They kept moving.
Spinner's clones charged once.
They didn't make it.
Each one dropped the moment a tendril brushed them, bodies collapsing mid-stride. After the second wave failed to close even half the distance, Twice stopped making more.
Shigaraki clones followed.
Same result.
Compress clones tried flanking—only to freeze, then crumple as their own bodies turned against them.
Twice adjusted.
The next wave was different.
Magne clones surged together—five, six at once—forcing Haru to split his focus. Tendrils struck, but there weren't enough. One clone slipped through the gap.
Both Toru and Haru's body glowed in different colours, just before Haru's tendril touched that clone, dissolving it.
'Too close. If I were just a second late, Toru and I would have been sent flying in opposite directions.'
Haru exhaled sharply. His head throbbed. Maintaining control at that density burned.
Knives kept coming.
Toga's clones laughed as they threw—some high, some skipping low, others aimed where Toru would be, not where she was. A blood extractor whirred past Haru's cheek and shattered against the wall.
A Spinner clone tried throwing his blade.
It clanged uselessly against concrete, wide off the mark.
He didn't try again.
They ran.
Dodges were too close. Always too close.
Toru ducked, twisted, leapt—Haru clinging tight, tendrils constantly reaching, withdrawing, reaching again. Every second costs him. Every touch was a calculation: who first, how long, how much force.
A knife lodged in Toru's shoulder. She grunted but didn't slow.
A chunk of debris slammed into Haru's side. Pain flared, sharp enough to make his vision blur.
They weren't escaping.
Not like this.
The tendrils kept the villains from swarming them, but five meters wasn't enough against spacing and thrown steel. Long-range pressure kept tightening. Every step forward was paid for in blood.
They were still standing.
Still moving.
But the gap never widened.
And the villains knew it.
"We can't go on like this." Toru's breathing roughened. "Remove my limiters."
"I already removed the limiters on your body."
"I am not talking about that one." Toru twisted sharply, a knife slicing through the space her neck had occupied a fraction of a second earlier. "Remove the limiter on my quirk."
Haru didn't answer immediately.
Another knife skimmed past his face and buried itself in the wall, the tip stopping millimetres from his eye. He flinched. His tendrils snapped out instead, brushing a charging clone's arm. The body locked, muscles contracting violently before it collapsed in a heap.
Toru glanced at him. "Haru!"
"I am alright."
The word came out flat.
"It'd be better if I removed my own limiters," he said.
Toru shook her head as she ran. "You just awakened. You won't get much out of it. And you need your quirk unharmed to reduce the backlash from forcing an awakening." Her jaw tightened. "If you hesitate here, you'll hesitate again."
Another knife came in low. She vaulted over it, boots skidding on concrete when she landed.
Haru's lips pressed into a thin line.
He knew what she was saying.
He also knew what it would cost.
"I don't want to potentially end your hero career," Haru said with a frown. Toru was his childhood friend and one of the main reasons Haru even decided to become a hero. If he had an option, he would rather face backlash, rather than her.
"Then don't let us die here," Toru shot back. "Remember what Aizawa-sensei said. On a battlefield, you stay rational." She cut sideways again, breath hitching. "A hesitating hero is a dead hero."
That did it.
Haru reached inward, past the surface control he was barely holding together, and forced the connection deeper. Not touching her body this time—touching the system that regulated her quirk. The artificial barriers snapped open under pressure that made his vision flare white.
Toru gasped.
Both of them vanished from sight, including Haru's clothes.
They ran.
Fast.
Distance opened behind them—five meters, then ten. Knives struck empty air. Clones overshot, colliding with each other. For the first time since the fight began, the pressure loosened.
Then Toga laughed.
A sharp inhale cut through the noise.
She turned her head slightly. "There you are."
Blood.
Toru's shoulder. Haru's arm. The smell hung in the air, thin but unmistakable. Invisibility didn't matter if the camouflage was betrayed by the scent of blood.
"Great," Haru muttered. 'Can the awakened quirk only cause things in contact with others to become invisible? Isn't it kind of useless?'
Suddenly, light flared.
A concentrated beam tore forward from Toru's position, slicing through incoming knives and shredding two clones mid-charge. The air warped around it, heat rippling outward.
Haru stared.
Toru adjusted her stance, invisible feet planting firmly. Another beam followed, tighter this time, cleaner.
"I can refract light consciously," she said, voice steadier now. "Control the angles. Bend it. Pull nearby photons together." She fired again, punching a hole through the advancing line. "Turns out I don't just disappear."
"…Not bad. We can finally be on the offensive." Haru said.
Unlike before, all the Magne and Toga clones were easily destroyed. Toru aimed at the legs to avoid fatally injuring them if they weren't clones.
All might, and All For One, were in a stalemate, taking up a major part of the battlefield. The former was holding back, because not only were both students present, but also the civilians had not been rescued yet.
Then, another abrupt change appeared on the battlefield.
The ground temperature dropped abruptly.
Ice surged upward at the edge of the battlefield, forming a ramp in seconds.
Haru's head snapped toward it. Dozens of thoughts appeared and disappeared within a second before he made a decision.
"Charge a large beam," he said immediately. "Aim at the ground. Don't fire until I say."
Toru didn't question it.
Light gathered.
From the top of the ramp, three figures launched skyward.
Izuku. Tenya. Katsuki
Bakugo peeled off first, dropping like a missile.
"Now," Haru said.
The beam detonated downward.
The recoil hurled Toru and Haru upward at brutal speed. They slammed straight into Bakugo's midsection, knocking the breath from him.
"That hurts! You fuckers!."
They grabbed on his body before his body twisted instinctively, an explosion erupting from his palms—not at them, but beneath them.
The blast redirected all three.
They shot upward again, straight toward Midoriya and Iida.
For half a second, the battlefield froze.
Then Magne moved.
She heaved both arms forward, magnetism snapping tight.
Spinner and Compress glowed just before she brought one pole of the big magnet close to them.
The males were ripped off their feet and hurled through the air like cannonballs.
They were too fast and too sudden.
Haru was facing the sky, so he missed them.
Spinner hit first.
His blade punched through Toru's torso.
There was no clear wound—just the sudden resistance, the wet sound, the way her body jolted mid-air violently.
It could have pierced her stomach, or possibly could have already passed through her heart.
Haru's invisibility wore off, just as a tendril snapped out on reflex, brushing Spinner's neck.
His body seized instantly, his muscles contracting so hard that they felt like they were about to tear. His body suddenly stiffened.
Compress was already behind him, out of Haru's range.
Crystal marbles flew.
They never reached.
A wall of wind exploded upward from below, blasting the projectiles aside. Something crashed into Compress and Spinner, sending them both to the ground.
Haru looked back, just to see a person with a visor hiding their face. They were dressed like a hero.
'Mom!?'
The thought slammed through him, sharp and disorienting, but nothing showed on his face. His expression didn't change. His grip on Toru didn't loosen. The situation didn't allow for it.
Before he could speak, the woman did.
"I'll send you toward the nearest hospital," she said, voice clipped, professional. No hesitation. No warmth. "Brace yourselves."
Haru nodded once, then turned his head just enough to look at Bakugo. "Time your explosion with her strike," he said. "You mess it up, we break bones."
Bakugo gritted his teeth. "Tch. Like I'd screw that up."
Haru spread out his tendrils, moving the air around to properly orient Tenya and Izuku.
The woman moved. Her fist glowed in a bluish-black colour, eerily similar to the colour of Haru's tendrils.
The punch never touched them.
The wind pressure did.
Air detonated outward, a compressed shockwave slamming into them from behind. Bakugo exploded at the same instant, precise, controlled, angling the blast to counter the force instead of adding to it.
The result ripped them free of the battlefield.
Fast.