The stone villain's fist descended like divine retribution made flesh.
Time seemed to crawl as Ryuu watched the massive appendage cut through the air, each knuckle promising annihilation.
He threw himself sideways, his hand finding Mina's wrist and dragging her with him. In his peripheral vision, Momo rolled in the opposite direction, her dark hair whipping through the air.
The impact came a heartbeat later.
Bang!
Where Ryuu had been standing, concrete exploded inward. Dust billowed outward in expanding rings, and when it cleared, a crater yawned in the reinforced floor.
Deep enough that he could have stood in it up to his chest, the edges still smoking from the sheer force of impact.
Christ. If that had connected...
"Fast little bastards," the stone villain grunted, already pivoting toward Momo with mechanical precision. His movements carried the weight of inevitability. "But there's nowhere to run in here."
Behind him, the second villain raised both hands slowly. Electricity danced between his fingers like captured lightning, casting shifting shadows across his grinning face. "Want me to stun them, Granite? Make this easier?"
"Nah." The stone villain cracked his neck, and the sound was like continental plates shifting. Like the earth itself breaking apart. "Boss wants the amplifier conscious. But the girls?"
His smile was a wound carved into granite. And it looked ugly on his already hateful face.
"Nobody said they had to be pretty."
Something cold and vicious uncoiled in Ryuu's chest. A fury that burned like liquid nitrogen, so intense it felt like ice.
Like hell.
His Resonance flared to life, reaching out toward both Mina and Momo simultaneously.
The connection stretched between them like invisible cables, humming with potential energy.
He'd never attempted dual amplification in actual combat before.
He Had barely managed it in controlled training sessions with both Momo and Mina. But desperation had a way of making the impossible seem merely difficult.
The connection struck home like lightning finding two rods at once.
Mina's acid generation didn't just activate. It 'exploded'.
Her skin took on an ethereal pink glow as chemical reactions accelerated beyond their normal parameters, beyond what should have been possible for human physiology. The air around her began to shimmer with heat distortion.
Through the bond, her emotions crashed into him like a tidal wave.
Fear transmuting into something fiercer, more primal. Love for him mixing with pure determination to survive this nightmare.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, but her hands were steady.
Momo's creation quirk stabilized in a way it never had before.
The lipid conversion process that usually required careful concentration became as natural as breathing.
The combat staff in her hands finished forming, but she was already manifesting something else. Multiple objects taking shape simultaneously without the usual strain or hesitation.
The feedback hit Ryuu like a freight train loaded with broken glass.
Two sets of emotions. Two quirks being pushed past their designed limits.
Two people he cared about whose lives hung in the balance of his control. His skull felt like it might split open, pressure building behind his eyes until his vision blurred. But he held on. He had to hold on.
'Focus. Channel it. Don't let it overwhelm you.'
"Ryuu!" Mina's voice cut through the chaos in his mind. "I can feel them both! Their quirks, their... their intentions!"
"The connection," Momo breathed, wonder mixing with determination in her tone. "It's like I can see the chemical composition of his skin changing. Stone, but not just stone. Sedimentary layers with metallic veins..."
"Now!" Ryuu shouted, his voice hoarse with strain.
Mina moved like liquid death given form.
Acid sprayed from her palms in concentrated streams, but these weren't the usual splashes of corrosive liquid she produced in training.
The amplification had changed the fundamental nature of her secretion. It's stronger.
The chemical composition shifted on a molecular level, becoming something that ate through reinforced concrete like it was tissue paper.
The streams carved precise lines around Granite's position, surrounding him in a pattern of dissolution.
"What the hell?" Granite's eyes widened as the floor beneath his feet began to dissolve, steam rising from the edges of the acid burns.
"Calculated trajectory," Momo muttered, her amplified analytical mind processing angles and vectors at superhuman speed.
Her second creation finished forming in her hands. Not just a weapon this time, but a rocket launcher. "Accounting for attempted evasion patterns and limited mobility in enclosed space."
The launcher fired three metal nets in rapid succession. Each one spread wide as it flew, weighted edges designed to entangle and restrict. The spacing was perfect, covering every possible escape route.
"Predictable," the energy villain sneered, electricity crackling around his form like an aura of destruction. He moved to dodge.
But the nets caught him anyway.
All three struck simultaneously, dragging him down in a tangle of specially designed alloy that dispersed his electrical discharge harmlessly into the ground.
"Impossible," he snarled, struggling against the restraints. "These can't be insulated. She couldn't have known—"
"I didn't," Momo said coolly, already beginning work on her next creation. "I made them adaptive. The metal composition changes in response to electrical current."
Through the Resonance connection, Ryuu felt her quiet pride at the successful innovation.
Felt Mina's fierce satisfaction at the precise acid work. Their emotions fed back into his own determination, creating a feedback loop that pushed all three of them beyond their individual limits.
But Granite wasn't finished.
"Impressive," he admitted, even as acid continued to eat away the concrete around his feet. Steam rose from the dissolving floor, filling the air with the acrid smell of chemical destruction. "But not good enough."
His skin began to change. Not just the hardening they'd seen before, but something deeper. More fundamental. The surface of his body darkened, taking on the mottled appearance of true stone. Not just hardening, but actual mineral composition change at the cellular level.
The acid that had been eating through concrete barely affected him as he dipped his legs into it.
"Secondary aspect," Ryuu breathed, recognition hitting him like a cold slap. "He's not just a hardening quirk. He's full mineral transformation."
Granite's legs, now thick as tree trunks and composed of living rock, coiled beneath him. When he jumped, the remaining concrete cracked under the force of his launch. He flew straight at Ryuu like a guided missile made of malevolent stone.
'Shit! How is he so fast?!'
But Ryuu was already moving, his connection to Mina allowing him to feel her plan the instant it formed.
He grabbed her hand tighter, pushing more power through their bond than he'd ever attempted before. Pain lanced through his skull, but he held on.
"The ceiling!" Mina shouted, understanding flashing between them faster than words.
Her acid changed again, becoming something that made the air itself shimmer with heat distortion.
Instead of aiming at Granite, she threw the enhanced compound at the ceiling directly above his flight path.
The reinforced concrete didn't just dissolve. It disappeared.
Like sugar dumped into boiling water, the structural material simply ceased to exist, leaving gaping holes in the facility's framework.
Chunks of debris rained down in a deadly cascade. Granite, committed to his trajectory, had to twist mid-flight to avoid being crushed.
The evasive maneuver threw off his aim just enough that he crashed into the wall beside Ryuu instead of through his chest.
The impact shook the entire room. Cracks spider-webbed out from the point of collision, and dust rained down from the compromised ceiling.
"Area denial," Momo was already moving, her amplified creation speed allowing her to manifest a dozen small objects simultaneously. "Flash-bang grenades for disorientation, smoke bombs for visual impairment, caltrops designed with enhanced penetration capabilities."
She scattered them in a precise pattern, each placement calculated to funnel the villains into predictable movement corridors.
"You're enjoying this way too much," Mina called out, but there was fond exasperation in her voice rather than criticism.
"Tactical analysis is its own reward," Momo replied primly, even as she created what looked suspiciously like a small cannon.
The room erupted into controlled chaos.
Flash-bangs detonated in sequence, each one timed to maximize disorientation.
Strobing light painted everything in stark black and white, while deafening sound waves made communication impossible.
Smoke billowed through the air, reducing visibility to mere inches. The caltrops made every step a potential disaster, their enhanced points capable of piercing even hardened skin.
But through it all, Ryuu could feel both girls as clearly as if they were extensions of his own body.
Their positions, their intentions, their
decisions.
The Resonance connection had evolved beyond simple amplification into something that felt like true telepathy.
'Move left,' he thought, and Mina was already sliding away from Granite's blind swing before the thought fully formed.
'Two meters right, deploying restraint,' and Momo's next net launcher was materializing in her hands.
'Combined attack, synchronized timing,' and they moved like they'd been fighting as a coordinated unit for years instead of minutes.
"This is incredible," Mina breathed, even as she unleashed another stream of super-heated acid. "I can feel what you're both thinking. It's like we're..."
"One entity with three bodies," Momo finished, her analytical mind already understanding the implications. "The emotional resonance is creating a temporary gestalt consciousness."
"Less talking, more fighting!" Ryuu shouted, though he couldn't deny the exhilaration of perfect coordination.
Mina's enhanced acid met Momo's specially formulated containment foam in midair.
The collision was precisely calculated, the chemical reaction instantaneous and violent. An expanding cloud of hardening material erupted outward, filling half the room with a web of restraining compound.
Granite got caught in the expanding foam, the material wrapping around his legs and lower torso like liquid concrete.
But his partner had learned from his earlier mistake, staying back and directing electrical current through the hardened foam in an attempt to break it down from within.
"Clever little shits," Granite growled, his stone skin scraping against the containment foam as he struggled. Each movement sent sparks flying where electricity met resistance. "But you're all forgetting something important."
"What's that?" Ryuu called back, using the lingering smoke as cover to edge closer to the door. His mind was already working through escape routes, contingency plans.
"We're not alone."
The third villain stepped through the doorway behind them with casual confidence.
The one with the sleep quirk who'd taken down Dr. Yamada so effortlessly. He'd been waiting, letting his partners exhaust their opponents before making his move.
'Smart'. Ryuu could respect the tactical thinking even as it terrified him.
The villain's hand came up in a gesture that looked almost casual.
Ryuu felt something wash over him like a warm wave, heavy and irresistible. His eyelids suddenly weighed a thousand pounds each.
'Sleep quirk,' his brain catalogued even as consciousness began to slip away. 'Line of sight activation, gesture-based trigger, fights against natural stimulation but overwhelming quirk use migh—'
The Resonance connection saved him.
The feedback from Mina and Momo's amplified states was so intense, so overwhelming, that it cut through the artificial drowsiness like pure adrenaline mainlined directly into his brainstem.
Their emotions, their quirks, their sheer determination to survive, all of it flowed back through the connection and kept him conscious through pure sensory overload.
But just barely. His vision swam, and his knees threatened to buckle.
"M-mina!" he gasped, fighting to get the words out before his tongue went numb. "Momo! Sleep quirk, don't look at—"
But it was too late.
Both girls' eyes were already glazing over, their enhanced bodies fighting the effect but losing ground by the second.
The connection flickered like a candle in a hurricane as their consciousness faded, taking his anchor to wakefulness with it.
No. Not like this. Not when they were so close.
'I won't let you fall.'
Ryuu reached deeper into the Resonance than he'd ever dared before, deeper than should have been safe or possible.
He grabbed onto their fading consciousness like a drowning man clutching at lifelines...yes, he was trying to affect their thoughts and mental stability without even touching them.
Pouring every ounce of his will into dragging them back from the artificial sleep.
It felt like trying to hold onto smoke with his bare hands. Like catching lightning and refusing to let it go even as it burned him from the inside out.
Pain exploded through his skull with the force of a detonating grenade.
Blood began to run from his nose in a steady stream, and his vision went white around the edges. But somewhere in the agony, he felt them respond.
'Come back. Come back to me. We're not finished yet.'
"Ryuu?" Mina's eyes snapped back into focus, confusion and fury warring in her expression. "What did he—oh. Oh, that bastard."
Her acid generation roared back to life, stronger than it had ever been. The amplification fed on her anger, on her protective instincts, transforming her quirk into something approaching a force of nature.
Momo jerked awake as if electrocuted, her creation quirk immediately manifesting something new in her hands. A shield with a mirror-bright surface that she angled toward the sleep villain with precision.
"Reflection array," she said grimly. "Let's see how you like your own medicine."
The sleep villain's gesture-based quirk hit the mirrored surface and bounced back at him like light off polished steel.
His eyes went wide in the split second before his own power knocked him unconscious. He dropped like a severed puppet, hitting the floor with a meaty thud.
"Impossible." Granite's voice was barely a whisper, filled with something that might have been awe. He stared at Ryuu with the expression of a man witnessing a miracle. "The amplification shouldn't work that way. Consciousness doesn't... you shouldn't be able to..."
"Yeah, well," Ryuu said, wiping blood from his nose with the back of his hand, "I'm full of surprises."
The energy villain finally broke free from his restraints, electricity crackling around him in an aura of pure destruction.
The air itself seemed to burn in his presence, ozone thick enough to taste. "Enough games," he snarled, power building to dangerous levels. "Boss wants you alive, but he didn't specify in how many pieces."
Lightning filled the room like the wrath of an angry god.
Ryuu threw himself toward Mina and Momo, grabbing both of them and pushing the Resonance connection to its absolute limit.
He could feel his quirk starting to burn out, could feel the strain of dual amplification tearing at the very foundations of his mind. But he held on anyway, because letting go meant death.
Through their shared physical connection, he felt Mina's plan form with crystal clarity.
'Trust me,' her emotions whispered. 'Trust us.'
"Mina, what are you—" he started to say.
She grabbed Momo's hand, creating a three-way physical connection that made the Resonance sing like a perfectly tuned instrument.
Then she did something Ryuu had never seen before, never even imagined was possible.
Instead of creating acid externally, she turned her quirk inward. The chemical reactions that usually produced her corrosive secretions began happening inside her own body, building up energy like a biological capacitor.
"Mina, that's insane!" Momo protested, even as her analytical mind understood the plan. "The internal pressure coul—"
"Kill me, yeah," Mina said with a grin that was all teeth. "Good thing I've got the best amplifier in Japan keeping me stable."
Momo caught on immediately, her enhanced processing speed allowing her to grasp the full implications in seconds.
She began creating something complex, a containment vessel designed to channel and direct massive amounts of stored energy.
"You're both insane," Ryuu breathed, but he was already adjusting his amplification to support Mina's internal chemical changes.
The energy villain's lightning struck just as they finished their preparations.
But instead of incinerating them, the electricity hit Mina's chemically altered skin and got absorbed into her makeshift biological battery.
The containment device Momo had created channeled the incoming energy, focused it, turned it into fuel for their counterattack.
"Now," Ryuu whispered, his voice rough with exhaustion and determination.
They released everything at once.
Chemical energy, stored lightning, and the pure amplifying force of Resonance combined into something that transcended the sum of its parts.
A beam of destruction that lit up the room like a miniature sun, painting everything in stark relief for one impossible moment.
The energy villain had just enough time to look surprised before the combined attack hit him center mass and launched him through the concrete wall behind him like he'd been fired from a cannon.
He was unconscious before his body finished carving its path through the rubble.
The backlash dropped all three of them to their knees.
Ryuu's quirk didn't just burn out...
It died...
The connections severed so abruptly it felt like someone had reached into his brain and ripped out entire chunks of neural tissue.
The sudden absence of the Resonance was almost as painful as its presence had been.
Mina collapsed forward, her skin pale and clammy from the radical chemical changes she'd put her body through.
She was breathing hard, sweat beading on her forehead.
"That," she gasped, "was either the smartest thing I've ever done, or the stupidest."
Momo's creation quirk sputtered and died, leaving her gasping for breath.
The lipid conversion process had been pushed so far beyond normal parameters that her entire metabolism was struggling to compensate.
"Definitely... stupid," she managed between breaths. "But effective."
Granite was still trapped in the hardened foam, but now he was staring at them with undisguised shock. The arrogance was gone, replaced by something approaching fear.
"What the hell are you kids?" he breathed.
Before anyone could answer, explosions echoed through the facility.
Not the controlled demolitions from earlier in their infiltration, but the chaotic destruction of a real battle.
Concrete groaning under impossible stresses. The sound of a building being torn apart from the inside.
And underneath it all, voices that made Ryuu's heart race with recognition and worry.
Shouting. In voices he recognized.
"That's Ochaco," Mina said weakly, struggling to her feet despite her exhaustion. "And Tsuyu. They're in trouble."
More explosions, closer now.
Through the hole they'd blown in the wall, Ryuu could see flashes of green lightning in the distance.
The unmistakable signature of One For All being pushed to its limits.
"Midoriya," he breathed. "He's using One For All."
"We have to help them," Momo said, her quirk flickering back to life just long enough to create a simple weapon despite her exhaustion. "They're fighting alone."
Ryuu tried to activate his quirk, reached for that familiar warmth of connection.
Got nothing.
Not even static.
The Resonance was completely burned out, his reserves drained beyond recovery.
But as they stumbled toward the sounds of combat, leaving Granite trapped and the other two villains unconscious in their wake, he realized something that should have felt like victory.
"I hope they're okay."