N.B : If you'd like to get early access to the next 4 chapters of All for none (Chapter 18-21) + Off screen Fight scene between Void and Aizawa, why not consider supporting me at Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom for as low as $3. Your donations will be very much appreciated.
Sunlight streamed into Principal Nezu's office, casting a warm, cheerful glow that felt like a mockery. It was the kind of perfect, peaceful afternoon that belonged in a storybook, not in the heart of an academy that had recently become a fortress under siege. The air in the room, however, was thick with a tension that the sunlight could not cut through.
Toshinori Yagi; the man who was the symbol of peace: All Might; sat stiffly in a chair that felt too small for his skeletal frame (He's surprisingly the same height as his buff form being 220cm…wow). His leg, hidden beneath his ill-fitting suit, bounced with a restless, subconscious rhythm; a frantic tap-tap-tap against the polished tiled floor that betrayed the storm raging behind his calm facade. Each tap was a second ticking by, a meter of distance growing between him and his students.
Across the wide, mahogany desk, Principal Nezu sat perched on a large stack of cushions, sipping a cup of perfectly steeped tea. His beady black eyes missed nothing, from the way Toshinori's fingers drummed on his knee to the slight sheen of sweat on his brow.
"More tea, Yagi?" Nezu asked, his voice cheerful and light, a stark contrast to the mood.
The pro hero sweat dropped at that. 'Just how much tea can this guy make?'
"No. Thank you, Principal." Toshinori replied, his voice a gravelly rasp. He forced his leg to still, clenching his fist on his thigh. "I… I must confess, my mind is elsewhere. The first-year field trip to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint began nearly forty minutes ago. I was meant to be there."
Nezu set his cup down with a soft clink. "Ah, yes. And you submitted a formal, and might I add, very politely worded, request for a one-hour leave of absence from the activity. Which I granted. Aizawa and Thirteen are more than capable of handling the introductory rescue training. The students are in excellent hands."
Yagi's lips paused to a thin fold. "I know that," The pro hero said, but the words sounded hollow even to him. "It's just… a feeling." He gestured vaguely toward the window, toward the distant horizon where the USJ was easily sited. "After the press breach, the sense of security has been… fractured. And then the incident with the files…"
The unspoken event hung heavily in the air between them. Someone had broken into Nezu's own office; a place considered one of the most secure in the entire academy. Nothing was taken, no doors were forced, but the subtle signs were there. A drawer left a millimeter ajar. A digital log wiped clean for a ten-minute window. And most chilling one of all, the confirmed disappearance of hard copies of specific files: the architectural blueprints of the USJ and the provisional quirk registries for Class 1-A.
It wasn't a random act of vandalism. It was a targeted intelligence gathering operation.
"A feeling is not a reason to neglect one of the most critical duties of your life, Toshinori." Nezu said, his tone shifting from cheerful to gently chiding. He hopped down from his cushions and walked to the front of his desk, his paws clasped behind his back. "The security breach is being handled. The stolen files are a concern, yes, but we have adapted the training exercise accordingly. The safety of our students is paramount, and I would not have allowed the trip to proceed if I had any concrete doubts."
"But what if the two are connected?" Toshinori insisted, his sullen blue eyes burning with a worried intensity. "What if the break-in was a precursor to something… something aimed at the USJ today? My place is there. Not here."
"Your place," Nezu said, his voice firming, "is wherever the future of hero society needs it to be. And right now, it is here, in this room, having a discussion we can no longer afford to postpone."
He walked over to a secure terminal and typed in a complex sequence. A holographic file flickered to life above his desk. It was a student profile.
Togata Mirio.
The boy's photo beamed back at them, his expression infectiously optimistic.
"We have spoken of him before," Nezu began. "Third-year. Work-study under Sir Nighteye. Quirk: Permeation. His grades aren't that exceptional, but his combat ratings are top of his year, and his character, from every report and my own observations, is unassailable. He is strong, reliable, and possesses a natural heroism that draws people to him. Sir Nighteye believes he is the ideal candidate as he had told you. And I am inclined to agree."
Toshinori looked at the photo of the bright-eyed young man. A perfect candidate. Everything he should want. A worthy successor to carry the torch.
So…why did it feel like a lead weight settling in his gut?...
"He is… remarkable," Toshinori admitted softly.
"He is more than remarkable," Nezu countered. "He is a potential cornerstone. With One For All, he could step into the role of Symbol of Peace seamlessly. The public would adore him. He would be a beacon."
A beacon…
The words echoed in the silent office. Toshinori's mind flashed to another boy. A boy with green, determined eyes, a fierce cry, and a body that moved before it thought. A boy who was all heart and no power, yet had more heroism in his pinky finger than most pros had in their entire bodies.
"He wasn't at the Sports Festival," Toshinori found himself saying, the words leaving his mouth before he could stop them.
Nezu blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"Togata. He's a third-year. I watched the first and second-year festivals. I didn't see him compete in the second-year event." (Slight alteration to canon on my part…)
"Ah." Nezu's whiskers twitched. "A strategic choice on his and Sir Nighteye's part. His Permeation quirk, while powerful, is… difficult to control in a public, non-lethal setting. A single misstep could see him permanently phased into the earth or unable to solidify before an attack lands. They deemed the risk of a very public, very catastrophic accident to be too high. It speaks to his prudence."
Prudence. Is that what it was? Or was it a calculated move to keep his most promising candidate out of the spotlight until the power was his to wield?
Toshinori's leg began bouncing again, a nervous tremor he could no longer suppress. "Principal… with all due respect to Togata and Sir Nighteye… this feels rushed. The boy is still a student. To burden him with this now, when the darkness is clearly moving against us…"
"It is because the darkness is moving that we must act!" Nezu's voice rose a fraction, the first crack in his composure. "…The Symbol of Peace is not just a man, Yagi. It is an idea. A deterrent. That symbol has been critically weakened since your injury, and our enemies are sensing the vacuum. The attack by the press, the theft of the files; these are not isolated incidents. They are probes. Tests of our defenses. The real attack is coming."
Nezu looked at him, his gaze unwavering and deadly serious. "We are not just choosing a successor. We are fortifying a dam that is about to break. We need a new Symbol, and we need one now. Togata is ready. He has been trained for this. Who else is there?"
The question hung in the air, charged and heavy.
Who else is there?
The image of Izuku Midoriya, brave and reckless and good, flashed again in Toshinori's mind. But the boy…was long dead.
A brief flash of a bad memory flooded his mind, but he shook that thought away from his mind before he could spiral. Young Midoriya was a promise, not a fortress. He was not coming back. No matter how many years he desperately wants to believe that was all a bad dream for years.
Nezu was right. The world didn't have years.
The conflict must have been plain on his face as Nezu's expression softened slightly. "I understand your hesitation, Toshinori. This is the greatest burden you will ever bestow. It is natural to doubt. But you must trust the logic. You must trust me. The safety of the many outweighs the anxiety of the one. Securing the future is how we protect the present."
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Toshinori's foot was still a frantic drumbeat against the floor, a stark counterpoint to Nezu's calm logic. It was the sound of a hero's instinct screaming that he was in the wrong place, that his students and co-teachers were in danger, that every second spent in this sunlit office was a betrayal of his duty.
However, Nezu's words were also true. The future was crumbling. A symbol was needed. He was trapped between the immediate duty to his students and the monumental duty to the entire world.
The number 1 hero of Japan looked at Mirio Togata's smiling face on the hologram. The perfect, prudent, powerful candidate.
…And all he could feel was a cold, creeping dread.
"An hour," Toshinori finally said, his voice hollow and defeated. "You asked for an hour of my time. We have used forty-three minutes. When this hour is up, this meeting is adjourned. I am going to the USJ. We can continue this… this discussion another time."
Nezu studied him for a long, silent moment, then gave a slow, single nod. "Very well. We will reconvene. But remember, Yagi. Time is the one enemy even you cannot punch."
The Principal returned to his seat, and the two of them sat in a heavy, oppressive silence, waiting for the clock to tick down the final seventeen minutes. The cheerful sunlight continued to stream through the window, illuminating a conversation that felt like it was sealing their fates, while miles away, in a facility designed for safety, hell was breaking loose.
_______________
USJ Exit Point…
All surrounding air at the USJ entrance was dead.
It was a profound, suffocating silence that pressed down on them with physical weight, broken only by the faint, dripping echo of water from some distant pipe and the ragged, hitching sounds of their own breath. The suffocating ozone scent of Kurogiri's warping mist still hung in the air, but it was now tainted with a new, coppery tang that made the back of everyone's throat itch.
Mina was on her knees. Her vibrant pink skin appeared ashen, smudged with dust and tears that cut clean tracks through the grime. Her hands, usually so expressive and quick, were clamped around the armored sleeve of Thirteen's suit, her knuckles bone-white. She was shaking the hero's shoulder, a small, desperate, repetitive motion.
"Th-Thirteen-sensei?" Her voice was a cracked whisper, a child's plea in the dark. "Sensei? C'mon… this… this isn't funny. The joke's over, okay? You can get up now."
She shook harder. The hero's helmet lolled to the side, the visor a mess of internal spiderwebs and a dark, viscous red that obscured the face within (For good reasons). The once-gleaming white suit was scorched and torn at the chest, a crater of ruined polymer and circuitry from which thin tendrils of smoke still curled.
"Please…" Mina's whisper broke into a sob. "You have to get up. You have to tell us what to do. We don't… we don't know what to do…"
A few feet away, Hitoshi Shinso froze where he had fallen as if turned to stone. His capture weapon hung limp from his neck. He wasn't breathing. His world had shrunk to the space between his own two feet and the horrifying, still form on the ground. His mind was a shattered record, skipping on a single, devastating groove.
'I triggered him. I used my quirk. I made him angry. She pushed me out of the way. My fault. My quirk. My fault-My fault.'
His hands trembled. The hands that had held the voice modulator. The hands that had sealed their teacher's fate. He felt the ghost of Thirteen's shove against his chest, the act of salvation that now felt like a brand of condemnation. He was a disaster, and disasters only caused harm.
The tableau was one of utter devastation. The proud Space Hero, a mentor who spoke of rescue and hope, lay broken on the floor of her own facility. Two of her students were shattered beside her, one lost in denial, the other in the depths of bottomless guilt.
And then there was Ochaco.
Where Mina's grief had turned inward into denial, and Shinso's into paralysis, Ochaco's…had been forged in the white-hot fires of a furious, all-consuming rage.
She stood apart from them, her fists clenched so tightly her short nails bit into her palms. Her entire body was rigid, trembling not with fear; but with pure, undilated wrath. Tears of fury streamed down her round cheeks while her brown eyes burned with an intensity none of her friends had ever seen. She stared at the body of the hero she idolized above all others; the hero who proved that saving people was the truest form of strength. Thirteen was her inspiration, her north star. And now that light was extinguished, violently and without mercy.
The sound of shifting mist broke the silence.
Kurogiri, who had been observing the aftermath with an air of detached completion, began to coalesce. His golden eyes glowed as his form tightened, the edges of his misty body pulling inward.
"My task here is complete," his smooth, placid voice announced, a obscene calm in the face of their nightmare. "Do not follow. The next time, I will not be so lenient."
All six students' (I'm correct, right?) He was leaving. After doing this, he was just… leaving.
He was just leaving…
He was just FUCKING leaving?!
A fresh wave of fury, so potent it was dizzying, slammed into Ochaco. Her vision tunneled, the world narrowing to the misty villain. But then, something else happened. As Kurogiri's form condensed, preparing to vanish, a tendril of his mist; casual, almost careless; brushed against Thirteen's boot. It wasn't an attack; it was the ethereal equivalent of someone absently nudging a piece of debris out of their way. A final, ultimate disrespect.
It was the spark that lit the inferno. And all Ochaco could see at the moment was red-no-Crimson.
How dare he…HOW DARE HE!
A raw, guttural scream tore from the brunette girl's throat, a sound so full of pain and rage it didn't seem like it could come from a human girl. "GET AWAY FROM HER!"
"Uraraka, no!" Sato yelled, his own voice thick with horror. He'd noticed the tremor of Ochaco ever since Hagakure had gone to get help, seeing the storm building, and he lunged for her as she moved.
But he was too slow.
Ochaco slapped her own thighs with a stinging smack, her quirk flaring. Her body became weightless. With a powerful kick off the ground, she launched herself across the space, not as a trained fighter, but as a missile of pure grief and anger. She wasn't thinking of strategy or survival. She was thinking of ripping that mist apart with her bare hands.
"You don't get to TOUCH her!" she shrieked, flying straight into Kurogiri's expanding warp gate. Sato, who had been inches from grabbing her, was pulled off-balance by her sudden movement. His instincts took over.
"Sero!" he bellowed.
Sero reacted without thought. His elbow jerked, and a strand of tape shot out, aiming to wrap around Ochaco's waist and yank her back to safety. It connected just as the outer edges of Kurogiri's warp gate enveloped her. The moment the tape made contact with the warping energy, the physics of it became chaotic. The gate, designed to transport matter, didn't distinguish between a person and the tape attached to her. The pull was immense, like a riptide.
Sero cried out as he was violently yanked off his feet, dragged toward the vortex. "Whoa! SHIT!"
Shoji saw it happen in slow motion. His classmate was being sucked into the villain's portal. His multiple arms, usually used for reconnaissance and combat, now acted on a single, unwavering directive: protect. Without a second's hesitation, two of his duplicated arms shot out and grabbed Sero around the torso, planting his other limbs firmly on the ground to anchor them.
It was a fatal miscalculation.
The warp gate's pull was absolute. It didn't care about anchors. With a sound like tearing fabric, Shoji's feet were ripped from the floor. For a single, terrifying second, a bizarre chain; Ochaco, connected by tape to Sero, connected by arms to Shoji; was stretched taut between the real world and the swirling purple void.
Then, with a final, violent lurch, the warp gate snapped closed, swallowing all three students whole.
Silence returned once more, heavier and more profound than before. The mist and Kurogiri were gone.
Ochaco, Sero, and Shoji were gone. Leaving only three people available.
Mina let out a choked gasp, her head snapping up. She hadn't even processed what had happened. All she knew was that her friends had vanished. Her grip on Thirteen's arm became vicelike, her sobs turning into full-body wails. "No… no, no, no… come back! Please, come back!" She hunched over the body, a final, desperate act of protection, as if she could physically shield her teacher from any more violation.
Sato had his hands akimbo to his head. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT, SHIT!!! Just how the hell did today end up like this. More importantly, where had that portal guy taken them too?!
His answers were immediately answered as down below he got the glimpse of a familiar purple mist swirling to life at the plaza a good far distance away from where he was standing. The muscular teen's onyx eyes' swiveled towards the door where Hagakure had gone out of for a while, then back to the plaza behind him. Should he go help his classmates? What if Hagakure never made it back on time?
After a few seconds of contemplating he resolved his mind. A groan escaped his lips. "Uurgh…what am I getting myself into?" He muttered to himself as he began sprinting back towards the stairs.
"Ashido, Shinso! Wait here till All Might gets here!" He shouted over his shoulder before any of them could stop him, taking a massive leap as he skipped stairs on his way down to the plaza.
Having brought out of his spiral, Shinso finally moved, yet he barely heard Sato's yell. His head slowly turned, his wide, violet eyes taking in the empty space where his classmates had just been. The catatonia of his guilt was shattered, replaced by a new, chilling horror. He was alone. Alone with Ashido…Alone with the corpse of the teacher he got killed. The weight of it crushed the air from his lungs. He took a stumbling step back, his hand rising to cover his mouth. He was going to be sick.
__________________
The world dissolved into a nauseating vortex of swirling purple and black. There was no sound, no up or down, only the sensation of being pulled apart at a molecular level.
The chain of students tumbled through the chaos, a tangled mess of limbs and panic. The trip lasted only a heartbeat, but it felt like an eternity. They were spat out onto hard, unforgiving ground, landing in a groaning, disoriented heap. The air that hit them was dry and dusty, filled with the moans of injured men and a low, sinister scratching sound.
Ochaco rolled away, nearly retching, the aftereffects of the warp and her fury making her dizzy. Sero scrambled to retract his tape, his eyes wide. Shoji was on his feet instantly, six arms fanning out, eyes and ears forming to assess the new threat.
Their collective breath hitched. They were in the central plaza, back where those villains had come from.
And standing over them, his red eyes gleaming with manic delight under the hand covering his face, was Tomura Shigaraki. He stopped scratching his neck to point a trembling finger at them.
"Kurogiri," Shigaraki rasped, a dry chuckle in his voice. "I said scatter them, not deliver them. This is messy."
The mist villain reformed beside his master, bowing slightly. "My apologies. There were… complications."
But the students weren't just looking at Shigaraki and Kurogiri. Their arrival had sent a ripple through the plaza. Dozens of villains; the ones not already taken down by Aizawa; were scattered around the area, nursing wounds or leaning against rubble. Now, their attention snapped to the new arrivals.
"What do we got here, stowaways?"
"And here I thought Eraserhead had told these brats to run."
"Too bad. Now we get to kill 'em."
Low laughs and hungry sneers spread through their ranks as the villain goons began to circle, forming a loose but menacing ring around the four students. They were outnumbered twenty to one.
Aside from the upending danger looming around them. Another sight the four heroes in training had caught made their blood run cold.
Lying in a crumpled heap near the water fountain was a broken form. His black jumpsuit was torn to shreds, his goggles were shattered, and one arm was bent at a sickening, unnatural angle. A pool of dark blood slowly expanded beneath his head.
Aizawa-sensei… He wasn't moving!
A new kind of terror, cold and absolute, seized them. They had just jumped from one nightmare directly into the heart of another.
Before anyone could even process this new horror, Kurogiri's misty form rippled. Something heavy and metallic clattered onto the dusty ground between the villains and the students.
It was Thirteen's helmet, scorched and cracked, followed by the main body of her suit, landing with a sickening, final thud. Kurogiri had discarded it. To him, it was just inconvenient debris. To the students, it was a desecration.
Ochaco stared at the empty, ruined suit of her hero, lying in the dirt of this horrible, horrible place. The fury that had brought her here evaporated, leaving behind a hollow, icy despair. She had charged into the lion's den, and all she had managed to do was deliver herself and her friends to the lions, and have her idol's corpse thrown back at her feet like garbage.
Shigaraki followed her gaze and let out a low, amused laugh. "Oh? Brought a souvenir for the doctor? How thoughtful. Void really did a number on her, didn't he? Looks like trash now."
His words were the final twist of the knife.
One of the circling villains, a hulking man with metallic claws, laughed and kicked a piece of rubble that skittered towards the students. "Looks like the main course delivered some appetizers!"
Shoji roared in anger as he formed a massive wall of muscle and eyes, his duplicated limbs creating a perimeter, watching every angle and placing himself squarely between the advancing goons and his friends. Sero fell into a fighting stance, tape dispensers aimed, ready to entangle the first person to charge.
They were outmatched, outnumbered, and surrounded by the evidence of their failure. The circle of villains tightened, a noose of malicious grins and ready quirks. But they were together. And in the terrifying, blood-stained plaza of the USJ, with one teacher dead and another dying at their feet, that was all they had left.
_______________
Mountain zone…
Ojiro stood amidst a scene of controlled chaos wrapped with the sharp clean scent of crushed rock and pine, his chest rising and falling in steady practiced rhythm. Around him, seven villains lay in various states of unconsciousness, strewn across the artificial rocky slope like discarded toys. One was draped over a jagged outcropping, another was neatly tucked into a crevice, and the largest of them; a man with jagged skin; was snoring softly, a large, swelling bump visible on his temple.
The teen allowed himself a single, deep breath, the tension in his shoulders easing a fraction. His tail, the source of his power, ached with a familiar, satisfying throb. It was a good ache. An earned one.
He hadn't won with flashy explosions or overwhelming power. He had won with precision. With patience. He'd used the treacherous terrain to his advantage, letting the overconfident villains slip on loose gravel or stumble on narrow ledges, their quirks often too broad, too unfocused for the confined space. Then, he'd moved in. A sweeping tail strike to the back of a knee here, a precise chop to the side of a neck there. He was a martial artist first, a brawler second. He had neutralized the threat with minimal collateral damage, a fact that brought him a quiet sense of pride.
He scanned the zone one more time, his dark eyes missing nothing. No more movement. The immediate danger was over.
'Right. Time to go.'
The plan was clear in his mind: find higher ground, get a lay of the land, locate his classmates, and regroup. Survival was the priority. His hand went to his belt, tightening the material that had been shredded in some places due to brushes from villains' attacks. The silence from the rest of the facility was unnerving. What had started as distant booms and crashes had faded into an eerie, oppressive quiet.
He moved with a practiced silence, his training shoes making no sound on the stone. He navigated the winding paths of the zone, heading toward the exit that would lead back to the main concourse. His mind was already working on the next step, mapping routes, anticipating threats.
He was almost clear when the world exploded.
It wasn't an explosion of fire, but of pure, concussive force. A deep, sonorous BOOM that wasn't just heard but felt, vibrating up through the soles of his feet and rattling his teeth. It came from the Ruins Zone, the area adjacent to his. The sound of crumbling concrete and shattering masonry echoed through the USJ dome like a death knell.
Ojiro froze, dropping into a low crouch instinctively, his tail rising like a scorpion's stinger, ready for a new attack. But the attack wasn't aimed at him.
The echoes of the blast faded, and in the sudden, ringing silence that followed, a new sound pierced the air.
A high, terrified yelp. A voice he knew.
"Aoyama?" Ojiro whispered, his blood running cold.
The sound was unmistakable. It was cut short, choked off by fear or something worse. His classmate wasn't fighting. He was in trouble. Grave trouble.
Every logical, strategic thought in Ojiro's head screamed at him to keep going. His mission was to regroup, to find the others. Charging blindly toward the source of an apparent destructive quirk like that was suicide. It was the opposite of everything his training taught him.
But this wasn't a simulation. This was a classmate, a fellow hero in training like him.
Sure the flamboyant boy had been preening about his navel laser. He was annoying, but the hero course wasn't just about beating villains. It was about saving people.
His decision was made in a heartbeat. Logic lost to duty. "Damn it," he muttered, and then he was moving, not away from the danger, but straight toward it.
He abandoned his careful path and took the most direct route, leaping from one crumbling ruin to another in the Mountain Zone, using his tail for balance and propulsion. He was a blur of motion, his heart hammering against his ribs not from exertion, but from a rising sense of dread.
Oh how right would he be soon…
_______________
Windstorm Zone…
Maelstrom of screaming air and stinging debris distorted the area. Artificial gales, generated by massive turbines hidden within the fake city's range, tore through the canyon with the force of a hurricane. The sound was a constant, deafening roar that swallowed shouts and pounded against eardrums until they ached. Loose gravel, dust, and larger pieces of shrapnel became deadly projectiles, forcing the three students to keep their heads down behind the relative safety of a fractured concrete pillar, one of the few remaining structures not yet scoured away by the relentless wind.
Kaminari was pressed flat against the cold stone; his usually spiky hair whipped into a frantic blond frenzy. "This is the worst! This is literally the worst place we could have ended up!" he yelled, his voice barely audible over the gale. He risked a peek around the edge and immediately ducked back as a shard of metal whistled past, embedding itself in the pillar with a sharp thwack. "They're still up there!"
Above them, silhouetted against the artificial sky lights, villains equipped with specialized flight packs and wind-manipulation quirks circled like vultures. They used the powerful currents to their advantage, swooping and diving with mocking ease. One of them, a woman with metallic wings, let out a gleeful caw as she unleashed a concentrated blast of air that shattered a nearby ledge into dust.
Iida who was crouched low beside him, adjusted his cracked glasses. His engines, usually primed for explosive motion, were a liability here. Every attempt to rev them resulted in a sputter and a dangerous skid on the wind-blasted ground. His greatest strength had been neutralized.
"We cannot remain here! This cover will not last indefinitely!" he barked, his stern voice straining against the wind. Blood from a cut on his shoulder had dried in a messy trail down his armoring's elbow, a testament to their predicament.
Jiro had her earphone jacks plugged directly into the ground, her eyes squeezed shut in concentration. The howling wind was a nightmare for her quirk; it was all chaotic noise, a deafening static that overwhelmed any useful vibration. She yanked them out, wincing. "It's no use! I can't pinpoint anything in this mess! It's all just... noise!" Her voice was tight with frustration and an undercurrent of fear she was fighting hard to suppress.
They were trapped, cornered in an environment that perfectly countered their abilities. Iida was grounded. Jiro was deafened. Kaminari... Kaminari was a walking lightning rod in a metal-rich, chaotic environment. One indiscriminate discharge could easily arc back to them or into the conductive metal struts of the zone, causing a catastrophic chain reaction.
"This is a definite weakness for us!" Iida stated, the obvious fact tasting like ash in his mouth. He slammed a fist against the pillar in a rare show of utter frustration. "We are outmaneuvered and out-quirked! Our only option is a strategic retreat!"
"And go where?!" Kaminari shot back, his usual goofiness replaced by a sharp, panicked edge. "Into the open where they can pick us off? We're sitting ducks here, but we're hidden sitting ducks!"
"A flawed strategy based on hope is not a strategy at all!" Iida retorted.
"Then what's your great plan, Mr. Vice President?!" Kaminari snapped.
"ENOUGH!" Jiro's voice cut through their argument, sharp as a knife. She wasn't looking at them; she was staring out at the raging storm, her eyes narrowed. "Arguing is just going to get us killed faster. We need a plan. A real one."
The two boys fell silent, chastened by the outburst of the only girl in the group. Around them, the wind howled, emphasizing their helplessness.
Jiro took a deep breath, forcing her own panic down. She looked at Kaminari. "Denki. Your electricity quirk. How much output can you put into it?"
Kaminari paled. "Whoa, whoa, slow down Ms. Jackphones! In this wind? With all this metal? I'll fry us! I'll fry everything! I'll just go full-watt dumbass and then we'll really be screwed!"
"Full watt dumbass?" Iida questioned.
"Nothing to hear about!" Kaminari quickly defended.
"I'm not asking you to unleash it wildly idiot. Of course we'll get cross in the crossfire." she said, her mind racing, piecing together an insane puzzle like how she formed lyrics in a song. "Iida, you said the wind is generated by turbines, right? Big ones?"
Iida nodded sharply. "Based on the directional consistency and power, yes! Most likely located at the far end of the canyon!"
"Right." A dangerous, desperate glint appeared in Jiro's eyes. "So... we take out the turbines." (At this point, I'm just making the students blow shit up for some reason, it's fun)
Iida and Kaminari stared at her as if she'd grown a second head.
"That is... exceedingly reckless!" Iida spluttered. "We would have to traverse the entire kill zone under fire to reach them! And with what means of destruction?"
Jiro pointed a finger at Kaminari. "With him."
"Me?!" Kaminari squeaked.
"Not you, your quirk," Jiro clarified, speaking faster now, the plan coalescing. "You don't blast the whole zone. That's suicide. You become a targeted EMP. Iida gets you close. You put your hands on the turbine housing and you send every single volt you have directly into the machinery. Short it out. Overload it. Kill the power at the source. Or drain it if you can."
The audacity of the plan left them speechless. It was insane yet it was brilliant. It relied on perfect timing, perfect execution, and a tremendous amount of luck (*Ahem* Plot armor *Ahem*).
Kaminari looked horrified. "I... I'll short-circuit myself for sure! I'll be a liability!"
"You'll be a hero," Jiro said, her voice deathly serious. "You take out the wind, and you level the playing field. Then Iida can move and I can hear properly again. Their flight packs will be useless. We can fight them on our terms, not theirs."
Iida was silent, processing the plan at a million miles an hour. It was against every rule of engagement he'd ever learned. It was a gamble of the highest order. But as another villain's wind blast sheared a foot of concrete off their pillar, he knew she was right. He can't believe he was saying this, but a bad plan was better than no plan.
"It is our only viable option," Iida conceded, his jaw tight. He turned to Kaminari, his expression grave. "Kaminari! Can you do it? Can you focus your output into a single, concentrated surge? Not a wide blast, but a directed stream?"
Kaminari looked from Iida's determined face to Jiro's desperate, hopeful one. The fear in his gut was a cold, hard knot. He thought about short-circuiting, about the embarrassing, mindless drooling and the shame that would follow. He thought about being dead weight. Then he thought about being stuck in this hellish wind tunnel until the villains finally got lucky.
He swallowed hard, a new, unfamiliar resolve hardening in his eyes. This wasn't the time to be goofing around. This was the time to be a hero.
"Yeah," he said, his voice stronger now. "Yeah, I can do it. I'll channel it. Like a... like a lightning bolt instead of a thundercloud."
"Right!" Iida said, a spark of hope igniting. "Jiro, you will be our eyes and ears! Guide us! Warn us of attacks from our blind spots! We will move on your mark!"
Jiro nodded, plugging her jacks into the pillar itself now, reading the vibrations through the stone even as her ears thundered from the heavy sounds above.
Focus, focus!
She closed her eyes in deep concentration, cancelling out the noises and focusing on the faint tremor she could pick up…
…there.
"The big guy with the wings is circling back around! The one with the air blasts is recharging! Now! Go!"
"Kaminari, onto my back! Now!" Iida commanded, turning.
Kaminari didn't hesitate. He scrambled onto Iida's back, wrapping his arms and legs around him like a koala (It would be funny to draw LOL). "Don't drop me, please don't drop me, please don't drop me..."
With that the tailpipe on Iida's legs began revving slowly, then picked up its vibration as he pumped more power into it. "Any moment..." Iida gritted his teeth, his leg engines sputtering violently as he fought against the wind. "...Now!"
It wasn't the graceful, powerful launch he was known for. It was a stumbling, grinding, desperate lunge out from behind cover. The wind immediately slammed into them, trying to tear them apart. Iida leaned forward, fighting for every inch, his muscles screaming in protest.
"LEFT!" Jiro's voice screamed from behind them.
Iida juked left just as a concentrated blade of wind sliced through the air where they had been. A villain with a flight pack dove at them, claws extended. Kaminari, clinging for dear life, let out a panicked yelp and shot a small, precise arc of electricity from his finger. It wasn't enough to hurt the villain, but it was enough to make him flinch and swerve off course.
"THE TURBINES! STRAIGHT AHEAD!" Jiro guided, her voice a lifeline in the chaos.
Iida pushed forward, his body a shield against the hurricane. Kaminari buried his face in Iida's back, trusting him completely. They were halfway there when the largest turbine came into view, a massive, caged fan spinning at a blinding speed, the source of the zone's torment.
"THE WINGED WOMAN! SHE'S COMING IN FAST FROM ABOVE!" Jiro warned, her voice pitching higher.
Iida couldn't dodge. He was committed to the path. It was a straight shot now.
"Kaminari, get ready!" Iida roared.
The metallic-winged villain dove, a sonic boom cracking the air around her. She was aiming to tackle them off the narrow walkway and into the side of the buildings beside them.
Kaminari looked up, saw her coming, and made a split-second decision. He let go with one hand, aiming his palm not at the turbine, but at the diving villain.
"Not... yet!" he grunted.
He unleashed a focused, high-voltage stream of electricity. A laser beam of lightning. It connected with the villain's metal wings, and for a second, she lit up like a Christmas tree, her flight pack overloading with a spectacular shower of sparks before she went limp and plummeted out of sight, hitting another villain that was coming in at them.
The effort cost him a bit. Smoke curled from his fingertips. His vision swam by the edges a bit. "Anytime now..." he slurred.
"ALMOST THERE!" Iida screamed, putting on one final, desperate burst of speed. They reached the turbine cage. The noise was deafening, the wind force threatening to peel Kaminari off Iida's back.
"NOW, KAMINARI! DO IT NOW!"
With a final, defiant yell, Kaminari slapped both hands onto the metal housing of the giant turbine.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the world turned white.
A colossal surge of raw electrical power erupted from Kaminari's body, funneling directly into the machinery. The light was blinding, the sound a deafening CRACK that dwarfed the wind. The turbine shrieked in protest, its blades seizing mid-spin as its internal electronics fried in an instant.
The effect was instantaneous and profound.
The howling wind didn't just die down; it stopped. The sudden silence was as shocking as the previous noise had been. The constant pressure pinning them down vanished, leaving an eerie, ringing quiet in its wake.
The remaining villains in the air, who had been effortlessly riding the currents, suddenly found their flight packs useless. They yelped in surprise and began to drop, scrambling to crash-land on the concrete floor.
Iida skidded to a halt, breathing ragged. He gently lowered a limp Kaminari to the ground. The blonde boy's eyes were wide and unseeing, a dopey smile on his face as he gave two thumbs-up. "Y'all rock..." he mumbled, before slumping over, completely short-circuited.
The blue haired teen blinked twice at the downed Kaminari…Was this what he meant by full watt dumbass???...
Jiro ran up to them, her ears no longer assaulted. She could hear everything now; the groans of the fallen villains, Iida's heavy breathing, the faint crackle of dying electricity.
The playing field was level now.
Iida stood up, his engines giving a clean, healthy rev now that the wind resistance was gone. He adjusted his glasses, his expression shifting from desperation to grim determination. He looked at Jiro, then at the disoriented villains picking themselves up off the ground.
"Good job everyone, the plan was a success." Iida stated, his voice echoing in the new silence. "Phase one is complete. Now, we neutralize the remaining threats and secure the zone."
Jiro nodded, her earphone jacks sharpening like stilettos. "Right. Let's clean up this mess."
Many of the criminal goons glared venom at the three teens (Well number three is a dumb-dumb now). A heteromorph villain with a beak for mouth rasped out angrily at the kids. "You're gonna regret that." Rearing his head back to release an attack.
"I beg to differ." Jiro said as he plugged her earphone jacks onto the mini USB cables embedded on her shoes (It does look like it, or was it the hand again?). This resulted in the amplified sound of her heart beat becoming sonorous as it rattled the eardrums of the villains as well as disrupting any attack coming their way.
Iida took the chance to rev his engines once more and go on the offense, drop kicking three villains at once before regrouping back to Jiro's side as more closed in on them.
They stood back-to-back, ready to fight, but on their own terms at least.
_________________
He really hoped Aoyama was okay. Because the silence from the Ruins Zone now felt more threatening than the earlier noise, and he refuses to think otherwise.
Ojiro slid down a final rocky incline and skidded to a halt at the border between the two zones. The scene before him was one of devastation. A large section of a faux-city building had been obliterated. Not broken or collapsed, but erased, as if a giant fist had punched straight through it. Dust hung in the air like a thick fog.
And in the center of it all, two figures. Ojiro's breath caught in his throat.
Oh no…
Aoyama was on his hands and knees, cowering in the dust and rubble. He was trembling so violently Ojiro could see it from twenty meters away. His usually pristine costume was filthy, and he was clutching his stomach as if in pain.
And standing over him was the source of the destruction.
It was a monster putting it slightly. The hulking frame, the bandaged arms, the cold, dead green eyes that glowed with an inner light. He loomed over Aoyama not with dramatic rage, but with a terrifying, still intensity. He was the calm at the center of the storm he had just created. The blonde teen wondered how it must be terrifying for Aoyama who's literally up close to that thing if he was this scared himself.
Ojiro's first thought was one of sheer terror for his friend. His second was one of admiration for Aoyama's bravery; to be facing down that thing alone and still be alive…
But then he heard something. Void's voice. It was a low, mechanized hum, devoid of emotion, yet dripping with a cold, analytical menace.
"…a flawed variable. Your variable."
Ojiro froze, pressing himself against the corner of a still-standing wall, his martial artist's discipline allowing him to become a shadow.
"What is it?"
A comm link in the villain's ear crackled with a voice Ojiro couldn't make out. "Tell the Doctor his morbid curiosity is not my priority." Void responded, his tone laced with a disdain that was somehow more frightening than anger.
Doctor?...Did they brought one along, or was that the mastermind?
"It seems one of your classmates has managed to escape this place to warn the school about this situation. Hopefully it's the so called 'Symbol of peace' that gets the news first. A better news than your accurate intel."
Ojiro's blood went from cold to icy. This wasn't a villain monologuing. This wasn't a threat. This was… a debriefing. A reprimand.
Then that meant…
No
…That Aoyama wasn't a prisoner…
No, no, no
…Nor was he a brave hero facing down a villain.
No, no, no, nO, NO!
He was… receiving a critique. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. Ojiro's mind, so clear and focused moments before, scrambled to process the impossible scene. Why wasn't Void attacking? Why was Aoyama just… taking it?
Oh God please let it not be what he's thinking…
Before the horrifying truth could fully coalesce, Void's head tilted slightly as he turned to leave, dismissing Aoyama as one would dismiss a useless tool.
And in that moment, just as he turned, his glowing, hellish green eyes had passed over the spot where Ojiro was hiding.
Time stopped.
Ojiro didn't breathe. He didn't move a muscle. He was a statue, hoping against hope that the shadows and dust would conceal him.
Void's gaze swept past… then snapped back. It locked onto Ojiro's position with unnerving, predatory precision. He had been seen.
The massive Nomu went perfectly still. The air around him seemed to grow colder, heavier. Aoyama, sensing the shift, followed his gaze.
The moment Aoyama's eyes met Ojiro's, the last piece of the horrific puzzle clicked into place. It wasn't just fear in Aoyama's look. It was pure, unadulterated guilt. It was the panic of a man caught in a terrible secret.
Ojiro's own eyes widened in dawning, soul-crushing horror. The security breach. The villains knowing exactly where to find them. It wasn't an inside job from a staff member.
It was Aoyama.
The thought was so monstrous, so unbelievable, that it left him utterly exposed. He stood there, in the open, his defensive stance forgotten, his mind reeling.
Void's head tilted again, a slow, mechanical motion. The low hum of his mouth guard broke the silence, each word a shard of ice dropped into the stillness.
Void's head tilted. A low, distorted sigh escaped from his mouth guard. The terrifying, glowing green eyes that had been burning with cold intensity just moments ago now seemed to flicker with something else. Not rage. Not murderous intent.
It was sheer, unadulterated annoyance.
His massive shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly, the posture of a soldier who just saw a simple, clean mission get catastrophically complicated.
"You have got to be kidding me," Void's voice grated out, the mechanical hum laced with a weary, frustrated venom that was somehow more terrifying than any roar. "A witness? Now? Of all times..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. The sentiment hung in the air, thick and ugly. This wasn't part of the plan. This was a messy, unpredictable variable. A complication that would require cleanup. And he was clearly the one who would have to handle it.
The green light of his eyes fixed on Ojiro, no longer with the focus of a predator sighting prey, but with the exasperated glare of a man looking at a massive, time-consuming problem that had just landed in his lap.
This situation had just gotten profoundly, deeply shitty.
Chapter 18-21 + Off screen Fight scene between Void and Aizawa already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom for as low as $3.