I think me catching up with MHA's final season airing and it being as incredible as it is has giving me a bit of a burst of inspiration, I basically hammered this chapter out in a week after taking a couple of weeks off post-OA&A Ch. 30.
So before we get into said chapter, I just wanted to address a couple of things that've come up in a few comments/reviews ever since Chapter 7 came out. Since I'm not planning on addressing them directly in the story itself, I figure it's worth doing here... the first thing being how the Omnitrix would react to the Nomu, bio-engineered freaks that they are, and whether or not Ben would be able to do anything to them via the omniverse's coolest watch, kinda like he did with the DNAliens in Alien Force.
I'll get straight to the point, I personally think the Omnitrix wouldn't do ANYTHING to the Nomu, for several reasons. I... don't really have an order for them though, so I'll just shoot them out:
1) Nomus are technically dead. It's canon that they originate as human CORPSES before they're modified to have extra Quirks added to them. Now, while the Omnitrix is straight-up the coolest watch to ever exist in fiction, no I will not hear any wrong opinions to the contrary, and is capable of many amazing things... I think reviving the freaking DEAD is a bit of a stretch.
I'd stop there, that's probably enough reason, but even with that aside, there are still multiple reasons why Ben curing the Nomu wouldn't work in this fic, starting with:
2) The SECOND someone finds out that he can do that, his entire cover story of the Omnitrix being a support item made to control his 'Quirk' vanishes in an instant. That, given where we're at right now, CANNOT happen.
3) Whatever human DNA sample the Omnitrix has stored within it, whether it comes from some random human from across the B10 universe, or from Ben himself... it is technically NOT the same as a hypothetical human-from-the-MHA-universe sample. Remember that at the time MHA starts, 80% of living humans have gone through the subtle evolution that allows them to develop a Quirk, signified by the absence of an extra joint in their pinky toe. So assuming Ben would be able to restore a Nomu to their source human (as in the human corpse that the Nomu originated) AND bring them back to life, is it not a serious possibility that he'd erase any Quirk that they might or might not have via the human DNA sample?
4) As those who've got further than... the middle of Season 2 of MHA will tell you, there are a LOT of Nomus in the 'employ' of the villains. So if Ben were to be able to cure them a la the DNAliens, would doing so repeatedly not drain power from the Omnitrix, and eventually damage it, as seen in Alien Force?
5) The vast majority of Nomus are... kinda aggressive. Ben needed to physically lay a hand on DNAlien!Ken in Alien Force, and keep it there for a minute in order to apply the genetic repair to him. Yes, I know he was able to fire a beam that applied that same effect in the War of the Worlds episode(s), but he's never done that outside of that episode, so I'm personally chalking that up to either that feature being unlocked thanks to Master Control... or he just doesn't know how to do that... I think that says enough.
And to the one guest reviewer that brought up the idea of Gwen freezing time to deal with the League of Villains right as they arrived... I think all I need to reply with is the one time she actually used that power (late on in Ultimate Alien) versus when she first learned how to do anything like that (late on in Alien Force, AFTER the Highbreed Arc), and compare those to when this fic starts during B10 canon (DURING the Highbreed Arc). Not the worst suggestion I've heard for one of my fics, I'll admit, but probably not the best either.
And with all that out of the way, here's the chapterly transformation-counter, as of the end of Chapter 7:
Jetray: 3
Four Arms: 2
Humungousaur, Spider-Monkey, Diamondhead, Upgrade, Swampfire, Grey Matter, Big Chill: 1
Anyway, once you're done with this chapter, which I seriously hope you enjoy, hope you've got it in you to keep leaving your thoughts via review, or if you want to chat with me (about the fic, Ben 10 or MHA in general, or something else entirely, drop me a PM or look me up on Discord (name for it is on my profile), or better yet join my server (link also in profile, just take out the spaces). Any of those methods works out just fine for me, and I hope to chat with you soon!
IT'S CHAPTER TIME!
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"Thirteen and Eraser Head… huh."
Gwen narrowed her eyes as the voice of one of the villains trailed up to her and the students' ears, almost a lazy drawl. She couldn't tell which one it was coming from… mostly because she couldn't see any mouths moving. Of the gang of villains that had just appeared out of the purple mist- she'd stopped counting how many there were by the time she hit fifty, the point was made: there were loads of them- she couldn't see anyone's mouths moving, cutting down the number of people who could have spoken just now down to two.
The slim man with the hand over his face had his entire jaw obscured, the monstrous black creature beside him obviously wasn't speaking (she had the distinct feeling it didn't have the capacity TO speak), and the cloud of purple mist… didn't have a mouth.
Thirteen had moved- no hesitation, no uncertainty- just a sharp pivot and a widening of her stance as she positioned herself between the students and the central plaza. Aizawa had moved a few steps away from them, towards the top of the stairway down to the central plaza.
"How disappointing." The voice of one of the villains continued. "We were told All Might would be here."
Gwen caught movement from the slim man next to the beast, as he reached up and scratched at his neck with a couple of fingers on one of his hands- his living hands. Whenever she looked at one of the embalmed hands clasping his body (from previous victims, maybe?), she couldn't help but feel a slight lurching in her stomach.
"What the hell?" he replied, his voice cracked and irritable. "And after I went to the trouble of bringing so many… friends, to play with… tch, whatever. Maybe some dead kids'll drag him out of whatever hole he's hiding in. Heroes love reacting to tragedy, don't they?"
Gasps rippled through Class 1-A. A couple of students stumbled backwards, but Gwen- the mana that had already coalesced around her hands glowing brightly- moved forward, her eyes narrowing slightly. She'd heard more than enough.
But before she could even get past Thirteen, Aizawa span on his feet, his eyes concealed behind the yellow goggles he'd snapped onto them a moment ago… and his hair standing on end, just like when he'd erased Midoriya's Quirk during the Apprehension Test on their first day.
"Tennyson. Stay. Back."
Muttering "Damn it." under her breath, Gwen obliged, the mana around her hands disappearing immediately. She retreated back behind Thirteen, between Iida and Kaminari, playing the part of any other student: one that didn't have a literally-otherworldly set of powers that she couldn't afford to reveal the nature of.
Thirteen immediately pressed a couple of fingers into the palm of her hand, where Gwen spied a button… but whatever effect she'd intended for that to have didn't happen as she repeated the action a couple more times.
"Eraser, I'm not getting anything!" she called out to him. "The signal's jammed!"
"Wait, seriously?" Uraraka called out, her voice sounding as worried as everyone else looked. "How?"
"It must be one of them." Todoroki mused, his grey-and-blue eyes laser-focused on the gang of villains in the central plaza, the majority of whom were advancing steadily towards the stairway that they were standing at the top of. "Some kind of Quirk that can interfere with radio signals, one of the villains here probably has something like that. Maybe an electric-type like Kaminari's?"
Gwen's jaw tightened, as Yaoyorozu piped up.
"That would make sense. I wouldn't be surprised either if one of them has some kind of location-scrambler. That would explain why no alarms are going off right now."
Gwen had been considering those factors, what the two of them had already said out loud. Factors that only pushed her towards what her instincts- instincts that she'd honed through alien fights, magic and more disasters than anyone her age really should have been through- had been telling her from the second the first villain had stepped into the facility: this was organised.
"Kaminari!" Aizawa barked out, his hair dropping down as he turned towards the students. Though from behind his goggles, Gwen could still feel his eyes on her- in case she tried anything again. "Try getting around whatever's jamming the comms with your Quirk! And Thirteen…" he turned away from the group, his hair standing on end once again. "Get everyone out of here. Now!"
Before anyone could do or say anything else (Midoriya in particular looked ready to protest the idea of Aizawa confronting the entire group of villains by himself), he kicked off the top of the staircase, dropping down to confront the villains.
"You heard the man!" Thirteen called, turning away from Aizawa and pointing to the large double-doors that they'd come through earlier. "Everybody out! Quickly!"
The class surged forward as one, racing for the double-doors… but they didn't make it. None of them had gone further than five steps before a wall of swirling purple mist surged upwards from the floor, blocking the path to the exit in an instant. The fog churned and twisted until it formed into a vaguely-humanoid shape. Two bright yellow, pupil-less eyes opened within the haze.
"I'm afraid I can't allow you to leave. My sincere apologies." The same drawling voice from earlier spoke, seemingly emanating from the mist itself as it made a bow-like motion. "We are the League of Villains, we decided to invite ourselves into this bastion of heroism… to kill All-"
And that was as far as he got, before three of the students moved at once.
Kirishima leapt forward, one of the redhead's arms hardening mid-lunge. Bakugo rocketed forward beside him with an explosion that shook the ground, his outstretched hand sparking, and a yell just as loud. And between them, a bolt of pink energy blazed between them, courtesy of Gwen's outstretched hand. The attacks landed simultaneously… and accomplished nothing. Kirishima's hardened fist passed through the mist like it wasn't even there, Bakugo's explosion disrupted part of the fog for half a second before it thickened again, and Gwen's mana-bolt vanished into the cloud, though the entire class heard a sharp 'ping' noise ringing out from inside, like the bolt had struck something metallic. But apart from that, there was no reaction.
"Such honed instincts…" the mist murmured, almost amused. "You truly live up to your school's reputation… but no matter. Allow me to fulfil my role, today."
"Kirishima, Bakugo!" Thirteen called out, three of the fingertips on her gloves flipping open. "Get out of the way!"
Both of them dived to either side as the fog expanded, violently.
"Now… BEGONE."
It surged outward like a tidal wave, swallowing the entire class before anyone could brace themselves. Gwen felt the world lurch beneath her feet as she was plunged into darkness, with the last thing she saw before she disappeared being the flashes of motion of Iida and Shoji lunging forward, each grabbing whoever they could reach.
And then everything twisted: vertigo punched through her skull, her stomach dropped, her world warping in a smear of purple and black… and then it was over, as her boots slammed against something solid. She stumbled forward, sticking her hands out and casting mana in front of herself to prevent from landing flat on her face.
For a split second, she thought she'd been tossed out of the facility, but one quick glance upwards told her that she was still inside the USJ, the inside of the dome still met her eyes. Another glance around told her exactly where within the USJ she'd seemingly been thrown: the Mountain Zone. She stood at the edge of a cliff- steep, jagged, high enough up to see the rest of the facility from where she was standing- from Aizawa in the central plaza facing off against at least ten villains at once, to the entrance that she'd been tossed from.
She sucked in a breath, steadying herself, before a shout of fear reached her ears from the base of the cliff that she stood atop. A glance downwards delivered her a sight that made her eyes widen slightly: one of her classmates- Koda, the broad, muscular young man with a rock-shaped head and peach-coloured skin in a tight yellow suit, was backing towards the cliff-face as a trio of villains circled him. One of them possessed the characteristics of a wasp- red and black skin, four buzzing wings, thin limbs and a smooth stinger protruding from the bottom of her back- and hovered above the other two: one of them wielded a sword and shield, the former of which he was twirling in one hand before menacingly pointing it at Koda, and while the other was unarmed, the way he moved- slowly, deliberately- set Gwen's instincts on edge.
Koda- still moving backwards- bumped into the cliff-face and pressed himself up against it, freezing up in clear terror. And Gwen… moved.
Wind tore at her hooded cape as she took a running jump off the cliff and dropped, her palms snapping open and mana surging through them. The humanoid wasp noticed her first, turned to face her- but that was about as far as she got before a bolt of mana- one stronger than the one she'd sent at the purple mist earlier- struck her square in the chest, sending her spiralling backwards and rolling on the ground, where she moved no more.
The sword and shield-wielder let out a cry of surprise as his comrade was sent flying, and the sword suddenly elongated, its gleaming blade shooting towards Gwen. Initially aiming the bolt at the man himself, she quickly shifted it towards the sword itself, which shattered to metallic dust the second her fired mana made contact with it. The villain dropped his broken weapon in surprise, allowing Gwen to land right in front of him, easily sidestep the villain's attempt to swing at her with his shield and sweep-kick him with enough force to send him sprawling on the ground.
Noticing the third- larger- villain swinging a fist at her out of the corner of her eye, Gwen threw up a mana-shield with one hand to block the punch while using the other to throw a mana-rope around the shield-wielding villain that she'd just put on his ass, lift him up before he could even try to stop her, and swing him into the remaining villain with enough force to knock them both out.
Cracking her neck and taking a breath once she was certain the villains she'd just put down weren't getting up anytime soon, she turned to face Koda.
"T-Ten…?" Koda began, his voice shaking and shoulders slightly hunched, before he caught himself and swallowed. "Gwen, a-are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Gwen replied, choosing not to verbalise her acknowledgement that this was the first time she'd ever actually heard the boy speaking, or her initial assumption that he was mute. "You hurt?"
Koda shook his head, taking a couple of steps away from the cliff-face, as Gwen turned to look over towards the plaza. She could see that Aizawa had sent a few of the villains sprawling already, still: way too many of them were swarming around him for her to be comfortable with. And that wasn't even counting the two that were standing off to the side, not even attempting to attack him yet: the grey-blue-haired man with embalmed hands clutching his body, and the black-muscled creature with an exposed brain.
Her stomach lurched slightly again, as she grimaced. Something within her felt wrong, just by LOOKING at them.
"We need to get over there." Gwen announced, her tone resolute. Right behind her, she could practically hear Koda going rigid.
"W-we?" he stammered, raising his hands, his voice small unlike his body. "But I-I'm not a fighter, not like Kirishima or Bakugo, or you, or anybody. I'm useless here, m-my Quirk… I can't use it here."
Gwen turned around, her eyes softening slightly as she looked towards Koda.
"Right… you control animals with your voice. And you need them to actually hear you, right?" she asked, moving over towards him. "I doubt there are any animals around here."
Koda shook his head, his eyes darting around in a minor panic.
"N-not to mention Mr. Aizawa," he continued. "He told you to stay back, and he- um- he sounded like he really meant it."
"He sure did." Gwen replied, extending a hand towards the shield and sending out a mana-tendril towards the shield that one of the villains had dropped when she knocked him out. She pulled it into her hand, weighing it as she continued, pointing towards the central plaza with one hand. "But look at him. He's doing alright now, but he's still got villains coming at him from every angle. I'm sure he's great in a fight, but one mistake, or if those two over there decide to step in..."
Turning away from the hands-man and the brain-beast, she noticed Koda's eyes widening even further than they already had been before, and small tears of panic and fear pricking at his eyes, probably brought on by the implication of her unfinished sentence. Sucking in a calming breath, she closed the gap between herself and Koda, offering him the shield.
"You don't have to fight, Koda." she spoke. "Not if you don't think you can. I can fight enough for the pair of us. But what you can do, is protect my blind spots."
She placed the shield into his shaking hands, closing them around its handle and steadying them with her own.
"Be a rear guard for me. Face wherever I'm not." She instructed. "Anyone comes at me from where I can't see, you call out, I'll handle them. Someone jumps us, raise this," she pulled back, tapping the top of the shield a couple of times with one hand "I'll handle them. And once we have a clear path to the exit, you can make a break for it while I help Mr. Aizawa. Think you can do that?"
A long, shaky breath escaped Koda. After a couple of seconds, he lifted up the shield, squared his shoulders- just a little- and nodded.
"O-okay… I'll do my best."
Gwen nodded, lightly squeezing his shoulder with one hand while offering him a confident smile.
"That's all we need." She replied, turning around and mentally charting a path: she immediately spotted a cluster of villains about a hundred yards from where she and Koda stood, but they were heading towards the Landslide Zone. There was a narrow path between it- in front of the pair of them and to the right- and the Flood Zone to their left, to the fountain in the central plaza, around which Aizawa continued to face off against the thugs.
It was gonna be a long trip across the facility, before they made it to a spot where Koda could make a clean run for the exit. But if Gwen was gonna get Koda out of here alive, then there wasn't much of a choice.
"Stay close." Gwen instructed, mana flickering back to life in her palms as she began moving. Koda held the shield tight against his body, and followed.
-----
"DIE, ASSFACE!"
Bakugo's gloved palm detonated with a white-hot flash, sending the villain in front of him rocketing backwards. He hurtled through a shattered window with enough force to take out part of the frame with him, with a loud thud following that as he hit the ground inside. He heard someone else coming up behind him and whirled around, taking half a second to realise that it was another villain, knife in hand.
It took another half-second for Bakugo to raise his guarded knee into the villain's crotch, making them drop the knife and double over, squealing in pain. Grabbing them by the arm with one hand, Bakugo used the open palm of his other hand to generate small explosions, building up momentum in order to spin around and throw his injured assailant into a nearby wall with another yell. The villain struck the wall such that they dented it, before sliding down to the ground and letting out a soft groan as he lost consciousness.
"God, Bakugo… volume."
Wincing at the constant spikes in volume brought on by her classmate, Jiro lashed her earphone jacks out like whips, wrapping them around a nearby villain's ankles. With a sharp yank, she dragged him face-first into the pavement, and she reeled her jacks back in.
Whatever deity there might or might not be in this universe, she was cursing them for sticking her right next to the very guy who served as an antithesis to her entire existence. Enhanced hearing was a blessing… until Bakugo existed within a mile of her.
Just across the ruined street from her, Tokoyami dodged an assailant that attempted to grab him.
"Dark Shadow! Now!"
The inky creature surged forward… at precisely the wrong moment, as Bakugo triggered another explosion on the ground, breaking apart the surface beneath their feet and forcing a nearby villain to stumble, leaving an opening that he took to clock them across the face with one of his grenade-shaped gauntlets.
Tokoyami was pretty sure he heard the sound of a shattering jaw as Dark Shadow let out a squawk of fear, retreating like a startled dog.
"Too bright! TOO… BRIGHT!"
Tokoyami clenched his jaw, forced to dodge another attempt by the nearest villain to grab him.
"Your volatility grows tiresome, Bakugo!" he called out across the street, as Bakugo rocketed over towards the large villain, blasting over his head.
"MAYBE DON'T RELY ON A FREAK THAT FREAKS OUT AT A NIGHT-LIGHT, BIRD-BRAIN!" the blond shouted back, aiming both his hands at the villain and setting off a double-handed explosion (which masked the sound of Dark Shadow's offended squawk) directly into his face, temporarily blinding the villain before sending him stumbling backwards with a kick… straight into Jiro's earphone jacks, which she jabbed into his back and sent a powerful vibration attack through, bringing him down.
And finally, mercifully, everything fell still within the Ruin Zone for a few seconds. All the villains that had thought Bakugo, Jiro and Tokoyami would make for easy kills were down, though it was undeniable who amongst the three had brought the lion's share of them down.
"Okay. Great. We're not dead." Jiro sighed, flicking a stray bit of concrete off her sleeve, before turning to Bakugo. "But dude, seriously, you are WAY too loud. You going crazy ever since we landed here could've been what brought us down!"
Bakugo span towards her, his hands sparking a bit and a dark expression on his face.
"Not my fault that we got sent here together at random!" he shouted back at her. "And if your precious ears are too damn sensitive to deal with puny villain scum like this-" he swung a hand around at the villains on the ground that they- mostly he- had taken out, "then you're in the wrong line of work! Drop the hell out once we're done here and go work at Burger Shack, or something!"
Jiro's eyes widened, her hands balling up into fists. Her teeth clenched, she started towards Bakugo, but before any more words could be thrown between them, Tokoyami quickly stepped between them.
"Enough." He raised his hands, prepared to hold Jiro and Bakugo apart if necessary. "The villains here are our enemies, not each other."
Jiro crossed her arms, but backed off. Bakugo let out a snort, looking away.
"We need to move." Tokoyami continued. "Thirteen wanted evacuation, and that's still our safest course of action. We must find a way out of here, back to the entrance."
"Whatever!" Bakugo replied, cracking his knuckles, sparks popping between his palms as he did so. "Do what you want. But first thing I'm doing when we get out of this maze," a feral smirk formed on his face as he spoke. "is finding that purple warpy bastard and tearing him a brand-new foggy asshole, and make sure the villains that snuck in here pay for what they've done!"
Jiro could only sigh, and Tokoyami pinch the bridge of his beak as Bakugo took off through the broken streets. After a look shared between them and a couple of seconds' mental deliberation, they followed.
-----
The Landslide Zone was quiet, in a staged sort of way. One of the many artificial slopes arranged around the zone stretched downwards, in an uneven ridge of shattered rock, overturned cars, and boulders stacked in such a way that to the untrained eye, they'd look like a set of precarious dominoes that would all tumble over at the slightest provocation. A thin layer of dust rolled across the incline as several of the villains charged at the sole hero-in-training that had been warped here, from several angles.
And none of them got anywhere near him.
The first simply swung a metal pipe at his head rather than even attempt to use whatever power he might or might not have, the movement so slow and his stance so poor that he almost felt offended by the attempt, a feeling that only grew as the villain tripped over himself, undone by the sloppy follow-through of his own swing.
Another villain attempted to spit some kind of corrosive substance in his direction, with all it took to evade such an attack being a slight tilt of his head. The corrosive spitball flew by the left side of his head, and splattered harmlessly against a rock. A quick half-glance backwards told Todoroki that, judging by the damage (or lackthereof) the spitball did to what it had struck, it probably wouldn't have done much damage had it made contact with him… nothing that he hadn't gone through already.
A third villain tried flanking around him, only for his foot to slip on unstable gravel before he could get anywhere near him.
'These guys… are genuinely pathetic.' Todoroki thought to himself, his eyes half-lidded as he scanned the other villains. Their stances… sloppy. Their sense of timing… nonexistent. Their co-ordination… laughable. And that was to say nothing for their applications of their Quirks, if they even did at all.
A fourth villain lunged, his fist glowing with condensed flame… but he'd started his punch too early. Todoroki saw it coming from a mile away, took half a step backwards to dodge the attack… and made his move. Lunging forward in turn, he grabbed the villain by the arm with his right hand, causing a sheet of ice to burst outward across and around the villain's body, encasing him in an instant. When the ice reached the ground, it raced across the earth- over the entire zone- faster than any of the villains could blink.
The legs of those that were still standing were engulfed first, then their torsos, then everything else. And that was to say nothing of those that had already been brought down before he froze the area.
Silence fell across the immediate zone, with the faint sounds of battle from all the other zones being all that either Todoroki, or the villains, could hear.
"Honestly," Todoroki spoke, for the first time since being warped to the Landslide Zone. "I'm almost impressed at how pathetic you all were. To lose this easily against children? I'd almost want to see how you fared against a competent Pro."
He glanced across the frozen zone. Counted fifteen in all. None with the evident self-confidence or co-ordination skills to even try and attack him more than one at a time, probably out of inexperience-driven fear that they'd end up hitting one of their own. Another mark against their non-existent co-ordination skills… if he was scoring them on that, this entire group of not-even-amateurs' points total must have reached the negative numbers by now, if such a thing was possible.
And THESE were the ones assembled to try and kill All Might, he thought? Please, there was no universe in which he'd have been overwhelmed by small fry like this. Which only begged the question of what their actual plan was. From what he could tell, there were only a few villains amongst those that had first warped in here that seemed to pose any actual threat: there was the purple smoke-person that was both responsible for bringing all the villains in here in the first place, and sending him and his classmates across the facility at seeming random.
There was the menacing guy with hands all over his body, a factoid that gave even him the shivers.
And there was the muscled beast with exposed brain, who was still standing by- not doing or saying anything as Todoroki looked across the facility and saw Aizawa continuing to face off against more and more of the low-level thugs. And that… was it. It wasn't much to go off of.
"I'd assume you were aware of this," Todoroki spoke, to the villains at large "but given your performance just now, I'm having second thoughts, so I'll let you in on something. If you stay frozen like you are for long enough, the cells in your body won't survive for long. First comes frostbite, which is unpleasant enough. Then comes hypothermia, which is… worse. You DO know what those things are, right?"
The nearest villain's eyes widened, which Todoroki noticed as he turned.
"That's something." He remarked, slowly stepping over to him and holding up his right hand again, a cold aura emanating from it. The tears that had begun welling up in the villain's eyes frosted over, from how close said right hand was to his exposed face. "Lucky for you lowlifes, though, as a hero-in-training I'd prefer to avoid that outcome. But-"
His ears caught the sound of someone struggling behind him… loudly. Ignoring it for the time being, he continued.
"-I can only do that if one of you tells me, right here and right now, how you plan to kill All-"
"MON CAPE! MON CAPE ÉTOILÉE!" A familiarly high-pitched voice wailed behind him. "JE SUIS GELÉ! JE SUIS COINCÉ, YOU BARBARE MACHINE À GLAÇONS!"
Todoroki blinked, and turned. He hadn't seen him, as he'd seemingly been crouched behind a car that had been crashed into a boulder on the other size of the zone, but Aoyama had also been warped here.
And he'd been frozen to the ground by the lower half of his sparkling cape, and was attempting to yank it free with his face twisted in dramatic anguish. The surrounding ice, along with the cape, glittered around him, almost cheerfully mocking his distress.
"…Ah."
"AH?!" Aoyama snapped. "J'ESSAIE DE ME CACHER DE CES MÉCHANTS, PUIS TU M'ENCHAÎNE À CES HORRIBLE DÉBRIS, ET TOUT CE QUE VOUS POUVEZ DIRE, C'EST... AH?!"
Todoroki's expression barely shifted. He really had no idea what Aoyama was saying, besides his tone.
"I… apologize?" he tilted his head, slightly confused. Aoyama flailed a little harder for emphasis, almost falling over from the effort of it all, and all Todoroki could do was sigh. Leaving the villain he had been interrogating alone for a second, he jogged over his ice to Aoyama, bent down with his left hand and began thawing out his precious cape.
All the while, the villains remained frozen solid, silent and absolutely terrified, their spirits very much NOT lifted by what was transpiring in front of them.
-----
The Conflagration Zone was really living up to its name, visuals-wise. With flames crawling over shattered storefronts and half-melted street signs, shimmering waves of heat belching over every surface, and smoke clinging to the air at eye-level, the simulated city really felt like a maze that would burn you alive if you hesitated… even if under regular circumstances, Thirteen would never let that happen.
But that didn't mean Yaoyorozu would have hesitated anyway, especially not under the present circumstances.
"Come on, Kaminari. Stay with me."
"Blaaaaaargh."
Well, that was helpful, Yaoyorozu thought through clenched teeth as she half-guided half-dragged the blond through a narrow alleyway, out of sight of any villains. Kaminari's eyes were swirling and unfocused, static occasionally crackling out of his hair in pitiful little pops, his entire state a side-effect of blowing his entire electric load at once… though to his credit, he HAD knocked out a particularly nasty-looking villain in his fear-induced discharge.
Under less tense circumstances, she'd probably have found him knocking HIMSELF out amusing, but not now. Not with the… everything, going on.
Yaoyorozu's grip tightened around his waist, cheeks flushing slightly as she held him against a wall while leaning just far enough out of the other side of the alleyway to see if there were any villains on either side of the street… there was one, on one end of the street, but he had his back turned.
Quickly creating a dozen or so bang-snaps in her hand, Yaoyorozu looked down the other end of the street to check if there were any villains on that side. When she was satisfied that there were none, she hurled the handful of bang-snaps in that direction as hard as she could. While she pre-emptively moved to cover Kaminari's mouth with her and, the bang-snaps all hit the ground and went off like miniature fireworks, achieving the intended effect of startling the villain on the other side of the street.
"Shit! What the hell was that?!" he called out to no-one in particular. As Yaoyorozu held onto Kaminari's mouth a little bit harder, to properly muffle his alarmed cries, she watched the villain run right past the entrance to the alleyway to investigate the source of the noise. As soon as he was past them, she shifted her grip on Kaminari to his wrist and made a break from the alleyway, down the street.
She was trained well enough in bojutsu and other weapons-based martial arts, along with her Quirk that had it just been her that was sent here, or better yet if Kaminari HADN'T rendered himself braindead within half a minute of arriving in this flaming city, she could fight these guys off with ease. But that wasn't the hand she'd been dealt, was it?
"We just need to reach the perimeter." She whispered, more to herself than anything. "Once we're-"
"Yaaaaaay…"
"-clear of the worst of the flames, we can try to-"
They reached a crossroads… and Yaoyorozu froze in her tracks, bringing Kaminari to a stop alongside her.
Three villains were stood, spread just wide enough across the intersection and situated well enough that… there was no safe path around them. A quick glance towards either side of the street yielded no alcove to slip into, and there was no cover to skirt around them. And with Kaminari already letting out the occasional vacant moan under his breath, and giggling at nothing… it was frankly a miracle that they'd gotten this far without getting caught… which they ABSOLUTELY would have been if even one villain turned their head in their direction.
But that was fine, Yaoyorozu thought. If she couldn't see a way through… that didn't mean she couldn't simply make one.
"Stay here for a second, and be ready to move." She whispered, pushing Kaminari gently against the wall before taking half a step away from him. "I need to make something."
Kaminari obeyed, responding with a vacant thumbs-up.
Taking a breath, the skin along Yaoyorozu's arm glowed faintly. Straight from the lipid reserves in her body, three red metal cylinders- smooth, compact and each with pins attached- emerged. Holding them all in one hand, she curled her fingers around each of the pins, sucked in a calming breath… and tugged.
One second later, she'd them in a high arc towards the trio of villains, who mercifully hadn't noticed them yet.
Two.
Three.
Four seconds later, they hit the ground with a clatter, in the centre of where the villains had been gathered. They all immediately turned towards the sources of the noise, right as the grenades exploded in thick plumes of crimson smoke. A flurry of yells and curses emerged from the red haze that had swallowed the villains whole, as Yaoyorozu immediately grabbed Kaminari by the arm.
"Move!" she hissed, before taking off. The smoke spread quickly over the crossroads, but she and Kaminari (who didn't have much of a choice in the matter) hugged the farthest edge of the nearest burning building to avoid the worst of it.
The last two things she wanted were to risk Kaminari having a coughing fit within the smoke and alerting the villains to their presence… and to run straight into them, which would have defeated the whole idea of concealing their presence with the smoke-grenades in the first place.
Yaoyorozu didn't slow down, not until the villain's yells were far enough behind them, and the firelight dim enough, that she could breathe a little easier. The darkened dome-walls of the Conflagration Zone were in sight, so it was a relatively simple matter of making their way to a door of some description, back into the wider USJ. Then through whatever was going on outside, hopefully not too much to slip through to the exit, or at least to somewhere relatively safe.
She turned to Kaminari, who was giggling at his own reflection in a glowing mailbox.
"We're going to get you out of here." She assured him, determinedly. "Just… please, don't wander off.
"Duuuuhhhhhhh…" Kaminari answered, his eyes rolling slightly as he turned towards her.
Yaoyorozu let out a sigh, before nodding.
"Exactly."
-----
It was like standing inside a washing machine set to 'typhoon'.
Sheets of freezing rain hammered every rooftop in the Downpour Zone, water ran down each side of every street in miniature rivers, while gusts of artificial wind whipped around everywhichway with enough force to sting. Visibility was bad, and slipping on the wet streets would be worse.
But Kirishima? He was in his element.
"C'MON, YOU UNMANLY SCUMBAGS!" he bellowed, standing right in the middle of an open street, slamming his hardened fists together in front of about ten villains. Water streamed off his jagged, rock-like skin, his costume wet and blowing around on his body, and making for quite the sight as the villains charged at him. "HIT ME WITH EVERYTHING YOU GOT!"
And they obliged… poorly.
A barrage of attacks hit him all at once: some of the villains charged in, attempting to put him down with hard-hitting close-range attacks. A metal bat smacked into his shoulder but shattered on impact, with the person who swung it letting out a groan from the pain of smacking something that hard only for it to yield so little. Kirishima turned, sent his fist into the man's stomach, and he went down like a ton of bricks.
Five small, serrated blades scraped along his ribs, courtesy of the extended nails of one of the other villains, but when said blade-nails simply broke off, he took one look at Kirishima, another down at his now-nail-less hands, and took off running down the street, slipping over and landing on his ass but getting back up as he went.
"Coward!" Kirishima muttered, tanking a fist to the face without even flinching and headbutting his latest assailant in question with enough force to break his nose, along with sending him sprawling over the ground. Someone even tried blasting him with a pressurized jet of water, which he found almost comical considering they were in a zone filled with pretty much nothing BUT water. "Is that all you can do, dudes? This tickles!"
His plan was simple: draw in a cluster, tank everything they threw at him until they tired out, knock the lot of them out at once in one big counterattack, rinse, repeat. Visibility was hardly perfect in these conditions, but that didn't change the fact that none of these guy, be it through use of their Quirks or their weapons, could even scratch him. It probably wasn't much of a plan, but hey. If it worked, it-
CLANG.
A disembodied metal pipe flew out of nowhere, smacking the blade-nails guy that was attempting to run square on the back of the head. The guy flew forward, smacking into the pavement like a puppet whose strings had been cut… before being thrown down.
Slightly startled, Kirishima blinked, as several rubber balls that were fired at him with the force and speed of bullets… bounced off of him.
"Uh… what?"
The rubber-ball man turned towards the source of the noise, but-
CLANG.
Down he went.
The one who had fired that water-jet at Kirishima widened his eyes slightly, took a step back… and then doubled over as the metal pipe smacked him in the stomach, before being thrown off his feet as the pipe smacked him in the face. He went down hard, groaning slightly.
Kirishima blinked a couple more times as he watched a fourth villain go down.
"WHAT the hell is-?"
"Are you really just gonna stand there, Kirishima?!" A cheerful, female voice called out from somewhere very, very close. "There are still villains left!"
Kirishima's eyes widened slightly.
"Hagakure?!"
"Yup!"
It was hard to see through the storm, but now that he was focusing, he COULD sort of see her… barely. Her body was faintly outlined as the water-droplets slid down her invisible body, and he could see her hands clutching at the pipe and the splash-patterns around her feet. Those were what mainly sealed the deal.
"Ohh…" he let out a short chuckle. "I wouldn't call that the manliest way of doing it, but if it works-"
"It DOES work!" Hagakure insisted, aiming for the knees of a particularly large villain and swinging hard. "Now let's mop these guys up!"
With the pair of them working together, it was a cinch. The remaining villains were wild, undisciplined, easy pickings against threats that they couldn't even see all that well through the neverending storm. Nine times out of the remaining ten villains that they could find within the zone, Kirishima charging them head-on with his usual loud enthusiasm was enough to sufficiently destabilize them that Hagakure could simply zip in from one side and crack them across their skulls, or their backs, or their legs, until they went down.
It was honestly kinda surprising to Kirishima, seeing(?) someone that he'd gotten the impression was quite bubbly and nice, acting so aggressively. Though given the situation they'd found themselves in, he supposed it wasn't exactly uncalled for.
"Behind you!"
Kirishima span around, hardening up once again just in time for one more wild punch to bounce harmlessly off his jaw, before countering with a solid uppercut that sent the villain off his feet.
And one second later-
CLANG.
He joined his comrades on his back, knocked out.
With the street now free of threats, Kirishima stretched, water cascading off him and his costume.
"Man, that was awesome!" he called over to Hagakure, whose pipe clattered onto the ground. Kirishima noticed her shimmering hand raised and waving at him, and returned the gesture.
"Thanks!" Hagakure replied, dashing over to the redhead and pulling her gloves out of her suit-pockets, using them to dry her wet hands off as best she could before slipping the gloves over them. "I thought it was gonna be hard to sneak up on people in this rain, but, uh… they weren't the brightest bunch, were they?"
"No kidding." Kirishima snorted, turning around. "C'mon, let's get out of here. We gotta find a way outta here, and regroup with the others!"
"Right behind you!"
-----
"On your right, Gwen!"
Immediately pivoting in response to Koda's words, mana surged from Gwen's hands and struck the approaching villain in the chest, sending him flying backwards before they could take even one step closer. He collapsed into a debris pile, unconscious, though the pair of students only managed to get a few steps further away from the Mountain Zone before Koda called out again.
"Behind- agh!"
Gwen span, her teeth gritting as she heard something slamming into the shield she'd handed over to her classmate, heard and felt said classmate sliding backwards on his feet a little. The villain whose enlarged fist had been stopped by Koda's shield barely had time to widen his eyes before a mana-rope wrapped itself around his wrist, twisted his arm back on itself, and punched him in the face with his own fist to knock him down.
"Keep moving!" Gwen called out, gently gripping Koda's free wrist and pulling him across the way. "We're nearly there!"
"R-right!"
As they moved, Gwen glanced upwards at the central plaza that they were steadily heading in the direction of. At least a dozen villains lay on the ground, out of the fight, but around half a dozen MORE were still on their feet, moving and attacking with Aizawa at their center, their homeroom teacher and his capture-weapon moving like a storm within the storm that they were all trapped in.
It was good for both Gwen and Koda that most of the villains not directly in the central plaza deemed Aizawa the greater threat than a pair of teenagers, and elected to make beelines for him over them. Good enough that they could escape notice by holding to the edges of the Landslide (which was distinctly colder than the rest of the USJ… Gwen had a feeling she knew where the ice-wielding Todoroki had been sent to) and Ruins (she could hear a familiar yelling of "DIE, ASSFACE!"… Gwen had a feeling she knew where Bakugo had been sent, too) Zones.
Her eyes trailed up the stairs on the other side of the plaza, that led towards the main entrance that they'd all come through earlier. She could still see the same purple mist that had enveloped and sent them all across the joint earlier, but a slightly closer look revealed that there were other figures there as well. She'd remembered Iida and Shoji grabbing some people- though she didn't see who- and managing to get out of the fog before they were sent all over the place, so the chance to get help was still there.
A chance that would be greater if one more person was up there, rather than down here.
She turned to face Koda, laying a hand on his shoulder and gently pushing him in front of her, in the direction of the stairs… that he had a clear running shot at.
"Koda, go."
"W-wait, but-" Koda began, but faltered when Gwen pushed him again, slightly more firmly this time.
"Help the others up there. I'll help down here. Go."
Koda hesitated for a split-second, but didn't need telling a third time. Shield held tightly against his chest, he broke out into a sprint, his shoes pounding against the concrete and not looking back for an instant as he went. Gwen readied herself, prepared to take out any villains that might try to target him as he made a break for the stairs, but when none did, she turned her attention back to the central plaza, where Aizawa remained. He was still going… but still alone.
Well, he wouldn't be for long, Gwen thought as she took a couple of steps towards the plaza in question, her eyes flicking around to the different zones as she saw movement around each of them.
Kirishima and Hagakure- both sopping wet- had escaped the Downpour Zone, chatting animatedly to each other.
Yaoyorozu was hauling a short-circuiting Kaminari out of the Conflagration Zone, his eyes spiralling slightly and hair sparking slightly, but neither looked hurt.
Midoriya, Asui and Mineta were making their way out of the Flood Zone- all soaked, Midoriya and Mineta coughing, but all three were alive.
Todoroki stepped calmly out of the Landslide Zone, looking completely composed. Aoyama followed a few steps behind, looking decidedly LESS concerned as he dramatically patted ice-chips off of his dripping cape.
Bakugo was stomping out of the Ruins Zone, looking like he needed something to either punch, blow up or both. Jiro and Tokoyami followed at several paces' distance, both soot-streaked but unharmed.
But as Gwen's eyes trailed back to Aizawa, her eyes widened slightly as his hair- which had been standing rigidly on end for most of the fight- suddenly fell back down. And right on cue, the grey-blue-haired man- the one with hands clinging to his face and arms- moved forwards, a hand outstretched.
Aizawa's hair immediately stood on end again as he hurled out his capture weapon, but the villain didn't try to dodge. Catching what Aizawa had thrown his way, he didn't break stride as he ran at him. Aizawa closed the distance, ducking under the villain's outstretched hand and driving one of his elbows into his stomach. However, unlike pretty much every other villain he'd been seen fighting today up until that point, the hands-man seemed to be made of stern enough stuff that he didn't go down immediately. He recoiled, sure, but remained on his feet well enough to grab Aizawa's other elbow in one hand… as Aizawa's hair went back down again.
Almost immediately, the fabric of his sleeve began to disintegrate, crumbling into dust beneath the villain's fingers. Within a few seconds, it began spreading beyond the fabric, onto Aizawa's skin… before a mana-rope wrapped itself around the Pro Hero's torso, yanking him violently backwards before the decay could spread too deep.
The villain's hand closed on empty air, and he glanced upwards at both Aizawa- who hit the ground and rolled away from him- and Gwen, who dashed to his side and dissipated the mana-rope the second he was clear. Her eyes flicked to his elbow, which was lightly oozing blood, but beyond that…
"That's not too bad." Gwen muttered. "Could've been… worse."
Aizawa rolled onto his good arm, forcing himself upright and glancing over at Gwen. She couldn't see his eyes behind his goggles, but she could tell he was glaring at her as he got to his feet.
"Tennyson, you need to-"
"Help? Yes, sir." Gwen cut across him, her hands glowing with mana again. "Left!"
There was no time to argue. On his student's word, Aizawa jumped backwards, angling himself so his injured elbow was away from the masked villain that had lunged at him from his left, mouths with jagged teeth emerging from his hands. With a grunt, he shoved him away, straight into a mana-bolt to the back from Gwen that sent him sprawling. Two more villains, one with the head of a hammerhead shark and another with enlarged, furry arms, lunged at the teacher and student.
Aizawa dodged around the one with enlarged arms, wrapping his capture weapon around the nearest one and holding it down while performing a jump-kick into his back, while Gwen ducked under a swing from the shark-headed man's clawed hands, before firing a mana-bolt straight into his groin. When the shark-headed man doubled over in pain, clutching his privates, Gwen straightened up and performed a simple mana-enhanced chop to the side of the man's throat, immediately dropping him.
When a fourth villain tried to grab her from behind, Gwen ducked under both his arms, driving an elbow into the centre of his abdomen. Turning around as the man stumbled backwards, winded, Gwen drove a mana-enhanced boot into the top of the villain's foot, sending him hopping around and clutching his foot before he eventually toppled over.
She turned, as soon as the last villain hit the floor, along with Aizawa to face the hands-man, who let out an annoyed breath.
"I hate it when some stranger thinks they can just waltz in and interrupt my raid…" he muttered, before turning his head towards the hulking brain-exposed behemoth. "Nomu."
At once, the 'Nomu' moved, launching with such strength that it tore a crater into the concrete. It barrelled straight for Aizawa, hand outstretched, ready to grab and more-than-likely crush him… but Gwen reacted first.
A mana-rope surged from her outstretched arm, wrapping around the Nomu's wrist and dragging its swing wide of her teacher as she pulled. Its hand smashed into the ground, embedded in there rather than inside Aizawa's ribcage. Aizawa, who had already jumped to the side as Gwen threw out the rope, landed hard on his injured arm with a grunt, but was back on his feet just in time to see Gwen planting herself between himself and… whatever the hell this thing was, as its unblinking black eyes focused on her rather than him.
"Tennyson!" Aizawa called out. "You're in the way!"
Glancing backwards, and immediately realising what Aizawa was asking of her, Gwen dived to one side, looking back and allowing Aizawa to raise his hair, activating his Quirk on the Nomu, and…
It swung at him anyway, coming INCREDIBLY close to reducing him to a bedraggled puddle, but Aizawa dodged to one side, just in time. As his hair dropped back down, he flung out his capture weapon at the arm it had swung at him with, wrapping it around its wrist…
But all it took was one jerk, and Aizawa found himself dragged off his feet by the sheer strength of the beast. He barely had time to process the Nomu's other hand, curled into a fist bigger than his whole head, coming right for him-
Only for a large blade of mana to slice into the Nomu's arm at the elbow, half-severing it. Aizawa twisted his body as best he could, just BARELY manoeuvring himself around the Nomu's dangling half-severed arm and pulling his capture-weapon off of the arm that wasn't severed. He landed a few paces away from Gwen, panting heavily as the pair of them looked over at the Nomu. The wound on it that she'd opened with her mana-blade steadily closed, with muscle and skin rapidly reforming as if it had never been wounded in the first place.
"It regenerates… and its strength appears all-natural. Beautiful." Aizawa muttered sarcastically, while readying his capture weapon again. "Absolutely beautiful."
The hands-man, who was standing off to the side rather than actually doing anything, let out a dark chuckle from behind the hand around his face.
"Neither of you stand a chance against my precious Nomu!" he called out. "He's been bio-engineered for the specific purpose of bringing down someone much, MUCH more powerful than either of you, and outfitted with the powers to do it! Without your precious Symbol of Peace here, you're absolutely hopeless!"
Gwen resisted the urge to roll her eyes, raising her hand and preparing to aim a mana-bolt at the hands-man, but when the Nomu wound up for another punch with its fully-regenerated arm, she was forced to divert her strength into throwing up a mana-shield in front of herself and Aizawa, that the Nomu easily smashed through. The shockwave generated by the punch sent both her and her teacher skidding backwards, with her actually rolling over the ground a couple of times before dragging herself back to her feet.
Having gone down on his bad elbow, Aizawa took half a second longer to get back up, groaning slightly as he did so.
"Tennyson, stop!" he called out. "We need to-"
"Hold this thing off? On it!" Gwen cut across him, again, as she moved to the Nomu's flank. Generating a pair of strong mana-ropes and binding them to the ground, she sent them around the Nomu's elbow to hold it down for a few seconds, just long enough for her to manoeuvre around it and hit the backs of its knees with a pair of mana-blasts.
The creature dropped, unable to move quickly without functioning rear knee tendons. Out of the corner of her eye, a ripple of purple mist appeared, and the teleporter materialised beside the hands-man.
"Tomura Shigaraki."
"Kurogiri…" Shigaraki turned his head towards the mist. "Is Thirteen dead?"
"The Space Hero is out of commission." 'Kurogiri' replied. "However, there were some students I was unable to disperse, and one of them escaped the facility."
Shigaraki froze for a couple of seconds. His breath hitched, his neck twitched violently, his hands (the ones that he actually had, rather than the embalmed ones all over his body) shot up to begin scratching at his neck.
"Kurogiri… if you weren't our ticket out of here, I'd tear apart every atom in your body…" he hissed. "Dozens of pros could be on their way to stop us right now, we don't stand a chance against them… and we didn't even SEE All Might, never mind kill him!"
He let out a long, shaky sigh as the Nomu's knees finished regenerating, and it returned to its feet, turning towards Gwen again.
"There's no way around it, we'll have to get out of here…" Shigaraki half-hissed half-whispered. "…but."
He turned. Looked away from Kurogiri, the Nomu, Gwen, Aizawa… towards the shallow end of the Flood Zone, where Midoriya, Asui and Mineta had been watching the whole thing, simultaneously awed and terrified of what they'd just witnessed.
"We can still make a statement… LET'S LEAVE A FEW DEAD KIDS, AT LEAST."
It all happened in a couple of seconds.
One instant, Shigaraki was standing next to Kurogiri, the next he'd moved- with faster speed than either Gwen or Aizawa had seen him display this entire battle- towards Midoriya, Asui and Mineta. His hand outstretched, aiming directly for Asui in the middle, with none of them even registering how fast he'd just moved in the direction.
Aizawa DID, though. As soon as he saw Shigaraki aiming for Asui, he aimed his Erasure directly at him once again, his strained eyes beginning to blaze red behind his goggles. Whether or not he was fast enough to stop one of his students from meeting a grisly demise at Shigaraki's hands, she, Midoriya and Mineta were still in IMMENSE danger, at the mercy of someone who- when push came to shove- had the capability to move as he'd just done.
…
But he wasn't the only one who'd registered Shigaraki moving. As he found out when, at EXACTLY the same moment he activated Erasure, a single pink mana-bolt whizzed past his head, close enough that he involuntarily shifted to the side.
It was like he was seeing it in slow-motion, whizzing through the air towards the villain. Towards his left hand, the one outstretched towards Asui's face… and striking it dead-on.
The impact was small. Quite a bit smaller than the kinds of blasts she'd been using against the Nomu throughout the past minute or so. What had been relatively-loud bangs every time mana had struck flesh was now a quiet 'crack'. Honestly, the sound of it moving through the air the instant BEFORE it had struck Shigaraki had been louder.
But the result was no less horrific.
Three of Shigaraki's fingers- his thumb, index and middle- along with half of his palm, detonated off his hand in a spray of red and landed on the ground at the edge of the water. Chunks of flesh and bone scattered in every direction, into the shallows in which Midoriya, Asui and Mineta were stood, onto the edge of the central plaza that Gwen, Aizawa, Kurogiri and the Nomu were standing on, and either side. The half of his palm that was still attached to him flopped forward, the tips of his ring and pinky fingers harmlessly brushing over Asui's face. And for the first time since the villains stepped inside… silence fell over the USJ.
Mineta- who had caught the lion's share of Shigaraki's blood-spray- blinked once, with trembling eyes, and fell unconscious, with barely enough cognitive function left before his mind shut off to make sure he went down forward, rather than backwards into the relatively-deep water.
Asui froze. Her eyes widened to dinner-plate size, pupils pinprick small. Within the water, she felt her knees trembling slightly within her hero-costume, and her throat tightening so much she could barely breathe, let alone speak.
Midoriya staggered backwards. His hand (the one without a broken middle finger and thumb) jumped to his mouth as his breath hitched: horrified at the gory display he'd involuntarily just had the best seat in the house for, but also very, VERY aware that if it weren't for what Gwen had just done… it probably wouldn't have been just Asui that would've been killed, but Mineta and himself too.
Aizawa blinked. The gory display wasn't what shocked him: in his over a decade as a Pro Hero, he'd seen worse- MUCH worse. It was how quickly and decisively the attack from Gwen- nice Gwen, smart Gwen, FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD STUDENT Gwen- had come out and struck its target… perfectly. There was really no other word for it.
He turned toward her for half a second, caught the icy glower on her face, before Shigaraki- who had been staring at his mangled half-hand in disbelief- broke the silence and screamed.
The sound ripped out of his throat raw more like an unhinged, rabid animal than any sound that one thought was possible to produce with human vocal chords. Like the audio interpretation of a man's sanity peeling apart piece by piece, or rather getting blown into chunks of blood, bone and disembodied fingers. He collapsed to his knees, his half-hand clutched against his chest by his one good hand (though all who were conscious to witness his breakdown noticed the thumb of said good hand pointed away from his wrist), rolling around in agony as his breath came in panicked, jerking, uncontrollable sobs.
"MY HAND-! MY HAND-! YOU-! MY HAND- NO- NO, NO NO-!"
Everyone who heard his screams ricocheting off every wall in the USJ tensed up, most of all those right there next to him.
His half-hand still oozing blood all over himself, strips of flesh still attached to his hand flopping around in the open air, Shigaraki pulled himself up into a sitting position, the hand over his face having dropped off of him to give everyone a look at his wrinkled face, chapped lips, visible scars and unusually-small red irises within his eyes. Streams of tears streaked down his face as shock and agony gave way to pure, concentrated molten RAGE.
"KILL HER!" he shrieked at the Nomu, flinging his hand at the beast- who had frozen as well after Gwen fired the shot off. "MAKE THAT GIRL A STAIN ON THE GROUND THAT ALL MIGHT CAN WIPE UP WITH HIS CAPE! NOMU, KILL HER! KILL HER! FUCKING KILL HER!"
The Nomu sprang at once, obediently launching itself towards Gwen, fist cocked back and ready to kill.
Aizawa sprang as well, sprinting towards Midoriya, Asui and the unconscious Mineta. Quickly lifting Mineta up with one hand and slinging him over his shoulder, and grabbing Asui by the arm with the other, he barked "Move!" at Midoriya before taking off towards the exit at full speed, with the green-haired teen following at a sprint half a second later, leaving Shigaraki to shriek behind them on the ground, his voice cracking and shattering like glass.
Glancing behind him, Aizawa watched Gwen dodge the Nomu's first strike, conjuring a layered shield to block the second- though the Nomu's fist broke through all of them and she was forced to dodge again- before she conjured up a mana-rope with one hand. Aizawa didn't slow: he hurled one end of his capture scarf backwards in Gwen's direction, aiming the cloth-like weapon to wrap around his orange-haired student and pull her out of danger, like she'd pulled him earlier.
But before it could even reach her, and without her even looking back at him, Gwen threw up a mana-barrier between herself and her teacher, stopping the capture-weapon in its tracks and causing it to drop limply on the ground.
Pulling it back to himself, Aizawa's eyes widened in a perfect mixture of anger and terror.
"KID!" he called out, skidding to a halt on the concrete as Midoriya dashed past him, only for him to come to a stop a second later and look back to see what was going on. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
Gwen dodged the Nomu's next punch, sent out her mana-rope towards its ankle and pulled, dragging it down while it was still straightening back up, and jumping back to gain distance between herself and it.
"Maybe the Nomu was made for All Might," she called out over the Nomu's bellow as it got back to its feet, brain glistening under the dome's dull light, "But it isn't All Might!"
Aizawa paused for two seconds, his eyes still wide as he looked from the Nomu, to Gwen (whom he bit back the urge to scream back "NEITHER ARE YOU!" at), then to the terrified Midoriya, shocked Asui and still-unconscious Mineta…
He didn't get the chance to decide whether to turn back or leave, as the mana-barrier that Gwen had thrown up a moment ago grew in size and sped towards him, Midoriya, Asui and Mineta, forcing the four of them far enough away from the central plaza that they couldn't be easily targeted.
Now truly alone, Gwen allowed herself a small smirk as she met the Nomu's eyes. As she brought down the mana-barrier, she gathered mana to her hands more intensely than she'd ever done, since arriving in this dimension.
'Aw, man.' she thought to herself as she watched for the beast's next move. 'Ben's gonna be heartbroken he's missing this.'
-----
Way to go, Gwen. I'm sure Ben would rather be here with you, but his time will come.