Well, my internet was spotty for most of the day, I couldn't even access Discord all that well. But it seems to be better now, so I'm going to get this up before things can change.

Chapter 37: Cyclone Nine

The rooftop garden that the two found themselves in was a truly breathtaking place. Under the stars of the night sky, the few lights scattered around the place gave it a feel akin to a fairy tale, if Tensei was a younger man, he would guess that among the diverse flowers from across the planet that bloomed all colors of the rainbow that fairies were waiting to pop up and shower him with fairy dust.

But his focus wasn't on the clusters of bromeliads, or the lavenders, or the bamboo shoots that swayed in the nighttime ocean breeze. Instead, his eyes remained on the fellow occupant of the garden, someone whose form was bathed in the moonlight, and had emerald eyes that burned bright, a part of him wondered if those eyes had been the same when Pyre had torched his baby brother.

"What?" He asked, as that offer seemed too good to be true, and from the mouth of a villain, he surely was. It had to be.

Reaching for some of the flowers and some beautiful blue tulips, Midoriya replied. "You heard me, I want to fix what Stain broke. I want to give you your legs back."

"And I'm just supposed to believe that? You worked with that madman." Tensei asked, some bitterness seeping into his words as he recalled when he first woke up, and the dread that came when he couldn't feel his legs, only to be told he never would again.

Pyre still had his back to him, gently caressing the flowers, fireflies lifting off from their perches and adding a near ephemeral mystique to him. "I gain nothing from lying to you. If I meant you harm, I could have easily thrown you off the ledge and let the 40th floor drop do you in." Turning his gaze to him, his emerald eyes shined with honesty, if a little brutality.

"Or maybe I could just cast you to the flames, the garden is a wonderful place to end, wouldn't you say? The one place on this manmade island that isn't…fake." He turned around to the garden again, it had been a while since he was able to enjoy such a place, wasn't it? But then again, maybe nature was a better suit for him.

When Iida didn't counter him, he knew the man had seen reason. "As for Stain, I would say we didn't really work together, we just agreed not to kill each other then, though I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to take my life or the life of my friends should we run into each other again." Stain was still going around killing and maiming, last he checked, he had added another 4 heroes to his kills.

"Then why?" Iida asked him, as nothing of his conversation made sense. Hell, Pyre just being here made no sense.

"Because," Now, he turned to face him fully again, holding in his hands a bouquet he had just picked. Walking over to him, Pyre placed them in the man's confused hands. "You're a good person. I knew it the first time we met, it's why I don't agree with Stain's approach to things, why I stopped him from killing your brother."

Iida tensed at that last part, as sure, his brother was alive, but he was far from okay after the horror that was his encounter with Pyre. A part of him wanted to throw the flowers back in his face, yell at him for all he had done, but his calmer side came out the winner, allowing him to see that Pyre truly believed in his words, that as the reports said, he seemed incapable of understanding how fire and burning was anything short of a good thing.

His silence answered Pyre, who stepped back to give the man some space. "You don't trust me, do you?" Pyre smiled, not amused, but also not saddened or angry either. Rather, he seemed to be something completely different.

"I would be foolish if I did." Tensei saw no reason to lie.

"Yeah, I suppose that is true…" Pyre mused, his eyes drooping just a little. "But be honest, do you think I would lie about this?"

"I…" Iida started, but whatever he wished to say didn't form in his throat. "I don't know." His common sense said one thing, yet his instincts from years of hero work were saying another. And then there was his heart, which wished that this was true. He might have accepted that he'd be in a wheelchair, but that didn't mean he didn't still dream of running again.

Pyre picked up on that internal issue but didn't mention it. "Well, that's a start, and that first step is always important." He quietly said to himself.

"Say I take you up on your offer? What's stopping me from fighting you? Or are you going to only heal me if I agree to step aside and let you villains do what you please?" Tensei asked, looking for the monkey's paw in this wish.

"If I thought you would take such a deal, I wouldn't have made the offer." Pyre laughed at that question, if anything, if he thought Tensei was the type to throw away his morals like that, he would burn off his legs from the knee down just to prove a point.

"No, I can control how long it takes for my flames to have a healing effect. Normally, I have it be a few seconds, with your brother, I made it around 12 hours so he wouldn't forget the lesson." He revealed, that he had used his quirk plenty of times on his friends and they were up and about less than a minute after the fact, even when he demonstrated how he could feel a severed finger, which took about 20 seconds for his flames to regrow the last appendage.

Tensei ignored how the villain admitted that he made his brother's suffering prolonged 'to teach him a lesson' as Pyre continued, counting on his fingers as he did. "With you, I can set it to around 2 and a half hours. We should be done with what we came here to do by then, so you don't have to worry about not stepping in, since well-you won't be able to." Pyre thought that was a pretty sweet deal.

So too did Iida, but there were still questions he had to get answers to. "And what is it you want? What insanity would drive you to attack I-island during the expo?" As insane as the 5 Thunder were, they hadn't survived as long as they did by being foolish. No, there was a reason they were here, and a big one for them to take the risk of making enemies with powerful people from across the world.

"The client wanted something that the island is keeping from them, I don't know what that something is, only that they paid top dollar for us to help them acquire it." Pyre shrugged, turning his gaze up to the skies. One couldn't get a view like this back home, well he did when he lived in the shrine, or when the Thunder traveled through the country, but here with I-island being the sole source of light for what could be hundreds of kilometres in every direction, the dark sky was that much clearer.

"Who's the client?" Iida asked, as perhaps if he could gleam who hired them, they could figure out what they wanted.

"Nope, sorry!" Only for Pyre to shut that down, crossing his arms at the wrists as he shook his head. "Client-villain confidentiality is very much a thing in the underworld. I don't want to lose jobs because people think I'm willing to give up the ghost."

"So, you take jobs then?" That was in itself, information.

Pyre looked at him funny. "Of course we do, how do you think we make money? We just robbed the one bank the TV doesn't tell you how expensive it is to be a villain." He mutters that last part, as one couldn't survive through threatening people alone, that just made enemies.

"If you're looking for sympathy from me, you won't get it. If you truly wanted to make an impact in the world, going against the law, and hurting so many people wasn't the way to do it." Iida replied.

"I tried to be good, to color in the lines you know, tried for years." Pyre softly replied, his eyes trained on the floor. "But…I'm just not made that way, but is that wrong? Should I suppress myself just so people who hate me can live their lives? Don't I get to live, laugh, and love like they do, like you do?" He asked him a question he had wished to ask a pro for a while now.

"And yet you chose this path," Iida replied, though not with as much anger as he would have thought not even 5 minutes before.

When Pyre looked up at him, there was something broken in his gaze, shards of something that could have been beautiful now forever shattered by the world. With a bitter smile, he answered Iida's statement with a question.

"Was there any other for me?"

"Nine, you finished your side quest?" The radio went off as Nine pulled the last of the flash drives from the terminal.

"I did, how much time till I need to get into position?" Nine asked, looking at the fragile cargo he now carried before he placed it into one of the pouches on his person.

"6 minutes." The villain on the other hand replied, Nine doing the math in his head, nodded as he found that should be enough time as he turned to walk back to the elevator.

"Then send an elevator for me to the 178th floor." He requested, to which the man manning the security coughed.

"Why?"

"There's something that sparked my interest is all." Nine kept it simple, but not openly vague as they didn't trust one another all that much, but could work together.

Grumbling, the person agreed as nine watched as the elevator came back online. "Fine, but you get 3 minutes to go whatever it is you want."

"That would be plenty of time." Nine replied as he waited for it to arrive, when it did, he calmly stepped inside as the doors closed and it started to ascent, leaving no trace that he was ever in the server room. As he went up the extra floors, the white-haired man closed his eyes in thought.

'I don't know what you are, Crown of Aegis, but I'm eager to find out.' Someone that secretive, that it had to be kept in a room separate from the rest had to be valuable, if not in terms of wealth, then perhaps utility. Even if not, he couldn't imagine that something that was kept in a secret database away from the rest wasn't something that could spark interest.

When he reached the aforementioned floor, he found that that it was a much smaller room, though it had servers just as large as the other one, but just one terminal. Walking up to it, he was pleased to see that it seemed to have a similar security to the regular servers, so he pulled out one of his flash drives and plugged it in. It took a couple of seconds, but it started breaking through its firewalls.

'Good thing I can still use these to break through the security even if I can't download more to it.' Nine thought to himself as the last firewall was broken and he was granted access. With little time to explore the rest of the files, he went straight to searching for anything related to the Crown of Aegis, quickly finding quite a large file.

Clicking on it, his eyes widened when he started reading through it, from how it was created by the good doctor and his assistant, its intended goals, and how it cleared the first experiments without any harm to subjects, at least in short-term use. Reading through this, and remembering that this data was kept in a server room that the doctor couldn't access meant that he had enough clues to piece it together.

"Interesting…very interesting." He mused, smiling under the mask as he pulled out his flash and plugged it in, copying the data and transferring it, glaring when he saw that there was over 30GB worth of data and it would take time.

Time which could prove to be in short supply as the coms came alive again. "Heads up, a door on floor 80 just opened, it's from the emergency stairwell." Nine frowned when he heard that.

"What the hell, I thought you scanned all floors and it came back clear." He wasn't the only one unhappy with this as Swordkill was the next to speak up.

"It's a group of 8 people, they don't look like heroes." Their man controlling security reported though Nine wasn't so sure that 8 people could have just bypassed the sensors and cameras. Not without help, but from who?

"What do they look like?" Pyre asked over the line, Nine wondering what he had gotten up to earlier but trusting that he knew what he was doing.

"What?" Swordkill asked.

"Please answer the question." Pyre was polite, but firm as he made himself clear, the man who spotted them grumbled again about being told what to do by a kid, but he did as asked.

"They look young, one is a girl with pink hair and skin, and another is a short guy with purple ball-looking things on his head." Nine's brow creased, as he wasn't sure when, but he had seen people that matched that description, but where?

Pyre didn't have that issue, recalling them perfectly. "Don't underestimate them, if you're right about your descriptions, there are another 2 U.A. students," Pyre warned them, Nine's frown growing deeper as he looked at the transfer and saw that it was still 2 minutes from completion.

"Not the ones you say earlier?" Wolfram joined the conversation, speaking softly, probably to keep the hostages from suspecting anything had gone wrong.

"No, I saw 3 girls earlier, but with the size of the group, they could be there as well," Pyre replied, with Nine not doubting that as the odds that 2 groups of U.A. students wouldn't in truth be one was low to put it lightly. Those 3 girls earlier had the creation quirk, a gravity quirk that seemed to drastically augment one's physical power, and ear lobes that could extend and be controlled like whips.

He wasn't the only one that was now on guard with this. "Boss, your orders?" Swordkill asked.

"Use the barriers to trap them on that floor, I'll send some people to head them off," Wolfram ordered, Nine looking at the transfer, seeing that it still wasn't done.

"Should we proceed with things?" Nine asked.

Wolfram could have been mulling over it, he couldn't be sure as there was a pause before he got a reply. "Yeah, we don't want any complications."

"Just send an elevator for me and I'll head for the 200th floor, I've done what I wanted." Nine felt like he heard a hint of Pyre being pleased with himself with that comment, but now wasn't the time to ask about such as he waited for the transfer to finish, so he too could head for the top and get to work.

Ignorant to the fact that they had not only been spotted but that the villains were wise to their identities as U.A. students, the group that consisted of Uraraka, Yaoyorozu, Ashido, Jiro, Kaminari, Mineta, Todoroki, and Mellisa ran down a hallway on the 80th floor.

"Is there another way to go up?" Todoroki asked as the group ran.

"There should be another emergency stairway we can use, though I can't be sure if hasn't also been locked off," Mellissa replied, though she was the sweatiest out of them, but she wouldn't complain or even ask they slow down, not when every second counts.

"Well, it's better than nothing," Jiro added, almost as out of breath as the older scientist, but her words proved to be difficult as the security gates in front of them sealed, it wasn't just the one but all the gates, starting from the furthest one.

"Crap, they know we're here!" Kaminari cried out.

"The ones behind us too, they're trying to box us in!" Yaoyorozu looked the way they came and saw the same thing. Thinking fast, Uraraka recalled her finals and what she had learned from it before she saw that just on the other side of a gate, there was a smaller door, it was sealed, but it could be their ticket out.

When the gate started to close, she made her call. "Todoroki!"

"On it!" Todoroki didn't wait as he sent out his ice, growing it large enough that it jammed up the gate halfway, which gave Ashido space to jump over it and slide towards the doorway, her nice evening shoes which she borrowed by Yaoyorozu destroyed by her quick but hey, she didn't know how to fight in heels to begin with.

"Sorry about this, but," She gathered up her acid between her hands, before she threw the blob at the door, the acid doing its job and starting to melt through the thick metal plate. "We need a way out!" Adding to it, when she reached she threw more acid to speed up the process. But by the time the rest reached, she had melted through most of it, giving them an out of the hallway.

"Let's move it, people!" She waved them through. The group didn't hesitate as they rushed on in, finding that in contrast to the white, barren hallway they had been in, this place was a large, wide-open space, so big that they wondered how the heck it could fit into a tower. All over the place was green thanks to the hundreds if not thousands of plants ranging from shrubs to trees that dotted the place.

"What is this place?" Uraraka asked.

A little short on breath, Melissa replied. "It's the plant factory, it's where they test the effects quirks have on different species of plant to better understand how to create stronger fauna." Jiro stopped them halfway through, pointing towards the central point to which they were running.

"Wait, look. The elevator's coming up." They could see the screen above the thing counting up, which terrified them.

"I thought it was on lockdown," Mineta asked.

"It should be, which means the only ones that could use it…" Mellissa didn't need to finish the sentence, they all understood as Uraraka pointed towards some bushes off to the side.

"Let's hide, we're not trying to pick fights." She didn't need to say it twice as the group dashed into them, being sure to not break branches or disturb them too much else they give themselves away. Right as Kaminari vanished into the bushes with them, the elevator door opened.

Watching 2 villains walking out, on the lookout for them, Kaminari looked towards the elevator itself. "Hey, can we use the elevator to get to the top floor?" He asked, keeping his voice down.

Mellissa shot the idea down. "Only authorized people can use the controls and the villains' control who are authorized right now. Besides, it's built like a bomb shelter so we couldn't even break and try and override whatever they did"

"Not to mention that if we're spotted while riding it, we'll be trapped." Todoroki eyed the structure with suspicion.

"Of course, we can't take the easy way up," Mineta complained as the villains continued to search for them,

"Quiet, we don't want to give ourselves away." Jiro reminded them, as they couldn't be sure that the villains didn't have good hearing, even if they kept it down.

"And then what? We can't use the elevator, and we can't go back the way we came." Ashido asked, as the elevator was the best ticket, but turns out taking it would be impossible and super risky.

"If we can get to the upper levels, we could try another route." Mellissa pointed up, as the plant factory took up 5 levels within the tower, with entry points on all of them.

"Great idea, but how are we supposed to do without being seen?" Kaminari asked, only for the conversation to be ceased when the villains spoke up.

"Hey, we see you, stupid kids!" Kaminari closed his mouth and clamped his hands over it, fearful that he had been the one to give them away as the rest started to sweat.

"Dammit." Todoroki cursed, as the last thing they needed was a fight.

"Get ready to fight, guys." Uraraka reminded them that what they didn't want could easily be what they got.

"What you say, you bastard?" Someone else replied to the villains, surprising them as they thought they were the only ones there. Peaking out from their cover, they saw the villains weren't looking in their direction but towards two people they didn't think they'll see.

"Bakugo…and Kirishima?" Uraraka asked.

"What the hell are they doing up here?" Jiro asked as those two had been late to meeting them earlier. What, did they arrive and decide to explore the tower before the tower, or did Bakugo decide to just blow them off and Kirishima had just been along for the ride?

"What you two doing here?" One of the two villains asked.

And of course, Bakugo reacted to the question with aggression. "That's what I want to know too, you two don't look like you work here."

"Hey man, cool it, okay? Let me handle this." Kirishima stepped in front of him before he could pick a fight with them, turning to them, he seemed apologetic, which made no sense as Kirishima was a terrible actor. "Sorry about this, we got lost looking for the party. Could you point us in the right direction so we can get out of your hair?"

"The party?" Mellissa asked.

"How bad is their sense of direction that they ended up on the 80th floor looking for the reception?" Mineta wondered aloud, though he wasn't the only one as that was either an extremely poor deception, or Kirishima just had that terrible a sense of direction, but why would be…wait, did those two know what was happening?

"Don't lie to us!" If they didn't know before, they knew now as one of the villain's hands grew, similar to that one girl from class 1-B, but instead of just being an enlarged fist, his hands seemed to shoot out some sort of blast of air.

"Hey, watch out!" Bakugo yelled at the unsuspecting Kirishima, but before it could hit, a flood of ice came pouring out from their cover, protecting Kirishima and cutting the villains off from them.

"Todoroki?" Bakugo asked, surprised to see them all there, but Todoroki didn't have time to explain things, not when he had the means to get them moving again.

"The three of us can keep them busy, the rest of you need to keep moving!" Todoroki sent his ice to his friends, not freezing them, but instead creating an ice platform which they were on, lifting it higher towards the walkways above them. As Bakugo questioned him on what was happening and told them about the villains, said villains broke through Todoroki's ice, though instead of smashing through it, it was like the taller of the two merely waved his hand and the ice vanished, leaving perfect circular holes.

"Not bad, looks like the brat was right about you." The shorter of the two villains started as he activated his quirk, his size drastically increasing, muscles bulging out and his hair grew into a large shaggy mane while his skin turned a deep purple.

"Brat?" Todoroki asked as that was an odd way to refer to whoever was their source about them.

"You can ask him yourself after we've beaten you!" The skinnier of the two laughed as he jumped at them, avoiding Todoroki's ice as the big guy just charged straight through it, his fists shattering it as the 3 boys found themselves in a fight.

"Boss, we found another 2 students." Wolfram reached for his com, having taken a seat on one of the tables.

"Great, was this tower crawling with them, are they being held off?" He muttered to himself, as they knew that some were here, but it seemed like the idea that an entire class had shown up on some sort of school trip was building up steam.

"No, those two we sent to deal with them let most of them pass," Swordkill replied, sounding irritated with the lack of success, a feeling the man shared.

"They're fighting upwards, right? Then they probably know that they need to retake the security." Pyre noted, as it wouldn't make sense for them to be going up the tower if they were trying to secure it, or even escape.

"Deploy the drones on the 80th to 85th floors, but leave the way clear from the 86th to the 130th," Wolfram ordered.

"What?"

"Just do it," Wolfram replied, calm as ever as he started thinking of a means to trap more of those brats, as the upper levels had plenty of specialized rooms, they could take advantage of. "Nine, Pyre, are you ready?"

"Naturally," Pyre replied, as he and Nine stood on the very roof of the tower, the breeze of the ocean passing over even as far up as they were. Both had removed their masks to take in the sights, but with them, they had brought up some tanks housing flammable materials from the labs. "Oh, get ready for a real show, I've never done this before!" Pyre gushed out.

"Pyre, remain focused." Nine looked towards the skies, picturing the size and power of the storm that he needed to create, and then maintain.

"I am focused, just excited." Pyre's eyes shined emerald right as Nine's glowed red, the man tapping into his quirk that gave him control over the skies. Within seconds, the once peaceful skies started to rumble as dark clouds formed from nothing, soon the entire island and the seas as far as one could see were covered in the rumbling clouds, lighting racing through them before it started to rain.

It started light, a drizzle but it only increased in intensity till it was pouring, but even then, it didn't stop as the downpour only grew worse, the winds picking up till what felt like a storm had just crashed into the island, people indoors looking out their windows, wondering what was causing this, but not much else.

Their worries only grew worse when Nine held his hand up, and then brought it down. with what should have been a simple command, lightning streaked out of the dark clouds, crashing into the seas around the island, a few strafing the island, smashing into empty paths and streets, each landing like an explosion.

Feeling the strain of using his quirk, Nine held back a cough or wheeze of pain, but that vanished when he was bathed in emerald flames. The familiar, comforting burning was a welcomed alternative to what unusually felt like his very cells tearing apart when he used his quirk. Seconds later, he was out of flames courtesy of Pyre, fresh as daisies as he kept up the storm, increasing the winds to add to it.

"I need more moisture in the air, Pyre." Nine told him, as while it was summer and the ocean was warm, he was pulling up most of the moisture that was already present just to keep up the rain, but they needed to make this into a tropical storm, akin to a hurricane as Wolfram had asked.

"I thought you'd never ask." Pyre giggled as he shifted into his second form, walking towards one of the large canisters, marked with all the proper signage to inform even a child that it housed propane, he smashed it open with a punch, causing its contents to explode into a fiery orange fireball, even with all the rain falling on them.

That fireball was easily consumed by Pyre, who brimming with fuel, opened his jaws so wide one would wonder if he even had hinges on it. At the very depths of his core, his emerald flames came to light, being fed by the copious amounts of air that he was breathing in like a supercharged vacuum. Letting the flames be fed, the inferno within him reached its apex before Pyre aimed for the skies.

"Boa Flame!" From his jaws, poured a firestorm given shape, twisting and curling into the form of a gigantic emerald snake, its open jaws as if it was about to bite onto a tasty snake. The flames made its massive body immensely hot that they could have easily melted anything on the island should Pyre have pleased, but as much as he wished to see the place in flames, they had a job to do.

Not a single soal would see the massive snake, as with the stay-indoors orders and the massive storm Nine was controlling, most wouldn't think more of the light outside as merely lighting in passing overhead. Once the snake had flown 200m straight up, Pyre directed it to crash into the waters just beyond the boundaries of the island. As always, his flames obeyed as they made a U-turn mid-flight as the 15m long infernal snake barrelled into the ocean, instantly evaporating thousands of liters of water and heating thousands more to near boiling.

It was an impressive move, but it was far from the last as Pyre's jaws remained open as he sucked in even more air, before repeating the action. Not even 15 seconds later, another serpent of flames, even larger than the first at 17m crashed into the ocean with a giant steam explosion, the sound masked by the lighting that continued to crash into the island and ocean, the tens of thousands of liters of water feeding into the storm, increasing the downpour to the point if someone where to step outside, they wouldn't be able to see 10m in any direction.

Blasting Nine with flames to heal him, and then smashing open another propane tank to keep his flames fed, Pyre's stone face smiled the best it could. The boy let out a booming laugh as he blasted out another Boa flame, the biggest of them so far, this one being over 25m long and bursting with its heat as the snake itself seemed to share in his joy as it careened into the water.

Yup, this was late, but I didn't want to cut things early and post an unfinished chapter. With Pyre and Nine, we finally see part of what their role was that Wolfram was talking about a while back, but is this their only part? Throwing up a storm to cover them?

Next chapter should be out on Setember 18th.

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