monster hunter is to blame for this delayed chapter, blame capcom ;p

Denji was whistling a jovial little tune.

In a lackadaisical manner, Denji trodded over, batting away occasional scraps of floating debris that floated in front of him as he did so. No point in puttin' too much effort into getting over there, he felt pretty anemic already, didn't help that big spike dude's blood tasted like crap. Maybe eating that hand wouldn't have been that bad…

"Meh, probably just taste like shit anyways."

Squelch!

Something very wet just got stomped on by his right food. Looking down at a snail's pace, Denji saw an unidentifiable bloody organ, which was now decidedly external, underneath his foot. Looking up and following the path of crimson, Denji could see the blurry outlines of a massive figure lumbering away from him. Looking down again, he checked himself out like a middle schooler on their first date.

Hmm… yeah his chainsaws are still sharp as ever. So–Wait, yeah girls don't like gore or something right?

"Crap… Are the girls gonna like me if I'm covered in guts?"

Denji felt the air getting hotter around him. That's weird… he didn't realize someone was near the area.

A voice too confident for Denji's liking made its way into his ears. "...Were you involved in this incident?"

Denji looked to his right, got a faceful of muscled chest, and looked up slowly. A flaming mane of hair adorned the muscled man's face as he stared sternly into Denji. The dude was giving him the stare he'd seen plenty of asshole adults give cuz they got mad at him for just walking near 'em as a kid. Honestly, did he have a fucking asshole attractor on him today?

"...Well?"

Course, Denji just didn't want to fucking get distracted from his noble heroic duties 'gain, so he just shook his head.

"Nah! I got caught up in Ch–the monster's fight. Cuz I'm a hero. A big one, too! You might have heard of me."

Denji pointed to himself with a goofy smile on his chainsaw face, which was still dripping blood directly onto Endeavor's shoe.

Internally, it took a moment for Denji's brain to realize that the man wearing a superhero suit was probably a superhero. Meh, the dude was probably just some rescue grunt or whatever Shiggy was babbling on about in the debrief.

Endeavour sighed deeply after the long pause in their staring contest, glancing sideways toward where the hulking unknown was whilst still keeping the obvious villain in front of him in his sight. Focusing his eyes back, the boy had switched to a neutral, and slightly defiant pose as looked up at him. The ground and rubble underneath him blackened as he raised his external flames.

His right hand erupted in white-hot flames as he narrowed his eyes, "You are going to have to come with m–"

Bwomp!

Purple mist covered the blood-soaked boy in front of him, and he disappeared before Endeavor could blink.

"..."

Endeavour slowly took out his receiver and put in his biometrics. And here he was hoping he wasn't going to have to talk to Nighteye. Well, to be fair nobody on the hero side of things really wanted to deal with a man who constantly berated them and compared their every action to the nearly monolithic man known as All Might. Him, least of all.

…

Ah, his phone just pinged.

Message not received! We will continue sending the signal until it's reached.

Wonderful.

Denji blinked, and then he was in a messy tiny apartment room. His saws slowed down as he realized that the portal guy brought him here, he was just about to kill that guy too…

"Denji. What the fuck happened?"

Waving off the mist from his body, Denji made a grunt as he turned to Shigaraki. The young leader was in considerably worse condition than before the fight, he might have even been missing one of them weirdo hand things on his body. He was kinda stingy with them and got pissed at any comment… Denji really didn't want to get into another shouting match with the guy. The dude was even sitting in a way that visibility showed his exhaustion. Wasn't his whole thing to just go in for a final kill and then book it immediately?

"Uh… I think Chisaki ate some Trigger or whatever the thing was and he powered up. I died really quick, so I didn't see nuthin, then I got busy with some random hobo attacking me…"

Shigaraki turned still and decided to ignore his one thousand and counting urges in his body to kill Denji and elaborated on his initial question. "You're sure that Chisaki only ate the Trigger? Nothing else?"

"Uh… Yeah?" Denji scratched his head with his left arm saw, leading to a very unpleasant metal on metal sound.

Screech, Screech.

"Trigger is supposed to buff someone, but he went through an entire third fucking boss phase. The deal we cut with that westerner didn't mention any of this. Damnit…"

Pretending to follow along, Denji coughed and mentioned quietly, "Oh, that cult porcupine guy had some too. But he was pretty easy to kill."

Shigaraki's pupils flicked toward Kurogiri. "Right, Sensei's insiders said that Tadashi's body was bloated and messed up, like Chisaki."

Oh, damn how long was he out?

Kurogiri sighed. "Well, judging from the lack of response from that Trigger merchant, he's either dead or long gone. We won't be getting any answers from him."

Looking curiously at Kurogiri, Denji saw that the man's dark fog seemed more transparent than normal, and despite his ever perfect posture and way of speaking, he could see slight tremors underneath all the mist. Oh yeah, the dude was only supposed to do one last teleport for the day. Was it even the same day?

Shigaraki sighed even harder than he did normally. Reclining his head further back to crack his neck, he relaxed. "Something's wrong. The level of buffs here turned a guy with a technical quirk to that of an instant Tartarus execution case. Tadashi might have been strong, but he could barely flip over a car, he couldn't do shit with any true powerhouses."

Kurogiri hummed, "Yes, and I believe Tadashi would not willingly take a drug that would so… completely rearrange his body."

"Ugh!" Kurogiri and Shigaraki looked up in confusion at the sudden interjection, and saw the shirtless and covered in blood boy rummaging through the refrigerator looking for some snacks. A puddle that used to be his chainsaw laid out in a rapidly disappearing puddle underneath him, leaving behind only blood as it evaporated. Pausing, he looked back at the two and coughed, "Uh, where's um… Magne and Twice?"

"We sent Twice back to the bar. We can't risk him breaking a bone, and we should have bailed out of this fiasco the moment shit went haywire. His tracker was easy enough to locate."

Denji returned to the fridge.

Kurogiri quietly added, "And Magne is… missing."

Denji blinked.

"Are ya sure? She was right next to Twice."

"The tracker we put in her shirt is broken, and we haven't gotten any reports of her being found yet. Hosu as a whole is basically in an emergency state right now."

"Nom," Denji took a bite out of some expired and uncooked sandwich and swallowed it in one go. He scratched his head and then cursed at himself as his eyes widened, "Fuck! Then the girl I dumped onto her is missing too."

…

Shigaraki stared intently into Denji.

"Denji, if you rescued some random fucking NPC, I–"

"IT WAS A KID! She was being tossed around by some Yakuza dude!"

Shifting his body painfully, the recumbent man gingerly moved his hands to his hidden pockets. Shigaraki carefully took out his burner phone, looked at the time, and then glanced at the only battle-ready league member, who was still chewing stale and moldy bread.

"Denji, Kurogiri is gonna have enough juice to teleport us back to headquarters in thirtyish minutes. But he'll have to do it at the same time with all of us. If you aren't here in that time range, we're going without you, and we'll try to break you out when we have the manpower."

Denji got the cue. "Fine, dude. I'll kill Chisaki and bring back Magne and the girl. I getta buy a whole load of whatever shit I want after, though."

Denji swallowed the last bit of tough bread, and it sank to the bottom of his intestines. Giving a small sigh of relief at finally gnawing through the bread, he turned around and–

Smack!

He paused before he got to the balcony of the apartment as Shigaraki threw something wet at the back of his head.

Scowling, Denji looked behind and paused at a bag of blood at his feet. Looking up, Shiggy shrugged. "Meant to give you this before we started. Whoops?"

"..."

"...We put some sugar in it to make it taste sweeter?"

Picking it up, Denji gave him the middle finger, before using that finger to pull his ripcord and do a back dive off the balcony. The whirring of chainsaws grew dim, and Shigaraki gave out a sigh of relief as he leaned back in the patchwork recliner.

"Thirty minutes is a short timeframe."

He rolled his eyes open and leaned toward Kurogiri. "Eh, he's good. Besides…" he held his heart rate steady as he looked at his now scratched porcelain hands stuck on his body, "I have full faith in Magne anyways. Just wanted him to cause a ruckus for her to clean up."

"I see."

Ibuprofens didn't work, and acetaminophens didn't make the sensations any more pleasant either. Mirai was just going to have to deal with the constant massive headache akin to someone cracking at his skull with an ice pick every time the devil "helped" him out. He'd be fine with that if the mental guest wasn't making some snarky comment at his expense every five seconds.

"I really am helping you out, y'know."

Sasaki gritted his teeth. It seems that the only good thing about a demolished city district was that nobody could see you talk to yourself. "All you've been telling me is that everyone in Squad Alpha is alive. If you want to be so useful, tell me who the hell did all of this, and how I can stop it."

"Spoilers!"

Hmm…

Maybe… no, he can't do that. Bashing his skull in would only hamper his combat abilities for this mission and it probably wouldn't harm the devil. Though, it would be a little funny.

"Heh…"

"...Your sense of humor is weird, man, and that's coming from ME! Like, why do you have a portable tickle mac–"

"KOFF KOFF KOF– HAAAAAACK!"

Sasaki suddenly needed to clear his throat, as he coughed VERY loudly and ignored the immediate raucous laughter in his brain.

He sighed.

He needed to hurry this up, his colleagues would get suspicious if he was out alone for more than a few minutes. He really was just sprinting in seemingly random directions, and saying that you have a nigh omniscient devil living in your forehead doesn't do you any favors to the bigwigs. Plenty of heroes have been demoted and even fired for doing nothing in disaster zones so they could take credit for partaking in "heroism." Being a past sidekick to the number one hero didn't mean you were safe from scrutiny. Far from it, actually.

"Turn left in twenty feet, and you'll reach your destination soon. Just do what you would normally do and I won't step in."

Ignoring the obvious threat given by his mental tenant, Sasaki turned left into only a moderately damaged alleyway.

"Ah," Sasaki said as his eyes widened a fraction at the sight in front of him.

A little girl, nearly bone thin, was curled up in a corner. One small horn was poking out of her off-white hair, as she was sitting down next to a curled up and bleeding woman. The child was deathly pale, likely a combination of naturally fair skin and the toll of the recent hours catching up to an innocent child. He had to force himself to ignore that, as visible spikes of stones were embedded deep into the adult woman's arms and torso, thankfully they only seemed shallow and deep. And if her consistently moving chest was anything for consideration, it meant she wasn't a hair's breadth from dying like he originally assumed.

Sasaki clenched his fists before digging them frantically into his pockets to remove a miniature first aid kit–thank god he decided to bring it with him– and rushed to the woman's side.

Her tired eyes flicked over to Sasaki now that he had made his presence visible. "My hero name is Sir Nighteye, please stay still as I try to treat you."

Underneath the cracked and dusty sunglasses, Magne almost looked through him. "...Alright…"

Not the worst thing he could find in the alleyway, but Sasaki could already tell he was going to need a day off after this.

"I'll leave the rest to you for the time being. I need to… check the schedule."

…Okay–

Ring, ring!

Endeavor was paging him.

This was going to be a long, long day.

Izuku was having a terrible, no good, just awful day.

"Khh! C'mon…" he panted hard. "Just get in– Phew!"

Izuku nearly fell to the ground in exhaustion, only narrowly missing scraping his broken left arm on the sidewalk again. Recovery Girl is probably going to beat him unconscious again. It was easier to focus on the pain than on what to do. His signaller and Gran Torino's signaller both weren't receiving any responses, and his signal was out, something which he knew meant the damage to the city had been far more than just that block if even his satellite signal wasn't working.

He had seen an ambulance truck blare its sirens as it rushed through the street, though only vaguely, as at the time he was still in shock from the ground underneath him turning into liquid asphalt.

…

Izuku vaguely heard the sound of a building toppling over in the distance.

There were still rumblings in the city. Wincing slightly, Izuku gave a small huff at Gran Torino snoring. Glancing back for immediate danger, he pulled out a tiny cartridge in his pockets. He originally got it for no real reason other than that it was an antique tool older heroes would often use. But, Ochako did tell him he had too basic of a costume…

He fired his red flare into the sky and looked at the starry night.

"Oh, I hope your first mission won't be too dangerous, sweetie!"

"Sorry, mom."

He had a villain to beat.

That was a cool fuckin' exit he made. If only there were people around that saw him do that.

"Eck, just get in!"

Ugh, why were these pockets so small? The bag of blood wasn't even that big! Who designs pockets to not fit shit!?

His jeans now bulged out like a moron. Whatever. Babes probably won't mind it as long as they focus on his abs. Hmm… maybe Shigaraki could help him do his official Chainsaw Man reveal to the public? They'll call him the fuckin' uh…. Hosu savior or something.

Before that deranged thought continued, Denji perked and stretched his body as he saw his target a few yards away. Scratches and scrapes covered its body along with layers of dust and miscellaneous minor debris. The only real noticeable difference in the chicken giant was its sinister beak being misshapen and bent toward its own left as if someone bent it like a plastic spoon.

His expression dropped slightly as he saw some not quite completely destroyed buildings near Chisaki, everyone was probably dead or gone already. But…

"Hey, devil knockoff! Over here!"

He was ignored.

"Tsk! ...Alright! No more Mr. Nice Chainsaw!"

Chisaki looked confused and turned toward Denji. For his confusion, he got a face full of car.

KABOOM!

The pulverized truck exploded as it collided with the faux beak of Chisaki, blinding it momentarily and leaving superficial burns. Sputtering and swatting the air clumsily, it screeched loudly toward the boy who threw a literal truck at it. Unfortunately for it, it didn't look down.

"I'M HUNGRY FOR SOME CHICKEN FEET!"

After slicing off hunks of flesh off Chisaki's ankles, Denji began his trek up the leg of the giant using saws emerging from his feet like a rabid squirrel. Pretty bad idea though, since the second he reached the knee, Denji was kneed through the still standing first floor of a building into the ground, collapsing the former apartment building.

The sheer force of the impact sent Chisaki stumbling back, a fortunate result compared to Denji who was busy coughing up his intestines and ribcage bits.

"Gnngh…"

Feeling for his cord, he accidentally took a look at his detached lower half. Denji would have scowled if not for his destroyed lungs, and of course, the fucking bag of blood exploded!

Snnk…

As his torso reconnected itself with a chain, he lapped up blood from his hand and made a sound of approval. It tasted like syrup! Standing up slowly and twisting his back to make sure his spine was on right, he stretched back and smiled.

"Yum!"

Scratching the complex machinery in the back of his head, he walked through the now shattered glass door and lapped off the last bit of the sweet blood off of his fingers. Denji stiffened and he slowly turned to his right, where he locked eyes with a kid with seaweed hair.

"Um… a-are you alright sir?"

Sounding like an engine sputtering, Denji coughed and put on his hero voice. "Of course I am. I'm Chainsaw Man!"

Denji didn't notice the younger boy's eyes not looking at his dramatic heroic pose but rather at the miscellaneous intestines on the ground that had been inside of him a few seconds ago.

"Um–" Izuku's face turned a lighter shade of green than his hair for a few seconds before swallowing down the bile.

"Do you have a sister that needs saving?"

"Wha– Um, no I don't," shaking off his confusion, Izuku continued. "Are you sure you're okay? Your… bits are on the floor."

Waving off Izuku's concern with his saws nonchalantly, he just stretched and popped his back. "Don't need 'em."

Izuku stared at the (still warm) bits of Denji meat on the floor, ignoring about half a semester of hero training. The ground under him shifted, and he glanced forward a little to see the giant klutz of a chicken finally get up.

"SsSsSsssSSSsSSkkKKKKkrrRrrrAaAaAAaaAAAAAAaAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaAaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

He could probably fry this doofus, but he just drank all of his last blood. Well, Denji usually had a good eye for people who could fight, and if he was right about this guess…

"Yer the one who beat up that big bird's beak right?"

Izuku snapped away from analyzing the monster and cleared his throat in trepidation. "Yes…?"

"Umf!" Popping his left elbow back in place, Denji was 100% again. "How 'bout I slice off those arms of his, and you rap him in the skull?"

"Uh–"

The poor boy was cut off from completing his question about if such brutality was needed, and if he was really a hero, as Denji had scuttled off already.

"Dangit."