AN: Enjoy!
Chapter 9 - Hysteria
"Gather together and don't move!" Aizawa suddenly shouted when a large portal was opened in the middle of the training facility and numerous quirk-users started pouring out. "Thirteen, protect the students!"
"Is this like the entrance exam where the lesson has already started?" Kirishima asked.
The students were thinking that it was all part of the scenario that the teachers had prepared for the class. But Aizawa's shouts in the next moment made them understand what was the reality:
"Don't move! Those are villains! Thirteen! I'm leaving them in your hands!"
"Yes!"
As the astronaut-costumed hero gave her verbal acknowledgement, Aizawa put on his yellow goggles and started running down the flight of stairs. However, a human-shaped missile zoomed past him with such speed that Aizawa could not even see its shape properly. But it all became clear in the next moment when two of the villains were kicked in the face seemingly at the same time.
It was a butterfly kick, a Wushu technique. As people gained superhuman physical abilities, martial arts techniques that had previously been used just in movies and in exhibitions due to their lack of practicality in real fights have become much more viable nowadays. With his superhuman dexterity and physical strength, Naruto could pull it off effectively with no effort - the two villains had been knocked out cold.
"UZUMAKI!" Aizawa yelled. "I told you to run away! What the hell are you doing here?!"
But Naruto did not stop to listen to his lecture.
"There's no way you can beat them all alone, I'm here to help you. You can nag at me tomorrow, during the class, sensei," Naruto said leisurely as he side-stepped a hail of bullets coming from the turrets-for-hair of a woman. "We have more important things to do now!"
Then, a small indentation was left in the ground as the fox boy abruptly jumped. His burst of speed was so great that, to his opponents, it appeared as if he had teleported. A brutal lariat smashed into a four-armed man's neck, almost taking his head off. He was not dead but he was bound to be in a hospital for a long time.
When another hail of bullets came from the group of attackers, Aizawa got the fright of his life because Naruto was in mid-air, and it looked like there was no way for him to dodge that. But the blond's large fox tail twitched and his body unexpectedly changed its position in the air, successfully avoiding any damage.
"Uzumaki! Stay close! I'll support you from the back by erasing their Quirks!"
Since he could not stop the boy from putting himself in danger, he would make the most out of it.
"Hai!" Naruto replied in joy as he punched someone in the gut with so much strength that the guy collapsed on his knees, unable to breathe and foaming at the mouth.
"But don't think you're off the hook!" Aizawa said in annoyance as he erased a villain Fire Quirk and then used his scarf to pull one of the flying types down and kick him unconscious. "When everything is over, you're going to be in a world of hurt, you hear that?"
"Hai, Hai," Naruto sing-sang as he swept someone's legs from underneath with his fox tail and, before they could even fall to the floor, he also kicked them in the face, knocking them out.
To say that Eraserhead was surprised by his efficient fighting style would be an understatement. While Uzumaki had always shown incredible battle awareness and combat strength at school, training and real battle were completely different. In a real battle, most people could not bring out even 80% of their strength. The way that the other students all tensed up and froze when he told them that villains were attacking had not escaped his notice. But the boy in front of him...
'It's almost as if he was born on the battlefield.'
Nevertheless, he did not think too hard about it at that moment. Instead, he focused on supporting him properly and keeping him as safe as possible. He erased the quirks of everyone who tried to attack Naruto from his blind spots and incapacitated those that got too close to him.
The teacher and the student fell into a seamless pace, Naruto's excellent hand-to-hand combat prowess and Aizawa's support from the back synergizing perfectly. Nearly two dozen villains were knocked unconscious, or worse, in less than four minutes. By the end of it, even Naruto was sweating from exertion but he was grinning widely, filled with excitement. He had expected three or four very long hours of boring rescue training but instead, he got to let loose and fight with his entire strength for the first time in his life on Earth. It was... ...liberating.
"Give me a break, is that really only a student? They mowed down everyone in a matter of minutes," the white-haired man with his face and body covered by human hands said in irritation and scratched his neck with his nails. "A fine hero seedling, indeed...indeed...makes me want to nip it in the bud!"
As he said that, Shigaraki lunged at the fox boy with his arms outstretched in front of him and a malicious smile hidden behind the severed hand covering his face.
"Whoa, dafuq is with that guy, creepy!" Naruto said with a shiver as he took a look at the severed human hands all over Shigaraki's body.
Moreover, he could sense a very dangerous smell coming off from him.
Before Shigaraki's hands could touch him, a front kick slipped through his arms and nailed him right in the face - Naruto's leg was longer than Shigaraki's arms. The silver-haired young man was sent flying through the air, the severed hand covering his face being flung off together with a mouthful of spit and blood.
"I noticed in the earlier fights too, oy, are you trying to kill someone? Hold back some of that stupidly high strength, or you'll really kill someone at this rate!" Aizawa yelled at him from the side when he saw the way Naruto had nearly killed his opponent with one kick.
But Naruto did not reply to him. The silver-haired man stood up from the ground as if he had not just been kicked in the face with the strength of a two-ton heavy hit. Naruto had kicked him in the face with his full power on purpose yet he was still not down for the count.
With the severed hand flung off his face, Shigaraki started to panic and shriek as he covered his face with his own two hands.
"Nomu! Kill them all!" he screamed.
"Uzumaki! Dodge!" Aizawa yelled and used his Quirk to erase the purple monstrosity's ability.
However, it was not enough. Even with Naruto's superhuman reflexes and physical attributes, the muscular creature appeared as little more than a blur.
A shockwave exploded forth as Nomu's massive punch slammed into the fox boy's chest. An entire man-made hillside was smashed into smithereens when the boy's body crashed into it, burying him underneath.
"Uzumaki!" Aizawa yelled in panic and broke into a run towards the place of the crash.
But only a second after turning around, a massive hand grabbed him from the back of his neck and face-slammed him into the ground.
'How?!' was the only thing he could think of at that moment.
He had erased that creature's Quirk, he was sure of it. Moreover, its Quirks would remain unusable for as long as he did not blink - Eraserhead did not need to keep looking at him for that.
'How is it so strong? How is it so fast?!'
After taking the severed hand from the place where it had been flung off and covering his face with it once again, Shigaraki regained his composure. He was even relaxed enough to let out a bout of hyena-like laughter.
"You're probably wondering how is he so strong when you erased his Quirk, aren't you?" Shigaraki spoke gloatingly. "I will tell you, Eraserhead. He's the anti-Symbol of Peace, the bioengineered "Nomu". He was created to be as strong and as fast as All Might. In front of overwhelming power as his, you might as well be Quirkless."
As if to further confirm his words, Nomu grabbed Aizawa's left arm and snapped it in half like a twig. The creature was about to grab his right arm as well when, unexpectedly, a powerful hit smashed into its brain and flung its over 200kg heavy body back as if it had been hit by a truck.
"I almost died, you fucking bastard!" Naruto rasped as blood flowed from a cut to his temple and from the corner of his mouth.
The top of his hero costume was torn to shreds, his ANBU fox-like mask had been smashed to bits as well and a large blackened bruise could be seen on his chest. If it had not been for his innate Fox-like flexibility and agility, that punch from Nomu would have killed him on the spot.
But there was one more thing that was different at the boy, something that even the half-unconscious Aizawa took notice of: next to his bushy golden fox tail...there was one more. Another tail!
Pushed to the brink of death, with one leg in the grave, his body had broken past its limits and his Fox Quirk awakened!
He appeared to have transformed into a ghost as he blurred out from sight, leaving afterimages behind him. A strong kick into the chin sent the huge creature flying and a shockwave burst from the impact, lifting clouds of dust into the air.
"I'm not done yet!" Naruto screamed and, just like Rock Lee from his previous life, with movements that defied the laws of gravity, he jumped after the still floating in mid-air Nomu and smashed his feet into its gut repeatedly, four times in a row.
Faster than the spectators' eyes could follow, six shurikens with strings attached to them were thrown at the creature, tying it up completely. Then, swinging his two tails to give himself momentum while in mid-air, he grabbed onto the tied-up creature and plunged with it head-first towards the ground.
A loud crash reverberated across the entire training facility and a deep crater appeared in the ground, with the muscular purple-skinned creature lying at the bottom of it. In his past life, Naruto had not been able to pull off such a move. However, with the specs of his two-tailed Fox Quirk, his body had just reached the requirements for it, his strength and agility not any weaker than that of Rock Lee after opening the 1st out of the 8th Inner Gates.
However, as if to reenact the fight between Rock Lee and Gaara's absolute defence from the memories of his previous life, Nomu stood up from the ground. It took Nomu a much longer time to regenerate this time around...but by the time its healing stopped, the creature appeared to be virtually unharmed.
"Oy, oy..." Naruto muttered in disbelief while trying to get his breathing under control. "Not even a scratch? Seriously?"
"It's no use! It's no use!" Shigaraki laughed maniacally. "His shock absorption is far beyond anything any of you could deal with. Nomu is the ultimate counter to physical damage. He was made to be as strong as All Might! You're better off gouging his flesh out - if he lets you do that at all! Hahaha!"
As Shigaraki said that, Nomu let out a bestial scream and launched itself at Naruto.
'Stupid jackass. Thanks for telling me how to kill it!' Naruto thought and evaded one of Nomu's punches as if he was the Matrix.
Before the awakening of his Fox Quirk, his bursts of speed for short distances had already been greater than those of Teniya Iida. But after gaining his second tail, his agility was on a completely different level. Even so, as a being that was created to counter the Number 1 hero, Nomu was not just as strong and durable as All Might, but its speed was incredible as well. It was only Naruto's martial experience and his animal-like instincts for sensing danger that allowed him to barely weave through the wind-stirring punches of the creature.
'This isn't good! If it hits me one time, I'm done! I can't keep on like this!'
He threw two smoke grenades on the ground and a super dense curtain of dark grey smoke burst out, cloaking the entire area into darkness. Sounds of sharp objects splitting the air were heard in the next moment, followed by sounds of metal colliding against hard surfaces. But after a while of dumbly looking around for its enemies, Nomu roared and suddenly clapped its hands. The shockwave generated by that handclap blew away all the smoke as if it had never existed in the first place.
Regardless, Naruto had already accomplished his objective. The entire area was now filled with metallic wires tied from the loops of kunai that had been stabbed into the ground, surrounding hills, walls of ruined buildings and even into the extremely tall ceiling of the dome-shaped training facility. It looked as if Nomu had been surrounded by a spiderweb or metallic wires.
With agility and dexterity far beyond anything a regular human would be capable of, Naruto stood with his feet on one of the extremely thin wires above Nomu. The wire tensed when he suddenly crouched and launched himself at the creature below like an arrow shot from a bow.
A scream came out from Nomu as Naruto flashed past him and opened a large gash into its neck, its blood bursting out like out of a showerhead. Although his homeroom teacher had suggested him to give up on his kunai, Naruto had never had any intentions of handicapping himself against his enemies. He would hold back when the situation allowed it because he would rather avoid unnecessary killing. But when shit hit the fan, he would not hold back from using his full strength and all the means available to him in order to win.
That horrible cut to the throat that would have killed anyone else took Nomu only a few seconds to heal! In a few moments, the creature was back to its pristine state as if it had never been wounded in the first place. Even so, Naruto was not done: just as he landed on another wire, he once again used himself as an arrow against a bowstring and launched himself at Nomu once more.
For the next two minutes and a half, making use of his numerous wires, Naruto slashed and stabbed the creature with his blades over 200 times, its putrid blood covering him from head to toes and transforming the entire area into a pool of blood. Bouncing like a pinball from one wire to another, Naruto had become so incredibly fast and unpredictable that Nomu's underdeveloped mental faculties could not find a way to stop him or counter him.
Watching his supposedly ultimate weapon getting massacred like that, Shigaraki screamed:
"What are you doing, NOMU?! Destroy everything! Smash everything to dust!"
Reacting to its master's orders, Nomu let out a savage shriek and, raising its arms above its head, it smashed its fists against the ground with its entire strength!
A terrible explosion followed and an immense crater appeared in the ground, the shockwave it generated snapping all of Naruto's metallic wires like paper before flinging him into one of the ruined buildings nearby.
This time around, the fox boy could not get up anymore.
'He's too strong. He's too durable. His regeneration is beyond belief.'
If it had been him from his past life, one simple Oodama Rasengan would have ground that monster to shreds.
'I miss having chakra. I miss my Sage Mode. In my Sage Mode, I could smash this guy into a bloody paste with one punch!'
For the first time since he was born into this world, Naruto felt acutely the limits of his Fox Quirk. Although he had awakened his Quirk and gotten a second tail, and despite that his strength and agility had skyrocketed compared to before, it was still not enough. Even his ingenious tactics and his mastery over his weaponry proved to be fruitless. In front of Nomu's overwhelming power, healing factor and defence, all his efforts fell short.
Sensing the monster slowly getting closer to him, he clenched his teeth in frustration and anger.
'Do I really have no other choice than to use it?'
Even as Nomu's enormous hand grabbed him from his head and he started screaming from the pain of having his skull squeezed by the creature's vice-like grip, he still hesitated to use his Adamantine Sealing Chains.
'I won't use them! I won't put my mother in danger!'
He was not blind to the situation. He knew that, at that rate, he was going to get killed. But he could not bear the thought of potentially causing his parents' death by exposing his secret quirk. To him, Kushina and Minato, his mom and dad, were the most important people in the world. For him, the importance of their safety was far beyond that of his own life.
But even as Nomu was attempting to crush his skull like a watermelon, Naruto did not give up on resisting. Amidst his screams of pain and agony, his nails transformed into fierce-looking claws and he started to stab and shred at the muscular arm holding him with reckless abandon.
In that life and death moment, his survival instincts kicked in and his body no longer held back any of its strength. With adrenaline coursing through his veins, his claws viciously stabbed into Nomu's forearm and directly severed his arm in half!
Naruto's normal, human-like blue eyes transformed into the red and slit eyes of a fox and a third tail burst from his lower back through the already tattered fabric of his top.
An animalistic growl came from his throat as he threw himself at the nightmarish creature in front of him. It was the hysterical assault of a cornered beast.
⁂
As previously stated, all heroes needed to belong to a Hero Agency in order to receive missions from the Hero Public Safety Commission (HPSC). Usually, HPSC or the Police Department would contact the Hero Agencies directly for any missions. That was how HPSC prevented Hero Agencies from having conflicts over intruding on others' "turf" and how they remained organized. It was an unwritten law that unless it was an emergency situation, Heroes would not regularly act in different cities and regions where their Hero Agencies did not have jurisdiction.
However, there were exceptions to those rules too. For example, rarely would anyone dare to tell the Number 1 Hero off for working on their turf. Another exception also happened to be Mirko, the Rabbit Hero. Although her residence was in Hiroshima Prefecture, Mirko was a solitary hero, part of a one-woman Hero Agency. She had no sidekicks, no teammates, not even a secretary. Naturally, she did not have a proper headquarters either. This vagabond-like hero could be found operating over the entirety of Japan. Wild, rambunctious, and always looking for a fistfight, Mirko had become rather notorious among heroes and villains alike for her belligerent attitude and her free spirit. She never stayed in one place for too long, always rushing towards the place where she smelled an exciting fight.
For solo heroes like Mirko and Eraserhead but also for a better and faster way of mobilizing heroes from multiple agencies in case of natural disasters and other particularly grave emergencies, the HPSC had created a special portal, the Hero Network. It was also the fastest way for pro heroes to ask for assistance from other heroes.
Mirko was just in the middle of eating a late breakfast when her smartphone vibrated with a notification. Momentarily putting down the carrot she had been munching on, she unlocked her phone and tapped on the notification. Unsurprisingly, it was from the Hero Network app.
URGENT! Numerous members of the League of Villains attacked USJ in Shizuoka Prefecture. UA High School students in mortal peril. Requesting immediate assistance from all Pro Heroes close by.
Her eyes widened in surprise for a moment but then, she grinned in excitement. Without even changing from her pyjamas into her Hero Costume, the rabbit girl jumped through the window of her hotel like a hurricane and threw herself into a mad sprint toward the address indicated on the GPS. She was a few tens of kilometres away from the address. Thinking of how far away she was, she increased her running speed even more, stirring powerful gales of wind in her wake like a racing car. She dearly hoped that the villains weren't all finished by the time she got there. Her legs were itching to give some people a good beating.