chuckled darkly. "Ignorant gnats. We came here today ready to kill the Symbol of Peace, All Might himself. Did you really think the feeble attacks of mere students would accomplish anything?"
"Did you really think we were going to take your chuuni bullshit seriously?" Once again, tough-sounding words somehow found their way out of my mouth. I was literally shaking in my boots, so hyped up on adrenaline that I could barely think straight, but when this supposedly deadly villain started talking like a character out of one of Zaimokuza's terrible light novels, somehow the incongruity of it all short-circuited the wires running between my brain and my mouth. Spouting off defiance to the clearly unstable lunatic was, undoubtedly, the stupidest thing I had done since, oh, yesterday afternoon.
Yet somehow, around me I saw spines straighten, fists tighten. My classmates started getting into more combat-ready postures, summoning powers in preparation for attacks, shaking off the panic that had paralyzed them. Maybe idiocy really was contagious. Similarly, Kurogiri himself started taking us a little more seriously, his mist roiling faster and faster, stretching out to the sides to encircle us. "Then, if mere words will not convince you, allow me to do so with actions!" A tidal wave of black mist erupted in tandem with Kurogiri's shout, racing towards us faster than I could dodge. The darkness swallowed me.
There was a split second where I noticed that I was touching someone with a combination discorporate body and spatial manipulation quirk, but between the sheer panic I was feeling and the brevity of the contact I couldn't react in time to copy it. All of a sudden, instead of the familiar tingle of someone else's quirk I felt a sensation of weightlessness followed by the sickening lurch of free-fall, a hot wind rushing past my face, and the bitter smell of smoke. Apparently, Kurogiri had decided that the best way to handle a 'regenerator' was to teleport me high into the sky, right above a blazing inferno! I screamed in very manly terror, sounding not at all like a six-year-old girl as I changed quirks faster than I had ever thought possible, tapping into Vulture Glide and Moon Gravity (my weak copy of Uraraka's quirk) simultaneously to try to slow my fall down.
My precipitous drop immediately tapered off into a much slower downwards float, and I heaved a deep sigh of relief, only to begin hacking and choking on the plume of smoke that I had been teleported into. I hurriedly tugged my facemask back up over my mouth and nose to try and filter the air a little, thinking furiously as I did so. Although I'd been teleported pretty high into the air the smoke and the panic had kept me from really getting a good grasp on my surroundings. Obviously, the ground immediately below me probably wasn't a safe place to land. If only there was a way for me to get back up higher to get a better vantage point - and on second thought, maybe there was. Experimentally, I grabbed my costume's cape in my hands and spread it out wide to the sides, like it was a parachute. The rising column of hot air beneath me grabbed at the fabric, but without anything to keep it anchored to my feet or extended out to its full width, the lift wasn't enough to do anything meaningful. If only I had a quirk that could…
I took as deep of a breath as I could manage, given the smoke, and relaxed my connection to Hayama's flight quirk. My stomach lurched as I started suddenly falling faster, but even as I fell I was already changing quirks to a power that I hadn't found much of a use for up until just now. With an effort of will, my shadow suddenly began to writhe and twist, drawing strength from the dark smoke all around me to become nearly solid, no longer corresponding exactly to the shape of my body but instead looking almost birdlike. Spreading my arms wide, with an effort of will I pushed my copy of Tokoyami's Dark Shadow quirk out from my body and onto my cape, making it grab and adhere to the fabric so that my shadow could manipulate the fabric as if it were a giant set of wings. Without my input, my semi-sentient shadow also stretched out its fingers past the edges of the cape, sticking out like pinions on a bird and grabbing even more lift. By the time I finally got everything set up just right, I was so close to the bonfire below me that I could feel the hairs on my legs start to smolder. I crossed my fingers and threw my arms wide again. This time, my cape caught the air with an audible whumph, and I felt myself being slowly rising upwards on a column of superheated air.
I couldn't help it. I grinned beneath my mask. So what if I had been teleported thousands of feet into the sky by a villain who wanted to see me go splat and then sizzle? So what if I was only managing to pull this off because I had the mother of all thermals below me, and because the dark smoke clouds above me were blocking out the majority of the daylight? After a decade of hoping and praying that my quirk could do something, anything useful, right here, right now, I was flying. It was enough to make me feel lightheaded - or maybe that was the smoke inhalation talking.
Next step: landing. As I slowly rose up into the air, my gut started twisting, a symptom informing me that my bootleg version of Zero Gravity was rapidly approaching its limits. If I stayed up in the air too long, I'd wind up first vomiting into my mask, then falling out of the sky like a stone as gravity suddenly started working correctly on me again. Neither sounded pleasant, so I started flapping my arms to try to make my way out of the cloud of smoke. Coughing and teary-eyed, I sculled my way through the sky with all of the grace of a drunken fruitbat, searching desperately for somewhere to land. After several alarming dips and dives as I struggled to figure out aerodynamics on the proverbial fly, I eventually got far enough free from the smoke to see that not too far away from me was a broad area in which the fires had not only been put out but also iced over.
So, the villains knew Yukinoshita was an ice user and decided to throw her into the fire zone? This was just not their lucky day. With that cheerful thought in mind, I held my breath and swapped Uraraka's quirk for Hayama's. As my full weight returned, my shadow-cape 'wings' were suddenly no longer generating nearly enough lift to keep me in the sky. Luckily, despite the sudden addition of a hundred-odd pounds of extra weight, my shadow was just barely strong enough to keep the cape open and keep that fall a glide, rather than a plummet. Together with Hayama's flight quirk I actually managed to start diving forward at a respectably shallow angle, one that would get me clear of the burning building and over to safer ground.
The downside of this, of course, was that every bit of momentum I managed to steal away from my downward motion was being translated into forward motion - I might not have been falling steeply, but I was still falling fast, stooping towards 'safety' at what had to be thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour. Intellectually I knew that the increased speeds were driving my copy of Hayama's quirk to reinforce my body to compensate somewhat, but it was still going to be a rough landing.
And then I saw them. Six or seven villains, all circling around Yukinoshita, keeping her dodging as she tried to fight back. Almost instinctively, I adjusted my course, aiming right at the biggest, meanest, heavy enough to stop my fall-est looking one of them all.
At the last second, right before I was about to collide with the villain that looked like a rock golem, I switched out Dark Shadow for Stockpile, and swung my fist at the Villain as hard as I could.
There was an audible bang as my doubly-reinforced fist impacted the Villain's stony skin, and then he went flying, careening head-over-heels across the frozen earth before slamming up against the ruins of a once-burning building with a groan. For my part, the shock of the collision blew me back a few feet, but I managed to catch myself with Hayama's flight quirk and landed on my own two feet like I had planned the whole thing, instead of just having gotten ridiculously lucky. I looked up. The villains all saw me, and took a step back.
It was a golden moment, one where a real hero like All Might probably would have used the opportunity to say something cheesy like 'mind if I drop in', or 'never fear, for I am here'; Hikigaya Hachiman, on the other hand, decided to use the moment to pull down his face mask and start coughing violently, because holy shit had I inhaled a lot of smoke. I was lightheaded, seeing spots, and unsteady enough on my feet that if any of the villains had reacted in time, they probably could have knocked me out with one hit.
To do that, though, they would have had to take their eyes off Yukinoshita, who was already capitalizing on the distraction I had provided by lunging for one of the villains between us. Feeling the wave of cold approaching me, I hastily swapped out flight for Yukinoshita's heat absorption quirk - the last thing I needed with my lungs this messed up was to have them start freezing shut! Yukinoshita glided forward, seeming to almost drift over the pavement like a ghost, combining fancy footwork with power-assisted slides that didn't require her to move her feet at all. In the blink of an eye, she had delivered heavy blows to everyone in her way and was standing back to back with me. "Are you alright?" She asked, her voice taut with tension.
Surreptitiously, I stopped coughing to look at my hand. I'd managed to split my knuckles, but other than that it didn't look like I had mimicked one of Midoriya's boneheaded stunts. "I'll live," I croaked. "You?"
"Getting a little overheated," she murmured, low enough that the villains couldn't hear, "but nothing I can't handle."
I nodded to show that I understood. My weak copy of Yukinoshita's quirk helped keep me from freezing in cold temperatures, as if I was wearing a heavy coat, but her full powered version was a nearly perfect insulator, such that she could probably stick her hand into liquid nitrogen without the slightest bit of discomfort. Unfortunately, that also meant she had no way to let her own body heat out. In a drawn out fight where she couldn't afford to drop her guard for a single second to cool off, that could be a real liability, potentially ending in heat stroke if she wasn't careful. "Got it," I said. "Let's finish this fast."
The 'suspension bridge effect' is an oft-misused piece of psychological research, which basically states that if you look at someone attractive right after you've been through a scary experience, you might fool yourself into thinking that you've fallen in love with them, solely based on the fact that your heart is still beating fast, your palms are still sweaty, and you're still having trouble breathing. In short, it's a pseudoscientific garbage theory, a theory only popular because it can be neatly summarized in a magazine column and included in a list of '10 ways to get your crush to notice you.' So when I say that Yukinoshita turned to smile at me in response to that statement, and that my heart skipped a beat in turn, please remember: even a broken clock is right twice a day, and even shitty teen magazine columns can have some elements of truth to them. Obviously, the suspension bridge effect had to have been in play, making me interpret an ordinary smile of camaraderie and friendship to mean something more, and clearly no good would come of pursuing it, and anyway there were a bunch of villains charging at us so even if that smile had, however unlikely, meant … something, it really wasn't the time to try and figure that out!
Together, Yukinoshita and I charged the enemy forces. As I sped towards the villains I could see nervousness in their eyes, doubtless born of having seen me slap their leader across the pavement like a hockey puck.
It wasn't me who they should have worried about.
No longer surrounded, Yukinoshita was free to display just how talented in a fight she really was. With deceptively slow and gentle seeming movements, my classmate floated into the reach of a boar-headed brute wielding a machete. He slashed at her with an overhead chop, only for her to brush against his descending arm with a palm. On contact, there was a flash of light, and his arm jerked to her right, twisting his whole body to the side and putting him not only badly off balance, but rendering him completely unable to guard against Yukinoshita's follow-up palm strike to his liver. Just like that, a single exchange of blows, and the villain was down for the count. Precise, calculating, measured - even if Stockpile let me temporarily copy Yukinoshita's quirk for short durations of time, I had no way of copying her hard-trained skills.
Thankfully, I had my own way of fighting. Having learned my lesson about knives and other sharp objects, I decided to target one of the unarmed fighters, a heavyset guy whose quirk gave him dull black skin and an enormous, toothless maw for a mouth. I charged straight at him, channeling my Stockpiled version of Yukinoshita's quirk to build up extra power from all of the ambient heat, and then punched him as hard as I could. The snow-white energy of Yukinoshita's power merged with the orange glow of Stockpile to create a gauntlet of shimmering energy over my fist, which hit the villain's blocking arms with an audible bang. That one punch busted his guard wide open, and with literally superhuman speed and strength I took advantage of the opening to punch him again.
His nose broke beneath my fist with a sickening crunch.
It made me want to step back, to try to find a way to resolve this that didn't involve people mutilating pieces of other human beings' anatomies in an effort to subdue them. Instead, after a shocked pause, I hit him a third time, this time in the stomach. He fell over backwards. I tried not to feel sick. Thirteen's corny speech about powers being used to save people, instead of to hurt them, somehow seemed a little less corny all of a sudden.
It didn't take Yukinoshita and I long to clean up the remaining three goons - none of them was a match for Yukinoshita individually, and I was fast and threatening enough that there was no way for them to gang up on her. I was happy to let her do most of the actual fighting; it was clear that Yukinoshita had actual training with things like non-lethal takedowns, whereas my strategy for the same was 'pick someone particularly sturdy-looking and try not to hit them anywhere too important'. Also, she was just plain better at fighting than I was, so really it was the most efficient division of labor. After the last villain fell to the ground, Yukinoshita turned to me. "What now?" She asked.
"I didn't see anyone else trapped in this burning area when I was flying around," I said, "and we haven't seen any more villains either. My guess is that they only had so many goons who were fireproof, and probably didn't teleport many other students to our area because of that."
Yukinoshita nodded. "I agree. And I think we would have heard something if there was anyone else fighting nearby," she added, her gaze sweeping across all of the nearby burning buildings as if to make sure that she hadn't missed anything. Indeed, aside from the moans and groans of pain coming from the downed villains, and the constant dull roar of the flames, our surroundings were pretty quiet. After a second to confirm that I agreed with her on that fact, Yukinoshita continued. "The fires near here look like they've been pretty thoroughly extinguished," she said, "I think it's probably safe to leave the villains here without worrying about something happening to them."
I went over to check on the first guy who I had hit. He was out cold, but still breathing. With a bit of assistance from Stockpile, I managed to roll him onto his side into the recovery position to keep him from choking on his own vomit. Because of course that's a thing now that I have to worry about in my day to day life now, whether or not I'm going to accidentally kill somebody by hitting them too hard. Isn't heroism glamorous and exciting? But I didn't have time to think about that right then, so I shook my head to clear it and refocused on our current situation. If there was nothing in particular keeping us here - "In that case, I think we should find a way out of this area and get to somewhere that we can assess the situation," I suggested.
"Right," Yukinoshita said, already looking around to try and find an exit. "People might need our help."
"Let's hope so," I murmured under my breath. I was acutely aware that Kurogiri had literally tried to not just kill me by teleporting me so high up, but also aimed for the extra lethality of setting me on fire afterwards just in case I survived the fall. My powers had let me escape the deadly situation, if barely, but how many of my classmates would have been able to say the same?
Together, Yukinoshita and I set off down the main 'street' of the burning cityscape at a quick jog, trying to quickly get out of the area without losing our ability to monitor our surroundings for ambushes or wasting all of our energy before we even got into another fight. It didn't take long for us to reach the edge of the Fire Zone. The shift from the dark, smoke-choked ruins of the fire zone to the cheerful, sunny ambiance of the USJ was striking, and probably would have been a relief if the well-lit facility hadn't been a backdrop for a chaotic superhuman brawl. I did however feel a sense of relief when I saw that Eraserhead was still alive and fighting by the front staircase, and by tapping into my telescopic vision quirk I could just make out that about half the class was still at the top of the stairs - unfortunately, Kurogiri appeared to still be nearby as well, but at least it seemed that a portion of the class had escaped being teleported into danger. Unfortunately, that also probably meant that nobody had managed to escape the USJ or had gone to call for help. Just as I was about to turn to Yukinoshita and suggest that we look for a back door to escape out of, I saw a flicker of movement in the sky that made me change my mind.
Darting back and forth underneath the geodesic glass canopy of the USJ were a quartet of figures: a bald-headed vulture-man, a Cronenbergian fly-person, and an almost blimp-like giant were all chasing after my classmate Hayama Hayate, forcing him to turn and swerve in order to avoid their harassing attacks. "Yukinoshita," I said tersely, my focus on the distant aerial dogfight. "If I get those flying villains' attention, do you think there's anything you can do to help take them out? Throwing a rock with your powers, maybe?"
As I asked the question, I glanced at Yukinoshita out of the corner of my eye, only to see her smirking confidently. "Oh, so even the great Hikigaya has days where he doesn't realize something that a quirk can do? Just get them above me, and I'll take care of the rest." Her face was so smug that I would have wanted to punch it if it hadn't been so stupidly pretty.
"Ugh," I grumbled. Since I had no clever rejoinders to that remark - mostly because she was right and I had no idea what she was planning - I decided to let my actions speak for me and tapped into my Stockpile of Miura's Light Arrow quirk. At a 20% Stockpile, the maximum firepower of my fully-charged arrows would probably only be as powerful as the shots that Miura could rapid-fire without charging at all, and my 'quiver' of arrows would run out quickly, but it was still probably the best long-distance ranged attack that I had. Also, if there was anyone in our class who would recognize the brightly glowing projectiles as something coming from a friendly face, Miura's teammate Hayama was probably top of the list. Without further discussion, I extended both hands towards the fliers, then slowly drew my left hand back to my chest. As my hands drew apart, the space between them was filled with a crackling beam of light that seemed to want to pull my hands back together. Miura called the beams her light arrows, but rather than a bowstring, it felt like I was pulling back on a giant rubber band. The further apart my hands got, and the longer that I kept them at that extension, the stronger the force upon them, and I let that build until even my Stockpile-boosted strength was having trouble holding on - and then, with just my left hand, I let go.
The projectile of coherent light sizzled across the domed-in 'sky' of the USJ, revealing our position to friends and foes alike. I had aimed it for the Blimp-guy, since he was the largest target, but unfortunately he saw the light arrow coming. The balloonlike villain hurriedly opened his mouth and started letting himself deflate, which sent him backwards on an erratic course. I was honestly a little glad I'd missed - if his quirk made him that much like a giant balloon, I didn't really want to see what happened if I poked him with a proverbial pin. In any case, as soon as Hayama saw the arrow he started accelerating towards us, the villains following in his wake. As they approached I backed up towards a small cluster of ornamental trees, firing additional arrows as I did so in an attempt to keep the villains' attention on me, and also to get myself clear of the blast radius from whatever Yukinoshita was planning. Unfortunately, after three or four more arrows, two things happened simultaneously - Hayama and the villains had made it over to our location, and my Stockpile of Miura's quirk ran out.
Hayama wooshed past me overhead, just skimming the tops of the grove of trees I had backed myself into. The bald-headed thug with the vulture quirk was the fastest of the three villains chasing Hayama - which made him the first one to get into Yukinoshita's range. I watched as she suddenly sucked in heat from the nearby area as hard as she could, freezing the air and ground around her. The vulture villain was high enough above her that I would have expected him to feel sort of chilly for a few seconds as he flew right past her, but instead he let out a startled squawk and started flapping his wings frantically, trying to regain lift. Unfortunately for him, however, by that point Yukinoshita had a full tank of kinetic energy, and with a spike of white light from the bottom of her feet Yukinoshita jumped impossibly high into the air, pushing herself level to her target - and then spiking him down to the ground like an oversized volleyball with a shout of "Downdraft Spike!"
Apparently there was no honor among villains, because the giant fly villain swerved around Yukinoshita's trap rather than rescuing his ally, choosing instead to follow close on Hayama's trail and therefore heading straight towards me. Just as he reached my position, I took a deep breath and expended my entire 30% stockpile of Kamui Woods' quirk at once. The tree that I was standing next to shot up in height in response to my copied quirk, its branches growing at superhuman speed. As the flying villain shouted in surprise, I used my connection to the freshly grown branches to force them to reach out, wrap around, and finally encircle the flying villain in a wooden cage. "Ugh. There goes another six hours of my life that I'll never get back," I grumbled, but despite myself I smirked as I said it. I couldn't help it. The angry cursing coming from the branches above me was music to my ears.
Having seen the fates of his two companions, the giant blimp man started to turn around and run away, but without his buddies backing him up he was like a zeppelin without a fighter escort - easy pickings for the advanced fighter jet that was Hayama Hayato. Hayama swung around in a wide loop, picking up height, then stomped down from above on the villain's stomach, knocking the air out of the villain and forcing him down to the ground. As soon as the villain was knocked out, Hayama flew over towards Yukinoshita and me. "Hikigaya! Yukino!" Wait, you're on a first name basis with her? "Thanks for the save! Is Miura here too?" He asked as he landed.
"Just me using Overdrive on her quirk," I replied, using the term I had made up while figuring out how to lie about the source of my powers. "Sorry to disappoint you."
"What's the situation?" Yukinoshita interjected. "Is everyone alright?"
Hayama shook his head slowly. "I don't know. It looked like some people were still fighting in most of the zones I flew over, but that's as close of a look as I could afford to take while I was being chased. Eraserhead-sensei is still fighting, but I can't get too close to him or his powers might make me start falling out of the sky. Thirteen-sensei is stuck protecting the rest of the class from the black mist guy, and I think maybe trying to make it so that someone can escape out the front door, but the black mist guy is between everyone and the exit."
"If they still haven't gotten anyone out to go find help, then we could be in trouble. Eraserhead-sensei won't last forever." Yukinoshita pointed out, her expression grim.
"Then if they can't find a way out, it'll have to be us. Hayama, did you see any service exits or back ways out of this place when you were flying around?" I asked, looking around for something of the sort myself. Unsurprisingly, with all of its other departures from common sense construction guidelines, it appeared that the USJ had also neglected to mark out the exits with visibly illuminated signs. Dammit Thirteen-sensei, building codes exist for a reason! On the other hand, if we couldn't see them, the villains would probably have trouble finding them too, which meant... "The villains might have teleported people there to guard those exits as well, but even if they did, those villains probably won't be as tough to handle as Kurogiri - Yukinoshita and I can probably clear a path for you to get out and to get help."
Hayama shook his head. "I didn't notice any other exits, but I kind of had my hands full being chased. I could fly up, take another look?"
"That'd take time," Yukinoshita said firmly. "Hayato, you get tougher and stronger as you get faster, right? Can you just break out through the glass?"
With an evaluating look, Hayama stared at the geodesic dome over our heads. "Maybe. I used the glass as a springboard before when I was running from those villains, and it seemed like it was pretty tough, but if I managed to accelerate across the whole dome, that might let me build up enough speed to make it through."
I shook my head. "I'm not sure might is good enough, especially with Kurogiri watching out for people trying to escape. If he noticed what you were doing, he might be able to stop you." A thought popped up in the back of my mind, something that I had seen on a saturday morning cartoon, and I slowly started giving Hayama a wicked grin. "We're going to have to give you a speed boost."
108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108
Roughly sixty seconds later, I was standing five meters tall, my right arm in almost a shotput position, while Hayama Hayato crouched awkwardly on the palm of my hand. "You ready for this?" I asked him.
"Don't worry, Yukino, prez. I'll be back with the cavalry before you know it," Hayama replied, which sounded like a yes to me. I took a deep breath, and then I tapped into Stockpile, accessing super-strength at the same time that I went from five meters tall to nearly twenty. As I grew I stepped backwards, twisting so that I could put as much of my core into the motion as possible, and then finally I pushed out from my body with the hand holding Hayama, shot putting him into the air as hard as I possibly could. The triple strengths of Stockpile, my giant body, and the quirk-driven growth I was undergoing all combined into one massive surge of force that launched Hayama across the geodesic dome at a truly preposterous speed. If I hadn't known that that he got tougher the faster he was going, I might even have felt guilty for throwing him that hard. Instead I just felt sweet vindication and a rising sense of hope as Hayama broke through the glass dome above our heads with a crash. He was out, and help would soon be on its way - all we had to do now was hold out until the heroes got here.
Unfortunately, the villains knew it too. From my temporary giant height, I could clearly see into the central area of the facility where all of the villains were surrounding Eraserhead - and all of the villains there could see me. I had just enough time at my full height to catch the blue-haired villain first sending some more mooks towards Yukinoshita and me with a wave of his hand, and then he himself began to run towards Eraserhead-sensei, finally taking personal action. I didn't really want to stick around, so as soon as my burst of height wore off I let myself shrink all the way back down to normal size and threw a panicked look over my shoulder to Yukinoshita. "I think I got their attention," I shouted, "there's about a dozen of them headed right for us!"
Yukinoshita smirked coldly. "Only a dozen? If they're the same kind of worthless gutter trash we fought in the Fire Zone, this won't even be a challenge."
Well, there went my chances of trying to convince her to run away. "It only takes one knife, Yukinoshita," I said instead. "Stay focused!" Sure enough, the villains charging through the bushes towards us were carrying a whole variety of knives, machetes, hatchets, and other cheaply-attainable tools of violence. Since it was Yukinoshita I was fighting beside, I opened the fight by switching to Backdraft's Water Cannon, spraying water out in a wide arc over the approaching crowd and soaking as many of them to the bone as possible, as well as creating puddles that would freeze into ice slicks. After that, they were up close, and I started fighting for my life.
The next sixty seconds were kind of a blur for several reasons, not the least of which was that it only took me about five seconds of fighting the crowd back before somebody punched me in the face. I staggered back from that blow and returned the favor with a 20% version of one of Bakugo's Explosions, but after that spent a lot of time ducking, dodging, and otherwise struggling to stay alive. At one point I got grabbed, and had to blow through my reserve of Denki's Electricity quirk to escape; at another I was dodging kicks from a guy with stilt-legs, and shut him down by using up my Stockpile of Eraserhead's quirk, forcing his legs to retract so quickly that he stumbled and fell. Despite those few small successes, however, I was racking up bruises, spending stockpiled quirks like there was no tomorrow, and generally starting to slow down. It didn't help that every time I had to expend a stored up quirk to get out of a sticky situation, I had to stop channeling Heat Conversion, which meant that I was intermittently fighting in subarctic temperatures. Yukinoshita wasn't doing much better than I was. Her face was red and flushed from overheating, and her once pristine kimono was now stained with dust, grime, and frozen blood - both other peoples' and her own. All things considered, it was a relief when the cavalry finally arrived.
Announcing their presence with an arrow of light, Miura, Asui, and Midoriya hit the villains attacking us from behind. Midoriya looked like he had hurt one of his hands somehow, but despite that, he strode forward into the battlefield like a wrecking ball crackling with green lightning, bouncing from one villain to another and taking them out with punches from his good hand that were almost too fast to see. Asui supported him, her long tongue flickering out to trip, blind, or otherwise hamper any villain that looked like they were trying to attack, while Miura picked off stragglers with rapid-fire bolts of light.
"Are you guys okay?" Midoriya shouted, his stutter for once entirely absent.
I coughed, putting a hand to my side where someone had kicked me in what felt like it was probably a kidney. "Nice timing." Without them showing up to help, we would have been toast - and that was with two of us against only a dozen enemies, holding out for just a minute. Meanwhile Eraserhead had been fighting the whole mass of villains at once since the very start of the invasion, from the sounds of it was still going strong, and didn't have a strength quirk. I didn't know what to think about that, other than that Pro Heroes were freaking amazing.
"We saw you from across the whole facility," Miura said, her eyes slightly wide. Although all three of the people approaching us looked a little damp, and were giving the slowly-dissipating zone of frosty air around Yukinoshita as wide of a berth as possible, Miura's soaked and bedraggled appearance was a particularly significant departure from her normally immaculately coiffed look. To her credit, she didn't seem very concerned about her looks at the moment, instead asking "was that Hayama you threw through the ceiling?" with a mix of concern and hope in her voice.
"Yes," Yukinoshita said, panting from exertion. "The pros… should… get here soon." I did my best not to stare as she loosened the neck of her kimono slightly, trying to get even more access to the icy air around her to cool off faster.
"We should see if there's anything we can do to help Aizawa-sensei, kero," Asui muttered nervously. "The three of us saw him fighting on our way to help you guys out, and he looked like he was having a hard time."
Personally, I felt more like just collapsing where I stood, but she did have a point - while it'd be easier to just assume that Pro Heroes were full of magical pixie dust and would never fail to save the day, I knew as well as anyone that all it took was one wrong move, one knife in the wrong location, for things to go wrong. "Alright," I said, "But carefully. We don't want to put him at risk by becoming hostages."
Together, the seven of us slowly crept forwards, inching our way into the bushes separating us from our teacher's battlefield. It was far enough away from the fight that I had to use my vision and hearing quirks to get a clear view of what was going on, but between the distance and the fact that we were using the foliage as cover, it was probably the safest place to watch from. As it turned out, we were just in time… to see the fight end.
"Are you sure this is alright, Shigaraki Tomura?" In the middle of the plaza, the black mist villain Kurogiri stood next to a similarly dark figure - although in comparison to Kurogiri's mistiness, the second villain was incredibly solid looking, a bulky beaked figure so muscular that he almost looked fat, with a mutation quirk that not only gave him a beak but made it look like he had an exposed brain, of all things. The two of them seemed like they were just standing to the side and watching as the blue-haired and hand-masked villain - Shigaraki, if I had heard Kurogiri correctly - and a few other villains all tried to take down Aizawa-sensei. Our teacher was looking pretty rough; it looked like someone's quirk had eaten through the skin of his elbow, revealing the muscle tissue and bone beneath.
"Huuuuuh? What's the problem, Kurogiri?" Shigaraki leapt back from the battle, motioning at his flunkies to keep Eraserhead busy. "It's obvious those brats ruined the plan already, so what's wrong with me having a little fun? I've already got Eraserhead's weakness all figured out. You see, when he uses his quirk, his hair pushes back and -"
"Shigaraki-dono." Kurogiri interjected, "I don't doubt your skills at all, but it's already been several minutes since that student with the flight quirk slipped through our net. Perhaps we should eliminate Eraserhead promptly in order to secure our lines of retreat?"
"Hhhhhhhh." Shigaraki let out a low groan, reaching up with one hand to scratch furiously at his neck, his fingernails drawing thin lines of blood. "If we hadn't been screwed over by the RNG… tch. Fine. Nomu!"
And then the bulky black villain moved. One second, Nomu was standing over by Kurogiri; the next, he already had his hand on the back of Eraserhead's skull and was piledriving our teacher into the concrete with superhuman speed and strength. Next to me in the bushes, I could hear everyone letting out gasps of dismay and shock as our teacher was defeated. "We've got to save him!" Midoriya hissed.
"Wait," I whispered back, holding up a hand to stop him.
With my quirk-assisted hearing, I could clearly hear Kurogiri saying, "My deepest apologies, Shigaraki-dono, I'm certain that we can arrange a rematch against Eraserhead at some later date, if you truly wish to defeat him yourself."
"... No," Shigaraki said after a few seconds thought, seemingly unperturbed. "Eraserhead is just a sidequest," he said, pronouncing the last word 'saido-questo' in badly mangled Engrish, "I was only fighting him to keep from getting bored. Go collect Thirteen, and see if any of the expendables got lucky and took out any of those kids... Maybe that giant kid too, if you see him," he added in a statement that chilled my blood in particular. "I feel like making a statement before we go."
"As you will, Shigaraki-dono," Kurogiri said with a bow.
As he did, I whispered to the group, "as soon as Kurogiri teleports away, that'll be our best moment to act. Get ready!" Everyone tensed up. Small flickers of electricity crackled around Midoriya, Asui sank into a crouch preparing to hop, Miura put her hands together in preparation to create an arrow, and a cold breeze emanated from Yukinoshita's direction. I myself was desperately trying to figure out what quirk to use, assuming that I was probably going to be a priority target.
And then our plans, along with the villains', were suddenly rendered completely irrelevant by a loud BANG. A cloud of smoke erupted from the front doorway, and from within that cloud a commanding voice echoed throughout the facility, effortlessly making itself heard despite the distance. "It's alright!" it proclaimed, "because I am here!"
There was nothing quite like seeing the Symbol of Peace himself coming to your rescue to make a person feel safe. Even wearing tan suit pants and a white dress shirt, the palpable menace in All Might's facial expression made it abundantly clear that the villains who had attacked us were about to have a really bad day. I myself felt a vicious smile of schadenfreude stealing across my face, but it suddenly froze as I realized that the villains somehow seemed just as excited to see All Might as we did. "A last second Time Attack event, huh?" Shigaraki said with anticipation, his fingers flexing convulsively. "Nomu, Kurogiri! Get ready."
The hefty, black-skinned villain with the exposed braincase tossed Eraserhead's unconscious body to the side, turning his attention towards the distant staircase and All Might. My gaze sharpened. "Asui," I whispered, "as soon as All Might engages them, you jump out and grab Aizawa-sensei with your tongue. Miura, give her covering fire. Midoriya, Yukinoshita, if they decide to attack us, you're in charge of keeping them away. I'll support Asui. Are you guys rea-"
Suddenly, there was a blur of motion too fast for my eyes to catch, and a massive burst of wind that roared through the stadium. All of the villains who Shigaraki had deemed 'expendables' were simultaneously knocked unconscious, Aizawa was suddenly gone from his position behind Nomu, and All Might was standing next to our hiding spot, Aizawa in his arms. "-dy?" I finished, only to immediately feel my cheeks heat up in embarrassment.
"I'm sorry, Aizawa-kun," All Might said, ignoring us for a second to address our teacher. "I shouldn't have been late." Aizawa just groaned in response, which while not great in and of itself was at least a reassuring sign that our homeroom teacher was still alive. Turning to us, All Might gave us a brief nod of approval, though keeping a wary eye on the trio of villains in the center. "Young Hayama caught up to me and explained what happened. You've done well. Now, take Aizawa-kun to safety, and leave the rest to me!"
"U-um, A-All Might," Midoriya protested, "Earlier the v-villains said they had a plan to k-kill you, shouldn't we -"
"Midoriya-shonen." All Might interrupted Midoriya, just giving him a very manly thumbs-up. "I'll be fine."
Oh my god, Midoriya is worried about his dad, and his dad is telling him not to worry. It's actually a little touching, or would be, if Midoriya wasn't being a moron. "He won't be able to go all out if he's busy worrying about y-us," I told Midoriya, hastily correcting myself before I could spill the secret to any of my classmates who were too dense to read the subtext. "Come on, let's go."
It seemed like even the villains noticed something was up, because the blue-haired villain called out to us with a sneer. "Not bad, All Might. Hitting me, saving your colleague, and checking on those brats all in one move? You're pretty quick… but not as quick as I was expecting you to be. I guess the rumors are true, after all - you've gotten weaker, haven't you?"
The accusation was a bit of a shock to me, and from the sounds of dismay coming from my fellow students it was new to them as well, but All Might just smiled and nodded. "Don't you worry, young man," he proclaimed, "I'm still more than strong enough to deal with you. Carolina -"
"Nomu."
"- Smash!" Even as All Might leapt into battle, the rubbery black villain named Nomu was quick to intervene, his fleshy body taking All Might's full-force blow with ease. The two of them began to trade a series of punches, All Might using his super-speed to narrowly evade blows while Nomu just let himself be hit.
Meanwhile, I had started leading everyone away from the battle. I had taken it on myself to grab Aizawa's upper body, letting Midoriya grab his feet. I could also feel embarrassed heat starting to color my cheeks as I pondered my next move. "Uh. You guys. You, uh." I paused for a second. "Do you mind looking the other way for a second? Just, watch All Might fight for a little bit."
"What is it, Hikigaya?" Yukinoshita asked, and I did my best to suppress a flinch as I met her beautiful ice-blue gaze.
"I have... a quirk I can boost to help Aizawa-sensei," I eventually said, not meeting hers nor anyone's eyes. "Just… look away for a second, okay?" Thankfully, she did so without smirking, perhaps due to the situation we were in, and so did everyone else. I was almost certainly going to get teased for it later, but as soon as everyone was looking away, I puckered up my lips and planted a big, wet, cringe-inducingly audible smack of a kiss on Aizawa's bloody cheek. I hadn't accumulated much of a charge in Recovery Girl's Heal quirk, primarily because giving somebody too high of a dose of healing could be dangerous and I had no way of practicing controlling how much of her quirk I used (and also because it was a freaking embarrassing quirk to use), but a 30% charge was enough for Aizawa to jerk back to consciousness, flailing and kicking a bit in Midoriya's grasp before I managed to calm him down. His combat goggles had been knocked off when he had been slammed into the pavement by Nomu, as his eyes went wide with panic it was easy to see that they were completely red and bloodshot. "Easy, easy, Aizawa-sensei! You're safe! It's us!"
After a few seconds, Aizawa slowly relaxed back into my grip. "Where -" he croaked, looking around in a panic.
"We're still in the USJ," I answered, "All Might is fighting the villains. We're evacuating. I hit you with a weak dose of Recovery Girl's quirk. Do you think you can walk? Or hold on to a couple of us if we do a fireman's carry?"
After a quick pause to reorient himself, Aizawa's bloodshot eyes narrowed. "Get me up," he ordered. I helped him stand, throwing his undamaged left arm over my shoulders as I did so in order to support him. His bloodshot eyes focused in on the still-ongoing fight between All Might and Nomu, narrowing slightly as one of All Might's punches exploded the villain's arm only for the villain to regrow it right back. Seeing as Aizawa was interested in watching, I didn't make a move to drag him away from the fight either - it seemed like we were at a relatively safe distance, and I was a bit curious to watch the Symbol Of Peace throw down against a full-fledged Villain myself.
Time and time again, the physical paragons slammed their fists against each other, sending shockwaves throughout the facility. But even above the thunderous din of the punches, I heard Shigaraki shouting in triumph. "You have no chance, All Might! Nomu is a biological weapon designed to destroy you! Even if you can get past his Shock Absorption quirk, his High-Speed Regeneration will render all of your attempts to hurt him irrelevant!"
All Might just smirked. "Hmph. If that's the case, then!" Faster than even the rapidly moving Nomu could react, All Might got behind the bulky black figure, caught him up in a wrestler's hold, and then slammed him backwards into the cement with all his might in a perfect German Suplex, throwing up a huge cloud of dust.
"Then if you can't hurt someone, all you have to do is immobilize them, right?" Shigaraki's gloating voice called out. "Well I'm sorry to inform you, but even if the cement had been tough enough to hold Nomu - and he's as strong as you, so it wouldn't have been, with a Warp Gate like Kurogiri around, trying to immobilize Nomu... is a lost cause." As the smoke cleared, we all saw with shock that Kurogiri had sent a patch of shadowy mist to underneath All Might, allowing Nomu's body to seemingly split in two, its upper body coming up from the portal to sink its fingers into All Might's side. "Face it All Might, you've been caught. Now all Nomu has to do is to drag you into Kurogiri's Warp Gate… so that Kurogiri can cut you in half."
Time seemed to slow down to a standstill. Fear. Panic. Shock. All of those emotions and more, going through my head and appearing on the faces of everyone around me. Midoriya, getting ready to jump into action. Flickers of movement in the periphery of the battle, as other classmates got ready to intercede on All Might's behalf. And the quiet words of Eraserhead, ringing in my ear.
"Oh? Is that so?"
With a visceral squelch that I could hear from tens of meters away, the warp gate slammed shut on Nomu's body, carving it into two separate halves as Kurogari shouted out with surprise and disgust. Despite the fact that he was so injured that he needed me to support him, Eraserhead still managed to call upon his quirk, a burst of invisible pressure pushing his hair away from his forehead and shutting Kurogiri's Warp Gate down cold, with Nomu's body still suspended in its midst. The shock of being chopped in half must have loosened Nomu's grip, because All Might sprang free from the grapple, clutching with one hand at a bleeding wound on his side.
"Nice job, Aizawa-kun!" All Might said, giving a thumbs up and a massive, white-toothed smile in our direction.
"Just stay out of my line of fire!" Eraserhead called back.
"What?! HOW!?" Shigaraki shrieked in dismay.
Eraserhead started walking forward, so I did so as well, keeping myself under his left arm to keep him steady. "Don't you know?" He called out to the villains, walking towards the battlefield step by step as his hair slowly fell back down towards his face. "You should know better than to count out a pro! And while standing far away from fighters with super strength is a smart tactical decision," Eraserhead said, "it made it easy for me to target your teleporter without catching my ally in the line of fire, so if anything you can only blame your own cowardice!"
"An - an injury like this is nothing!" The blue-haired villain replied with a shout as Nomu's upper torso started bubbling with cell regrowth. "Nomu's high-speed regeneration will-"
Again, Eraserhead's hair blew back from his face. As it did, Nomu let out a pitiful birdlike squawk. It had been slowly crawling towards All Might as it regenerated, not letting its wounds hamper it, but as soon as Eraserhead hit it with his quirk it spasmed, clawing at the ground a few times before suddenly collapsing, its regeneration interrupted. "Hmm?" Eraserhead taunted. "You were saying?"
But there was no response. Taking advantage of the fact that Eraserhead had to focus his vision on the Nomu, Kurogiri had swallowed his boss up in mist and vanished. Just like that, the villains were gone - well, two out of the hundreds that had attacked, anyways. As Eraserhead allowed his eyes to rest, the Nomu slowly began regenerating once again, but either it had been knocked unconscious or it was inert without being actively commanded, because other than the small movements caused by its body being regrown, it didn't budge a centimeter, even when All Might walked over to it and nudged it with his foot.
"Well done, Aizawa-kun!" All Might called out, one hand still against his bleeding side. "I had intended for you to escape to go receive medical treatment, but as it stands I'm glad you stuck around!"
"Hikigaya hit me with a shot of Shujenji's quirk," Aizawa droned, a note of exhaustion entering his voice. "I'll survive for now. What about you?"
"It's just a flesh wound," All Might replied, standing a little straighter, though still leaving his hand at his side. "I should be able to hold on for another half hour or so before it needs to be treated."
It seemed like there was something important being said that I had missed - maybe a code phrase? - but whatever it was, I could feel Aizawa relax slightly as I supported him, seemingly reassured. Nevertheless, Aizawa-sensei still glowered in All Might's direction. "Don't be reckless," he admonished.
All Might gave him a solemn nod. "I promise, I'll seek medical treatment just as soon as I see to the safety of the rest of the students." And with that, he was suddenly gone, moving like a whirlwind through the USJ.
"Way to go, sensei!" "Impressive, kero!" "That's a pro hero for you, huh?" "Smart thinking, Hikigaya!" All Might's departure was seemingly a symbol for the rest of the class to run in and start congratulating our homeroom teacher - and me as well. From other hiding places near to the center of things, a few other students also popped out - Bakugo, Kirishima, Yuigahama, and Todoroki had all rescued themselves, and had been waiting for chances to step in and make a difference. A triumphant feeling rose up in my chest - or then again, maybe it was the broken rib. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, I was beginning to realize just how much pain my body was in. I could switch to Zaimokuza's quirk to start healing it a little faster, but without enough of a charge to make it so that all of the pain and suffering would be over in a split second, using his quirk would just make everything hurt more. Even if his quirk could probably regenerate limbs at full power, maybe that Nomu's quirk would be better?
"Alright, everyone," Aizawa said, pitching his voice to carry above the hubbub. "Let's get out of here. Just because the villains are gone doesn't mean that they didn't leave any explosives or other sabotages behind. All Might is taking care of everyone else, so keep moving!"
"Hey everybody," Kirishima called out as the celebrating crowd headed for the exit, "Don't forget to include 'sabotage' in your list of reasons to evacuate for your five-hundred word essays!" It was a bad joke, but somehow it was met with laughter anyways.
Ah, crap. I'm actually going to have to review all of those now, aren't I? I looked over my shoulder at Aizawa, who met my glance and just smirked. Ugh. Well, nobody ever said I had to grade them fairly. In fact, I predicted a course of 100s all around. In the meantime... "If you're that energetic, Kirishima, you can come carry Aizawa for me."
Still grinning, my red-haired classmate hurried over to help me out. "No problem, prez! Man, you got beaten up a bit, huh?" He said, pointing to his eye.
Tentatively, I reached up to touch my own eye, only to wince as I felt a puffy and tender bruise. "Ugh. If I come home looking like this, my sister is going to completely lose it." I said, giving Kirishima a thankful nod as he took Aizawa's weight. "Be right back." Before he could reply, I had zipped over to the unconscious bulk of the Nomu. Dammit, all of the villains in the Fire Zone had been heteromorphs, and I had been too busy fighting after sending Hayama out through the dome to worry about copying quirks - in other words, I had to come away from this whole debacle of a field trip having gained something, and this Nomu seemed like just the ticket. It was a little concerning being so close to it, but since All Might and Eraserhead had just let it lie there, odds were good that they didn't think it was going to get up anytime soon, so why should I? Before I could lose my nerve, I leaned down and furtively poked the Nomu in the arm. Weirdly enough, it felt like it had four quirks, not just one, and one of them even felt almost familiar. It took me a second to sort out all of the confusing sensations, but as soon as I did my face paled and I practically threw myself away from the Nomu like it was a red-hot stove.
It wasn't just a quirk that had felt familiar. It was one I had already copied. I looked down at the blankly staring, bulky 'biological weapon' before me, and almost unbidden a name leapt to my lips.
"...Zaimokuza?"