CYA: What Defines A Hero: Good Path

by lumpeistbark3

this story revolves around the Entirety of Class 1A being isekai'd into the one-punch man world. The story contains light spoilers post-season 6 of MHA and heavy spoilers for Season 3 of one punch man, bad path is complete and the good path is being uploaded now.

61. Month 5: Week 1: The War Part V(G)

A Powerful Enemy: Saitama

Saitama went along with the mission mostly in silent contemplation of his hobby. He had thought that becoming a hero would be incredibly fulfilling, and initially, it was. He had a few hard-fought battles and could barely beat a wolf-level threat, but ever since a year ago, things just changed. He became too strong; nothing seemed to be a challenge anymore. Even the strongest person he has faced so far was Borogami? He wasn't much of a threat at all, so what was the point anymore? He became a hero because he wanted to fight monsters, and while he initially wanted to beat them with one punch, he never knew how boring that would have been when he started his training with that goal in mind.

He reflected on what King told him about how he was probably the strongest hero; he still wasn't the greatest hero, but what if he didn't want to be the "greatest" hero? He never cared for the fame of being a hero; he did it because it was fun for him, but now that it wasn't fun, could he change to be about something else? With fame came fortune, he often heard, and that was one thing he did care about, no matter the outcome of this battle, due to the circumstances of how he joined as King's secret apprentice and all of a sudden he would be seen as something big if they decided to tell the world about him. What would he do, then?

From his interactions with King, he knows that the hero association likes to bother him with a lot of requests and things of that nature; it could get pretty annoying, but having just thought about what those missions were, they were to protect people, right? Shouldn't he be satisfied with saving people's lives?

Was he really just looking for the thrill of a fight again, and was that his sole purpose in being a hero? Did he not care if other people died? He thought about it and thought about it some more, but he couldn't find it in himself to care all that much. Was he just a bad person? Did he have the heart of a hero? He tried to switch the situation to how he would react if someone close to him had died.

Initially, he didn't think he had anyone that close, but King and Genos seemed to be exceptions to that; however, they were the closest substitutes for that, and maybe Fubuki, but she was the most annoying woman most of the time who would come around and nag at him to join her group like she was a saleswoman. He imagined her dying, and in actuality, he didn't think much of it at all; she wouldn't be coming around anymore to bother him anymore, and on the other hand, he couldn't think of many downsides to her leaving his life.

His next thoughts were about King, he enjoyed gaming with the guy, he met him under peculiar circumstances, and through that, he found out where his credit was going for killing monsters when he initially was told that he didn't truthfully care about it although he did find it somewhat harmful not to himself of course but to the others around him and to the guy he's been lucky so far that people haven't challenged him to a fight or another monster like that crow didn't attack his residence again if the small boy wasn't going to be able to take it on then that was it he would be toast but he mostly put that up to the man himself he told him that he should try working out to live up to the reputation people had for him but he seemingly disregarded that advice entirely and just decided to rely on him and he couldn't blame it all on him for that as he enabled him by actively helping the guy out on his quest from the association.

King did offer some bright sides to his life now that he thought about it. Other than playing games, him taking over his role as the strongest man on earth had the benefit of not being mobbed on the street every time he stepped foot outside of his apartment. He already had his fair share of stalkers; he didn't need giant groups of them around wagering him everywhere he went. Overall, if King died or went missing, he would notice it. He didn't know if he would be sad or not, but he would feel the man's absence, and it would leave him with the last person on his list.

Genos, Genos was a weird guy all around; initially, he was simply sucking money off the guy to pretend to be his master, and he was sometimes a bit too serious and dense, even for him, taking things he said and twisting them into some sort of divine wisdom when in reality it was just common knowledge or something he picked up randomly, but his naivety was funny in a way and offered at least some bright spots in his boring life. He oftentimes got himself into trouble by fighting monsters, but he continued to get up again, dust himself off, and get stronger from the conflict.

It reminded him a lot of his past self's drive to get stronger and continue to fight and kill monsters. Maybe that's why he's taken a liking to him and sees him as an actual disciple. He also handles cleaning the house and planning things, so he isn't late for sales anymore at the supermarket. He was an S-class hero, so he gained technical information that was privy to them and helped out in monster attacks. The more and more he thought about the cyborg, the more he thought of how the guy was just really cool to have around, useful and somewhat dependable, and would do mostly anything he said. If he suddenly died or worst yet killed, then...

BOOM

The next monster saitama blasted with a punch held a little too much power into it, the floor beneath him completely crumbled away as the vibration and shock wave of the punch completely evaporated the surrounding landscape, saitama landed with a thud and quickly swiped his hand upwards and to wash away all the debris headed his way, well he thought that answers that question as he started to get up and dust himself off , he didn't know how far did he fall but he guessed by the sections it was a couple dozen floors, genos was a good friend to him he wouldn't like for him to die anytime soon in fact now that he thought about it he was a cyborg so he would technically die even before he did, well that was if the scientist that makes him continued to live that was, he doubted genos would let someone else work on him… well other than himself, but Sasaitama was definitely not smart enough to repair him before he chuckled to himself as he imagined him fusing Genos with something like a night lamp or something in that event.

He took his earpiece out for a moment and fiddled with it. He didn't remember much of anything about how to operate it, but he knew the thing had a map somewhere, so after pressing all the buttons, it finally showed where he needed to go to stay on course, and he proceeded that way, taking a couple of twists and turns before coming down to a hallway to the sight of a large black dog coming down his way. Was that a monster as well? Hmm he didn't like the idea of killing animals and he did remember seeing that the teens were holding out spots for monsters to escape so maybe if it was non-violent he could send their way but he assumed that it would likely need something to bait it to listen to him which he was in luck as he found a very large bone to pick up and display at the dog hopping to coax it to calm down but for his efforts he was simply blasted in the face multiple times by large blast of energy, as the blast connected he again found himself thankful to genos due to his problem dealing with heat based attacks he had wanted to see if his engineer could create him a fireproof suit which worked out well as he jumped out of the explosion completely unscathed and most importantly clothed.

This was a monster dog after all, so it likely would only listen to force, so maybe after a good whack on the head, it would listen to him as he gave it a simple command to sit. The punch was even stronger than his previous one, destroying hundreds of floors in a circular area around him and causing him to go tumbling downwards again. He cleared himself off and grimaced at the fact that he accidentally went a little overboard and knocked the dog out completely as it lay there on its side. Well, he could just come back for it later in that case. He felt something slap the backside of his head, and he immediately turned around and caught the monster that did so.

It was a humanoid cat monster of some kind. He felt it was kind of ironic that after a dog was a cat, but unlike the dog, this thing was just a monster, and it made the grand offense in slapping him in the head, so he crushed the cat monster's leg in his hands as it tried to get away, he was about to slam down a punch home, but stopped as the monster begged for its life. He again thought about the teens and their little plan. They told him that if any monster surrendered, he should send them their way and not just kill them outright, so he guessed he could do that with this one as well as the dog.

Saitama didn't release his grip on the cat but let go of its leg and took hold of its arm instead the monster was fairly slippery for something so large but he maintained his hold, this was the first monster that tried to talk to him so he could get some information out of it and for that he would let it go and told him about some of the heroes on the surface that would help him out if he promised not to hurt anyone else the cat monster quickly nodded its head at him in confirmation, now what he wanted to know was simple where was this monster king orochi, it was the only monster that was he was down here to beat he was confident more or less that other heroes could handle the rest, the zombie guy told him that himself and that he would just need to fight the boss alone.

The cat monster nodded and remarked that he would take him directly to the monster king, and the two were about to start walking before multiple dragon-like tendrils started to grab at the surface of many of the pillars of the room and rise out of the ground. A large being cloaked in flames and tendrils with a wide, open maw looked at him.

The cat monster seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as it yelled at him that there he was, and that was the monster, King Orochi. To let him go, Sasaitama felt like it was telling the truth, and it quickly used the opportunity to slither away from him and into the cracks of the ground. Out of sight, he hoped the creature was being honest about just leaving.

"I don't know how you got in, but you do not appear to be useless trash that can be ignored." The monster spoke to him as it sent multiple other monster tendrils directly at him. Saitama instantly swung his arm up and destroyed each of the monster tendrils it sent his way.

"Are you the boss? Is that the best you can do?" Saitama remarked unimpressed, and Orochi was for a moment stunned into silence. There was this unfamiliar pressure coming from this man that he couldn't describe. He noticed that Rover seemed to wake up and turn to look at him.

"Rover, you're still alive; kill this human." Orochi demanded, but just with a single glance backward from the man, Rover did the most unexpected thing: he ran away.

"What did you do to Rover?" Orochi questioned, seeing the impossibility of the mutt directly disobeying him: did his strength in its mind eclipse his own!?

"I punched him, of course; I went easy on him since I think the master deserves more punishment than the dog itself in cases where it bites, but you're right here; get ready for a normal punch," Saitama remarked with a balled-up fist.

Orochi couldn't believe it; the tremendous shockwave from earlier was this man all along, and now he realizes that the enigmatic entity that took out both Goketsu and Elder Centipede, along with the rumored monster of the ghost town, was none other than this man. This was great every part of his monster cells was telling him that this man would make the perfect sacrifice for his resurrection, he no longer needed to hide his true face as he took it off and took the floor from out from under the hero and the both of them started to dropped down he began to burrow deeper down into the earth during his free fall to a specific location directly to the place he found during his time with psykos, during his experimentation phases he went through several degrees of battle testing and monster fusion which lead to his supernatural growth into the monster he was now, before long the sacrifices that psychos fed to him were no longer satisfactory so instead he opted for a different approach as his instincts lead him to drill down into the depths of the earth to drain energy from the very planet itself and it was then he found this place.

Ancient ruins held an altar and a mural. This mural depicted a monster that looked just like himself, but what was more surprising was that he could read the text on the mural in some language that he didn't know about.

Crossing the vast expanse of time, our god shall resurrect on this earth. On this altar, a worthy sacrifice is offered.

"I was awakened to heaven's will. I, who had changed into a monster through experimentation, was destined to become a god. Since then, I have donned a mask and put on a front of obeying psychos while I continue to slaughter sacrifices, continuing the search for this so-called "worthy sacrifice" until today, that is, WAHAHAHA! Fate has led you all the way here to make that sacrifice. NOW FIGHT WITH ME LIKE ALL THE OTHER BATTLE TRIALS, AND OFFER ME YOUR FLESH. NOW I SHALL BEGIN THE RESURRECTION CEREMONY OF THE EVIL GO-"

"Nope, enough is enough; on the contrary, I have no interest in you whatsoever. What are you getting all excited about by yourself? I'm sorry, but I'm tired of hearing these self-introductions: King of this, ancient weapon that, is the final evolution of something, sealed whatnot, whole universe so-and-so, the whatever of whatever. I fought a ton of dudes like you; what's the big difference? All this stuff about God and sacrifice, you'll just end up getting one punched anyway. Come at me if you want, but like I said, I'm not expecting anything." Saitama quickly interrupted as he put a hand up to silence the monster.

There was a moment of silence as the monster just stared at him in utter shock.

"Just what I'd expect from you; in that case, I'll use my full power from the very start." Orochi remarked that as a large tail pursued down into the earth's crust and started to suck, he would pull up energy from the earth's core itself and strike him with it. As the earth's core started to come, the very earth started to vibrate, creating an almost wave-like motion to appear on the surface.

Many of the surface team members worked together as some of the decrepit buildings started to crumble and fall on top of them, but everyone worked together to save themselves from any permanent or majorly harmful damage. The energy finally found him, and he abandoned it inside of himself and took one last moment to look upon the worthy sacrifice that would lead to his rebirth.

"Burn! Gia cannon!" Orochi remarked simply as the large wave of maga shot out of him like a beam of energy. Sastama stared at the wave that seemed to move in slow motion with a look of apathy. He was more concerned about the shaking; his home was upstairs after all, so he guessed he should take care of this guy, Pronto, instead of just stalling out. It said that this was his strongest attack, so he shouldn't be disappointed in losing this way. As he drew his arm back, serious series: serious punch.

His first flight forward connected with the large blast of energy, completely inverting the attack and blowing a sharp hole into the creature itself; its entire body was gone, only its head that fell into the lava below; surprisingly, it was still alive.

"Wha, what did you do?" Saitama turned as he was walking away.

"Oh, that? That was just a normal punch," he remarked with a shrug of his shoulders as he began to walk out of the crumbling landscape. It seemed that the place had started to become unstable and was collapsing, but he was happy that the monster was at least durable enough to absorb most of the pressure of his punch. Fighting down here was pretty dangerous, and he realized he needed to better focus on holding back so that his home on top could be at least somewhat safe.

As he walked, he was somewhat saddened that the secret monster boss turned out to also just be another dud. With Garou also being subpar, he really may need to find something else that interests him other than being a hero, but he was even more bored of working standard jobs; ugh, everything was just so boring. Maybe he should talk to King some more and see what he should do next; his choice does affect the guy after all.

Orochi watched as his worthy sacrifice walked away and the world crumbled around him he couldn't believe it that man's power was so immense, he used his head to crawl up towards the mural to get one last look at it before it was buried completely, orochi woke up with hard breath as he stared at the look of his current self, when the two of them were falling towards the ground he had shot out of himself his very own heart and was controlling his body with the miniscule amount of esper power that psykos had taught him, while he believed in his strength he was also no fool, he knew that having a backup plan was always a necessity, so now he was simply reduced to a puddle of goop on the ground he needed to regain his strength which meant he needed bodies and blood and their were still plenty of fodder monsters around to do just that so he used his fleshy protrusion and started to expand it though the entire base absorbing anything he could get his hands on, he will return, if he could absorb all the monsters, the cadres, the heroes on the surface and below , then maybe he would have a chance to beat that man but for now he would just bide his time to recover.

Saitama finally made his way back up to the top and looked around. There was a bug monster of some kind who spotted him and squashed it with both of his hands. He didn't know what it was, but he hated insects in general, so the giant one was not going to escape his path. Since he killed the big boss, he guessed that his job was over and the others could handle the rest. Speaking of the others, he guessed he should tell them all what happened, but what button did he press to say to do that again?

He pressed a couple of them and started talking into it, repeating his message as he pressed a multitude of buttons. Maybe he should have brought his phone with him; that way, he could have just messaged the explodo so he could tell everyone instead, he heard a voice come through the comm unit and he tried to reply to some of them, but maybe he was pressing too hard or he just pressed too many buttons on the device, but he was pretty sure that the thing broke as he saw a bit of static leak out of the device, which means he's just stuck down as he needed to find a way to get back up top.

He could just bust his way out of there, but he doesn't know where his house is from his position. The only thing worse than it being destroyed is him destroying it himself. At least if it was someone else, he could get them to foot the bill, he thought as he began to mindlessly travel forward on his journey. He was momentarily surprised when something, or more like someone, ran into him.

He noticed the person had a sword and attempted to strike him. He casually leaned away from one side of the room. The guy may have been running away from something and just struck out by accident. The place was full of monsters after all, but after just staring at him for some time, the stranger opted to attack him again for completely no reason, so maybe he was a monster after all.

"Since you're attacking me, does that mean you're a monster?" Saitama remarked as he grabbed his sword and pulled back a fist.

"Wait, wait, wait... Look at me carefully; do I look like a monster?" The strange blonde-haired man asked,

"You are the monster golden forelocks." Saitama guessed

"No, I'm not! Don't makeup names! I'm the S-class hero, Flashy Flash." flash replied

"Huh? But you attacked me twice?" saitama rebutted.

"That was... my hand slipped," Flash stated simply.

"If you're a hero, then I guess you were going for the final boss? Well, I already beat him." Saitama mentioned it with a shrug.

"Wait! That was you? Your king's disciple!?" Flash remarked, astonished. He remembered this person from the S-class meeting; he was supposed to be the demon cyborg's master.

Given that the cyborg was participating in battle, he expected this person to be there; however, he didn't expect the man to be down here. He was following the edge of the last known location indicated by the king's beacon. After getting that message, this disciple had already defeated the king, which was fairly astonishing to hear, and he wanted to investigate for himself, but this was too weird.

"Ah, ugh... Yeah, that's me, I guess." Saitama remarked, a bit confuddled, nearly outing that to be a lie.

"I see, and do you have any proof that the monster king is dead?" Flash asked a bit skeptically; things weren't adding up in his mind, which meant something must be amiss.

"Proof? Hmmm, I guess that's the guy's mask he had on. Here, follow me." Saitama remarked, and Flash reluctantly did so, making sure to keep his guard up around the man. He was not only able to see through his attacks once but twice; it was an unforgivable offense, but attacking and killing someone just due to the weird nature was impromptu, although as they walked, he couldn't help but notice how vulnerable he looked, so many opening like he didn't have a care in the world even though they were in the center of the monster association base, not to mention that he held no wounds on him at all. If he truly defeated the monster king, then surely he should have taken at least some damage, or was he just good at hiding it? Or was he simply giving the monster too much credit?

If this man is who he claims to be, then it would make sense for him to be unharmed, but that didn't explain the transmitter malfunction. He asked about it, and the man told him that he "pressed too hard on the buttons and broke it on accident." Before going off on a tangent about whether the piece of equipment was expensive, he would tell the others that it broke during his fight with the monster king or something like that, ignoring how that logic wouldn't follow given that he sent the message supposedly after the fight. Flash just nodded along with his story.

The two backtrack towards the large area and flash was surprised at the amount of destruction present being a very large gap in the center of the monster association wider than even the gap that child emperor had made with his machine but he was floored when true to the mans words the mask of the defeated king orochi was sitting down on the floor completely gone, the man even went over to pick it up and wave it all around like he was showing of a trophy, flash understood and reconfirmed his visual using the data Metal Knight had provided them of the monster king, he seemed to be telling truth which left only one thing for him to do which was to actually see how the man fought, the man or saitama as he told him his name was the greatest link to see how strong king was or give him an indication of how he fought and now he wanted to experience it, so instead of taking the man up back to the surface, he started to walk aimlessly around the base in search of monsters to examine this strange man's prowess in combat.

---

Surface

Group 4: Blue Fire, Gearsper, double hole, Smell Master, Gabriel(shining Prodigy), Trap Tengu, Raiku(shining Prodigy), Aikon(shining prodigy), crescent eyebroll, Doll Master, ?, ?

Group four had to walk on eggshells when their group leader had returned from his mission the man who was irritable most of the time was now down right hostile to anyone that even questioned what he was doing before hand or what he was called away for, he was noticeably a bit ruffled up signaling that he's been in combat some of the heroes whispered around some potential theories of what could have happened ensuring to keep out of the man's earshot, as he became increasingly more tigger happy with the sporadic monsters that would pop up during the rest of their time, they had been gone for about 30 minutes so he assumed that it was really important especially as some over head that he wasn't the only one that had been asked to move around as they saw many other heroes move and swap around in the distance some thought their may have been a break in their perimeter but sekigar assured them that everything was fine and he was just adjusting the squads for a task he needed the to commit to at the moment.

Upon his return, Blue Fire gave his report on the situation involving the non-killing army and what they were doing, and he couldn't believe it. They were legitimately helping the enemy escape; he knew that they were sympathetic to monsters, but this was a whole new level and was borderline ground for treason. he asked them about what they attempted to do and Blue Fire remarked that of course they tried to stop them but they not only outnumbered them but outmuscled them completely in terms of strength as well which sekingar took exception to he sent 30 "heroes" technically and several of them were in the A-B class range they should have more then made up the difference that the few S-class they held had especially if his report that two of the S-class members of their groups were missing but he was corrected by the man and was told that they weren't alone they had the fubuki group on their side but more worryingly they had some monsters that were with them as well several of which were demons so they never had a chance but their duty to the mission he assigned them came first so they took the non-killing army up on a deal that would serve their purpose but they failed the non-kiling army was stronger than they thought.

Sekingar found them peculiar; where were they shipping the monsters off to, and for what purpose? All conversation came to a screeching halt as a singular monster came to approach them, but this monster was different; it was actually familiar to him now, so he hurriedly looked down at his watch as he activated the four octo sentries, positioning all of them to overlap fire on that one creature. He yelled a warning to all of the heroes in his area while pressing his distress beacon. That monster was a cadre. The monster made a slow approach. The thing moved with a limp as its right leg seemed to be mangled fairly badly.

It said nothing as it approached, but after one more step it would step into the range of the turrets, which it did, and all four turrets opened fire on the monster, but nine heroes watched gasp as the monster seemingly wiggled. It's a way between the entire hail of bullets until it's damaged, which hindered it, causing it to get riddled by a few of them, but they did superficial damage and only seemed to make the monster angrier as it lashed out with two of its claws, sending bladed winds that completely cut to pieces each of the four sentries.

The creature continued its march forward just as the trap tengu had activated. It was a soft landmine that came up in a large iron maiden and quickly consumed the creature. However, the group was again surprised as the cat easily burst through the trap and continued forward just in time to avoid the secondary portion of the trap that shot out even large spikes that were meant to pin into the iron maiden and anything inside.

The monster easily side-stepped each of the spikes before it sped forward. Both shining members of the group had stepped forward to act as the other shields, but as the monster sped forward in the blink of an eye, the group of heroes was only confused as they witnessed multiple other of Tengu's traps activate on seemingly the air itself. The two large members fell quickly, with large spurts of blood erupting from their chests as the monster simply manifested itself behind them. Crescent Eyebroll and Blue Fire took to the back to guard Sekingar as the two of them told him to run away.

"Where does he think he's going? I take it to mean that you all are incredibly weak. Good, now I can release pressure and have fun, and the game is already underway. I always love a good game of cat and mouse." Nyan remarked with demented glee as it licked along its long, serrated blade-like nails before dashing forward. Two other heroes took the stage wearing some sort of mouth and nose covering, and in the very next moment, a powder was quickly spread his way. The speed at which the smoke approached was slow, and by the time it reached his position, he had already moved past it, cutting the two heroes along the chest as well as making them fall forward. Ah, it seemed Gyoro-Gyoro was right; the majority of the hero association forces are pretty weak, so running away seemed like the best solution. After all, the one at the base seemed to be an exception. From now on, he would follow my instincts as a monster and do things my way. I love playing with toys until they're broken.

There were three of the members of the group in his way but he quickly blitzed past each of them slashing along their chest disabling them but leaving them alive, he speculated that this man was likely an advisor sort of like Gyoro-Gyoro but it was clear as day that, unlike the monsters this man lacked any strengths as he decided to run away, but he was slow he quickly caught up to the man and his sudden appearance made the scared man dropped down on the floor as he was completely paralyzed in fear or so he thought as a laser struck from the man's eye but he was able to avoided rather easily and for fighting back he was going to take that piece of machinery out as he did small claw swipe on the side of the man's face causing him to scream in pain as the claws laid into him, oh how he loved to hear those sounds he thought as he turned to look at the other heroes writhing on the floor, he didn't kill them yet they would witness him kill their advisor.

As he pulled his hand backward, however, his instincts kicked in as he turned his head to quickly avoid a barrage of punches from someone else, he quickly retreated through the cracks and popped up somewhere further away, now that he had his distance he noticed this person was more machine than man, the advisor on the ground regarded him as demon cyborg an S-class hero but it seemed the cyborg wasn't one for conversation as he ran straight at him, out of his hands shot out a beam of heat that he made sure to dodge around, the cyborg was hasty in his assault as he came at him but none of his attacks were able to reach him.

but it turned out the man had just simply been trying to move him back as he combined both of his hands and unleashed a massive explosion of heat that carved a crater into the earth as it went, of course he was already gone but if he wouldn't have gotten out unscathed if the attack had landed on him, He slipped between the cracks of the armor and quickly came back out after the cyborgs attack had swiftly finished, coming up and disarming his opponent literally by cutting off both of the cyborgs hands, which completely shook it.

There was a large flash of light coming from the cyborg's eyes, and he suddenly felt multiple impacts directly on his stomach. He admitted that it was a cheap trick so that he could get an attack on him, but the blow barely rocked him. Was this guy S-class? The naked guy seemed stronger than him if he was being honest, as he quickly lopped off the offending appendage before quickly doing it again to his last leg, hoisting the machine up by the hair, and laughing at his current situation.

He considered for a moment taking him with him to be a nail sharpener or something, and kidnapping an S-class hero could be used as leverage, but he liked the feeling of despair he was seeing on the others's faces as they were about to watch him kill an S-class hero. As he picked his hand up and was preparing to thrust it forward, a glare tipped him off to something coming towards him. He quickly dropped the machine and jumped backward.

'

He turned and witnessed another robotic hero; this one was supposedly another S-class hero. Weren't they all supposed to be down in the Monster Association right now? Or were these simply the weak ones, so they were told to stay up top and watch the other fodder? It was the best he could think of as the robotic hero charged at him, but what was interesting was that the briefcase it sported with him also broke down and started to come together along its body before transforming him into some sort of motorcycle that came directly at him. He was able to jump out of the way of the initial charge, but the robot unleashed a large canister of smoke. No poisonous gas surrounded him.

It wouldn't work; he wasn't weak like humans were, but it also served the dual purpose of obscuring his body from sight. He looked around and followed the noise to the loudest point, and he was able to narrowly avoid the machine coming out of the smoke as he slipped down into the cracks. This hero seemed stronger than the previous one, and he didn't know how many they had in reserve; he couldn't afford to stick around. There's much to gain from him killing them anyway. He's got his fill of fighting anyway. He should probably retreat for now and... meowch! The cat screamed as it rose out of cracks in the ground part of his whisker. Was it completely burning off acid?

And like the machine was answering his thoughts, the knight spoke and remarked that he had managed to lay down a specially-made dissolving liquid. The thinner the body, the faster it dissolves. Just like a cellophane being absorbed by water, if I spread it out over a 5-kilometer radius around us while you were busy with the others, you wouldn't be able to slip away. The robot told him that, despite the monotone voice, he could feel the smug energy that the machine exhibited.

That was all he could do but run. Angered by the theory, he charged at the machine, evading all of the rockets the machine sent his way before making his way back on board the machine and getting ready to stab it in the face, but he lost his purchase as the machine suddenly transitioned again. Before he could regain his balance, he felt hit in the face by something that he now recognized as hooves.

He rocketed into the air as he was unable to find much purchase of anything, but during his tumbling, he could see that the hero was coming towards him before moving past him and taking on another transformation, this time a bigger form than previously and a lot thicker as his enlarge fist slammed down on his body, sending him crashing down into the ground.

The pain of the blow was nothing compared to the pain of that bald freak gripping his leg, so he recovered quickly, dropped inside the large mech, and performed his feline retribution with four claw swipes on the inside of the man's armor. Such a strike would have fallen on any organic foe, but this wasn't an organic foe.

There was a small explosion of some kind that forced him out of the robots' systems. He struggled to recover from his injured leg but managed to stand up. Damn, he missed the perfect opportunity to kill this idiot quickly now that it was back in its regular form, but that could prove to his advantage. Yes, he'd decided on the method of this hero's execution: he would kill him and then get out of there.

He flicked his claws out wide in hell's fury, and the wind generated devastating wind strikes that struck along the body of the machine. He was somewhat surprised that it didn't seem to do much damage, but that didn't matter to him. All he needed was to close the distance. This new form of his only seemed to turn his gold with a few additions, which means his enteral body was still ripe for the pickings.

He charged forward with his initial attack serving the dual purpose of creating debris to shield himself from the cyborg vision as he dashed in closer but he had hoped to get a blow in to chip away at the machine armor so he used another feline retribution to chip away at the machine but it still managed to block the attack forcing him to close in and find a different path inside of it, surprisingly the machine was somehow able to track him as he continued forwards slamming downwards and maybe it was due to his wounded leg but he was a bit too slow to dodge the strike completely his already injured legs getting hammered again but the strong machines strike he couldn't even move it anymore but it could still serve him some use as he cut it off to act as a distraction which it did as he made his way into the machines through a port on its neck.

It was over; he had one; he may have sacrificed a leg to do it, but now the battle was his; the hero's overpowered armor or his strength and speed—none of that would matter now that he was inside of it. Once he let that thought truly sink into the machine, he was going to let it have it. Another feline retribution on the inner systems should cut this machine off like a light switch, but just as he was about to do just that something was wrong, something was hot too hot, he quickly attempted to run away, jumping out of the machine, but it used that opportunity to grab him by the throat and stab him in the chest.

He couldn't escape; if he moved with the sword there, he would just cut himself in half. No, this wasn't how it was supposed to go; he was just a toy to be played with. He could feel the heat build-up and explode outward. His last thought as the eruption took him was of the bald guy's words; he told him that there were heroes on the surface that would help him escape. The non-killing army guys... he wondered what would have happened if he had gone to them instead. Where would they be? His thoughts went black as the explosion completely consumed him.

"Target capture complete; dragon-level monster Nyan obtained." Drive Knight remarked simply as he walked through the flames.

"You won! You did it! That's amazing; even a monster cadre is no match against the S-class!" Sekingar spoke as he recovered most of the other members, although both of the shining prodigies were far too heavy to move, so he opted to just bring everyone else to them.

"That is an incorrect view of the situation; the enemy was overconfident and reckless, and in addition, I was able to get the enemy's battle data beforehand due to the battles prior. I managed to win due to these battle conditions."

"That was a risky gamble; these heroes could have died while you lied in wait," Sekingar challenged.

"I assume all of the heroes here were prepared for that; it would have been worse if the enemy managed to win or get away from insufficient analysis. This is my way of fighting. To improve the probability of victory, everything that can be exploited must be exploited." Drive Kight remarked simply.

"Well, you do have a point... There is one thing: Where have you been? We haven't been able to get in contact with you until now. What happened exactly? We were lucky enough to get the information you gave us, but we didn't have enough time to implement it.

"What information?" Drive Knight asked, suddenly making Sekinger stop in surprise.

"The information about the cadre, the monster location, the hideout schematics, and the location of the child? You sent it to us, but we never heard anything back after that, so we thought that it was the last thing you did before you were killed." Sekingar remarked as he took up his hand and showed him the information on his watch.

"This intel isn't mind, although from a visual glance, it is not much different from the data I personally collected myself." Drive Knight replied as he turned his hand over and out, popping a hologram of the information he had.

"Wait, so where did the information we got come from? It was vetted by the executives themselves," Sekingar replied, confused.

"If I had to make a guess, it likely came from the non-killing army; a group of their monsters infiltrated the base and recorded evidence and their findings. Naturally, this data came from monsters, so I didn't trust it and went to gather it myself, but it seems that my trust was misplaced." Drive Night bemused some of the information as even better than his.

"Data given by monsters..." Sekingar remarked in mild shock

"It seems they have arrived, so you can ask them yourself," Driveknight remarked as he looked upwards, and from over the rooftops dropped a large lion, the magma lion monster. Sekingar was a bit worried at first before looking upon the lion's back which held the child hostage along with Green Savior Deku. Sekingar's surprise turned to anger as he set his sights on the green teen.

He approached him, but before he got to him, he checked over the boy's well-being first. Part of him wanted to slap the child to ensure that he was the real thing, but Drive Knight seemed to take the thoughts out of his head instead of slapping him. However, he injected a syringe into him, which, after a moment, confirmed that this was the real child. Sekingar gave a very reluctant huff at that before looking at the teen boy and the large lion that stood next to him.

"You all took a very big risk relying on monsters and slipping the information to us," Sekingar stated.

"We know… Most of you wouldn't accept such information, which is why we waited so long to inform you all and gave Drive Knight the credit," Midoriya replied.

"How long have you all had this information?" sekingar asked

"In the better half of two months ago," Midoriya replied, astonished by the man and the boy he was with.

"You all kept it to yourselves that entire time!?" sekingar yelled.

"Right, you could have picked me up much sooner; why did you drag your feet?" The child yelled as well, but Midoriya raised both his arms up to placate them.

"We didn't have anything; we just collected the data for the association. They chose to wait this long, likely due to you all not believing in the information without having a credible source to back it up, and if you found the source to be from monsters, then you would disregard the information entirely." Midoriya argued, and Sekingar bit his tongue at that, knowing it to be true. He took a deep breath before getting his head straight.

"How many of the executives know that you all are here?" sekingar asked

"A few of them, maybe a little less than half." Midoriya remarked again. Sekingar's anger somewhat flared, but he stayed level.

"What is your mission here?" Sekingar asked next

"I can't tell you, but given the injuries the others face, I can show you." Midoriya remarked as he extended his black whip to all the downed heroes on the field, scooping them up carefully along with Genos. When the group was about to leave, Drive Knight chimed in and confirmed that he was currently able to move very well due to insufficient power, and in actuality, he had been hoping to run into Kaminari to refuel himself if possible. Midoriya just smirked at that and remarked that sure, he could lend a helping hand in that regard, scooping up the cyborg as well. However, when the cyborg made a machine to capture the cat monster by placing it between what could only be described as a dual spike trap, he was a bit apprehensive, but the monster was alive if that was worth anything when it was in Drive Knight's custody.

He took the large group towards the others, while Sekingar remarked that he should be taking them instead to the operation checkpoint so that they could get checked out. Midoriya was more confident in Fubuki's abilities to heal them up. He told them how the girl had learned how to heal wounds using her ESP abilities, but it takes the energy of others to perform. Sekingar was still skeptical of the teen, but he's been right so far, and he had returned the boy to them relatively safe and sound, so he decided to trust in the teen, at least for now. drive knight questioned from whom they were getting the energy to power her abilities and questioned if the monster was willing to help out to that extent, and at that boy, he slightly shook his head.

The monsters that were with them weren't, and that wasn't for their lack of wanting to help anyone who was hurt, but more because they had others. Maybe the word he would use is an unfavorable monster to fill that gap to prevent it from breaking out and going wild, of course, as sedatives seemed to be not as effective as they would like them to be.

Drive Knight questioned the identity of such a monster and midoriya reluctantly told him that it was fuhrer ugly one of the association cadres, now this gave rise to Sekingar remarking that such a threat needed to be exterminated at once and that whatever they were planning with the board could not be a part of it whatsoever and midoriya agreed they didn't know what they were going to do with the cadres they have captured so far, they were indeed very powerful and dangerous and would pose a threat to the others but for some reason, Sekingar didn't like who "these others'' the boy refereed to and questioned by that if he meant other monsters and he confirmed such which made the man scoff at but remained silent.

Drive Knight was intrigued by the use of the plural "cadres" and what the boy meant by that—do they have multiples under their possession? Midoriya confirmed that with the one he brought in along with the one Drive Knight was carrying with him, there would be a total of three technically four cadres present.

Midoriya, however, was sure to point out that the teens wanted to relinquish those monsters to him if they didn't have to. One of the cadre members, Energizer, was much more cooperative and likely could belong with the others without many problems. On the other hand, he was still unsure about them, but he didn't mention his doubts to them. Drive Night challenged, if not for him, who would be powerful enough to take these adversaries and contain them. Midoriya remarked that shouldn't be a problem as metal knights should be more than capable of doing that, which got the cyborg's attention, but before he could attest too much to that, they had started their descent into their base of operation, where all of the others crowded around him and the wounded.

He asked Fubuki, he faked coughed "Mistress," Fubuki, to please heal the other heroes using the strength of the monster, he asked if there had been any problem with its containment, which thankfully it wasn't, and the monster was still fast asleep. The large metal structure that made up its cell was made up of the same metal that the A-City headquarters was but even more reinforced with kinetic padding to lighten the effect, but even with that, the monster shook the thing with a punch, which surprised Midoriya because he swore he broke the thing's arms, so it may have had a healing factor along with it to heal those wounds.

They managed to filter enough sleeping powder into the small cage to essentially knock out over 1000 people but he still took some time to go to sleep, about 10 or so minutes and it was the direct reason why midoriya couldn't go out and help with the threat facing their and had hoped that genos would have been able to handle it but judging by the damage he suffered he was wrong, so he was thankful that drive knight was there to save him, midoriya lowered genos down near momo, where the two discuss something while he lowered the injured next to fubuki, and open a secret compartment in the cage allowing the girl to touch the monster without being worried of being hurt or grabbed by it just in case it was faking being asleep.

The girl was hesitant but didn't want to show her fear in front of her group or front of her rival goddess's glasses, so she toughed it out and reached her hand inside before they all started to ensure that they brought the other heroes towards her. One by one, she began to heal all of them, just as she had healed Tank Top Master, who was also present. Sekingar asked about what he was doing there and about the mission, and he remarked that he had been defeated and dead to right by one of the cadres before they came in to save his life.

Drive Knight looked at the massive cage and peered inside of it to spot two dozen monsters inside of it, as well as examine the other monsters outside of the cage, one being a large fish humanoid and the other being some type of armadillo creature that was approximately 25 feet and 6 inches tall, and both were monsters but weren't attacking them at all. He noticed a couple of other monsters: a snake creature, a fox humanoid, a lion, a dragon, and a shadow creature. He took notice of several monsters that weren't in the cage and seemed to have complete freedom. Was this the work of the forest lord?

No, he was told by Kaminari, who remarked that he couldn't control monsters, so these monsters were just moving about of their own will and not attacking. Curious, he thought as he scanned around again after leaving the frightened monster behind. Now he looked back over to Kaminari, but what truly interested him was the small device that he held in his hands; it gave off a massive energy signature. The boy's signature was also much higher than usual, and his normal electricity in his powered-up state was in the color white instead of the traditional yellow.

He proceeded toward them, and his approach was noticed by the boy, and he waved a greeting. However, he noted how the boy clutched the strange item in his hands more securely to himself, and it almost seemed like he was trying to hide it from him.

"Yo drive knight, Midoriya told me you could use a charge-up since I'm not doing much of anything now, so I guess you can use me. Oh, this is Volten; things happen and he became a monster now, but he's still cool," Kaminari introduced.

"Hello, we have only spoken with each other over messages, but Kaminari spoke highly of you. I would gladly offer my energy to you as well so that you can return to fighting shape."

"What of that in your hand?" Drove Knight pointed this out.

"This is an energizer. Yeah, he's an energy monster, but he doesn't like being used as a batter, so you're going to have to settle for the two of us."

"What he said!" The orb itself spoke out, which was surprising for the drive knight to hear.

"I see. Well, that will have to make do for now." Drive Knight replied simply.

Once Fubuki was done healing all of the heroes, it was time for them to take their leave. Drive Knight asked both Sekingar and Green Savior about the current battle situation, but other than the battle on the surface, Sekingar didn't know much about what was happening underground. Midoriya was able to fill in some of those gaps by explaining that, other than the three cadres that were captured, Atomic Samurai and Sweet Mask were currently facing off against another one, which energizer chimed in and said that Atomic was supposed to fight against black sperm given the match-up advantage it had against him.

Midoriya also explained that Saitama had supposedly defeated Orochi; however, Energizer chimed in and remarked that the big guy wasn't dead but greatly wounded, at least as far as he was concerned, but Flash confirmed the body, so the reports were mixed. The mention of the strange name took both of them off guard, asking who this Saitama character was, and the class explained that he was the king's disciple. Drive Knight had run a background check on the man's name and found the B-class hero caped baldy; he had been in numerous incidents that surprisingly also involved S-class in one way or another.

But most of the feats weren't attributed to him but to the other heroes, and the association termed him much of a gifter riding on the coattails of other heroes, especially the S-class hero demon cyborg whom he finds normally accompanied by. He turned to Genos, and short of giving a short speech about how his "master" was the greatest and most powerful hero, he was quickly shoved into the machine pod that Momo summoned up for him to get him to stop singing the man's praises.

Drive Knight could somewhat understand the situation; if this Caped Baldy, as the hero association called him, was Genos Master, it would follow to have him be the disciple of King himself, and Sekingar agreed that it made sense given that King himself went to go fetch the man personally and offered the man his communicator. Drive Knight pondered for a moment and asked:

"Where did King go? Did he return to Hero headquarters?" Drive Knight asked suddenly.

"I doubt it; he's likely still around, just in case his disciple needs help." Mineta commented as Midoriya looked at Bakugo, who simply shrugged his shoulders.

"You seemed concerned about something; what's happening back at headquarters?" Sekingar asked.

"Potentially, from what the two of you explained to me, nearly a fifth of the association was deployed on this mission; this includes nearly all of the A-class heroes and all of the S-class heroes besides Watchdog Man, which is not at the base at this very moment. Meaning that if a new situation were to arise, no capable heroes would be able to get there in time, and hero associations would be wide open." Drive Knight commented with severity.

"Even if the monsters took the opportunity to attack, the association HQ is equipped with metal night defense systems. After all, the whole facility was built by Metal Knight, plus he has absolute confidence in its defensive abilities against monsters." Sekingar remarked.

"He built it; after all, you put your blind trust in him. That alone shows how far you have fallen." Drive Knight stated.

"Come out with what you want to say already," Bakugo remarked, butting in, but Drive Knight obliged the teen with a nod.

"Metal Knight Doctor Bofoi is a traitor," the man remarked, suddenly earning a few gasps of surprise from everyone.

"That's a serious claim. Do you have any proof of that?" Tank Top Master spoke up.

"The "Metal Knight" drone he was controlling was destroyed and taken apart in the monster's hideout by Orochi, causing a potential data leak.

Bofoi can potentially link a number of his robots into one autonomous unit capable of communicating combat data in real-time, thus improving battle efficiency. Among those, "Metal Knight" is Bofoi's favorite machine. It's not something he would just give away easily. The weapon information would be present to the monsters, which they have already succeeded in using to create robotic machinery of their own.

If they somehow manage to analyze the machine's data, absorb the information, and hack into his systems, the monster association would have full control over his robot weapons. In that case, hero association defense systems would be reduced to unresponsive junk. And that's not all. Dr. Bofoi's missile launch codes and his unnamed bomber's control passwords might have also been leaked, and he wouldn't even have gone that far as he could release the number of monsters they captured directly on the base itself." Drive Knight remarked, pointing towards the teens but more specifically the two large cages in question.

This is when the teens started to interfere with his line of reasoning.

"That's not true; we're simply relocating the monsters that don't want to fight anymore... Our goal is to give them a place where they can live in peace; metal knights' only interest in them is weapon testing." Koda defended.

"What would he even gain by doing that? As someone with experience with the man, I know that he only makes moves when it benefits himself." Momo asked.

"The goal was to supply monsters with weapons. Because he's waiting for his opportunity, the Heroes Association's combat forces are weakened. Because he's a bad guy, he plans to keep growing his military force and one day take over the world. The hero association is nothing more than an obstacle. Only a select few are privy to this information." Drive Knight replied

"All I'm hearing is a bunch of insignificant phrases: "if, "maybe, "and potentially." You haven't given any actual definitive proof of anything you just said." Bakugo balked in annoyance.

"He is correct; also, this doomsday scenario doesn't make sense, as someone who has seen his inventions in action wouldn't need to have the hero association weakened to beat them; only the S-class heroes could pose a threat to him." Momo remarked

"How would he take over with his army if his army is controlled by monsters as well? Unless you believe he was purposefully allowing them to hack his systems and that he could stop it anytime he wants and hope that the monsters don't bypass that, it would seem like such a gamble to commit to." Todoroki added on.

"They do bring up some valid points, Drive Knight... You didn't provide any proof and have only feared so far. You are right, the headquarters is not defended, however, which was part of the reason I also didn't have the non-killing army in the plans, this relocation of monsters is suspect, but by their reports, it was not garnered by Bofoi but by the association themselves, which I will confirm for myself during my report." Sekingar remarked, looking towards the teens at the end of his statement. There was a brief silence before Drive Knight spoke next.

"If the headquarters came under attack next, do you think the number one ranked hero blast will make a move?" Driveknight asked

"Blast? No, I don't think that's very likely. To my understanding, he is more or less retired.

"Is that so? And what of you all? You all met him, and very few have had the opportunity." As he turned to the non-killing army, they all looked around for a moment, unsure of what to say.

"Blast is still operating as a hero; his mission is of much greater priority than much of anything happening now. As for your question, Sekingar is right; it would be unlikely but not impossible for him to show up," Midoriya commented.

Drive Knight was going to comment more, but there was another large rumble that shook the earth from where they stood, and at that, the hostage wanted to leave Pronto and didn't want to entertain anymore talking, and Sekingar agreed at first, wanting to just take the boy and his group, but the young kid was adamant about taking an S-class hero with them. Midoriya was going to agree to walk with the child, but Tank Top Master took the spot for him as payment for their help, along with the request for the hero.

The boy also wanted the cat monster to come with him and more precisely be his pet, which the monster took exception to, but besides that, Sigismund had to come back to the land of the living as overlong exposure to that gas could put his life in danger, so the monsters disappeared before it could say it's a piece. Sigismund went along with them for the time being to offer even more protection in case anything happened. Although the teen thought he was just being sent away for his protection, Tokoyami disagreed, and Tank Top Master remarked that they would come back together since the fight was still ongoing.

The group all said and waved their goodbyes as they walked away. Given that the child was secure, he sent a message to all teams on the surface to retreat to the perimeter of the ghost town, and he congratulated all of them for a job well done.

Now that the hostage was secure, the teens had one less thing to worry about. Drive Knight continued to ask them about their mission, blast, and his mission, along with what they had planned to do with the cadre. Nyan Shakily spoke up and requested that they save him from this cyborg that he learned wanted to experiment with him and that if the "bald guy that could beat a cadre with one punch gave him directions, he would have gone there from the start".

While the class was somewhat sympathetic to the monster's plight, drive-knight argued that it was only attempting to take advantage of their nature, and since he was the one to capture the creature, he could decide to do what he liked, especially since they were being stingy with the other two. He questioned what was up with the small chick monster, and Kaminari explained that.

It was another cadre, technically, but one that joined after their monster spy adventure after helping the child emperor fight it. It was reduced to that state, but he was expressly interested in the creature's ability. Once he learned that it could revive the dead, he would love a sample of it. He was even tempted to fight the teens for it, but not now. He would find an opportunity. He secretly placed a tracker on one of the cages. He would find where the cages were being sent and investigate the monsters there. For now, he would play nice.

Speaking of which playing nice and having a dissenting opinion of Metal Knight seemed to work in his favor of gaining Energizer's favor who also had a negative opinion of Drive Knight and if this sanctuary was guarded by the man he would prefer to go with him instead of course kaminari remarked that drive knight would try to experiment with him but engineer rebuffed and told of how he was brought into being by being experimented on by Metal Knight so anywhere would likely be better than being reminded of that man and he remarked drive knight sounded like a cyborg so he was confident he could defend himself against such threats even better than regular humans, he could feel the man's core energy regulator even in his dismissed state and a few wrong charges and that could explode he said with levity in mock threat.

Drive Knight understood the warning and would respect the monster's boundaries if it did decide to cooperate with him, so the two came together in an uneasy alliance, even sharing some energy with the cyborg, allowing him to get back to max capacity relatively quickly, leaving Momo, Kaminari, Kirishima, and Mina to power the machine holding Genos. It would take some time before the man would be capable of battling again, but his upgrades should be worth it, he remarked inside his pod.

---

A Man and His Dog: Metal Bat

Metal bat charged head first into the monster association base, he didn't know what to expect to encounter as he went down there he knew that the monster that he had to look out for was the cadre, he wasn't to worry about taking them on if anything they would offer at least some chance to get majorly pumped up, but if he had to choose between the cadre he saw then he would have liked to face off against that centipede again his battle was interrupted by the hero hunter the first time but he was confident he would have been able to take the thing on, the second person he wants to face off against was a rematch against the her hunter he would clobber him this time.

The guy was good he would give him that if bang had beaten him down that bad during his two times facing the man then he may have bothered to learn a thing or at lest the gimmick to beat it, he couldn't beat someone he couldn't hit and during his time in the hospital kept trying to think up a way for him to circumvent that technique of his after being cleared from the hospital he even went back to talk to bang and pay attention to what the older man had to say about his martial arts Supposedly, it was the ultimate defensive technique, and he could buy that. He found it a bit cowardly to just avoid attacks all the time real men took their opponent's attacks head-on to demonstrate their support for their opponent, but different strokes for different folks, he supposed.

He learned that the technique had at least one weakness in the form and that it was a specifically anti-human martial art, so the best thing he could do against it was simply not fight like a person. While that sounded simple in his head in practice, he didn't have much of a clue as to what he could do to change up his style and not fight like a human anymore. He pondered a few ideas and even asked forest lord about any animals he could mirror or something like that he was an animal lover so he should be able to think of something he could use as inspiration.

The boy first talked about apes but he believed that was too close to being human and he couldn't learn anything from apes and monkeys, felines, and dogs were also out of the question he wasn't going to bother with biting or scratching at his opponent if he was going to learns something it would still involve his bat in some way or form and the boy surprisingly brought up the idea of bees, hornets, and even scorpions, animals that main sense of attack relied on the weapons on their back instead of there front.

It was an interesting idea he didn't know if there was any precedent for it that he could use to copy off and after searching their wasn't so he had to come up with the style on his own but it would take some time even the two months wasn't enough to get it down packed but he got the general idea he would instead of wielding his bat like a club instead put it between his legs and streak with it that way like a tail or stinger but generating force that was more difficult to generate a bit of force behind but he found a way, he would call it the garou plumbing but only time would tell if it would work.

He did ask Bang about what he wanted for his disciple and what he wanted to do if he encountered him, but the man remarked that he had it covered, so he shouldn't worry about it. If he did encounter the man, then he shouldn't hold back on his account and do what needed to be done to protect himself and the mission, which Bad took to mean that if he proved to be a danger, lethal force was fully acceptable, and that was all Bad needed to know. He didn't know what the guy's problems were or if he was even human at this point, but it truthfully didn't matter to him; he would smack him down all the same, just like the rest of the creatures in this place.

He did take a moment to think about Koda and the non-killing army people. He asked him if he could be "lenient" against monsters that didn't seem like they wanted to fight or surrender. He told him that if he found any monsters like that, he should send them over to where DO-S Lair is. While that didn't mean much to him, the monsters themselves should be able to do so themselves. He was skeptical of the request, but given their group name, he didn't question what they were doing. If they got in trouble for it, he could claim ignorance of the activity. He didn't know what the teen expected of the monster in the monster association, despite being mostly a dime a dozen when it came to strength, which almost all of them severed no problems for him to deal with, with just one swing of his bat on most occasions, to the point he was starting to get a bit bummed out by and decease his fighting spirit.

Hell, if the fighting was going to be this easy, he questioned why he even bothered to show up. He heard the monster association had some strong monsters that they called cadre, so where the hell were they? They should at least make it worth his while to make his sister Zenko worry about him.

The monster, despite the numerous ones that had fallen before, continued to come at him in some false hope that, through attrition, they would be able to take him down. Even though he assumed at least he showed indication that he was getting tired at all, he felt several large vibrations rock the place, and sometime late he listened in as Child Emperor remarked that he had beaten a cadre but unfortunately lost the child in the scuffle. He didn't blame him for that, and it got his head back on to the actual mission at hand: finding the kid and bringing him back.

He fiddled along with his communications unit to find out where Child Emperor was located, but unfortunately, the boy was already back on the surface, so that didn't tell him anything, and he didn't know what path the kid was going down. He didn't pay that much attention in the briefings well enough to know, so he couldn't tell where the man was beforehand, but oh well, he would keep an eye out. The kid was on the move, which is all his message dictated, which meant monsters may have run by him occasionally, so he could start questioning them if they wanted to talk instead of leaving for the other world, of course.

Eventually after another massive shockwave this one even bigger than before rocked the monster association, some of the monsters he started to encounter started to mellow out a bit, or maybe they started to realize that they had been getting their shit kicked in and had no other choice but to surrender he cornered a group of frightened monster that seemed to attempt to hide from him, he asked about where the hostage had been relocated or had any of them spotted the kid one of them spoke and remarked that it was being guided away by some sludge monster before giving him a general idea of where the kid was located from once he passed by the group of them, metal bat didn't know if he should believe the monster or not but he decided that it should be fine he didn't have much else to do anyways so he might as well investigate if it was a trap well he might as well spring it then.

So he told the huddle of four or so monster to head towards this DO-S place and they should be alright over their ironically enough the monsters themselves had heard rumors from others of such of what they were calling an escape route but many found it to be just a trapp set up by the heroes Metal Bat said that it likely wasn't and told them that the non-killing army was over there so if they really did want to run they were their best chance at doing that but they didn't have to believe them and remarked that the entire place is surrounded by heroes so if they tried to escape by his tunnel then they would have to fight their way out instead as he sauntered away before rapidly coming back and remarking if they do make their way out but they were leading him into a trap he would personally hunt them down to and give them a beating in a last ditch attempt to intimidate them into giving up any hint of a trap of sorts but even through their frightened demure they still gave him the same information as before and he soon enough took his leave heading downwards towards the indicated area the monster specified that he passed them "some time ago" during his travels so his information was probably out of date ut he told him the direction where the monster s were headed and that was better than nothing so he would tae although he probably only mentioned that to cover its own ass.

Now that he was on the move there was another even bigger vibration the very earth seemed to be up in arms as the floor beneath where he was traveling seemingly gave out, after recovering and dusting himself off he wondered if that was tatsumaki's doing or something but after he dusted himself off and picked himself up before checking his surroundings there had seemed to be several different monsters scattered about and upon noticing him they went to attack him, he quickly dispatched of them before moving out of the area, he could hop back up to the floor he was on but he assumed that the monsters would be heading lower into the base with the kid anyways so he just continued forwards in that general direction, he had to stop for a moment when he heard someone over the comms remarked that he had killed the monster king it had been king's disciple which somewhat dimmed the shock and he guessed those last two shockwaves was their battle.

He hated that he didn't get to see it or be a participant, but man, the guy didn't even sound winded at all from the battle, but maybe he was giving the monster a bit too much credit. There didn't seem to be much of anything strong down here, but there was still the cadre to look out for, and speaking of such, his mic suddenly cracked to life as the voice of Tatsumaki came out a short time later, remarking that she defeated the advisor as well. There was a small conversation until it was interrupted by a sweet mask begging for help against one of the cadres.

He didn't like the idol very much but he could get some serious points with his little sister especially if the idol owes him one for saving his scrawny ass he could get his sister a private song or something she would be so excited and love him, even more, he fantasized as he made his way forwards when he heard that green savior was going to help him instead he was about to make a point that he would take care of it himself so they didn't have to worry but looking at the map he was about 6 kilometers away and 30 meters above where the man was despite that it wouldn't take him long at all to get them maybe like a minute or two tops shorter if he just decided to smash his way through out of all the walls in the place and make a B-line forward.

Just as he was starting his mad dash forward bursting through two walls he accidentally ran head-first into something large sending him flying backward into a wall, he shook his head free and was surprised by what had run into him it was a large black dog of some kind. The creature's multiple eyes were all focused on him, and Metal Bat quickly dug himself out of the wall as he saw energy start to build up in the creature's mouth. The beast shot out a large blast of energy from its mouth, but he didn't have enough time to evade it, so he clutched his bat forward to absorb most of the impact. A dreadful heat washed over him, and his jacket was completely evaporated, but he still kept standing, steam blowing off of him as the blast subsided.

Damn it, he thought just when he had something worthwhile to chase after he had to deal with an actual troublesome opponent, given just that attack hurt him to such an extent he figured that this creature was a cadre he could pull out of comms unit to check but he didn't have the time to as multiple other blasts emerge from out of the dog's mouth, his body willed itself to move out of the way of the strikes and came in hard with a large swing against the creatures spine but he was shocked when his bat was completely shrugged off by the dog creature and for his troubles he was hit dead center carving a deep hole into the monster association but he wouldn't fall from just a little he has came back out charging directly at the dog this time hitting it on what he assumed to be the weakest area well if it shared a similar biology to regular dogs that was which was it's snout but unfortunately it was not as he continued to launch a heavy smack against the dogs snout just to have the dog head bend down slightly but rapidly rise throwing him high into the air before using him like target practice.

But he wasn't going to just sit there and take the shot just like that as he started to rapidly spin in the air savage Tornado a large of energy came towards his spiraling vortex and made contact with his bat the attack was shot directly back at the dog causing it to explode bat would have thought that the creature would have been at least hurt by its attack but it came out of the attack completely unscathed as it continued to launch blast after blast at him and metal bat sent it back just the same the two essentially seemed to be playing a game of softball the dog was the pitcher and he was the batter but he had something more important to take care of as he heard that midoriya had arrived to assist sweet mask and the fighting seemed to be over.

His one opportunity to gain something from all this slipped his anger flared for a moment realizing his plan wouldn't be possible anymore as he charged forward and avoided a couple of blasts entirely as he got close to the dog's belly and hammered away at it dragon thrashing the strikes against the dog which hadn't been working out for most of the time finally started to make a dent as he managed to push it back for the first time during the battle but the dog didn't even let out a small grunt of pain from the rapid blows only being able to push it back a few steps, the dog's head managed to turn at him in time to launch a blast at him but before he could completely fire off the attack meta bat was faster quickly coming in and smashing the dog under the jaw and hitting it with all his strength being able to hit it so hard that it was sent off it's feet snapping it's jaw shut mid attacking causing the explosion to go off in its mouth.

"Get lost!" he shouted as he landed the attack before the condensed explosion and attack launched the creature away. His attack caused a large shockwave that shook the place around him, and the ceiling and stuff started to collapse around him, causing him to use his savage hurricane to smack all the debris that was falling out of the air. He didn't see the dog again, but he could hear the creature, and as he went to investigate, all he found was a large hole in its place. Well, that sucks now that he didn't have anything strong to take his anger out of; he could try and follow it, but who knows where it was going, and the floors beneath seemed to fill up and scatter as he went. There was another shockwave that seemed to rock the place. No, not a shockwave; it seemed to be something entirely different this time around, as he felt weightless, almost like he was rising upwards.

(_ )

The Power of Light: Zombie Man

Zombieman felt a small shaking rock the landscape he didn't know who or what caused it but it did call into question what was happening with the battle their were a total of four cadre defeated so far which left 11 on the table so any one of them could be fighting them at that very moment and causing the shaking however he didn't know who would be winning that battle which was the problem while he could discern their location which meat the battle citation was still unknown to him unless someone called for help which speaking of which his coms unit sparked to life as sweet mask voice blared over all channels begging for help against one of the cadres, well the guy really was a jockster the entire time it seemed, he didn't completely blame tatsumaki for rebuffing him and basically remarking that he should be able take the consequences of his own actions, although they were heroes so someone should go and help him but when the mutants came up and remarked that he got it then he guessed there was no need for concern but a voice caught his attention from behind him while he was diestracted he turned just in time to see a large white light completely consume his vision causing a massive explosion to take place.

"Is this the end for the one they call a hero? How underwhelming… I checked the official Hero Association website, and there are 17 S-class heroes, right? I can eliminate that many myself." The man remarked as he cradled four glowing energy spears in his hands. The zombieman rose from the dust of the blast wave.

"Hold up," he remarked simply as dashed at the man wielding his ax, but before he could slam it down he noticed that the man lifted his hand in the shape of a gun, and out of it emerged a super fast light orb that destroyed his wrist and sent his hands and his ax flying off into the distance along with carrying on to evaporate a good chunk of his head, he dropped down to his knees and pretending to play day while he condescended his chest as best he could to fire off his trap card.

His chest exploded outwards as a bullet flew through it directly at the man while he was off taken off guard he was still able to stop the attack to his shock another light orb got in the way of the bullets causing a miniature explosion as the two projectiles collide causing him to go flying backward against a wall and the man himself to slide back a few steps and he had gotten into a more defensive posture from before hunched down and his light orbs creating a screen around him.

Zombieman lamented the fact that he planned to use such an ace just to have it still fail, but that didn't matter as he stuck his hand into his chest, pulled out his pistol, and aimed it at the target. There were few openings, none of which were kill shots, but he would take any damage he could get as he fired, and the man returned fire of his own using those light orbs. His bullets were completely obliterated in the exchange of fire as the light orbs began to overwhelm him and send him spiraling backward while he was able to stand. His entire body was torched; nothing could move because everything was gone—nerves and muscles and all. He needed time, so he might as well strike up a conversation while he healed and get some game planning going. This monster seemed way too strong.

"Hey, I don't understand the nature of your rule-defying attacks that resemble magic; what is up with you?" Zomebieman spoke as his mouth was created.

"What a surprise! I have heard a lot about you, zombieman. It seems the undying body isn't just a figure of speech. Do you want to know the secrets behind my light powers? Fine, I shall tell you," the man remarked.

Zombieman faintly listened as the man went on with his story. He was just an average-day businessman until his boss made him make a very strange request like dancing naked in front of the recruits, and then he was fired the next day for sexual harassment. Due to that, he couldn't pay his rent, so his landlord kicked him out, and he started to live like a recluse. Zombieman would have liked to chime in and say that's likely definitely a sueable offense, and he could have gotten a lot of money out of it if he decided to pursue it, but he would probably not take to being interrupted. He went on to talk about how he was sky-gazing and came upon an epiphany, which was that man had no right to push his own self-made rules on the earth and mother nature, so he was an anarchist or something. zombieman thought.

He found the very audacity foolish, and everyone who contributed to such a system was a fool. The revelation was so crushing that he figured the only way he could not be as foolish as the others around him was to return to Mother Nature and return to the Earth so that they could truly coexist. However, when the man was going to do just that, something that he was calling god stopped him and told him that he was right and supposedly bestowed upon him that power; he was the supposed chosen one that would be a god herald and destroy humanity and the civilization that spawned with it. Unfortunately, that seemed like a closing statement, so Zombieman had to figure out some way to continue to draw it out while his body healed.

"So why did you believe him to be "god"? Did he have I.D.?" Zombieman quipped. It likely wasn't the best reply, as it almost seemed like he was not taking him seriously, but sarcasm was just his natural state for things like this.

"Is that so? There is no need for you to believe in God. Enough chit-chat. To atone for your inflated arrogance, you will die and return to the planet," the man remarked.

"Well, before you do that, at least allow me to know your name." zombieman asked

"Very well, the person that sent you to the land beyond was none other than God's chosen homeless emperor," the man spoke before firing off rapidly again with his light spheres, and the extra couple of seconds offered him enough to finally have motor functions in his legs again as he quickly moved to get out of dodge of the attack. He likely didn't expect him to move, or else he would have just followed along after him, but that was his problem as he continued on his evasive maneuver. Multiple other light orbs continued down his path, chasing after him and exploding just at the edge of the place he was.

He quickly went over and picked up his axe that was discarded on the ground before rolling out of the way of another barrage of light orbs. With his current equipment, as he evaded another spray of light orbs, his mind started to map out his current situation. He was currently engaged with a monster association cadre, with no weapons other than his axe. The cadre had supposedly gotten his powers directly from God and could fire off spheres of destructive light. He wondered if the spirit of light could redirect them or not.

Well, that didn't matter for the moment. He pondered whether he should attempt to call for help right away or not but realized that he was completely naked, so that wasn't an option in the first place. He found some shadows that he could hide in while he scoped out the room. He was in through the gravel, burying himself inside of it to hide away. Thankfully, parts of his jacket had managed to survive the initial onslaught. It was in tatters but otherwise fine; his two katana were scattered in each direction, which at least gave him two other options for weapons if he lost his ax.

He pondered what he should do in this scenario: should he attempt to lead the man away and come back to call for help? He considered it for a moment but decided to hold off against doing that at least, for now, he knew that this guy was dangerous but how dangerous were the questions at hand he didn't want to lead anyone down there to help just to be obliterated when they came, he had regeneration so he could take the abuse while figuring out the man's abilities once he recovered enough data on the target then he could call for help and fill them on all that he found out and beat the guy together and with that plan of action down he decided to reguard the individual or homeless emperor as he liked to call himself, he saw the guy on the data the mutants gave him but he thought that it may have been a transformation type so he was just promoting a humans face and in battle, he would look different but it seems that wasn't the case and his new ability were these light sphere given to him by god or whoever it was.

As soon as he moved among the rubble it was no sooner blown to pieces as multiple light sphere launched off at his general direction blowing up everything, thankfully to the rubble he wasn't completely destroyed like last time but he was missing parts of his head, his right arm, and his gash in his lower torso but those didn't matter right now the one thing he wanted to prioritize was his legs which were still fine as he started to get out of dodge and ran out of the large hole in the wall that he created, the man continued after him at a slow place, but he didn't have to worry about physically catching him it seemed as the light orbs were more than fast enough to make up the difference but their had to be some sort of range or sight limit because if their wasn't he wouldn't bother to move closer to him at all and to test his hypothesis he started to due down different pathways to get out of the man line of sight and his instant reaction was to simply target the walls themselves blowing each and everyone one of them up which definitely told him line of sight needed to be an option for his engagement which also gave him an idea on his range limit as well.

The explosive varied in power, but the telltale sign of a stronger orb being produced was concerning its size. The smaller ones were not much of a threat; even his body could somewhat shrug them off, but they were faster than the other larger blasts and seemed to be able to spam more often than his large blast, which he only used to clear the field of walls and barriers. As Zomebieman continued his game of cat and mouse his opponent continued to mock him all the while attempting to goad him into coming towards him but he wasn't that stupid.

He understood a difference in an ability when he saw it but he wouldn't just be an evasive target for the guy to practice on he also wanted to test his opponent's defenses, so he started to attack back from the shadows moving in and out of them as best he could throwing rocks at the man once he drew close enough to his original position it only worked once and he fully expected the impromptu projectile to do squat, he wasn't some juggernaut like tank top master that could hurl them at super speed, but he could pitch at least faster than any baseball player out there with his strength.

He only managed to hit the guy once with his surprise attack, but he was shocked by the damage it did. The rock had hit him in the back of the head, and the guy nearly keeled over and planted, but he recovered and immediately did a large area of effect burst explosion, destroying nearly the entire area they were in, leaving no walls in sight. For a couple of miles, he was stuck as his legs were completely incinerated, leaving him with just an upper torso on the floor. He inwardly cursed, saying that if he had expected the attack to do that much damage, he would have used his ax instead.

Was the guy a glass cannon? Or was he just feigning it to draw him to the wrong conclusion? His thoughts were momentarily interrupted as his head was blown off his shoulders for the second time in that fight, but the man didn't stop there as he started to pummel his body with several smaller light spheres until it fell backward on the ground. Well, it's either the guy was a world-class actor or that was the most classic example of rage he's seen in a while. He cursed him out the entire time he attacked his body, calling him a fool, idiot, trash, filth, and all kinds of things before he seemed to stop in and take a breath from yelling so much.

Zombieman healed like he always did and noticed that the man had started to walk away from him, he used that opportunity to grab his ax off the floor and charge at him jumping up into the air and attempting to come down on the guy from behind but he had better reactions than he original thought as he evaded the downwards ax chop and was about to blow his head off again but zombieman was able to raise his other hand in time and tank the attack for his head, it getting blown off in his stead, he continued using his other hand to strike out with the ax again, unfortunately.

The orb moved and shifted to block the strike but the man also ensured to jump backward at the same time so he was scared of getting hurt or at least feared that he could hurt him but what he focused on was his hands he noticed that the orbs were being guided by his hands and generated by his hands only, could he guide them without them he thought or what if they were subdued? It was a potential weakness that he would chalk up for later potential use, but something else was bothering him as another blast took him far away, throwing him backward again, leaving him in a very similar state from before standing but unable to move as another concentrated blast cut right through his center, leaving a large gaping hole in its place.

He purposely slowed his regeneration to see if he could find any indication that the man seemed to be tiring out. He didn't know about this god power, but even when it came to the mutants and their magical-like abilities or monsters with elemental powers, they had to have some sort of limitation or drawback, but the man's blast was still just right as rain. Was he getting power from something? Or with this god constantly funneling energy into the person so he could have an unlimited amount of orbs to use?

It didn't make sense, but they had been fighting for some time, and he was extremely careless in using his power like he had no concern for stamina, and that may be the exact reason he seemed more tired from yelling than actually firing those things off. Hmm, Zombieman pondered his next steps as the man questioned him on why he wasn't healing anymore; he was, but not the hole in his stomach to give off that illusion. Ultimately, he figured out as much as he could about the target, and nothing good could come from him continuing to fight the guy alone, especially as underequipped as he was.

So he waited for his opportunity to move to get over to his beacon, but his thoughts were completely taken from him when a massive light sphere started to form above the homeless emperor. This was the largest one he had seen yet, and the man remarked that if this was the end of their little play of hide and seek, then he would be sure to vaporize him thoroughly to the point where he couldn't regenerate, and for that one singular moment, fear did rush through his mind as he contemplated whether that attack would be enough to kill him. His body reacted more instinctively than his mind to the strange and unknown sensation, as he didn't just back away but ran as fast as he could.

He didn't know what the man expected as he made a mad dash forward, sprinting away as quickly as possible, but he noticed that the light behind him was getting brighter and brighter, which signaled to him that the giant orb was following after him. The only thing he could do was hope and pray that the man couldn't redirect its direction. As he made a desperate jump to the side to avoid the strike, his lower body again was vaporized, and to add insult to injury, his body stopped from its sudden tumble, he found himself just a couple of meters off where his tattered jacket was, along with the beacon. He attempted to crawl towards the device, but another harrowing barrage kept him in his place.

Both of his arms were blown off, leaving only his burned head and chest, which slowly healed. He twisted and turned to get a glance behind him, viewing the destruction the large sphere left in its wake before detonating with a defying boom and vibration, just to look back and see as the man approached that he was still completely exhausted from the attack. Even after such an attack, the man himself seemed unphased, not even panting; there was no effort. The only option was that he was simply not trying at all like he was just playing with a kid, or that his power was not connected to him in any way, and he was predicting the latter, but this left him in quite a predicament.

He tried to strike up a dialogue with the guy, but this time he saw through his ruse and was in the beginning stages of preparing another one of those massive energy spheres. Well, he guessed it would be time to tell how immortal he was, but as the attack neared completion, a sudden rumbling completely stopped the man in his tracks, and watched as the large ball of energy completely disappeared. The world around them seemed to shift as the rumbling seemed to increase in earnest, shaking the entire place. The man couldn't even spare the time to attack him, as he had to ward off debris from the ceiling, allowing his newly regrown arms to pull himself and allow him to slink off into the darkness once more.

---

Gluttony: Pig god

As Pig God followed the scent of his nose, he found his first prey, which was a large bearded dragon. He didn't truthfully care for what it said, and he could feel his stomach rumble with how delicious it would taste going down his stomach. When the monster finally decided to stop talking he completely consumed the monster without a second thought, the large size white satisfying was also slightly debilitating he couldn't move for a couple of minutes as his body digested the massive beast, he had partially thought he heard the sound of a human behind him, from the voice he imagined it was atomic's pupils but despite that fact.

He couldn't really get his feet under him at the moment to move out of their way the monster had continued to wiggle around and it even partially expanded inside of him in a desperate attempt to escape but it never did as he fully consumed the creature and sat around for another couple of minutes while it digested it took a surprisingly small amount of time than he originally thought it would but that must have been doing to his rampant hunger as even after he fully consumed the monster he was still hungry and he quickly went on to find even more monster to consume.

The majority of the monsters following that great food tub monster weren't as impressive in terms of size he could casually walk around grabbing them and scooping them up into his mouth as he continued on his path almost like a vacuum cleaner or rumba, none of the monsters would escape his stomach and eventually after a dozen or so monsters he could finally feel himself filling out a bit nothing too major but he could properly fit his pants now which was a definite plus, he heard of the comms that the mutants had successfully rescued the child which was good although there was a different on the loose so he should still keep a look out while he was snacking but Atomic remarked that he had a visual on the kid so maybe he could just focus on the buffet before him after all as he wandered down his path.

The monsters didn't put up much of a challenge; most of their blows simply bounced off his fat or were absorbed by it, allowing him to save them for later if there was some downtime between the monster waves, which he did. Some monsters started to actively flee away from him, making him extend the extra effort into chasing them down and consuming them, which only served to make him hungrier as he carried on.

He was momentarily surprised when the floor had been cut out from under him, he fell for around 15 seconds before he landed in a lake or pool of some kind he didn't know his head was barely above the water in his enlarged state he could touch the floor of the pool with his feet and he could see that just ahead of him were seemingly dozens of glowing eyes that lifted seemingly dropped down below the surface of the water, and soon after all along his body he had felt small nipping bites that picked at his skin it felt like a nice massage to his body he's heard about those fish spas that people would visit to have fish eat off dead skin cells and he wondered if this would be a similar feeling to that.

He was thankful for the monsters however the one thing he forgot to bring in his preparations was something to drink and the water around them in the pools seemed to be just the thing he needed to quench his thirst, so he dipped his head into the pool and started to inhale all of it, the water that flowed around the area started to flow directly towards him like a storm drain, the monsters that were biting at his body had all been forcibly pulled away from the forces of the suction straight down his gullet, by the time he has finished his drinking almost all of the monsters were completely wipe away and he was indeed fully quench from drinking the water as he felt somewhat satisfied for the first time that day.

There was another, however, a smaller crocodile creature. Was it smaller, or was he just bigger? He thought for a moment as he quickly turned around with speed, surprising the monster, hoisted it up by his hands, and began to swallow it whole. Just as he did so over his earpiece, he heard the voice of the sweet mask begging for help, and despite his current size, he was eager to go and help the man if he could, but just as he got up, he found his vision completely blacked out by something.

He felt the soles of his boots and his shirt begin to burn away, signaling what had happened to him—he had been eaten. Well that was unacceptable he thought as he pressed hard on the insides of the monster that had attempted to consume him hoping to stretch the creature to its very limit and burst free but likely knowing that it instead opted to throw him back up, he puked him up and pig god was furious as he growled like a rabid dog at the monster upon a casual glance he noticed that the creature was actually one of the cadres he remembered it from the briefing and his coms he could hear that sweet mask was encountering one as well and he needed assistance so he wanted to opt to make this as fast as possible to go and help but as he charged forwards at the monster and the monster met him in a mutual charge as both of them sizing each other up, pig god was surprised by the size of the monster as he had hoisted him up by his arms but instead of attempting to eat him again instead he threw him across the room where he slammed through two walls before sliding down to a stop.

He quickly picked himself up as the monster's heavy feet approached him with a guttural yell. The monster had no eyes or ears; could it have been by sound, which could explain why it let out that scream just then? However, he didn't hear that scream previously, so maybe it could have been from heat instead. He avoided the creature's rapid dash towards him, holding out his leg to trip the creature up as it did, so his tactic didn't work; instead, the monster dropped its mouth and attempted to bite his leg off, but the maneuver changed the creature's center of gravity as he avoided the bite and slapped the creature on the back with a full-force open-hand hit.

His only other method of attack was to use pure punches, but as the monster quickly recovered itself, stepping up, he figured that may not be enough as it charged back at him. He pretended to meet the charge head-on, only to sidestep the attack and chop down as hard as he could on the monster's back, only for his teeth to ache as he barely broke the skin of the monster in question. For his transgression, the monster hit him with a back smack that sent him spiraling head-first into a wall. His head was swimming from the impact, but he recovered enough to roll out of the way of the monster, whose mouth was agape, attempting to swallow him again but only got a mouth full of floor, which it eagerly swallowed without care.

Pig god recovered quickly and bounced back up to slam down multiple palm strikes along the creature's back forcing it downwards even more cracking the floor with each impact before it finally broke and the two of them started to fall downwards down to the next floor, he maneuvered himself while in mid-air to slam down directly on top of the monster as they crashed down through two more floors from their collective weight before finding purchase as the monster stopped itself and quickly managed to lift off again this time using it's power to shove them up through a floor and quickly whirled around and bit on to him with it's massive jaws unlike before the creature began to chew on him as he felt the monsters teeth bite into him multiple times his fats for the first time in what felt like forever had failed him as blood started to seep out and he could feel his legs nearly be crushed by the pressure. The entire room seemingly started to shake and move again, which offered Pig God some room to slip free, but the monster was relentlessly charging at him again, picking him up and swinging him away. Blood trickled down from his head from the wounds, but he still got up on shaky legs to face the monster charging his path.

---

A tricky enemy: Atomic disciples, Child Emperor

As the disciples continued their rampage down in the monster association they had thankfully not run into many enemies as strong as the long hair monster from before but they had run into a good amount of monsters and while weak through sheer numbers they started to take its toll on the three of them, there was seldom much to talk about amongst the three of them as they battled other than to check for any wounds or injuries one of them may have received also due in no small part that any conversation would eventually dwindle back to the topic of sweet mask and what's happening with him and what's his deal but the logic was always circular with them just throwing out random speculation that they couldn't confirm or deny.

The group had decided to pace themselves on their travels, ensuring to keep their stamina and form up to shape so that they could better combat the horde of monsters that awaited them in the next room. Unfortunately, they didn't bring any snacks or drinks to accompany them on the journey, so they would have to make do with being hungry and thirsty. It seemed too risky to poke around for food and any water that they did pass; they had to worry about it being contaminated or toxic to them.

They had just finished killing another monster as they continued to walk on their path; they didn't have much of an objective other than to get the monster off of the S-class back, and judging from the numbers they had killed so far, they were sure that they were doing a fine job of that. They continued forward to a rather lucrative hallway with seemingly locked vaults of who knows what but as long as they stayed locked its contents didn't concern them, they continued forward encountering some sort of checkpoint of kind none of there were two large guards present wielding dual kandabo's along with a plethora of smaller monsters, given that they had the element of surprise iaian instructed okamaitachi to use her wind blade to kill the two large guards first and they would then rush in to kill the rest, she followed orders as instructed and the plan went off without a hitch, the battle was mostly fast and over with before it began their blitzkrieg and teamwork making kick work of the small group of monster all besides one and this was partly because Sweet Mask started to blare over the comms begging for help against one of the cadres.

Iaian was so shocked by the sudden outburst that he missed his strike against the target body proper only managing to take the creature's arm forcing the group to give chase after it, they had a very brief conversation about the idol again since he popped up so suddenly, okamaitachi thought it was so hypocritical that he would beg for help while simultaneously being able to kill people without a second thought and while the others agreed with her, the man was still a hero in the end or hopefully, he was a hero and if he needed help someone should do so, he didn't recommend themselves, of course, fighting a cadre could be a tall order and if anything they would likely just get in the way, so when the mutants had stated that they would assist they were at least welcome of that the situation was resolved.

The voice did bring up questions revolving around why they weren't part of the mission proper, but they would leave that question until later. They chased down the monster, and unfortunately, it seemed to have opened up one of the safe rooms. The three of them approached the large vault and were shocked to see that inside was nothing but a large container of some kind.

Two large eyes floated along the container, and just below it was a facet of some kind that the monster was making its way towards. Okamaitachi let loose another wind blade, and she succeeded in cutting one of the creature's legs off, but it showed tremendous heart as it hopped towards the lever and pushed it forward with its last breaths.

The monster spoke about how they were too late and that he would let the worst and most uncontrollable cadre handle the rest, before pushing down on the lever and immediately releasing water out of the facets scattered about, from the water out popped fish that completely consumed the dying monster as more fish jumped out directly at them, the samurai were easily able to cut the fish down and deduce that they were not likely to be the cadre in question but whatever it was they didn't want to find out what it could be as they made a quick retreat out of the vault and attempted to close the door behind them.

Unfortunately, this proved fruitless as the water mass seemingly moved on its own accord and it was then they knew that the cadre was the water itself as two streams seemed to erupt from the mass, Iain reacted quickly raising his sword in an attempt to deflect the attack but he was stunned when the cost of that deflection was a curve section of his sword.

The three disciples instantly did a staggered retreat; they couldn't fully run with their backs turned, having to ensure that they kept an eye on the water stream being shot their way along with the fish being shot out of the water well. They managed to duck down into two separate alleyways to catch their breaths, but unfortunately for them, the atomic samurai had never taught them the technique of cutting water, so the task in front of them seemed impossible to overcome with the weapons they had now. The water seemed to have stopped moving forward, allowing them a moment to catch their breath, but Bushidrill had been on the opposite side of both Iaian and Okamaitachi, so he would need to cross over.

Iaian did a hesitant experiment to test the monster's reaction time as he threw two rocks out in int eh center of the room but the water didn't take the bait, meaning he had to give it something else, he poked his blade out but again it did not shoot, he was hesitant the water may have been smarter than they thought, he instead he opted for something else as he through a large crate instead while bushdrill started to swap sides, the older gentlemen got to about halfway before he took a glance at the monster and in that moment was when the monster struck at him, thankfully both okamaitachi and iaian was their to defend him deflecting with the back portion of their blades to better protect their weapons from the damage of the water jets.

The water continued to move after them down the hallway, and Bushidrill collapsed the entrance to the tunnel with his weapon to block it off, but it only managed to sow the monster down as it started to slip through the cracks and push through the debris. Their came spared once more, this time with a grimacing remark that Tank Top Master had fallen, which came as a surprise to many of them, but they worried that they soon would be next with the cadre hot on their tale. The only thing they could do was activate their emergency beacon and keep running as quickly as they could, or until their bodies failed them.

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Child emperor had spent his time walking around aimlessly searching the base for clues on where the child could be located he again resented his inability to protect the child and lead him to safety, he doubled back to his original position and checked the entire floor he was originally on to see if he could catch in wind of the boys whereabout unfortunately he didn't, so his next best conclusion was to case each floor as he traveled downwards.

He used the whole that he created with Brave Giant as an easy access point using his helicopter backpack to continue to proceed downwards checking the floor and going down further, he initially thought the robot that neith provided him would need some assistance in falling but he was pleasantly surprised to find that it wouldn't be the case other than simply cutting through the floor the machine also had microjets in the bottom of its feet that allowed it to make course corrections while in mid-air and give it an extended jump height.

The machine also came with its artificial intelligence; although he didn't speak to it much, it was able to take orders and confidently talk back, almost like it was an actual person. Fittingly, it's extinct; it seemed to go for an honorable warrior gimmick and would often engage any monsters they encountered in a one-on-one battle, not wanting him to interfere with their battle. True to form, the machine listened to him when it came to fighting; before it engaged a monster, it would ask him every time he wished for him to kill said monster, and he would often give the go-ahead, of course.

Although some of the more frightened monsters he would hold off and ask questions regarding the child if they had any information at all despite his nature he would spare the monster's life and send them towards the non-killing army his better judgment if he was being honest with himself however he was using Neith machine and her power for his benefit it was the last thing he could do to return the favor to her and her group, the monster didn't even fight anyways just cowards in the corner he guessed he would feel somewhat bad for killing them in that state, the monster association forces seemed to have been nearly exhausted it seemed despite the 2000 monsters present another scan of his satellite shows now it was less than 300 remaining and the numbers continued to twindle at a slow but steady rate.

There was an interesting phenomenon that happened on there travels where the two of them met face to face with a snake monster of some kind but the robot did not ask to engage or kill the creature like the rest instead telling him to remain calm and that it was a "friendly" one as the approached he also noticed some other monsters behind it, they gave him a wide berth but also readied themselves for a fight as they closed in on the other, the robot and the monster which went by apophis talked to each other and he listened in close to the conversation before the snake monster looked away for a moment stopping all conversation cold for several moments and seemingly zoning back into the conversation and remaking that "sol" found the child and is taking him back now, the robot seemed to agree to that and ask the snake what it will do now, he remarked that it will do one last round up and see if it could collect a few more monster before meeting up with sol and heading back up to the surface.

He was surprised by the conversation at hand when the voice of Sweet Mask over the coms asking for the assistance he quickly checked his map and tried to see where the man was located her was one of the closer heroes nearby him just a couple hundred meters away nearly and a couple of meters below but he wasn't going to be of much use in a fight against another cadre without his primary weapon, he could send his watchdog man or neith super bot over to help but they likely would only serve as a distraction thankfully the other non-killing army members could offer aid, he was shocked to hear that from king's disciple had defeated the monster king already and with tatsumaki having confirmed to take care of the advisor a lot of the heavy hitters have seemed to be defeated already which was good, now all they needed to do was continue on this path and victory would be assured to them.

There was a momentary sense of panic when the Sekingar signal pinged in distress, and he voiced over the communications that the cadre had made it to the surface before there was a moment of silence. The child emperor pressed the neith, not about the response that the army was making, but it remarked that they were bust dealing with another cadre, which got the child emperor confused. There were two cadres on the surface. Did they sneak past the others? He started to consider, but the robot declined his worries and remarked that the cadre was "contained," at least for now.

He didn't like the phrasing of that statement but decided to drop it for now before confirming what the two were talking about, and the hostage, the robot, confirmed that Sol, a large lion monster, was in her custody and being brought back up to the surface as they spoke. Well, at least that problem was taken care of, he thought as he decided on his next steps. He didn't know why they were separated; it could have been that they had gone after the kid instead while their master had dealt with the cadre he was facing, only to end up inadvertently running into another one, but that wouldn't explain their distance in terms of longitude and latitude being on several floors higher than where the atomic samurai was.

Never mind that he continued to forward towards the disciple's signal; he used to go as fast as he possibly could until he came to the room that they were in. Unfortunately, as he peered over the railing, he saw that all three of the disciples were down on the ground. The word no constantly repeated through his mind as he jumped over the railing to check up on them. He prayed that they were alive, and once he reached them, he breathed a sigh of relief as they were, but their wounds were so bad they would need to go topside soon so that they could be looked at or they would bleed out. He was able to beat the three of them before, but this

Iaian spoke up and told him that he needed to leave and that the cadre was still there and at that mention he looked to the side and was just able to dodge out of the way of an attack aimed directly at him, he felt the sprinkling of something touch his face as he dodged as he took a proper look at what attacked him, something started to slink in through the cracks of an adjoining door while it's main body slithered in through the large gap, it seemed to be a sentient being of water he could see how it could defeat the three sword saints however it didn't seem like a bigger threat than phoenix man he could take this thing down even with out brave giant he was fairly sure of it but first come first securing the three swordsman so as he dodged out of the way of another three water jets he unleashed three watchdog men from his backpack and ordered the three of them to take the swordsman to safety each of them understood and continued forwards.

Child Emperor was a bit worried that the watchdog men would be fired upon so he handed one of them his umbrella to cover for the other two but no shot was made against them as they went which was a curious display. The super unit machine provided that they wouldn't be under threat as the monster only responds to negative emotion, so the machine passed back his umbrellas just in time as multiple streams of water struck against the energy shield.

He used the shield as a barrier as buried to protect himself weathering the continued blast of water shot his way, he chuckled to himself and was curious if he could just turtle away in there forever while the being simply drained itself to oblivion or at least point where he could defeat on his own but the machine remarked again right beside him telling him the folly of such a plan due to the creature continuing to drain moisture from the air to replenish itself after five minutes of it blasting him, he questioned how the machine knew about that and it remarked that its database was updated with data provided by drive knight he has joined the battle and took care of the other cadre on the surface.

Well, at least that was a plus. Child Emperor thought that maybe he could call in Brave Giant again, but the target didn't feel like it was worthy of such hassle. He could figure out something else, and he was sure of it as his umbrella shield started to break. However, he may have had no other choice as the base started to shake once more, this time even more violently, to the point where it almost felt like it was floating upwards. The child emperor immediately asked the super drone to run after the three watchdog men, and the machine did so. He had an inkling that some girls were getting a little too cramped for the current environment.

End Notes: Well now we are finally getting back to the surface and to usher in the new transition we will be changing the title to The Final Battle from Part One. Mostly sticking to cannon with this chapter few changes, four cadres capture their fates in the hero's hands who else will survive?