A/N: Apologies for the delay, I worked several 80-hour weeks in May and June and wrote about half of a chapter during July before I realized that the interlude material I had been writing should take place next chapter, instead. Hopefully at least that means the next one will be quicker! Also, thank you to DeepFriedMarsBars over at Spacebattles (where if you haven't visited already, there are a lot of fan art and fan omakes to enjoy) for the new story image!
108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108
As the roof of the warehouse peeled back like the tab on a can of Maxx Coffee, it wasn't dread that stole the breath from my lungs. It wasn't fear that made my body tremble like I was standing in an earthquake. They made another one. The sudden realization that Zaimokuza was not one of four victims, but maybe one of forty, or of four hundred, held me speechless and immobile even as chunks of steel and asphalt from the broken roof plummeted towards me.
It wasn't fear for my own safety that got me moving out of the way, either. Out of the corner of my eye, I somehow managed to see Hiru Setsuna standing near me, as shell-shocked as I was, and before I knew it my legs were moving on their own, sending me into a flying tackle that carried both of us away from danger just in time. The debris hit the ground in a series of deafening collisions almost like a rapid-fire drumbeat that set my ears to ringing, kicking up clouds of concrete dust where it landed. I felt shards and splinters pelt against my cloaked back as I did my best to cover for a wide-eyed Setsuna. As I stared down at her helpless face, I suddenly noticed a streak of an almost fox-like orange-brown at the edge of her pink and platinum blonde hairline. But even if the sudden realization that the younger Hiru sibling was wearing a wig felt like it should be important, for some reason, I had more important things to worry about.
I pushed myself to my feet as the sound of falling roofing materials gave way to the sound of screams. Unlike the preposterously quick bulk of the Nomu at the USJ, the bioweapon entering from the roof was - although well muscled - built long and lanky, and it moved with an unnatural jerkiness that was almost spider-like. As it dropped down into the cloud of dust its entrance had caused, its pale green skin seemed to blend into its surroundings. Like any sensible coward, I decided it was time to get the fuck out of its general vicinity before it decided to stop hiding in the dust and pounce. No longer particularly caring about unimportant things like quirk laws, I called on Stockpile as I scooped Hiru-san up off the floor and threw her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "Wait - ah - put me down!" She shouted, her voice shrill in my ear. Funny thing about heroic rescues that nobody tells you when you watch them on television; even fairly light people are heavy, and freaking awkward to carry. Despite Setsuna's screaming, however, I could still hear the sharp whistle of something cutting through the air behind us, and so leapt forward just in time to carry both of us out of the range of a tongue that, froglike, had lashed forward out of the dust cloud only to separate into a fleshy net. It thudded wetly into the cement behind my feet, then just as suddenly retreated back into the clouds of dust with a disgusting slurp.
As the dust settled, the Nomu's form became clearer. It might have stood two and a half or three meters in height, had it risen to its full extent, but instead it carried itself in an apelike hunch, full of bestial instinct where the previous Nomu had had almost robotic precision. The four eyes on the sides of its head focused independently from each other as it tilted its head ominously, as if in preparation from another attack of its tongue. "What - what is that thing?" Hiru asked, twisting inconveniently in my grip to try to get a better look.
"A villain," I said tersely, grabbing her more tightly to counteract the wiggling. "Now hold still, damn it!"
Thankfully, before the Nomu could move forward and hunt the two of us down, Cyberpunch stepped up to interpose herself between it and us. The pristine white back of her trench coat stood out like a beacon against the dust and grime of the movie set, suddenly seeming more like a sturdy and reliable wall than a few lengths of fabric. As I continued backing away from the Nomu, I risked a glance over my shoulder to see if I could actually turn to flee, but the cast and crew of the movie had bunched themselves up by the narrow doorways that served as the only exits far enough from the Nomu to be safe. It would take them time to finish getting out. Time that Cyberpunch would have to buy. Yet for all that her back was to the metaphorical wall, my teacher looked completely calm and unruffled behind her mirrorshade sunglasses. "Myriad, get Hiru-san to the evacuation route," Cyberpunch said dispassionately, "and then I'm going to need you to go find Campestris. The local cell towers are overloaded with all of the people calling emergency services in a panic, and I left my patrol gear in the car. Haruno should have the equipment necessary to punch through and get us some reinforcements."
Part of me, insanely, was tempted to argue. To volunteer to stay with her, because even if Cyberpunch was good she was talking about going up solo against the kind of monster meant to kill All Might. But setting aside whether it was legal for me to help, I had about two whole months of hero training and a few handfuls of half-baked quirks saved up. Frankly, I would only get in the way if I tried. Instead I readjusted my grip on my still squirming passenger (another thing they don't tell you about 'heroic rescues', the chains and spikes all over her gaudy belt were annoyingly painful as they dug into my cheek) and copied her quirk - the ability to compress strong emotions into semi-autonomous telekinetic sprites - while I did it because there was still an investigation to get back to if we all survived this. As soon as Hiru-san was situated I gave Cyberpunch the best grin I could. "You got it, boss," I said, barely cognizant of what my mouth was saying over all of the adrenaline pounding in my ears. "So, uh, try not to die until I get back, 'kay?" I said.
"What, because of him?" Cyberpunch said derisively. Even as she said it, I saw the Nomu's haunches tighten as it made up its mind and prepared to spring towards her. In the distance, I heard the sound of a helicopter racing across the night sky, and distant sirens that for once I prayed would get closer quickly. "I didn't get to be twenty-nine and still an active hero by folding the first time I ran across a Villain with more muscle than brains, kid," she scoffed. It sounded like bravado, but the fact that she was feeling calm enough to lie about her age was sort of reassuring in and of itself. "I can keep him busy until reinforcements get here and we can contain him more permanently. Now get moving!"
As if taking my mentor's words as a signal, the Nomu suddenly exploded into motion, lunging at Cyberpunch in a pounce that could only have come from a creature with superhuman strength. I wasted no time in doing the same, surreptitiously borrowing strength from Stockpile in order to make sure that I got clear of the impact zone in time. Which, I supposed, proved my cowardice. If I was willing to break rules to run away, but not to break them to fight, then the fact that I was 'just doing what a more experienced hero told me' was really just a convenient excuse. Realizing that didn't really change anything; it wasn't like admitting I was a coward was going to make me run any slower, but as the shame burned in my veins I resolved that if I was going to use Cyberpunch's instructions as an excuse that I was at least going to follow them properly.
As harrowing crashes and bangs rang out from behind me, I rushed across the cheaply-carpeted concrete floors, dodging around film equipment and cheap plastic folding chairs before skidding to a stop at the panicked knot of people still working their way out of the building. "Here! Take her!" I shouted, practically throwing Setsuna off of my shoulder and into her brother's arms, anxious to get her off of my back so I could chase down Campestris. The sheer relief in Cain's eyes, the first vaguely human emotion other than raw contempt I'd seen from him all day, was palpable. It wasn't an emotion that anyone else around him shared. The mood of the evacuating crowd was panicked, the fear exacerbated by the fact that the only accessible door was a partially blocked side door rather than a proper emergency exit. People were pushing and shoving each other in their haste to get away from the Nomu, and while Director Konoe was shouting at people to try to keep them in order, he was being drowned out by the crashing sounds of battle and the frightened squawking coming from the crowd.
I wasn't a hero. But I wasn't going to let anybody get hurt if I could help it. Taking a deep breath, I attuned to Present Mic's quirk. "Everyone, calm down!" I shouted. Honestly, if the Director had kept shouting he probably would have achieved the same effect eventually, but I wasn't just louder than him - I was wearing a snazzy jumpsuit and cape. And since the film crew were good Japanese citizens, that meant that as they turned to look over their shoulder at the asshole who was shouting in their ears, when they saw that I was dressed like a Hero, they stopped and actually listened, turning to hear what I had to say. Honestly, staring down the faces of dozens of hopeful civilians was even more terrifying than facing the Nomu had been.
I gave them all my best 'heroic smile', which judging by my track record in Hero Studies class probably meant that I smirked in their general direction. "So, uh, you can probably stay calm and leave in an orderly fashion," I continued at a merely 'normal' shout. "Cyberpunch is keeping the Villain busy, and as soon as I leave here I'm going to be heading over to Campestris to get reinforcements." As if to punctuate my words, I heard a massive crash coming from the battle going on behind me, but since the civilians didn't start ignoring me to flee in terror I assumed it was probably okay. "All of you should evacuate, uh, stick to major streets and stay in one group to make sure nobody gets left behind," I said vaguely, having only the loosest notion of what an actual evacuation plan looked like - and that only from all of the essays Eraserhead made me grade after the USJ. Wait, speaking of those, weren't most buildings usually supposed to have - "Who's usually in charge of counting people to make sure nobody's missing during fire drills and stuff?" I asked. A few people, mostly wearing the black uniforms of the film's stage crew, raised their hands. "Right, you guys are in charge," I said, eager to hand off the responsibility to someone else. "Now, get going!"
"Right everyone," Director Konoe called out as the crowd started to organize itself around the people who had raised their hands, "you heard him, let's take it slow and steady, and stick together!" I nodded to the pudgy filmmaker gratefully and turned away, eager to get out of there before I had to do any more public speaking. "One at a time, people, the Heroes have it under control!" I heard him shout as I sprinted away. "Line up one at a time, make some room so we can all get through!"
The only way to get to the other side of the warehouse was past the stage. Doing my best to skirt around the edges of the open area where Cyberpunch was fighting, I saw that for the moment, at least, I hadn't been lying when I said things were under control. The Nomu was moving with the sort of raw physical speed that only superhuman strength could grant, but it had all of the skill of a clumsy thug or a wild animal. Between her experience in hand-to-hand combat and her own ludicrously quick reflexes, Cyberpunch was somehow managing to stay a step ahead of the Nomu, taking advantage of overextended blows and the Nomu's clumsy movements to redirect its momentum and send it flying into the piles of shipping containers that had formerly been part of the movie set. As impressive as it was, however, it was obviously like dancing on a tightrope - one missed step, and Cyberpunch would be in for a world of hurt. No matter how impressive her fighting was, I didn't exactly have time to sit around and watch. I raced for the door to the soundproofed back half of the warehouse, racing against time to get to Campestris before my mentor made a fatal mistake.
Even over the blood pounding in my ears, even over the harsh panting of my breath, I could still hear the fight going on behind me even as I ran past styrofoam graveyards and wall-less office buildings. Something, either the Nomu crashing through the ceiling or the general state of emergency going on outside, had knocked out the overhead lights, leaving everything lit in the harsh red glare of the building's emergency illumination. What had looked like tawdry and cheap set dressing under the bright fluorescents now seemed to hide monsters in every shadow and movement in every corner. It was with a sigh of relief that I reached the actors' trailers, but even as I reached them I almost immediately tensed up again. Something was wrong. There were no signs of movement, no hints of Campestris being ready to ride to the rescue. And then, suddenly, walls of ice erupted from a location deep in the trailer park, their glacial mass shoving the merely aluminum and plastic residences to the side in their fury.
Over the crackling sound of their eruption, I heard a sharp, feminine shriek of surprise. My head whipped around, spotting a slim shadow scrambling out of one of the displaced trailers. I almost thought it was a villain, but suddenly the bright glow of a mobile phone screen illuminated the delicate features and hamster-like ears of Manaka, the actress I'd spoken with earlier this afternoon. Crouching low, I scuttled forward towards her, keeping my eye out towards the surroundings for any Nomu. "What's going on?" I hissed as I drew close.
As she looked up, her face was pale with fear, but she seemed to be holding herself together fairly well. "Oh! Um, Myriad-kun, right? I, um, don't know either," she said nervously, "The lights went out, and then I heard someone shout like they got hurt, and now Shoto-kun is making ice and I don't think he's supposed to be doing stuff like that so, like, are things maybe really bad?" She held up her phone, revealing that she had already dialed 119, and I faintly heard the beeping of a busy signal coming from the receiver. "I was going to call the police, but…"
Further sounds of ice breaking reminded me that I didn't exactly have time to just stand around. "Stay down, and stay quiet," I said. "There's villains in the studio. I'm going to go see what I can do." At the sparkle in Manaka's eyes, I groaned internally. Damn it, I was an underpowered fake of a hero, not someone who could actually do anything about a villain that was giving Todoroki trouble! You're going to be disappointed in me later when all I do is remind someone to make a phone call and then run away! Manaka's unrealistic expectations hung heavily on me as I crept towards the pillar of ice in the center of the trailer park. The trailers, which had once been set up in a faux "neighborhood" of long boxes with narrow strips between them, had mostly been knocked askew by the rising glacier coming from between the backmost two trailers, which looked as though they had been frozen in place. Those last two trailers had been turned into the side walls of a fortress, while buttresses and ramparts of ice filled in the front, back, and top. I had expected to see a Nomu battering down the 'front gate' of Todoroki's redoubt, but as I crept from shadow to shadow using the trailers as cover, I saw that instead of a monster, the icy defenses were being slashed to pieces by a man.
Tall, lean, and dressed in rags. A red bandanna, standing out even in the dim emergency lighting against the white backdrop of the ice. A katana in his hand, chopping at the ice with fast, precise motions, and multiple other knives strapped to his arms, legs, and waist beneath his raggedy cloak. Frankly, he looked like a chuuni tryhard, but my eyes could barely follow his sword as it chopped effortlessly through the ice, so he was probably at least a cut - no pun intended - above the thugs that the League of Villains had used in their attack against the USJ.
I crept closer, using the sound of the Villain in homeless chic's ranting to cover my movement. He sounded like a chuuni tryhard, too. "The two of you defending your relative is understandable," he shouted through the ice in a deep, gravelly voice. "Admirable, even. But make no mistake - Yukinoshita Haruno, the False Hero Campestris, must die. Stand aside, and you can leave freely. But if you continue standing in the way of my mission, then you two can join her."
So he needed Haruno-san dead. I needed her alive to help Cyberpunch take down a Nomu, so in my expert opinion, we were at a bit of an impasse. Although really, what I needed was to get inside that ice cave with Todoroki, Yukino, and Haruno. Once I was inside, I could tell Haruno to make a phone call for backup, maybe heal her if she was injured, help keep the crazy sword guy from getting inside by reinforcing Todoroki's ice walls with concrete… all I needed to do was get past the murder hobo in the first place. As I watched the swordsman chip away at the ice, it seemed like Todoroki was only reinforcing the defenses in waves instead of constantly repairing it, so if I timed my move just right, there might be a few seconds where the hole in the wall was big enough for me to slip in. Technically, it was legal to use your quirks in self-defense - did it still count if I pre-emptively defended myself against this whackjob by ambushing him? Well, if Campestris didn't use her hero equipment to call for backup, probably everybody in this building was going to die; so as far as I was concerned, it counted. Taking a deep breath, before I could lose my nerve I leapt out from the shadows, channeling two copies of Stockpile.
And as I attuned to Tokoyami's quirk with my third tendril of Ooze-Mime, the shadows came with me. In the red-lit dimness of the cavernous warehouse, the vaguely birdlike mass of darkness erupting from my navel gained enough mass and strength to more than make up for the fact that I'd only had time to charge my stockpile of that quirk to 10%. In the end, it was with a shadow that was almost human-sized that I ambushed the ragged Villain, and at superhuman speeds.
"Oh?" The Villain said in mild surprise as his head turned my way. "Too slow." His voice almost sounded bored as he stepped up onto the ice for a foothold, then effortlessly backflipped over my onrushing shadow. While he was in mid-air, though, he couldn't dodge unless he had a flight quirk, so I let Dark Shadow drop in favor of Kirishima's Harden quirk, toughening myself up as I turned my forward momentum into a jumping two-handed push directly at the mid-air villain. "Ah, now I recognize you," the Villain sneered. He grabbed a knife from a sheath and stabbed at the side of my arm as I approached. "The foolish child who can't see the difference between a real hero and a fake."
Luckily, my skin was tough enough that it barely scratched me, but what hurt more than the blade was his presumption. If there was anyone who knew what a fake hero was, it was me; I saw one in the mirror every damn day. But there was a difference between a fake hero, and the kind of delusional asshat who willingly worked with kidnapping, murdering fucks like the League of Villains! As the two of us clinched in mid-air, I didn't bother throwing a punch and just shoved the asshole in front of me as hard as I could. He went flying backwards, while the reaction sent me backwards towards the hole he'd carved in Todoroki's wall of ice. "Let me guess," I called out sarcastically in response as we tumbled away from each other. "The real hero is you, right?" Before he could respond, I tapped into the superadrenaline quirk that I'd picked up from Zaimokuza, scrambled up over the lip of the hole the villain had carved, and tumbled down the other side into the frigid cave of ice. Todoroki let loose another blast of ice and sealed the hole behind me just in time to deflect a pair of daggers that came whistling out of the darkened trailer park and probably would have torn several much larger holes in my rapidly softening skin. "Nice save," I said to Todoroki, my nerves jangling from the close call.
Todoroki was in a bad state; the rime frosting over his hair and cheeks showed that he had overused his quirk heavily, but he wasn't nearly as bad as Haruno, who was motionlessly bleeding from a bad gash on her shoulder blade only a few inches from her neck. Yukino looked much better in comparison as she sat cradling her sister's body to keep her warm and off the frigid ground, and part of me couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief at seeing her unhurt. I smirked as she looked up in surprise at my sudden appearance. "Hey. Good news," I said sarcastically. "I'm here to rescue y-" suddenly, I felt a shock run through my body, like I'd stuck my fingers into an electrical socket, and felt every single one of my muscles lock up simultaneously. I fell forward, and though I tried to bring my hands up to catch myself wound up landing nose-first with a sickening crunch that I heard even over the thud of my body landing and a burst of pain so sharp and sudden that my vision literally went white for a few seconds. "Ooou," I muttered into the cement with a groan.
"I see," Yukino said dryly, sinking back down from her abortive attempt to catch me before I hiit the ground. "Hikigaya-san. Were you aware that Stain had a paralysis quirk?" She said, her voice shaky, her usual sarcasm a thin mask over her deep unease.
From outside the icy hideaway, Stain - holy fuck, I just mouthed off to the Hero Killer, I was so dead - called back to me. "Oh, no. I'm well aware that I'm a monster," Stain declaimed, "but I am a necessary one. Only after I eliminate the impure heroes corrupting our society can a new era rise from the ashes!" Oh good, he was just a psychopath not a hypocrite, that made everything so much better!
Doing my best to focus through the sudden surge of panic, I struggled mightily and managed to overcome the paralysis and turn my head just enough that I could look up at Yukinoshita. "I copied his quirk," I grunted, my tongue feeling thick as I struggled to enunciate the words, "hadn't had time to analyze it until just now. Works on licking blood," I offered. My mouth filled with the coppery taste of my own as it flowed freely from my probably-broken nose. "Don't get cut," I advised sarcastically.
Maybe it was the serial killer resuming his efforts at chopping his way through the ice only a meter or two away, but for some reason Yukino didn't laugh at my joke. "Yes, well. Shame that you couldn't follow your own advice. I don't suppose you brought Cyberpunch-san with you?" She asked, her voice tinged with faint hope.
"She's fighting a Nomu like the one we ran into at the USJ," I managed to gasp, the paralysis binding my limbs making even breathing an effort. Somewhere behind me, ice shattered ominously, followed by the crystalline snapping of ice condensing out of thin air. "She's a little busy."
"A Nomu?" Todoroki spoke up from behind me. "Then this is an attack by the League of Villains. ...Reinforcements may take longer than we'd like."
Todoroki's declaration was met by Stain's dispassionate voice. "Stalling for time only works when backup is coming," he advised, almost helpfully. "Or if you're strong enough to hold off an attack indefinitely, which you aren't," he said even as he sliced an ice wall to pieces as quickly as Todoroki could erect another one. "How long can you continue to make those walls before Campestris freezes to death, I wonder?" Stain gloated.
The murderer outside might be crazy, but he wasn't wrong about the cold. I could already feel myself starting to shiver from the icy ground sapping my body heat, and so attempted to switch to Yukino's Yuki Onna quirk to try to keep myself from freezing. Luckily, even if I couldn't move, the paralysis didn't seem to be affecting my ability to use copied quirks, as the sudden quirk-granted insulation appeared normally. A silver lining to the fact that once again, I was useless. Helpless. I couldn't even keep the blood dripping from my nose from freezing to the cement. "Cyberpunch sent me to ask your sister to call for help," I said to Yukino in the vain hope of at least having accomplished something by rushing out to get myself killed. My voice low in an effort to keep Stain from overhearing, I added, "apparently she should have something that can get the word out even with emergency lines overloaded."
Suddenly, I heard a wet cough. "Belt," Yukinoshita Haruno - no, Campestris - croaked. "Looks like a box, numbers on it. Nine two five five. Then the red button."
"Shhh," Yukino said, stroking her sister's forehead with her left hand, then moving it down to fumble at her belt. Her right hand stayed pressed against her sister's back, and from my angle looking up at the two of them I could see that it was dripping with blood. "Don't try to talk," she said. "Save your strength."
I coughed a few times, trying to get Yukino's attention. "Hey. My quirks still work. Bring me your sister's hand."
"What?" Yukino said, panic robbing her of comprehension.
"If you put it up to my lips, I might be able to help her," I restated, causing Yukino's eyes to light up. Hurriedly, she moved from her crouch, maneuvering so that her sister's wounded arm dangled in front of my face. Craning my neck, I managed to mash my lips into Haruno's skin, uncaring of the fact that blood was dripping down from her wounded shoulder. She tasted like salt and copper, fear-sweat and fresh blood, but as I pushed my stockpile of Recovery Kiss into her wounded frame, the sigh of relief she let out was worth the effort. As if in appreciation, Yukino adjusted her sister for long enough to pull me up to a sitting position next to the two of them before my bloody face could finish sticking itself to the pavement. As glad as I was to be able to see what was going on better, it didn't look particularly good. Todoroki was breathing heavily, his breath coming in huge white clouds as he leaned heavily against the wall of ice with right arm outstretched, while the wall itself shivered and cracked after every blow that Stain delivered.
After a few seconds, Campestris spoke again, her voice significantly steadier. "I still can't move," she said, "but that definitely helped." I couldn't turn my head to examine her closely, but out of the corner of my eye her skin still looked pale and clammy, so I was guessing that she was exaggerating just how much it had helped in order to keep up morale.
"Stain's quirk feels like it should wear off eventually, but I haven't experimented with enough blood ingestion quirks to be able to tell how long," I replied, trying to do the same. "For all I know, either one of us might be able to move again soon," I said, doing my best to suppress my natural cynicism.
A sudden break appeared in the wall, and I got a clear look at Stain's red-bandannaed face, his eyes full of hatred, before Todoroki once more patched the wall. "Yukino, you should put me down and go see what you can do to help Shoto defend," Campestris said.
"Nee-san -" Yukino protested, but she was cut off by Haruno's harsh command.
"That's an order," Haruno snapped. "That wall won't keep Stain out for long."
"If you keep repeating the same defensive move over and over," I heard Stain call out from outside the defenses, as if echoing Haruno's statement, "Eventually someone will just decide to go around it." In the middle of Yukino shifting Haruno off of her lap and onto mine, I suddenly spotted a ragged silhouette casting a shadow down from above the open 'alleyway' between the two trailers we were hiding between.
"Above!" I shouted, and Yukino leapt up even as Stain dropped down. A lavender and white skirt fluttered in mid-air, dancing amid suddenly appearing snowflakes. Steel flashed even as the temperature dropped, but Yukino guarded against his long sword with her quirk, simultaneously pushing him upward even as she pushed at the air around her to temporarily hover in mid-air. Once again, I was reminded of how much better than me Yukino was at being a hero; unlike my clumsy shove, Yukino parried slash after slash with her bare hands and split-second kinetic force emissions. For a second, I thought she'd gotten out of the exchange cleanly, but as Stain flew backwards and Yukino landed, I saw that she was favoring her leg, a nasty looking puncture on her calf where it looked like Stain had kicked her with a spiked boot. The only bright spot in the exchange was that it bought Todoroki time to enclose the roof in a canopy of ice. The narrow alleyway darkened as the walls of ice crept in and blocked off even the dim emergency lighting. As Yukino fell back to earth I craned my neck upwards just enough to see Stain, framed mid-air above the center of the closing circle, and watched helplessly as he reached to his belt and hurled a knife down towards the four of us.
"Agh!" Todoroki grunted in pain, audible even over the sound of the hole in the roof sealing shut with a crystalline crackle like someone stepping on a broken bottle.
In the gloom, Yukino's voice echoed in the newly-constructed cave. "Shoto-kun! Are you okay?"
After a few seconds of pained silence, Todoroki spoke up. "He hit my right arm," he hissed. "The knife's all the way through. I'll survive for now, but it'll slow me down. What about you?"
Fuck. That was bad. Todoroki's ice was all that was keeping this crazy asshole from killing … possibly all of us, maybe just Haruno, but I personally didn't really feel like taking my chances. And right now, the only uninjured person who could defend us all until reinforcements arrived was Yukinoshita Yukino. And it sounded like she realized that just as well as I did. "I managed to freeze my blood before much spilled," she said, "and as I haven't been paralyzed yet, we'll have to assume it was sufficient. I'm more concerned about you, Shoto-kun. If your right arm has become unreliable, you're going to have to create some heat," she said, her tone of voice matter-of-fact and brooking no denial. I couldn't help but agree with her. I could feel Haruno trembling as she pressed up next to me, and I suspected that the only reason she wasn't shivering more violently was that she was paralyzed. "I can defend us," Yukino continued, "but if I did, then I'd be killing you all myself unless you stepped in to help." Todoroki didn't immediately respond. I couldn't blame him. He'd never said a word on the subject, but between his reluctance to use his fire, the scar on his face, and the time I'd found him crying in the tunnels of the UA stadium, I could make some pretty uncomfortable guesses. Whether he could overcome his hangups or not, it was clear that the process of working through them would take a few minutes - which meant I had to do something, anything, to buy time.
With a twist of mental effort, I attuned to Hellfire and Hot Skin. The glare of flames suddenly flickering from my hand and forearm (just the right side, since Haruno was lying against my left, and also since my quirk wasn't strong enough to do two hands at once) lit up the cave of ice, glittering in a way that might honestly have been sort of pretty if, you know, I wasn't too busy trying not to die to appreciate it. "Th-th-thank you," Campestris said with heartfelt relief.
With the light, I saw that Yukino and Todoroki were staring at one another, Todoroki's face conflicted and agonized as he clutched his bleeding forearm, Yukino's face full of implacable pity. "Indeed, thank you, Hikigaya-kun," Yukino said, not taking her eyes off of her cousin. "It's not much, but it's a start."
I'll say this about people trying to kill you - they're incredibly disruptive to awkward silences. In the reflections off the inside of the ice cave, I saw several inches of steel puncture through the ice just a few scant inches next to Todoroki's head. He scrambled forward with a yelp, twisting in mid-air so that he could shoot out a wave of ice from his right foot to patch the hole before Stain could widen it further. Before he could fall from the awkward motion, Yukino caught him, almost stumbling under his weight. "You idiot, you're shaking," she said with scathing concern. "At least warm yourself up before you pass out!"
"I can do it," Todoroki gasped. "I can still fight."
"A true hero would use any means at their disposal to defend the innocent," Stain's voice called out, muffled through the layers of ice. For all that Todoroki's ice was usually pretty clear, this particular barrier had been broken and reinforced so many times that Stain was only visible as a funhouse-mirror smear across the ice. But I could see him, which, since I was doing my best impression of a tiki torch, meant that he almost certainly knew exactly where I was as well. I shivered in a way that had only a little to do with the fact that I was wearing skin-tight spandex in the temperature equivalent of a meat locker. "I don't know for what reason you insist on being half-hearted in your defense of this celebrity," he said, pronouncing the word like filth, "but it appears that you are as false a hero as the woman you are defending. In that case, you can die with her."
"My sister isn't a fake!" Yukino shouted, indignation fierce in her voice. "If you hadn't ambushed her like a coward, she'd have proved it to you!"
"Campestris is a disease!" Stain shouted back. It sounded like he had moved, and I did my best to tilt my head to the side to follow him. Even though I couldn't spot him, I did get a great view of Campestris. It was telling that even freezing, paralyzed, and injured, Yukinoshita Haruno still had the energy to roll her eyes in response to Stain's pronouncement. Personally, I wasn't so dismissive. I hadn't seen very much of her, but nothing I'd seen contradicted the idea that she was just a bitch who'd won the genetic lottery; exactly the sort of trashy so-called-hero I myself had been personally dismissive of in many internet message board arguments. Stain started hacking at the ice even as he ranted, punctuating his tirades with brutal, sickening chopping sounds, and that let me pinpoint him. He was up on the roof of the trailer above and behind me, trying to carve his way through the ice where it was comparatively weaker. Todoroki stumbled forward on frozen legs, leaning heavily on the trailer with his arm covered with frozen blood as he sent trails of ice climbing up the walls to prevent Stain from getting in.
"Commercials." chop. "Magazine ads." chop. "Movies." chop. "The pursuit of personal glory, and of self-enrichment using her name as a hero." chop. "Campestris is not a hero, she's a celebrity tainting the name of heroes, a pretender to all that heroism stands for, not just a symptom, but a vector of infection for the rot that plagues this society!"
He had a point. But so what? Even if she was a narcissistic bitch, I'd much rather have her glorifying herself by taking on dangerous public service work than by trying to become a trillionaire or something. Either way, she didn't deserve to die. So as Stain's voice reached a fever pitch of excitement, just as he was about to work himself up to a thundering denunciation and possibly an attempt to kick the roof in on top of us I spoke up, packing as much sarcasm and vitriol into my voice as I possibly could. "Aren't you the same?" I asked, dropping the flames I had been generating just so that I could use Present Mic's quirk to make sure he heard me. "I mean, you keep killing celebrity heroes instead of nobodies because that's what gets you on television, right?" I accused him. Taunting a murderous psychopath wasn't exactly the smartest thing I'd done all day. Unfortunately, it was the first part of the completely idiotic plan that I had just come up with.
"I kill fake heroes because they are mockeries of all that the name of Hero stands for," Stain replied. I smirked. Gotcha, I thought as the chopping at the ice outside suddenly faltered. My plan, such as it was, relied on the vague and slender hope that at 1/108th strength, Hitoshi Shinso's quirk would be weak enough that Stain wouldn't notice it working on him right away. I hadn't tested the quirk at all other than to stun Monoma with a charged-up burst of it during our fight, but Stain was delusional enough that if I could keep him talking, and keep him angry, there was a chance that he wouldn't notice what was going on until backup arrived or his quirk wore off.
"Slow down," I said, embedding a command to the start of my sentence in the vague hope it would help. "What's so bad about celebrities, anyway?" I asked disingenuously. "Do you not like watching television, or something?" I asked, and then held my breath. When Stain didn't immediately accuse me of using a quirk on him, or indeed immediately respond, I felt the faint stirrings of hope start to blossom. I then immediately quashed them, because there was one major downside to this whole plan. The problem with keeping Stain too angry to realize what I was doing to him was that I'd be getting him angry at me. Specifically.
Sure enough, when Stain eventually replied, his already menacing-sounding voice got low and ugly. "I should expect nothing less from a prattling fool who thinks that mere hard work makes a hero," Stain said. The accusation shouldn't have stung, given that it came from a crazy person, but it was… disconcerting that just by watching me on television Stain already had me so correctly pegged. "True heroism requires self-sacrifice! A higher moral calling, unbound by concern for profit or fame! The sort of integrity that people like you and Campestris so clearly lack!" He punctuated his final statement with another swing at the wall of ice, showing that my quirk had worn off. Chunks of ice fell into my hair as the icy canopy splintered and buckled, but Todoroki, red icicles hanging from the knife in his arm, managed to close the hole once again.
I didn't bother arguing with Stain's characterization of me. After all, it wasn't like he was wrong. I joined UA's hero program out of pride and spite, not the nobler motives most of my classmates held. If not for what had happened to Zaimokuza, my 'heroism' would have been exactly as shallow and as self-centered as Campestris' - and for that matter, the fact that I'd moved on to personal revenge wasn't much better. Maybe that was why Stain could identify me so accurately; at the end of the day, he and I weren't that different. On the other hand, that meant that I knew exactly what to say to really piss him off. "So what?" I said with false nonchalance, wishing I could shrug to match what I was saying. "It's not like doing commercials actually hurts anybody, right? What's wrong with wanting to make a living? Hero work is fucking hard, you think people want to do this shit for free?"
"Pathetic," Stain scoffed derisively, followed by another pause that I could have mistaken for him thinking about how to answer me if I hadn't known it was the result of my quirk. "Any time spent on shameless self-promotion is time that a true hero would have spent saving people," Stain claimed after a good fifteen or twenty seconds. Already, I'd bought us an entire minute. Any moment now, either Campestris or I would be able to move again. I just had to keep this up. Yet, ominously, even as he kept speaking, Stain didn't continue attacking. My eyes, just about the only thing I could move of my own volition, frantically scanned the narrow alley between the two trailers, bouncing back and forth between the plug of ice over the front and the canopy over the top, searching for Stain's next avenue of attack. I wasn't the only one - Yukino and Todoroki stood practically back to back, ready to respond from an attack in any direction. "How many people suffer in darkness, while so-called heroes seek out bigger paychecks?" Stain's voice echoed in the cavernous warehouse, giving no sign as to its location. "How is filming a movie," he said disparagingly, "more important than people's lives?"
Over the course of my middle school career, I had heard a lot of edgy bullshit. But hearing a murderer declare that he was in it to save lives had to be the most ironic, self-serving, piece of fucking crap I had ever heard in my life, and most of the time I even listened to myself speak. "Oh, I see now," I said sarcastically. "There aren't enough heroes to save everyone, so obviously the only solution is to kill a few, is that right?" It wasn't like poking holes in Stain's so-called "logic" was going to do me any good; if anything it was even more likely than mouthing off to him in general to get me killed, but my mouth had either an adrenaline addiction or a deathwish, because I just could not make it shut up. Even when suddenly in mid-sentence I noticed that my arms and legs could move again I didn't stop ranting, pulling myself up just enough that I could project better. "Speaking as someone who's needed to be saved before?" I said, my heart beating in my chest so strongly I could feel my pulse in my temples, "I didn't give a single flying fuck whether the person who saved me was a real hero, or a movie star, if they had scandals or sold shampoo or whatever fucking criteria you apparently judge heroes guilty for." Dimly, I realized that I was shouting, nervous energy and long-buried emotion erupting all at once. "All I cared about was whether they fucking showed up! I mean, if a real hero and a fake hero both save a real victim, what's the fucking difference?"
"The difference between a real hero and a halfhearted fake is that when the fake attempts to save someone from a true villain instead of a mere run-of-the-mill criminal," Stain's voice said, suddenly sounding close, as though it was coming from right behind me, "is that the fake - dies." In that split second, to my dawning horror, I realized that the cheap trailer walls on either side of us weren't particularly thick. I threw myself and Haruno forward away from the wall, attuning to Stockpile and Steel Skin as I did. A heartbeat later, with a hideous screech of tearing metal, Stain's katana pierced through the wall where my neck had been mere moments before. As the blade twisted to the side and carved a massive horizontal fault line in the wall, all of us moved at once. I scrambled to my knees, Todoroki tried to ice over the wall to slow Stain down, Yukino darted forward to drag her sister out of the way, but we had been caught off-guard, and Stain was apparently done playing around. With a single heavy kick he knocked down the weakened trailer wall, taking the too-thin layer of ice with it. He crouched in the shadows like a predator, ready to pounce and murder us all.
And then, suddenly, he was illuminated. Firelight danced in the battered steel of Stain's katana, and I saw the whites of his bloodshot eyes as they widened in shock. "You're right," Todoroki Shoto said, his voice full of anguish. A lance of lambent light roared past me, forcing Stain to spring backwards even as it lit the entire trailer aflame. My ears popped as the sudden heat forced the nearby air to expand, and I wound up blown backwards away from Todoroki by the backwash into the still-cold air surrounding Yukino. Everywhere else in the dome of ice that had been serving as our cover was blasted away by the shockwave; while in the trailer, sofas, vanity tables, and lamps torched one by one as Todoroki chased the rapidly-dodging Stain with a roiling plume of pure fire and didn't stop until Stain, singed and smoking, backed all the way out of the trailer. As Todoroki finally let the beam drop, I looked over my shoulder at him in astonishment. His face was twisted in self-hatred, and as he stared at his outstretched left hand I heard him mutter, "and so was my father, damn him."
"What? No he isn't," I protested reflexively. Sure, Stain had a few good points, but that one in particular was stupid as hell. Todoroki looked at me in surprise, but before I could explain I caught the gleam of a throwing knife flying end-over-end out of the darkness of the warehouse, already far too close for comfort. My eyes throbbed as I used a quirk I'd copied from an upperclassman and fired a wave of weak cutting force out of my eyes to meet the knife mid-air. At 2% power, it was barely more than a harsh breeze, but it was enough to knock the dagger off course so that it clipped my ear instead of burying itself in my eye socket. The sudden gouge still brought tears of pain to my eyes, and worse, it spilled blood. "Fuck!" I cried out.
Todoroki did his best to incinerate the dagger and the droplets of blood I'd spilled, even as he set up a wall of ice to buy us time as we started running back into the warehouse proper. "He was. I should have used my left side from the beginning," he said in self-recrimination.
"It's already too late for regrets," Stain's mocking voice drifted out from the dark corners of the warehouse. "A last-minute attempt to improve yourself will make no difference to my judgement of you." Yet another knife whirred through the air toward us, but forewarned, Todoroki managed to intercept it with a column of ice.
My left hand was hot and slick with my own blood as I pressed it to the side of my head in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding, but I nevertheless found the strength to roll my eyes. "What does you needing to stop holding back have to do with Stain's shitty arguments?" I asked peevishly even as I tried to combine Regeneration and Vlad King's Blood Control to get the gash to close temporarily. "Thinking that heroes who adhere to some arbitrary moral code are better at fighting is just the Halo Effect," I said. "You know, like thinking attractive people are smarter and so on, only edgier."
"Is now really the time to be talking about that? We have to get out of here," Yukino said incredulously, limping on her wounded leg under her sister's weight and starting to pant with exertion, but managing to keep up with us regardless. "Between the darkness and the abundant cover, Stain has too many options." As if to punctuate her statement, the entire warehouse shuddered, sending ceiling fixtures swaying. "And that's before taking into account the Nomu a few hundred feet away."
"Outside!" Haruno commanded. Yukino held her in a princess carry; her blood dripped down Yukino's arm, but even wounded, half-frozen, and paralyzed, Haruno's voice brooked no disagreements. "We need to make ourselves visible to reinforcements."
The sound of fast footfalls arrived a split second before Stain materialized out of the darkness. He wove out from behind a stack of loading pallets only a few steps away from Yukino and Haruno, his katana held low and to his side in preparation for a sudden slash. "As if I'd let you," he exclaimed menacingly.
There was no time. I threw myself into the path of the blade, praying that the defensive quirks I'd stored before my internship would hold out for long enough. His blade swung, blindingly fast, and only sheer luck allowed me to get one of Totsuka's Reflect Rackets up in time to intercept the blow. My blue disc of force promptly shattered, but it forced Stain's blade to rebound and knocked him off-balance. It was exactly the sort of opening I'd been practicing to take advantage of for the past several days. As my bloodsoaked left hand swept out to the side with the motion I'd used to block the blade, I stepped into Stain's charge, dropping my body weight to compensate for the super strength I was using, and delivered a picture-perfect, Stockpile enhanced, right palm blow straight into his ugly face. The contact reverberated all up and down my arm, at once painful and incredibly, intensely satisfying.
It was almost as satisfying as what I did next. Stain rolled backwards to absorb part of the force of the blow and came back up onto his feet almost immediately. He crouched, tucking his arms back to prepare a lunge with his blade that would almost certainly stab straight through me. Suddenly, Stain coughed; ugly, wet, and hard enough to stop his movement. I felt a gleeful grin spread over my face and almost jumped forward to press my advantage, but before I could Todoroki finally managed to react. I stepped backwards hurriedly as a wall of fire appeared between us to discourage Stain from eviscerating me. But instead of attacking, Stain continued falling back, clawing at his face. "You! What did you do!" He snarled.
"There were a couple of quirks I held back from overcharging during the Sports Festival," I said smugly. "Quirks that, let's say, weren't exactly tournament appropriate." Or honestly, that heroic, at least not the way I was using them, but then again I was a fake hero to begin with. I didn't mind taking cheap shots. My smirk of vindication as Stain ripped the newly mushroom-covered rags off his face morphed to a sneer of disgust as the almost cadaverous nasal cavity beneath was revealed. Even as I recoiled from the sight, part of me lamented the fact that I didn't have enough of Ebina Hina's Mushroom quirk stocked up to take Stain out more permanently. "It's almost like how good someone is in a fight doesn't have shit to do with how heroic and noble they are," I taunted. "I mean, some of the most skilled heroes out there are total assholes, right Todoroki?" I asked with a significant glance at the scar on his left eye.
"Unfortunately," Todoroki agreed. I wish I could have taken credit for the dry humor in his voice, or pretended that my continual taunting of Stain was part of some master plan to raise morale, but the fact of the matter was that my mouth was now stuck firmly on autopilot. As Todoroki conjured waves of fire and ice to keep Stain away from us, the three of us continued running, heading for the nearest emergency exit.
Stain's howl of resentment chased after us, followed by the man himself. "Endeavor is next!" He claimed, once more showing his complete departure from reality. "Gang Orca, Yoroi Musha - none of the false heroes in the Top Ten will be exempt!" His tirade was interrupted by a spate of wet, ugly-sounding coughs, but they didn't seem to be slowing him down; by the time we made it to the fake graveyard full of styrofoam headstones, Stain had caught up to us, dodging from headstone to headstone for cover. Even though I and Yukino had or could copy quirks that made us literally faster than homomorphically possible, and Todoroki could skate faster than most people could run, Stain bounded past us with lunatic speed and agility, coming to a stop perched on a faux mausoleum, his sword ready to cut down any of us who came too close. "Only by cleansing this impure society of false heroes can a new society full of true heroes like All Might be born!" He shouted. "Only when a true hero like All Might attempts to stop me, will my crusade end! Until that day, I will let nothing stand in my way!"
Waves of pure intimidation poured off of Stain. His shadow, cast by the red emergency lights behind his silhouette, seemed to stretch out hungrily in our direction, and I couldn't help but take a step back from the sheer intensity of his bloodshot stare. My legs felt weak and shaky, and out of the corners of my eyes I saw that Todoroki and Yukino were doing the same. So, of course, my traitorous adrenaline junkie tongue decided to pour oil on the fire. Before, I'd argued with Stain in order to stall, and even that had been stupidly risky, but what I was about to say was the sort of thing that would get me killed for sure. And unlike before, I didn't have a real reason to say it; I'd just punched Stain in his lack of nose, so it wasn't like making him even angrier at me would accomplish anything useful. I really, really should have kept my mouth shut. But I was just so sick of this asshole's bullshit. "Uh, you know All Might's illegitimate love child is in our homeroom class, right?"
"I knew it," Todoroki muttered next to me.
Yukino's reaction, on the other hand, was more like what I'd expected. "Wait, you mean Midoriya is-"
Stain's maddened eyes narrowed, the entirety of his killing intent focusing itself on me. "You lie," he growled venomously.
"Okay asshole, you tell me why two people have the exact same quirk," I fired back, conveniently choosing to ignore the fact that Stockpile could theoretically be passed down to other people; anyway it wasn't like All Might had lost his powers, so clearly that wasn't what had happened. "Their quirks are more identical than some identical twins I've touched. What's the matter? Can't stand the possibility that the most famous man in Japan might have gotten some, like, fifteen years ago?"
"Enough!" Stain shouted, his grip visibly tightening on his katana. "If you think I will be distracted by schoolyard gossip, you are mistaken!"
"Is he, though?" Stain's face fell slightly, then settled back into a cadaverous grimace of resolve; a sudden movement in my peripheral vision gave the reason why. Campestris swung herself off of Yukino's back, a little shaky, but no longer paralyzed. "Seems to me that schoolyard gossip worked well enough for your time to run out," she continued, bravado thinly papering over the pain in her voice. "You kids stand back," she said, her face pale. "I'll finish this."
"Nee-san!" Yukino protested. "You're hurt!"
"At least let us support you," Todoroki said with an intense frown.
I wasn't quite as gentle with her ego. "Are you an idiot?" I asked. "You're covered in blood, and I can't heal you a second time if you get hurt again. Plus, Stain already said he planned on killing us all. That means if we all gang up on him it counts as self-defense."
Setting herself into a combat stance, Yukinoshita Haruno pasted a smirk on her pasty face. "This is a job for a pro. A real hero, no matter what bullshit this guy is spouting. Just stay out of my way," she ordered.
I dubiously looked at her bloodsoaked body, but… even if she was a fake hero, she was at least more of the real thing than I was. I stepped back. So did Todoroki and Yukino, although with significant reluctance on Yukino's part. As if our movement was a signal, Stain leapt forward like a starved beast. He didn't bother with a warcry, or with unnecessary showmanship; he had been willing to taunt and rant to feed his own ego earlier, but now that Campestris was back on her feet and willing to stand up against him it looked like he was done screwing around. She ran forward to meet him barehanded, leaning forward to reduce her aerodynamic profile like a speed skater as she half-slid, half-sprinted onto the battlefield. The distance between them shrank in heartbeats, yet before they could fully come to grips, Stain abandoned his headlong charge in favor of a leaping slash at a diagonal angle, his sword licking out to attempt a glancing slash on Campestris' flank. In response, Campestris pivoted into a sliding turn that took her just outside of Stain's reach to evade, then darted back in, clearly trying to take advantage of her superior speed to counter Stain's reach. Stain forced her back momentarily by conjuring a dagger in his off hand and stabbing at her with it, but she met it with an open palm, parrying with her stored kinetic energy. Still, the maneuver bought Stain enough room to make another slash with his jagged katana, which Campestris was forced to dodge back away from, clearly cautious of the chance that a stray edge might draw even the tiniest drop of blood.
Yukinoshita Haruno fought differently from her younger sister. It wasn't just that Haruno was more practiced, more polished; Yukino fought conservatively, knowing that her cold aura would inevitably slow her foes over time, while Haruno was aggressive, willing - or needing - to take risks in order to achieve her goals. Once, twice, three times, she came within a razor's edge of getting caught, dancing between life and death just to glancingly brush her arms or legs against Stain. And every time, Stain recoiled back from those brief contacts as though they were solid blows. I could willingly believe that if she'd been fresh and had fought him knowing his quirk from the beginning, she might have been able to beat him. In fact, as she punched Stain's sword so hard that it snapped in two, I almost thought that she was going to win. But Stain leaned forward with the half-blade, slashing for Campestris' ankles, forcing her to dodge back for just long enough that he could continue leaning forward and lick a droplet of blood off the floor from where it had fallen from her back.
Campestris froze, falling to her knees in paralyzed horror.
Yukino dashed forward despite her wounded leg, trying to intercept Stain before he could murder her sister.
Todoroki unleashed fire and ice, trying to force Stain away before he could complete the kill.
And I…
I was a fake hero. I was a fake hero, and Stain was a real villain. By all rights, I should have run away long ago. But I didn't want to watch anyone, not even another fake like me, die in front of me. So I ran. Forwards. One step after another, not just powered by Stockpile, but burning quirk after quirk in the desperate attempt to get there in time. Taking one step as a giant, another as a beast; using Falcon Flight and Zero Gravity and Power Triangle to keep accelerating and to keep my superstrength from bouncing me off the ground.
I closed the distance. Stain's half-sword swung across Haruno's throat, but bounced back, the last dregs of Campestris' saved up energy blocking the blow. He was moving slower, drained by Campestris' quirk, but it only took a few pounds of force to slit a throat and from the panic I saw in Yukinoshita Haruno's eyes I knew she no longer had the strength to resist even that.
And straining every muscle in my body, every ounce of energy I possessed, I dove forward to try to make sure she wouldn't need it. I didn't have any quirks left that could stop Stain from killing her... so I'd just have to use my body instead. By the time Stain swung again, my hands were in his way. One of them caught the sword where his hands wrapped around the hilt. The other caught it by the blade. I screamed in pain as the jagged blade tore into the meat of my palms, even despite the fact that I had enlarged and toughened them with Big Hands. I wasn't the only one who yelled, though, because I hadn't just made my hands bigger. I'd coated them with Mina Ashido's Acid. Our impact pushed him backwards long enough for Todoroki's ice to rise up around the three of us, freezing both Stain and me in place while simultaneously walling Haruno off from her demise. Even despite his pained surprise, however, Stain's tongue lashed out, licking the blood off my fingers, and my muscles froze.
That was it, then. I was going to die. Haruno was safe, but as Stain slipped free of my suddenly powerless grip and palmed a knife, I realized that I had just taken her place. What the hell had I been thinking? Suddenly I remembered. Despite all of my spite and pride and rage, I had originally started down the path of being a hero because I refused to be helpless ever again. With the Hero Killer's knife to my throat, raw pain burning its way up my arms, when all hope was lost, I grit my teeth for one last surge. Never again! As Stain drew back for the killing blow, I used Vlad King's blood quirk to gather up as much blood and acid from the palms of my hands as I could, then threw it. Right into Stain's eyes.
If Stain had cried out before, this time he screamed in agony, a bloodcurdlingly hoarse, awful cry. I almost felt bad for him. Almost. But I didn't let up from keeping the blood bound to his eyes, not until Yukino, screaming with rage, leapt over my head and kneed the blinded villain squarely in his forehead, hard enough to burst him free from the ice around his ankles and knock him prone. Panting with exertion, covered in ice, unable to move, I somehow found the strength to spit at Stain's unconscious body. "When fake heroes fight real villains," I snarled, "fake heroes cheat."
Gasping for air, Yukino's strength left her. Her wounded leg buckled beneath her, and she flopped backwards onto the ice. Her face stared up at mine, red and blotchy from overheating, dotted with sweat that somehow managed not to freeze despite the arctic air around us. I was used to seeing Yukinoshita Yukino cool and collected; occasionally flustered or irritated; but at that moment all I saw in her face was sheer and profound relief. "Thank you," she said between panting breaths.
I could have replied, but I was a little bit busy biting back blinding agony. Fun fact, hands? Are full of nerves. I'd just had mine slashed open and then scoured with battery acid, because while I could use Ashido Mina's quirk to create acid my tissues stopped being immune to it as soon as I ran out of stored quirk factor, and anyway I wasn't sure that my power copying went any further than skin deep. It was like pouring lemon juice on a paper cut that went all the way down to the bone, and as the adrenaline faded and that pain seemed to grow and spread, part of me was tempted to use Tokage's Lizard Tail power to chop them off and grow myself new ones. I didn't want to see what would happen if I ran out of power too soon though, so I just turned to Willpower to attempt to hold on long enough for emergency treatment.
"Is everyone okay?" Todoroki asked as he ran up to join us.
"No," I moaned.
"We're all alive," Campestris clarified, "somehow."
I made the mistake of trying to heal my wounds. The idea was a good one in principle, but I underestimated just how bad the pain would get, even with the buffer of Willpower. It wasn't until I felt an unfamiliar quirk register on my awareness that I realized I had blacked out, because the next thing I knew Todoroki was melting the ice around me and lowering me gently to the ground. "Wait," I croaked, wishing my head would move so I could turn to look at him. "Cyberpunch. Someone has to help Cyberpunch."
"Yukino already went to go meet emergency responders," Todoroki said, gently depositing on my side in what I recognized from hero class as a recovery position. "Hikigaya, can you use a quirk to heal yourself?" He asked. "You've done it before, right?"
"Already tried," I grimaced, "hurts too much to stay conscious. Think my quirk stops working when I can't focus on it, plus I don't have anything saved up," I explained, realizing only too late that pain had loosened my tongue.
"Okay. Just hold on," Todoroki said, thankfully not focusing on my accidentally honest turn of phrase. "Help is on its way."
When it came, it came in a totally unexpected fashion. Cyberpunch led the way, her costume tattered but otherwise intact, and Yukinoshita Yukino followed close behind. Even through the pain, that was a relief. Behind them, however, came a pair of Pro Heroes, and a pair of sidekicks, and three out of the four of them were people I recognized. Was I seeing things? Manual being here I understood; his agency was in Hosu, so that made sense. Orimoto Kaori showing up in a white cloak and top hat behind him? I guess she had to intern somewhere. But.. "Midoriya, what are you doing here?" I asked as my green-haired classmate came rushing forward with a first aid kit. "Thought you were in Yokohama with Mirko."
He kneeled down next to me with a complicated smile. "It's a long story," he said.
"Oh, thank fuck, you're alive," Cyberpunch said as she walked up behind Midoriya. "Having to do the paperwork for losing an intern on top of everything else that happened today would have been one shitshow too many." Although the words were callous, the concern she felt for me and the relief in her voice were plain to hear, and I found myself smiling.
"I know, right?" I said with as much good humor as I could muster. "I probably wouldn't have had to fill out paperwork for losing a mentor, but trying to find another hero this late in the game to do the rest of my internship with would have been a pain," I said, doing my best to reciprocate her sarcasm.
"I'd have taken you," Campestris spoke up from the ground somewhere nearby, presumably receiving treatment from her own first aid responders. "Consider this an open invitation, anytime," she said. "If you ever want to work for the Campestris Agency, just let me know," she said.
"Eh. I'll pass." It wasn't the most politic of responses, but frankly, I couldn't stand her, and I was all out of fucks to give. The subsequent offended silence was interrupted by a sudden snort of amusement, and although I couldn't exactly turn my head to look, I was 99% confident that it had come from somewhere in the direction of where Yukinoshita Yukino was being treated.
As Midoriya started bandaging my hands, I closed my eyes to shut out the pain. As unwelcome as it was, though, it meant that I was alive, and the sheer immenseness of that fact combined with the equally terrifying knowledge of how close it had been had me checking out, only loosely paying attention to the world around me. And then suddenly, I had a wicked, terrible, utterly irresistible idea. "Hey. Midoriya," I said, opening my eyes. "Do me a favor."
"Um, sure!" He said, his green eyes meeting mine as I opened them back up again. "What do you need?"
"In the left side of my cape, my phone should be in the outermost pocket," I said. "Can you get it out for me?"
"Sure," he said. "Do you want me to call someone?"
"In a minute," I said. "But first, can you take a picture of me? And, uh, make sure to get Stain in the background, before the cops take him away?"
"O...kay," Midoriya said, sounding confused, but he did as I asked.
"Thanks," I said. Midoriya was soon called away, and I sat there recovering for a few minutes, waiting until I could move again. As soon as my arms would respond to my mental commands, I grabbed my phone and forwarded the most recent picture (well framed; Midoriya had a talent for photography) to Bakugo Katsuki. "So, I just helped take down the Hero Killer," I texted clumsily through my bandaged fingers. "How's your internship going?"