A/N: Here we go continuing the heroes' arc against the Sinister Six.
I'm also proud to announce that my editor and I have finished going over my outline for the final version of my action/adventure novel. Look forward to seeing the first three chapters posted on my FictionPress once the final draft is complete.
My Hero Academia: Heroes Across Dimensions – Part 1
No. 4 – Four vs. Six
Spider-Man was already in midair, dodging taser shots from Mysterio's gauntlets, before he had even finished alerting his new teammates. Their responses came back in short order, revealing that each one of them had found at least one of the villains they had been searching for. With their statuses reported, everyone went radio silent, each needing to focus on the fight they now found themselves in.
Mysterio continued his assault with his taser gauntlets, now adding hovering drones armed with small machine guns to the mix. Spider-Man ducked and weaved around the bullets as they flew through the air, returning fire on the drones with his webs, wrapping them up and pulling them together to destroy them. The Lizard jumped forward, engaging Spider-Man in close combat, while Mysterio floated past them and called more of his drones in from deeper in the facility. Spider-Man crawled around Lizard's body, avoiding his claws, and then shot a web at Mysterio to prevent him from escaping.
Todoroki flew to the left reflexively, narrowly dodging the blast of electricity that Electro threw at him; he felt the hair on his body stand on end, and the heat of the lightning warm his face. Electro surged forward towards the young hero-in-training, but Todoroki unleashed a massive wave of ice to block him. The frozen bolts and the man at their center began to spark; the ice began to steam and boil; the erratic lattice of frost exploded, as Electro broke free and continued his assault.
The young hero and the older villain danced through the sky above New York, sending discharges of fire, ice, and lightning in all directions. The superpowered men minded their surroundings, each trying to drive the other against the walls of the buildings while avoiding getting boxed in themselves.
Before the armored men could step forward, Bakugo was already in the air, flying towards them; he detonated an explosion from each of his hands upon arriving in front of his targets, one for each of them. The Rhino and Scorpion pushed through the explosive blasts, the former charging the boy, while the latter struck with his mechanical tail. Bakugo quickly used his explosions to rapidly shift his position, evading their attacks; he landed with his feet planted on the truck they were using to escape, and then rocketed forward, setting off more explosions as he passed them by, before rebounding again off a nearby wall.
The armored men had a hard time keeping up with the blonde boy's movements, but he wasn't making any progress in damaging them either. Bakugo's fourth flyby had him meet a close call with Scorpion's tail, as the green-clad villain tried to grab him; his opponents were learning the timing of his movements, meaning he couldn't keep this up any longer; it was time to change strategies.
Deku stared down his adversary, looking up at the sunglasses-wearing man who had positioned himself high in the air using his mechanical tentacles. The criminal scientist removed the goggles and put them away in his tattered trench coat, giving the boy his undivided attention.
"Doctor Octavius, please stop this! Weren't you once a brilliant scientist!?" said Deku, trying to reason with the man, but keeping his guard up and maintaining the power of his Quirk.
"What do you know about me, boy!?" the older man snapped back.
"Only what I've heard; that you were in an accident that left those arms fused to your body. Isn't there any way you can stop being a villain, and use your science for the good of the world again?"
"You naïve child; my science is for the good of the world! That's why I need to finish my work at any cost! Now, step aside!"
"I can't do that! I don't want to have to fight you, but I can't let the cost you're willing to pay be the lives and livelihoods of innocent people!" declared Deku, lowering himself into a fighting stance as a final warning.
"Well, unfortunately for you, I don't have such reservations!" yelled Doc Ock, as one of his mechanical tentacles swung toward the young hero.
The mechanized limb hit hard, rattling the air from the impact, but was stopped cold in its tracks; to the Doctor's surprise, the green-clad boy had caught the appendage in his arms. With a twist of his torso, Deku yanked the tentacle, pulling the man at the end of it forward; Doc Ock tried to resist by burrowing two of his mechanical tentacles into the sidewalk, but the boy proved strong enough to tear tri-part robotic hands out of the ground, and send the Doctor flying to the other side of the street.
Ock's arms caught him before he hit the ground; he turned around to find the boy standing in a fighting stance, ready to continue if need be. "I suppose I shouldn't take you lightly, boy," he said, as he lowered himself to the ground and prepared all four of his mechanized limbs to attack.
A thick wall of webbing obstructed the hallway, the result of Spider-Man having shot several web grenades down the corridor to cut off his enemies' escape; the illusionist and the reptile had traded places several times, neither one of them able to make much headway through the silk-steel material while the other kept the arachnoid hero distracted.
The thinner webs were far easier to deal with for the Lizard, in particular, as he tore the threads off of his body just as fast as Spider-Man shot them. The reptilian villain was not some mindless beast, but still a highly intelligent, accomplished scientist at his core; he bided his time during their exchange, waiting for the opportune moment to turn the tables on his foe. The webs stopped; the Spider's mechanical web-shooters, mounted on his wrists, sprang open, dispensing their spent cartridges of web fluid; the boy kicked off of the reptile's chest to put some distance between them, grasping towards his belt to reload his signature weapons.
"Now!" called the Lizard.
Upon command, several drones that had been on standby flew in from the darkened corridors and corners of the research facility. All opened with machinegun fire and hologram projections from every direction; a pair of smoke bombs were thrown in by Mysterio for good measure. Beneath the telescopic, white lenses of his red mask, Spider-Man closed his eyes and focused. The noise was completely shut out; the world became a hazy and dark; other than the sensation of his feet touching the floor and the shape of the hallway he resided in, Spider-Man existed as if in a sensory deprivation tank. Except, all around him he could feel the threats in the air; every bullet, taser shot, and claw swipe was accounted for; he weaved through the hollow images of violence that surrounded him like he was dancing between raindrops; his sixth sense, his Spider Sense, guided him through every hazard like his body was on cruise control, just going with the flow of what his empty mind showed him.
As Spider-Man spun, jumped, flipped, twirled in between his enemies' attacks, bouncing between the walls and ceiling, he managed to swipe a couple of web cartridges from his belt and reload his web shooters. He webbed up a few of the drones, enough to create an opening, then proceeded to slam them into the floor and walls; he moved from drone to drone, dodging their gunfire in an evasive ballet. When the last drone was crushed between his hands, he opened his eyes, finding Mysterio floating in the air a little ways in front of him.
"That never ceases to impress," said the bowl-helmeted villain, "but it has its limits."
Spider-Man was now keenly aware of the fact that the Lizard was nowhere to be seen. He wouldn't have to wait long to find out where the mutated man went, as the green reptile burst out of a nearby lab sporting a pair of flasks in his clawed hands. One flask was tossed at the young hero, sparking a bright light and a violent explosion; the other was tossed towards the dense webbing blocking the hall, and exploded into a pool of liquid flame. The blue flames scorched away the webs, before burning out as quickly as they had started.
The red-clad hero rose to his feet after coming to his senses, only to find the two villains nowhere in sight. he sprinted down the hall as fast as he could, exiting the building in a matter of seconds. He looked around the city streets, noticing a busted fire hydrant and several damaged cars, along with civilians knocked over and injured. With the villains having fled the scene, Spider-Man rushed over to help the people around him.
Civilians in the streets of Manhattan ran for cover, as streaks of flame and lightning surged through the sky above. Shoto Todoroki raced between the high rises of New York City, desperately trying to defend against the lightning-fast onslaught of his opponent. He made another ice wall, this one even thicker than the last he had constructed; it formed in the air in the blink of an eye, turning the city skyline into a frozen mountain; but just as quickly, electricity surged through it, and it shattered to pieces. Todoroki scoffed among the diamond dust of his ruined ice; he glared at the glowing, electrified man that casually floated up to him.
"C'mon, kid, there's no way you're winnin' this," said Electro, coolly.
The electric man hardly looked winded, or even concerned about the situation. He was so powerful from having siphoned so much electricity from the power grid that this fight wasn't even a challenge for him. It was strange, actually; with this much power, ending this fight should have been easy, and in their previous battle Electro was a far more aggressive combatant, so why was he so much more dialed back this time? Todoroki could only assume that he was holding back to preserve as much of the power he absorbed as possible. That settled it; if Todoroki couldn't defeat Electro outright, he could at the very least make sure he burned as much of the resource he had gathered as he could be forced to; all the less of it the Sinister Six would have for their plan.
He needed to push himself to his limits; his ice needed to be colder, his flames hotter. With a jet of flames behind him, Shoto rocketed forward and kicked a wave of fire towards the sparking villain. It had little effect, as Electro merely moved out of the way so quickly that he appeared to teleport the short distance; but Todoroki wasn't done yet. The young hero shot another fire blast towards the villain, and another to his left; when Electro pulsed to the right, a third blast of flame was there to meet him, but that still wasn't enough to trap the electric villain. More flames filled the air, as Todoroki flew around in circles with a blisteringly cold ice slide, shifting his body's position in midair to constantly in order to shoot fire in all directions; New York City's sky appeared to have a second sun, as the hot and cold hero turned the area around him into a giant fireball.
While he had full mastery of electricity, Electro had no immunity to fire; and while he was certainly powerful, his body was still very much human; even he would not survive long in a wall of flames so long as he remained solid. If he had to choose between the power he had gathered and surviving, Electro would choose to fight another day, so with a mighty cry he supercharged his entire body, transforming back into a blue specter of living electricity. With a wave of his hands, he expanded an electromagnetic field, dispersing the fire around him.
"Not bad, kid, but not enough power to take me down!" proclaimed the villain.
"I didn't think it would be!"
Even in his electrified form, Electro could feel how cold the air around him was getting. Standing on an icy platform attached to the side of a building, the young hero stood, the right side of his body almost completely freezing over at this point.
"Take this!" shouted the hero, as flames erupted forward from his left hand. "FLASHFREEZE! HEATWAVE!"
A blast of flame superheated the chilled air in an instant. A massive explosion blew out the windows of every building around them. Now all that was left was to wait for the smoke to clear.
In the midst of the blast's aftermath, a bubble of yellow electricity slowly faded away. Electro, now back in his flesh-and-blood form, floated in the air unscathed.
"That was some good shit," said the villain through his heavy breathing, "but you made one big mistake." He pointed up.
Above them, the sky had darkened. Thunder clapped in the black clouds above.
"Didn't you know hot air creates thunderstorms?" taunted the villain, before he shot up into the clouds.
Electro hovered in the center of the shadowy sea of clouds. He opened his arms and began drawing in the electricity around him. He had used more power than he had intended fending off that new hero's attacks, but absorbing a whole thunderstorm's worth of power would give him more than enough to make up for it, as well as letting him smoke the kid on his way back to base. The villain laughed as he felt the power surging through his body; there was so much power here it was like ecstasy; there was…not as much as he was expecting. Electro looked around, confused, and noticed the storm clouds were lightening, decreasing in volume quickly. He felt…cold again. He looked down.
Just below the building storm, Todoroki flew around the area he had previously turned into a massive heatwave, this time blanketing the entire area in a blizzard. The hero looked up and locked eyes with his enemy.
"If heat builds a thunderstorm, cold will sap its strength," he said with frosted breath. "Your big mistake was thinking I didn't know that!" He stopped in place directly below the New York native villain, his right arm and leg icing over. "HEAVEN-PIERCING ICE WALL!"
In the blink of an eye, a massive glacier flowed up into the dissipating clouds, engulfing the entire storm in a frigid blast. The remaining clouds scattered, and the villain within them was surrounded by frozen spires. Slanted pillars of ice shot out from the enormous construct, attaching it to the rooftops of the skyscrapers and street below to support its weight.
Todoroki fell to the ground, using a jet of flames to break his fall just before landing on the sidewalk. From afar, onlookers recorded the hero on their phones, as he wreathed himself in fire to heat up his shivering body.
Above, Electro had still managed to absorb quite a bit of power from the thunderstorm, though not nearly as much as he would have liked. He was far behind on his quota for the power he was supposed to gather, but he couldn't risk fighting that boy again now. He turned his body into electricity and slowly made his way through the ice; it was slow going, as ice didn't conduct very well, but that suited his needs just fine – the slow creep through the glacier would let him reach one of the buildings unnoticed, where he would disappear into the city's power grid to make his getaway.
A towering blast of fire burned through the sky as Bakugo pulled the pin on one of his gauntlets. The explosion did little more than scorch the armor of the Rhino, but is destroyed the machine guns mounted on the man's wrists, as well as sent him flying to another part of the industrial park; that was one less threat to deal with. With the man in grey armor out of the way, Bakugo was free to focus on the green-armored man now attacking him from afar.
Scorpion's bladed tail whipped towards the blonde hero multiple times, each time taking a swipe at a different part of his body. Bakugo dodged using small explosions from his hands, needing to use each to both propel his body quickly, and to deflect the tail as it closed in – doing only one or the other wasn't enough to defend against such a fast appendage, and would've easily resulted in him losing something if he had made even a single error. During one particularly wide swing of the villain's tail, he took his chance; Bakugo shot himself forward alongside the tail, grabbing onto it to increase his approach speed even more.
Upon reaching his opponent, he detonated a light film of his sweat in a blinding flash. "STUN GRENADE!"
Scorpion looked away from the dizzying light and shut his eyes; when he opened them again, the teenage hero was nowhere to be found.
"A.P. SHOT!"
Scorpion was launched forward by a searing blast to his back; he groaned in pain as he was slammed into the wall of the metal plant by the scorching ray. He turned around and saw the fiery-tempered boy charging him, screaming at him to die. This was clearly the kind of opponent that thought the best defense was a good offense; the boy wasn't unintelligent by any means – as soon as he noticed that his two foes were catching on to his fighting habits, he immediately changed tactics – he was just aggressive; Scorpion was going to make him regret that.
As soon as Bakugo closed the distance and got in Scorpion's face again, the armored villain deployed a pair of pincer-like claws hidden in the arms of his suit. The villain grabbed Bakugo's grenade-shaped gauntlets and crushed them, rendering them useless, and then threw Bakugo up and into the wall of the building. The old brick caved in from the impact, embedding Bakugo in the wall; he didn't even have a moment to rest before Scorpion began climbing the wall.
"Dammit! This guy can wallcrawl just like the Arachnerd!" said Bakugo, under his breath.
Just before Scorpion's tail could skewer him, Bakugo blasted off from the wall and landed back on the ground. Scorpion leaped after him, but Bakugo put some distance between them, thinking it was about time for a more long-range strategy.
Just then, the wall surrounding the metal plant shattered open, as Rhino came charging back into the fray on all fours; the grey-armored villain jumped over the truck and almost landed on Bakugo, but the young hero propelled himself out of the way. The charging villain got back up on his two feet without ever breaking his stride and ran up to Bakugo, intent on making this a fistfight. Bakugo matched Rhino's fists blow-for-blow, using his explosions to match the power of the larger man's superstrong punches.
While their throwdown was happening, Scorpion got into the truck and started the engine. He put the car in gear and started pulling out of the lot at full speed. He sounded the horn a couple of times to let his partner know it was time to make a break for it.
Upon hearing the horn, Rhino re-covered his head with the armored canopy of his suit and charged out of the lot at full speed, completely unconcerned with what Bakugo would do next. Bakugo wasn't having it, and used a large explosion to launch himself into the sky like a missile. He blasted himself through the air and followed the fleeing villain, tracking him through the streets all the way to the speeding flatbed. He launched himself directly at the Rhino, tensing the muscles in his arms to force a large volume of sweat into the palms of his hands as he closed in on his target. Just as he reached his foe, Bakugo threw his arms forward and let off a massive explosion, but the Rhino turned around and the last second and batted him aside.
Both hero and villain were sent flying to opposite sides of the road. The Rhino, covered in armor, recovered quickly and continued his pursuit of the flatbed. Bakugo, reeling from the impact, struggled to get up, being helped by a passing civilian.
Deku bobbed and weaved through the air, dodging the four mechanized tentacles as best as he could; it took all of his focus just to keep track of them all. Whenever one got too close, he would knock it aside with a punch or a kick. They were at a stalemate that the Doctor was clearly getting frustrated with. The tentacled villain brought all four tentacles together and opened their hands, bringing them all down with little space in between them for a pincer attack – just the opportunity Deku was waiting for.
The green clad hero launched the glowing tendrils of Blackwhip from his left hand, catching the robotic hands and then pulling them together; as he yanked them taut, he deployed the Air Force cannon in his right hand and a blast of air pressure at the villainous scientist, releasing Blackwhip at the same time. The air blast knocked Doc Ock back into a wall, though the fact the tentacles were coming out of his back blunted the impact somewhat; before he could recover, Deku dropped down from above with a flying axe kick; two of the mechanical arms reacted autonomously to block the attack, but were nearly smashed into their master's face for their trouble. The arms pushed the boy away, but he landed with a somersault and quickly dashed back at the villain.
Doc Ock tried to hold the boy back using to of his tentacles, but Deku caught them both just below the base of the claws. With a slight intensifying of the electric green glow around his body, Deku stepped forward, forcing the mechanical arms back and starting to crush them in his hands. Octavius angled the claws as best as he could towards the boy's head; sensing something not quite right about that, Deku let go of the tentacles, just as a long spike deployed from the center of each of the claws. The young hero crossed his arms in front of him and blasted the tentacles away using more air bursts, and then captured all four of the Doctors tentacles with Blackwhip, before throwing the man over him to the other side of the street.
The parts of the tentacles closer to his body managed to constrict enough break the Doctor's fall; he put the strength of the mechanical limbs to maximum output and managed to finally rip them free from the tendrils of energy that held them.
"You can't beat me, Doctor Octavius!" declared the young hero. "Please, surrender peacefully."
As much as he hated to admit it, the boy was right – there was no way for Octavius to defeat him; not fairly, at any rate. Octavius held up the large briefcase he had been carrying throughout the battle and placed it between the open palms of two of his claws.
"Let me go, or I'll crush the case open!" ordered the Doctor.
Deku ran forward, getting ready to jump for the case; he hesitated when he saw the claws flex and dig into the case, denting the metal shell.
"I mean it! One more step and this whole block gets bathed in radiation!"
Deku looked around him; there were civilians watching the battle from the buildings around them. At his current power there was no way for him to get the case fast enough, and he couldn't risk using his full power and injuring himself when still wasn't familiar with this city or this world; and there was also the possibility that snatching the case would end up breaking it open by accident anyway. Deku stood down, but kept the power flowing through his body; he backed away to the other side of the street.
"There's a good hero," mocked the Doctor.
"Next time," replied Deku, with an angry glare, "I will stop you!"
"Next time, my work will already be complete," said Octavius, as he put his goggles back on and left the scene.
The four young heroes reconvened on a rooftop downtown. They each went over their encounters with the Sinister Six and what was stolen. Deku and Spider-Man were both impressed with Todoroki for being able to fight off Electro all on his own, though he was rather ashamed that the villain managed to escape in the end; meanwhile, Bakugo was still furious that he let Rhino and Scorpion escape, and was swearing up and down that he would get his revenge next time he saw them.
"So, the Sinister Six should have everything they need to carry out their plan now," summarized Spider-Man. "All they need are the proper facilities."
"Where would they be able to find those?" asked Todoroki.
"Well, there are three places in New York that they could choose from – Avengers Tower, Oscorp Tower, and the Baxter Building."
"We could probably rule out Avengers Tower right away, since they would probably face heavy resistance trying to break in there," speculated Deku.
"Definitely," Spider-Man agreed. "I would rule out the Baxter Building for the same reason; the heroes that live there are out of town right now, but their security is state-of-the-art; besides, I don't think the place is really set up for what Doc Ock has in mind right now."
"That just leaves Oscorp," said Bakugo.
"Bingo. Unlike the other two, Oscorp Tower is almost entirely a research facility from top to bottom; they'll definitely have something in there that Otto can use."
"So, I guess we're just going to wait for them to raid the tower now?" asked Deku.
"Yup. I'll have Mister Stark send a few Legionnaires to the patrol the other two locations, just in case. Meanwhile, we'll hang out and get to know each other better while keeping an eye on Oscorp; it'll be like an old-fashioned stakeout!"
A/N: Hope y'all enjoyed this one. Until next time, stay frosty.