When Izuku had stepped through the hole he'd melted in the doors, he'd thought he was ready for anything that lay beyond. He had just fought his way through dozens of villains nearly alone, and in what was possibly the second worst environment for someone like him –the first being open water– and he had come out without a scratch.
His short string of victories had led him to the conclusion that the people he was fighting were barely villains. They were hardly innocent civilians, of course, but they had more in common with low-level thugs who hid in the back alleys of the particularly shady parts of town, waiting for helpless old ladies or stupid young kids to walk by so that they could wave a knife or flash their quirk and claim some easy cash. It was clear none of them had had the luxury of formal training, but still, Izuku had expected more. They fought without thought or even a basic plan, just charging in and hoping that either their quirks were enough or that the fact that their opponents were teenagers facing down hardened criminals for the first time would be enough of an intimidation factor that the students wouldn't fight back.
It was kind of pathetic, really.
Izuku had officially demoted the idiots he'd fought from 'villains' to 'criminal morons' in his mind, which made the fights he'd won basically worthless, to his disgruntlement. On the plus side, the fact that these thugs could barely throw a proper punch meant that Izuku wasn't very worried about his classmates at the moment. They'd made it into UA, after all. They were the best of the best of the country's hero applicants, so they at least had to be able to fend off these D-listers.
That was assuming, however, that none of them were dumb enough to go after the leaders, of course. The blue-haired villains covered in hands, the muscled giant with the exposed brain, and the well-dressed warper all had a different feel to the rest of the people who'd invaded the USJ. If Izuku were to try and name the difference, it was that they had a certain… substance to them, that the other criminals lacked. A presence.
They felt like actual threats, actual villains. So that automatically made them a hell of a lot more dangerous.
If he were to guess, the one wearing the hands was probably the leader. The mist villain hadn't done anything until the other had pointed at them, and the muscle villain had just stood there, looking vacant. So that made the hand villain the one to watch the most.
In any case, those three had been standing there, doing nothing the last Izuku had seen, content to watch their disposable army be cut down by a single underground hero. Though, it had been a good while that Izuku had lost visual on the courtyard, so the situation might have changed by now.
And Midoriya wasn't really an optimist.
So Midoriya stepped through the doorway, avoiding the puddles of molten steel that his last blast had scattered around the area surrounding the exit to the downpour zone. Tokoyami was injured, so he could follow Izuku's lead.
Izuku had taken a second to look around and assess the situation, finding himself with a ground-level view of the courtyard. In a second, he registered the slumped bodies of the thugs, and felt like grinning. His teacher was a badass!
A badass that, Izuku noticed as that second trailed on, was lying flat on the ground, the monstrously-muscled villain sitting on top of him. His arms were both horrifically broken and the man had his head imbedded in the ground. He was completely limp.
The second stretched into an eternity.
The next thing he registered was the screaming. A horrible, painful, wet, familiar type of screaming that pierced through his skull and threatened to bring up m̵̺̻̗͉̼̹̜̭̥͈̙̹̋̂̕͝͝͝ę̴̛̱̜̜̮̠͈̭̹͇̭͓̻̿ͅm̴̛͍̼̟͍̆͛͊̓͛̕o̴̲̪̐͝ř̶͙̞͔̲̘͌ͅȉ̶̘̠̳͇͇̲̭͖͈̳͕̹̤͜ͅë̶͉̪̖̬̪̣̼̠̻́͂̐͂̉̃̏̃̑̎͘͝ş̴͖̦̣̝̗̣̖̗̗̺͖̺͓̈ͅ. It was a short scream, but it's volume and feeling delivered the intended message of intense pain and distress. The fact that it tapered off to a gurgle before going silent was a just a cherry on the top of an already horrible kind of noise.
Izuku's eyes flickered to the source of the scream. It was the only motion his frozen body could possibly manage. When his gaze, filled with a new but terribly familiar emotion, landed on the source, Izuku's typically superheated body felt very cold.
Red in the water.
A floating body curled into a ball as if to try and protect itself from the world.
Green and black skin-tight wetsuit slowly staining crimson.
Long, flowing, dark green hair of such a familiar shade hiding a head from which the blood flowed in rivers.
Emerald green eyes widened.
He didn't even register someone walking into him, the sharp pain of a beak stabbing into his back, and a horrified gasp of realisation as whoever it was looked over his shoulder.
All he saw was dark dark red spreading through unmoving green.
He didn't think. Fire answered his instincts. It rushed to his limbs as his body reacted like it had been trained to do when confronting danger, crouching down and spreading his arms backwards.
The fire roared.
In an instant, Izuku had crossed the gap between himself and the blue-haired villain that was advancing on his downed classmate and her impromptu protector. He didn't bother being gentle, he needed to be quick. To get the man away from his classmates. Head wounds bled a lot, so it might not be as bad as it looked, but a head wound was a head wound, and it was serious enough by virtue of its existence without having to also factor in whatever lingering effects the villain's mystery quirk may have.
Izuku supposed he could ask what that was when the man was beaten and on the ground.
Ǫ̴͉̥̋̇̋̈́̊̐͗͑͝ŗ̵̰̫͍͙̮͖̠̲̣̈́̆ͅ ̶̢̩͚̌i̸̧̟̣͎̺̗̹̤̍̊͐͑̇̾̀͝n̴̯̪̟͍̳̥̪̞͇̑͗̏͑̿̉̑͌͐̐̏̌͜ ̴̳̭̤͉͍̦̏̃͒̉̌͑̽̅̆̕̚̚̕i̵̳̳̱͔͚̳͖̾͛̆̔͌t̵̢̯̥͛̂͆̌͛̊͝.̴̧̡͖͎̱͙̬̟͔̗̽̊̕̚͝ͅ
The flames building in both palms exploded outwards as he swung his arms forward, working with the fire coming through his boots to cancel out his momentum as it ravaged his target and the general area surrounding the bastard in an intense but controlled blast of heat and force. He'd made sure to attack from the side, as to not catch his two classmates in the explosion, but with an open target and a clear firing range, who was he to say no to a little extra umph?
He landed lightly on his feet, shifting so that he was between his classmates and where the villain had been. He listened as a blubbering Mineta tearfully told Izuku everything he'd learned about the villains.
The big guy is super-fast, and super strong. 'Good to know.'
Aizawa tried to save them, but the beaked villain had taken him down. 'Not helpful and very obvious.'
The blue-haired villain could disintegrate flesh with a touch. 'More useful and pretty interesting…'
Blue hair and his mist butler were called Shigaraki and Kurogiri respectively. 'Ooooh, names. Juicy, but not particularly useful at this specific time.'
Izuku didn't drop his guard as he heard water sloshing behind him, resisting the urge to turn back and check on the wounded. If the villain hadn't been incapacitated by his initial attack, he'd need to stay wary and keep an eye out for potential counter attacks.
As the smoke and dust cleared, Izuku's narrowed eyes went wide. Instead of seeing a rather overcooked villain, he was seeing a particular muscled villain with a beakful of teeth standing between himself and Shigaraki with his arms spread out to the side, shielding his boss. Izuku caught movement on the beaked villain's torso, and watched with a sense of awed disgust as charred flesh and skin bubbled before knitting itself back together.
"Haha. You heroes really don't hold back against us at all, do you. That attack could have seriously hurt, you know?" A raspy voice spoke behind the dead-eyed wall of muscle. It sounded disturbingly calm for a person who'd nearly been on the receiving end of a very potent fire-blast.
'Well,' Izuku eyed the now healed beak villain, 'potent for normal people without whatever quirk this guy has.'
The disintegration villain –Shigaraki, according to Mineta– stepped out from behind the beaked villain. He had an undeniable aura of satisfaction as he watched Midoriya's reaction to the beaked villain's defence. "You should really be more careful with that, hero-brat." The word was spat out like phlegm stuck at the back of the villain's throat; his disgust practically visible as blood red eyes glared from between the embalmed fingers of the hand covering his face.
Yet, despite that, a sense of smug satisfaction practically oozed from the man's dry skin. His every step filled with a confident swagger. Shigaraki stopped beside the beaked villain, laying an almost gentle hand on bulging, purple skin. The villain kept his gaze fixed on Izuku, having dismissed Mineta and Tsu as soon as the new arrival had tried to barbeque him. Izuku met his gaze evenly, emerald suns burning in his sockets as he kept his flames running up his arms and legs. A warning. No, a threat.
"You're lucky Nomu here has a Super-Regeneration quirk. Without him, I'd probably be dead." Flaky skin stretched to its limits as the man's face contorted into what was probably a grin beneath the hand on his face. "Though, you probably wouldn't mind that, would you. You're all just dying to become the revered tools of the state. Oppressors of the unfortunate, sitting on your ivory thrones and laughing at us little-people as we try and make our way in the world. Yes… you're all eggs. Eggs that'll hatch to be good little hammers of state sponsored violence. All dying following All Might's lead."
If the word 'hero' had been spat out, the name of the number one hero had been a growled curse. A condemnation of society and show of the man's hatred, as well as a taste of its depths.
Though, honestly, Izuku was unimpressed.
What had started as a kid showing off a toy, had moved onto the mutterings and ramblings of a deranged misanthrope. At some point during the monologue, between the presentation of points and connections made by the twisted logic of a similarly twisted mind, the villain had started to scratch at his own neck. A scratching that only got worse as the villain got more and more worked up
Izuku was honestly having trouble following along with Shigaraki's rant, but that was mainly because his mind was more focused on what he had categorised as a significantly more dangerous threat than the lunatic villain's speech.
The Nomu had shown its Super-Regeneration, and Shigaraki had said that was its quirk, but it had also moved between where it had been sitting on Aizawa, to shielding Shigaraki in less time than it took to blink. 'Speaking of Aizawa,' Izuku narrowed his eyes in thought, still ignoring what Shigaraki was saying. The crusty villain seemed to really be getting into it now.
'The Nomu was sitting on top of Eraserhead, and he does look pretty messed up, though I can't tell if any of those injuries came from the villains in the horde or not.' The gears turned in Izuku's head as he analysed his opponent. 'Could that speed just be Nomu taking advantage of its advanced regeneration and using hysterical strength to max out the use of its muscles, while its quirk heals any damage? And If its strength matched its speed…'
Izuku's thoughts were interrupted as the villain stopped speaking, his face in a scowl. The warp villain –Kurogiri– was standing a distance away from the now silent Shigaraki and the dead-eyed Nomu, constantly observing the interaction, but seemingly content to let things play out. Izuku didn't dismiss the warper as a threat, but he was definitely second on the list of priorities.
Shigaraki's silence didn't last. His face pulled into that now-familiar grin, dry skin pulling against itself as the red orbs twinkled with a sadism that Izuku decided meant the time for talk was about to end.
'Not a moment too soon,' Izuku thought. He couldn't hear the sound of splashing behind him, so either Mineta had given up trying to move Asui, and was watching the stare-down like an idiot, or he had successfully used the time that the villain had been distracted monologuing at Izuku to discretely carry the injured girl away from the confrontation and tried to sneak around the edge of the courtyard, back to the stairs, and had linked up with anyone at the entrance.
Izuku thought back to what he'd seen of Mineta's behaviour and capabilities during the week, heard a week sniffle behind him, and decided he needed to set more realistic expectations of his allies.
Finally, Shigaraki spoke. "Hey, you, NPC… you jumped in to save your friends just now, didn't you. How noble. How heroic. I bet you're one of those wannabe All Mights too. Worshiping him like the false god he pretends to be. Well guess what?" The villain rapped his knuckled against the immobile beaked villain besides him. "Nomu here was specifically made to fight and kill the so-called Symbol of Peace. Our special cheat code was built to fight the strongest that there is. But I think he might need a warm up, and it always feels good to get rid of the mobs before the final boss gets here. And besides, like I said earlier," the villain takes a step back behind the Nomu.
Izuku's coils like a spring about to launch, his eyes locked onto the figure of the Nomu. The creature. The unnatural weapon apparently made to kill All Might.
His mask lets out a mechanical whoosh as he inhales.
'This thing was made to fight All Might, and the villain was confident when he said that. Bluffs are of no use when you aim that high, so Shigaraki really believes that this thing can do it.' Izuku felt his heartrate pick up, blood pumping around his body as adrenaline started to enter his system.
"If we're going to have to leave because of Kurogiri's screw up, then at least we'll leave the bodies of hisprecious students as a gift. You die following that false symbol like the good little NPC you are."
He breathed out, and the fires of twin emerald suns leaked out of their sockets, the flames twitching as they licked at Izuku's eyebrows. A message displaying the content Izuku's mind for the few that could read it.
The villain pointed the index of his deadly right hand at the green haired teen. "So, Nomu–"
This thing was built to fight All Might, and behind the nerves and jitters such a statement would cause, Izuku felt something build.
He wasn't nervous. He refused that notion. He couldn't be nervous as he stood there, the single thing between his classmates and the villains.
'No. Fuck that!'
He was excited!
A week of practicing to keep from maiming his opponents, of drilling it into his skull how flammable his classmates were compared to his usual sparring partners. A week of holding back…
And now, he was given a chance to let loose. To measure up to this beast? To push his quirk harder?
He wasn't scared! This fight was going to be fun!
Green eyes burned, as Shigaraki's eyes gleamed. "– kill."
Dead, vacant eyes came to life, swivelling in their sockets, before focusing on the green haired pyromancer. A rictus grin filled with shark-like teeth filled a beak as the brain of the beast pulsed for a split-second. Then the beast vanished.
Pure instinct and practice saved Izuku from being squashed like a bug as the Nomu's fist buried itself in the concrete where he had just been standing. Izuku had blasted himself to the side, keeping his body facing the Nomu, and watched carefully as the monster paused, then removed its fist from the ground, before charging back at him.
A rocket-blast assisted leap later found Izuku above the Nomu, its massive arms closing around his launch spot. Izuku decided to retaliate. Aiming both hands downwards, he unleashed a torrent of flames in a waterfall of heat and destruction, bathing the surrounds in a warm glow. A pained screech could be heard from the centre of the flames, before the Nomu emerged, having jumped upwards to try and grab the green-haired teen, but instincts and training kept him just out of reach.
The two continued this dance, the Nomu lunging, leaving a path of destruction after each step, and Izuku dodging just in time, using the Nomu's split second pause after an attempted attack to bathe his attacker in increasingly hotter blasts of flames. Flames which spread and consumed larger and larger quantities of their battlefield. The smell of burned flesh and the sounds of enraged screeching filled the courtyard as the battle carried on.
Once, Izuku launched himself a bit further away, before planting himself and unleashing a tidal wave of fire towards his enemy's last position. An enemy which let out its characteristic shrill noise of pain and rage, before it charged through the attack as a blue, seemingly ignorant of the bones of its ribcage and arms being exposed to the open air, flesh pulsing and bubbling as tendons and muscle-fibres sprouted from anywhere and sewed the beast back together, vacant eyes glaring at the fire-wielding teen from their place imbedded in the creature's brain. Flames consumed the area behind it as the behemoth attacked, its wounds still healing as it crushed concrete with its fists and swung so hard its missed punches left wakes in the air.
All the while, Shigaraki and Kurogiri sat back, seemingly content to observe the carnage and destruction. At first, Shigaraki cackled. "You absolute fucking noob, Nomu has regeneration! He can take anything you can dish out like it's nothing and hit back harder. He's a perfect tank! And its fucking obvious what would happen if a newbie mage tried to fight a high-level tank, no matter what your DEX stat is!"
Eventually, as the battle drew on, Shigaraki cackling died down, and he and Kurogiri slowly backed away from the ongoing clash to escape the growing intensity of the flames burning around the courtyard. Most of the villains Eraserhead had defeated were far enough away to be safe from the ongoing battle, but a few of the more unfortunate unconscious villains had been killed by the Nomu, crushed by punches that landed too close or simply turned into gory mists as the Nomu charged towards its target, heedless of any obstacles. The flames that littered the ground, burning through anything flammable, and had started to attack the chunks of flesh and bone, like hyenas scrounging for scraps after a lion's hunt. The already pervasive smell of burning meat from the battle between Midoriya and the Nomu masking the smell of carbonising human remains.
The battle of fire vs regeneration was still ongoing, and, despite the ever-increasing heat of the teenager's attacks, the Super-Regeneration managed to keep up. 'And the NPC keeps avoiding Nomu's hits. He probably poured all his points into DEX and AoE, so it'll end with a one hit KO eventually. Nomu doesn't get tired, after all.'
"But still," he grumbled, one of his hands coming up to scratch at his neck. He glared through the hand on his face, his anger still present but seemingly dulled without a specific target to focus it on, "it's taking too much time, and we still have a level to complete, and I don't want to abandon a raid without also leaving bodies." He scowled at the thought of such an unsatisfying ending. "Kurogiri, can you help Nomu catch this fly?"
The mist villain came to attention as he was addressed, considering the request, before shaking his head. "It wouldn't be impossible. They're moving around quite a lot, so accurately placing portals would be difficult, but I don't think it would be wise to intervene. The high temperature might destabilise the portals somewhat, and if you attempted to assist yourself, I'm afraid you would end up being badly injured, Shigaraki Tomura. Either from the boy or the environment he has created."
Shigaraki glared at his subordinate, before looking back at the clash. He turned just in time to see a beam of flames burn through one of Nomu's arms, cauterizing the injury and preventing the regeneration from activating effectively as the rest of the charred limb dropped uselessly to the floor, before being consumed by the surrounding flames in this man-made hellscape.
The blue-haired villain felt a flicker of something he refused to acknowledge, watching as the Nomu followed its programming, tearing away at the wound with its powerful clawed hands before the cauterised flesh was gone, creating a pathway for the quirk to activate and a new arm to grow. The Nomu, now back to fully operational, returned to the fray, a blur of power and mindless fury.
Shigaraki grinned. 'He's as perfect as you said he would be, Sensei. He'll definitely be able to kill All Might.'
His grin turned back into a scowl. 'But I don't know if it'll be today. Time is wasting, reinforcements are coming, and I still need to up my kill count. Maybe Eraserhead? Nah, he was practically dead already. Actually…' The grin returned, becoming a smile full of toxic pleasure. "I'm pretty sure Eraserhead was lying somewhere over there." He pointed at the inferno, his smile becoming a maniacal laugh. "Oh. OH! THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER! 'UA student kills teacher in villain attack'. I can see it now. It would be amazing! That would definitely hurt All Might, nearly as much as killing his whole class. YES! It fucking rocks when RnG is on your side!"
Tomura observed the flames before him with a new satisfaction, it's combatants only visible by the sudden gout of bright flames swallowing a portion of the battlefield, or a screech and an air blast from the Nomu. It didn't matter to Tomura, really. At this point, he'd already won.
At this point, he'd drag this out as long as possible until All Might got here, squash that puny symbol and the other teachers, then go home and pin his stupid head with those stupid rabbit-ear-bangs to the dartboard to replace the picture that had been there as long as he could remember. Maybe Shigaraki would even reward himself with that new MMORPG, Country in Chaos, to play while he taunted his trophy. He'd read good things about the game online, and other gamers seemed to be hyped too. He'd definitely deserve it after such a win. Sensei would definitely-
Out of the corner of his eye, Shigaraki spotted movement.
Shouji Mezou was stressed. He had been stressed since the portal opened in the middle of the courtyard and spilled a bunch of villains into one of his lessons after less than a week of being at UA.
The stress had only gotten worse when the portal (which turned out to be a dude!) appeared in front of the doors to the USJ and blocked their escape. He had thought his stress levels had peaked when he had been dropped into a burning city. Dropped, might he add, from a pretty substantial height.
It had been a stroke of luck that he had, on a whim, learned to use the membrane between his arms as a glider when he had been young. He thinks it had been a lesson on different types of vertebrates that gave him the inspiration. The teacher had been droning on about mammals, and poor child Mezou had been dozing in his chair, when the uninspiring man had mentioned something called a flying squirrel. Zoning back into the lesson had given the six-armed child a view of a flying squirrel projected onto the board, its limbs extended mid-flight. Shouji had been transfixed by the creature, utterly fascinated, before the slides changed.
The lesson forgotten, child Mezou's mind had run like the machine made of coloured bricks and clockwork it was, and had come to a conclusion. It had taken weeks, a lot of experimentation, and no shortage of bruises and skinned knees, but Shouji Mezou finally achieved flight after throwing himself off the jungle gym.
It had been glorious. The wind in his hair, the rush of an aborted fall, and the feeling of being cradled by the air itself… for five seconds, Shouji envied those with flight quirks.
Then he crashed into a bush. He hadn't been hurt, and his mother had a rather funny picture of the event, but young Mezou had felt like the missing Wright brother after that glide.
He had practiced it continuously over the years, along with other aspects of his quirk, until it was a seamless movement to transition from falling to gliding.
All of this to say that Mezou was saved from becoming a red stain on the pavement of a burning city by a particularly boring third grade teacher, and a picture of a rodent.
He didn't particularly care, at this point, he'd take all the help he could get.
Finding Ojiro beating the shit out of some villains in the middle of the street, surrounding by burning buildings, loosened some of the pent-up stress that had gathered in his gut, as well as made him realise what a discrete badass the tailed teen is. Helping in the beatdown by grabbing three villains sneaking up behind the tailed teen and throwing them like cheap medicine balls relieved some more.
After a dozen more unconscious thugs, some shaky navigating, and a close call with a villain who had a slightly more powerful fire manipulation quirk than some of the rest –they had taken that one out using the two-pronged assault of a thrown brick and the lid of a trash can, and it had been particularly satisfying seeing that asshole go down– the two mutant teens had finally made it out of the inferno of the conflagration zone.
Only to walk right into the hellscape of the courtyard.
Everywhere he looked, there was fire. Bodies he didn't recognise littered the ground, and he kept hearing a horrible screaming coming from the centre of the courtyard. From what he could see through the haze of the haze from the heat, a massive black blur was rushing around, with dust and sounds of breaking concrete coming from each movement. Every so often, an extra intense gout of flame would erupt from somewhere, bathing the black blur in radiant heat and eliciting another screech.
Tearing his gaze away from the battle going on, Shouji decided to focus on what he could do. Focusing on the feeling of his quirk, the weird sensation of his limbs stretching and splitting apart washed over his body, before his field of view suddenly expanded, receiving five new perspectives at once. For anyone else, the feeling would be terribly disorienting, but Shouji barely felt the change.
His extra eyes allowed him a better view of the field above the haze, and his breath caught.
"Midoriya is fighting one of the villains," a newly sprouted hand morphed into a mouth, and he relayed what he saw to Ojiro as the two slowly made their way to the closest cover available to them. Ojiro hid behind some bushes as Shouji used a tree for cover, using his extra eyes like periscopes. "The villain's really, really fast. I can barely see him, and he seems to be immune to Midoriya's attacks." His eyes caught onto another detail, and the six-armed teen gagged. "Scratch that. Not immune. The villain's just healing after every blast."
Ojiro looked contemplative, hidden behind the bush. "Healing and super speed, huh? That's a tough combination to beat." The teen looked at the taller mutant. "What should we do?"
Shouji was about to respond, when something alarming caught one of his eyes. He had been looking over the villains –and desperately ignoring the suspicious chunks near the fight; nightmares later, focus now– and he noticed a familiar shape. A black jumpsuit and white scarf, tinted with an alarming amount of red was lying limply on the ground. Lying limply much too close to a fight between a powerful fire quirk user and someone with super speed who could apparently ignore said fire quirk.
"Aizawa-sensei's there." Ojiro tensed as the news was relayed. "He's not moving. There's a lot of blood, and his arms look twisted." Something twisted in Shoji's gut as he looked at the mangled form of his teacher, but he pushed it down. He needed to be the rock, brushing off the tide of panic he watched slowly consumed the tailed teen beside him. Mezou would panic retroactively later, in the privacy in his own room. Now, he would be the stoic giant he was known to be. "We need to get him away from there. Any ideas?"
Ojiro considered this for a second. A bead of sweat ran down his brow, whether from the heat or from the nerves, Shoji wouldn't ask. Not when he could hear Ojiro's heart beating like the hoofs of a stampeding herd. "I'm drawing a blank here. I say we rush out, grab him, and pull him back here. Hopefully we can keep him stable, and hopefullyMidoriya can keep that villain busy while we do all this." The blond grinned wryly, though his eyes showed what he really felt about his own idea. "Please tell me you have a better plan."
Shouji's extended mouth returned the grin. "Unfortunately, no. I'll do a quick check to see if there are any other people around, then, on my signal, we book it."
Shouji pressed more on his quirk, and more arms and eyes sprouted in response. He wouldn't bother with any ears; the roar of the flames and the sounds of combat would drown out anything useful. Scanning the battlefield, Shouji cursed under his breath, drawing the attention of his tailed companion. "Two more villains are standing back. The mist one who teleported us, and the hand guy who came through the portal. They're far away, and the flames could shield us, but with the warp villain, distance won't matter." Ojiro's grin turned into a grimace as he turned back to the battle, considering their options.
Shouji continued. "They're focused on Midoriya and that other villain for now, so I think we can do it. We can get him." He retracted most of his duplicated limbs, and Shouji leaned forwards, ready to run when he got confirmation from his partner. Ojiro looked at Shouji, looked at the inferno just in time for an extra-large burst of fire to shoot upwards out of it, and looked in the direction of their sensei. The tailed boy sighed, grinned shakily and readied himself to run out. "Let's go be heroes."
The two students burst from the bushes in a dead sprint, Ojiro slapping his tail against the ground for an extra burst of speed, while Shouji pushed his legs to their limits, taking full advantage of his longer gait. The two made it to their teacher and crouched down, using the flames to hide from the villains' view. Ojiro shakily pressed his fingers against Aizawa's less broken wrist, ignoring the way bones moved in ways they really shouldn't be able to while still inside the body. He let out a breath in relief as he felt a pulse. Weak as it might be, it was a sign of life, and that was all the confirmation they needed.
After Ojiro signalled to his partner, Shouji leaned down and picked Aizawa up, being extra careful to not jostle any part of the man too roughly, especially his head and neck. Mezou really didn't want to pull his teacher out of a battlefield, only to realise he'd made the man's condition worse by being careless.
Shouji grew more arms to act as a sort of cot as well as keep his mangled teacher stable as he followed Ojiro, sprinting as carefully as one could when what sounded like a fight to the death between some hellspawn and a monster born from the evil of the world distilled into physical form that was going on at what he considered to be a less than ideal distance away from himself.
Shouji pushed himself to run faster.
They reached their cover and crouched behind the bushes. After gently laying down their wounded teacher, Mezou immediately spread-out extra eye-appendages to check on the villains and the fight, while an increasingly rattled Ojiro began to perform basic first aid on Aizawa. While Shouji sighed in relief at the fact the villains hadn't seemed to have noticed them, Ojiro was panicking and swearing under his breath. "The first aid course didn't cover this! The most I've done so far is a deep cut, and is that… ohmygod! I can see the bone! The skin is all gone!"
Shouji shot his partner a stern look to try and get him to keep quiet, but was ignored as Ojiro started to bandage the most serious wounds he could realistically deal with. Sighing, Shouji got down to help his beleaguered classmate, keeping a couple eyes on the situation.
A few moments later, two hero-student approved level med kits, and a lot more bloodstains on their hero costumes than they would have liked, Aizawa was bandaged as well as they could manage. They had made rudimentary splints for their sensei's arms with branches they had found lying about, but there is only so much they could do for an arm where the bone was more powder than solid object.
Shouji sat back on his haunches, but didn't relax. As he turned to tell his partner to prepare to move and try to get Aizawa to the exit, he heard a rustling come from behind him. Ojiro visibly heard it too, and both of them whipped around to face the new threat. Ojiro was already settled into a stance, face pulled tight, while Shouji's arms had begun splitting at a fast rate, soon producing a wall of arms and fists, all cocked and ready. Both of them watched the area behind them, before they heard sniffling from behind another bush.
From that bush emerged a beleaguered looking Mineta, visible tear tracks running down his face. He looked somewhere between dazed, exhausted, terrified, and haunted, and Shouji quickly deactivated his quirk and ran forward to assist him, but, before he could reach his diminutive classmate, his blood ran cold. Mineta's bright yellow gloves were drenched in blood, and his costume was soaking wet. Shouji could see darker patches in the front of Mineta's costume where blood had stained the fabric, and the stoic teen quickly gave Mineta a visual once over, before Mineta noticed them.
The small teen jumped, his face showing his terror, before recognition set in. Terror melted away, giving way to relief. Then, to Shouji's confusion, the relief was quickly replaced with fear.
Before Shouji could ask what was wrong, Mineta turned back and dashed into the bush. Shouji blinked, and Mineta hurried back, a small, green, and horribly limp, being carried over his shoulder. Shouji rushed forward to help, relieving his tiny classmate of his burden, and allowing Mineta to break down.
"I-It's Tsu, s-s-s-she g-got… got h-hit by the h-h-hand villain's q-quirk. Her face…" Tears resumed as Mineta curled into a ball and sobbed, his fear finally being allowed to get the best of him. Shouji had blanched during Mineta's explanation, and quickly rushed over to Ojiro, who had calmed down by the act of helping their teacher. Now, his panic returned full force, sharing its place with horror in the marital artist's heart.
"Asui…"
Shouji ignored him and set the girl's body down gently, noting the yellow material wrapped around the girl's head stemming the bleeding. Carefully and filled with dread, Shoji lowered one ear-appendage down onto the frog-girl's chest –sending her a silent apology– and listened for her heartbeat. For a tense second, the sounds of battle faded away, and silence enveloped the multi-armed teen. Grief had started to build up, when he heard the faintest of sounds, and felt a shallow rise.
'She's alive!'
He snapped up, forming two mouths to speak to both Ojiro and Mineta. "Do either of you have any first aid stuff left?" The same voice coming from two mouths overlapped, creating an echo-like effect that knocked Mineta out of his breakdown. The urgency in Shouji's voice got both of their attention.
Ojiro shook his head. "I'm out. Used all I had on sensei." Mineta blubbered about losing it somewhere, but it no longer mattered. The cloth was the only thing preventing the girl from bleeding out, but it was also blocking her airway. The blood soaking into the material wasn't helping either, and if they did nothing, Asui would die choking on her own blood.
Shouji thought. Harder and faster than he ever had, he tried to come up with a solution. He was going to be a hero. Heroes saved lives. He refused to fail when his first chance to save someone came up, so dammit he would try something.
Suddenly, he hit upon an idea. His quirk, Dupli-Arms, was the ability to split his arms and produce different parts of the human body on the ends of his new arms. Typically, he used it to make himself stronger, or to enhance his senses, but remembered something one of his classmates from middle-school had asked, seemingly out of nowhere. Their conversation hadn't gone any further, and Shouji had forgotten all about it, but now it seemed it was time to put that random theory to the test.
"Hey, Shoji. Your quirk lets you grow parts of the human body, right?"
Mezou formed an arm with a mouth on the end. Gingerly, he lifted one part of the cloth up and, keeping his gaze away from what was underneath lest his stomach revolting distracted him from what he was about to do, he placed the mouth on the opening he could feel. He ignored the feeling of something wet and warm running along his skin, as well as the occasional hard point, and he focused.
"Well, I was just wondering…"
Ojiro's already pale face went sheet white, and he opened his mouth to protest. Something on Shouji's demeanor seem to convince him otherwise, however, and his mouth snapped shut with a click, before the tailed teen looked away, seemingly caught somewhere between embarrassed and revolted.
Shouji focused. His eyes, ears, noses, mouths, and extra limbs all related to his central system. He had an inbuilt limit to how much extra he could handle, despite the fact his quirk came with adequate mutations to help support him, if he made too many extra appendages, he wouldn't have enough blood, or take in enough oxygen to supply the extra limbs. Until now, he hadn't needed to think about that limit too hard. Simply build up his endurance, his body's capacity, and synergy with his quirk, and he would be able to push himself further. It was a mutation quirk with a transformative aspect, not too hard to train.
"…internal organs are parts too…"
'Well, if there was any time for Plus Ultra, now is it!' Centring himself, he focused on his quirk. He focused on the feeling of expansion and contraction, of the millions of tiny, unnoticeable sensations as his chest widened to accommodate the extra space required. He felt a swelling, then a hollow feeling, before something limp dropped down from his arm. Concentrating on the feeling, he pulled at it, before pushing as it reached maximum capacity.
Instantly, Shouji felt something flow through him. It felt like the first breath of fresh air after holding your breath for a long time. He felt phantom tickles at the back of his throat as he opened his eyes, looking on with pride as the pair of lungs at the end of one of his arms expanded and contracted.
It was a relatively simple system, really. One mouth was constantly open, pulling air in or out as they expanded and contracted. Air was pulled out of Asui's lungs and into Shouji's extra lungs, before being expelled out of the spare mouth. Air was then taken in, and sent back into Asui, allowing her to breath without putting too much strain on her system.
Honestly, despite the situation, Shouji was proud of his impromptu biological ventilator. Ojiro looked sick, and Mineta muttered something about horror movies or face huggers.
Shouji shook his head, and refocused on the task at hand. "This won't work for ever. We still need to get them to the exit. I can carry Asui-san and keep giving her air, but if I take Aizawa-sensei too, it's slow me down too much."
Ojiro nodded. "Don't worry about sensei. I can take him without too much trouble, though that means that you, Mineta, will be in charge of protecting us if something goes wrong and we attract the wrong kind of attention."
Mineta froze, and Shouji wanted to scoff, as out of character as it was for him. Mezou really didn't think his diminutive classmate had much left in him. Dragging a wounded and dying Asui had taken a mental and physical toll on the small teen, and Shouji could still see dried blood on Mineta's face, recalling how the purple teen had mentioned how over using his quirk would make him bleed from his head.
Mineta clenched his fists, and looked down, trembling. Sighing mentally, Mezou started to try and plan another way for them to get to the stairs undetected, when Mineta suddenly looked up. Raising his clenched fists, the small purple teen stared at them with watery eyes and a face that held more fear than confidence. "D-Don't worry guys! You can count on me!"
Shouji found himself quietly surprised, but decided he'd think on it another day. The three started to sneak around the edges of the courtyard, Shouji using his quirk to simultaneously make sure Asui was breathing, as well as keep an eye on their surroundings. They had decided, since the fight had spilled over somewhat and the conflagration was now blocking the shortest path, that they'd need to sneak around the other way. Thankfully, this would bring them near to all the other zones except the downpour zone, so hopefully they'd be able to link up with some of the other students. Shouji had spotted Tokoyami on the other side of the fire, separated from them and closer to the stairs, and the boy seemed to have been collected by those who had been leftover near the exit to the USJ and, thanks to the melted hole in the doorway of the downpour zone, Shouji had deduced that his bird-headed… friend? Were they friends now? A villain attack probably-
'No. Focus.'
Shouji had deduced that Tokoyami had probably been with Midoriya in the downpour zone, which meant that Midoriya, a fire quirk user who had spent somewhere between ten to twenty-five minutes before this fight being soaked to the bone by rain, was so unaffected that he had decided to fight the strongest villain in the USJ. A fight that was still going strong, and made all three of them flinch with every gout of roaring flame, and every screeching reply from the villain, though Mineta claimed that the villain wasn't really human which was… Shouji decided to shove that into the 'Unpack Later' box in his head for when they were all safe and sound and out of danger. 'Yeah. That sounds like a good idea.'
Then things, as they seemed wont to do in life or death situations, changed.
They had made it past the mountain zone, and Shoji could nearly touch the walls that surrounded the landslide zone. They hadn't linked up with anyone new yet, but Shouji could feel a chill on his skin which wasn't just from the cold sweat that seemed to be covering him, so the multi-armed teen felt pretty confident in his assessment that Todoroki was nearby, went a dry and painfully raspy voice rang out.
"This is taking too long. This cheating mage's DEX stat is stupidly high for his level, he'd basically a mini-boss." Inaudible grumbles met Shouji's multitude of ears as he caught sight of red and white hair in the distance. 'So close…'
"But this mini-boss is still a hero, and he can't hurt our tank… Nomu." Shouji, Ojiro, and Mineta felt a chill go down their spine. They felt the overwhelming feeling that Death had just cast her empty gaze upon them, considering.
"Kill the three brats over there."
All of Shouji's eyes widened, and three head swivelled to the left. A black blob suddenly disengaged from the fight going on in the courtyard and started charge towards them. The blob started to blur as it picked up speed, practically teleporting to them. A massive, meaty hand backed with so much muscle the creature seemed to be nearly bursting through its skin, pulled back. For a fraction of a fraction of a second, Shouji felt true, unadulterated fear. He felt it freeze his body in place as a fist backed up by more power than he would ever have in his life swung forward, and, in that instant of time, his body unresponsive and his mind empty, Shouji felt nothing.
Then, suddenly, something stood in front of him, and from that green, hooded something came a wave of the most intense fire that Shouji had ever felt. It dried the air and melted the ground as it raced towards the monstrous blur, washing over and devouring its flesh like a swarm of starved hounds, carbonising the beast layer by layer.
For another instant, Shouji felt hope.
It wasn't enough.
That black fist swung, and the green something didn't have time to move. The world blurred as it struggled to catch up to what happened, and Shoji stood stock still, in shock, as his mind registered what his eyes were reporting. Standing in front of him, on two red, metal boots, was a pair of legs. Only a pair of legs.
When his brain caught up to him, Mezou nearly fell to his knees. His… his classmate was dead. He had diedto protect him! Mezou wanted to be sick.
He wouldn't claim to be friends with Midoriya. The green haired fire user was anti-social, nearly reclusive compared to the rest of the class, and seemed to enjoy being as far away from anyone else as he possibly could, despite being relatively easy to speak to, if you knew how. Shouji liked to think he had been starting to know how.
Even if Midoriya had appeared terrifying in the videos of the combat training, even if most people in the class were wary of him on some degree, Shoji had seen how the green haired teen had reacted after the match. There had been a hint of regret as he had watched Kirishima being wheeled away, hidden from everyone behind the burning green suns that lived in his classmate's eye sockets. Midoriya had even offered to walk Shouji to the infirmary, which, when his concussion had started to catch up to him, Mezou had really appreciated.
So yeah, Shouji would readily that he could have seen himself maybe being friends with Midoriya.
Not that it mattered now.
A pair of legs falls limply to its knees, bereft of the upper body that would complete it.
Around the courtyard, all the fire goes out at once as the wake of the beaked monsters punch washes over the three frozen students. Shouji can barely keep his thoughts clear enough to keep pumping air into and out of Asui. He stares at the remains of what could have one day been a friend, mourning.
Ojiro's eyes are as wide as they can go, and the tailed teen's mind is as empty as Shoji's as they stare at their classmate's remains. His tail's twitches are the only sigh that he is still alive, blood pumping furiously through his veins as his body enters fight or flight mode now that the one shielding them has fallen. A part of him despairs for the loss of a classmate, for the loss of one who dared stand before overwhelming odds and decide to fight, for ones like that are exceedingly rare.
Mineta tears up again, and starts to cry. Despite this, he pulls two balls off of his head and prepares to follow the lessons he's learned from a wounded teacher and a dying classmate. He will try to be brave, for those who have shown him how.
Far behind the wall of muscle and mindless killing, a madman with destruction at his fingertips cackles with delight. The obstacle blocking his path to victory lies dead, defeated by the suicidal mindset of the heroes the corpse once admired that demanded it stand between the weak and the strong. The villain now has free reign to enact his desires, and spread death and destruction to hurt the ones who worship those who hurt him, and make proud the one who saved him. His puppet is eternally ready for more violence, as is its purpose, and his assistant stands behind him at his beck and call. Nothing can stop him now.
On the ground, the bottom half of a body lies motionless, deemed unimportant by those around it .