One thing that quickly made itself apparent to all of Class 1A as they fought like hell through the Beast's Forest, utilising their Quirks to the absolute maximum of their abilities against the dirt creations that Pixie-Bob made, as well as traversing the land and trying to make sure that they kept on track to the location they were given.
It was for absolute certain that they weren't going to be getting anywhere near their lodgings by noon. Not even close.
Maybe for Pro's - And that was a big maybe, depending on their Quirks and how familiar they were with the terrain - Getting there within three hours was possible. For these students, there was no way in hell. This place was like a living maze, filled with gargantuan beasts who only existed in any form whatsoever to try and block their path. Not to mention, just the sheer scope of what was in front of them.
Attack after attack after attack, the group had maybe one small break after the initial attack, before they'd all decided that they needed to get going, and since then, it had been one creature after another. That had been hours ago.
Pros, Mina decided, were filled with quite a variety of sadistic and quirky maniacs.
She came to this conclusion as she tangled with one of the beast creations herself, this one just as twisted and mangled as the one the classes strongest had taken down immediately, only this one had spiral-like horns, which Mina took almost like a personal challenge. Jirou and Kaminari were behind her, watching her back from another beast making its way up on them - Not that Mina was sure what the hell good Kaminari was going to be against literal dirt. This forest basically countered him perfectly, so he was pretty useless in this entire escapade. Not that it stopped him trying, mind, but he was with the Earphone Jack Quirk user.
So Mina decided to take this one on her own. Working with Izuku for as long as she had, she'd gained the experience and the act-before-thinking level of near idiotic confidence in herself to deal with this sort of threat. Stopping a Villain from attacking people she knew - That was one thing, but this was a whole other matter. Yet she didn't feel even the slightest tint of fear, apprehension, or even anxiety. She stood her ground, a smile on her face, ready to take her enemy on. Acid secreted from her palms and just over her wrists, and she stood, waiting to see what this barely sentient dirt, which was twice her size, would do. She tried to anticipate its movements, bouncing oh-so lightly on her legs as she did so, ready to move at a moment's notice.
As it turned out, the creature would throw a left armed hook towards her, with hands about the exact same size as the pink girl herself. Using her natural fitness and reflexes, Mina easily managed to skid out of the way without any risk to her person whatsoever. She then moved in, moving as fast as her legs would allow her to, getting in as close as she could to creature. One well-placed clomp of Acid at the torso of the creature, and it would crumble to nothing.
She closed the gap between her and said creature, aiming to land that solid his by making direct contact with it. The beast had strength and size, but it didn't have any particularly noteworthy speed, which under normal circumstances would give Mina an advantage.
This was a theory that was dashed quickly, however, when the dirt beast suddenly generated another muscular arm of earth from its stomach, reaching for the pink girl to grab her and toss her aside. It missed, Mina quickly stepping back and skidding along the ground, her hand gripping onto the dirt beneath her as she did so to slow her down.
Not that it was the weirdest thing that had happened all day, but Mina was still thrown off by it. None of the beasts had displayed anything even close to that sort of ability. They had just been cumbersome, slow, yet powerful beings, like elephants in a certain sense. What was the logic in this creature having that sort of power? Was it just to make the pupils lives more difficult? An added challenge? Perhaps that was some sort of attempt by the Pro Heroes Quirk to try and replicate what it would be like to fight Villains with unpredictable Quirks, but there was only so much that could be done with dirt...
Probably a bit of all of those options.
Either way, this beast seemed to be emulating some sort of limb growth replication Quirk that it would activate whenever Mina got too close.
But now, the horned girl knew what to expect, so she attacked again.
Pushing herself forward with her grounded hand, she charged straight for the beast, this time ready to counter attack whatever came her way. The beast let out a grizzled roar as she got closer, and created another one of its dirt limbs from its body, attempting to create an arm and hand with which to claw at her once more. This time though, with careful timing and athletic skill, Mina dodged the limb by a mere centimetre, slammed her acid-coated palms along the artificial limb, and ran it straight along the creatures newly developed arm until she hit the torso, pushing her corrosive attack as far into the creature as she possibly could. One throaty, dry scream later, and the beast began to fall into a pile of dirty rubble. It marked the sixteenth creature she'd defeated, and, if she counter the ones she had helped conquer as a group, the thirty third.
"Die!"
Across the open section that the group was situated within, Bakugou's explosions obliterated another one creatures with ease, setting one off with the same force to that of a grenade. His attack scattered chunks of the creature he defeated all over his surroundings. That, and his flashy and loud Quirk brought Mina's eyes directly in his direction, since he had created a blast that was towards her direction, so the chunks of dirt came landing around her. She had to protect her eyes with her forearms as they landed, some hitting her chest and stomach, and a few specks getting into her hair.
Just behind him, Mina saw the pale green electricity crackling from Izuku's Full Cowl technique, hanging in the air for brief moments as he leaped from tree to tree. Launching himself from a particularly sturdy trunk, he lurched forward fist-first, with such speed that he tunnelled straight through his target, leaving a hole straight through the torso of the dirt behemoth before it even had the chance to fall apart and disintegrate into nothing.
He, Iida, Todoroki and Bakugou had been totally on point when it came to combatting the dirt creatures, unleashing their Quirks and hammering away what stood in their way. The strongest in the class, the ones with the experience when it came to Villains. The ones that knew what it was that they were doing.
At least, that was what it looked like to Mina. Like everyone else, she knew about Izuku and his groups run in with the Hero Killer. When someone went toe-to-toe against a murderer like Stain, they were of course not going to hesitate against anything that came afterward. Izuku's group proved that much. None of them had it in them to hold back. And as much as she disliked the guy, Mina couldn't begin to deny Bakugou's skill and talent when it came to violence and using his powerful Quirk. Plus, he was the victim of that Sludge Villain incident just over a year ago. That was something only she and Izuku knew. So he had to have that same 'Do-or-die' instinct about him.
Everyone else was fighting around them as well, all fighting off a huge influx of opponents that had ambushed them from all sides in the clearing, aiming to catch them by surprise. The class had reacted quickly, and taken to defending themselves, battering each one of them as they came at them, but those four were leading the charge. Everyone else was fighting hard, but the gap between them and everyone else was so clear that it wasn't even funny. Mina herself wasn't lagging behind either. She was keeping up with them, the top of the class, though it was taking all that she had. Through her encounter with Overgrow, and the Hero Team Initiation, her practical training was starting to kick in, sending her into automatic as she fought against the enemy.
With an opponent down each, she, Jirou and Kaminari all moved towards Bakugou, Izuku, Hagakure, Kirishima and Yaoyarozu, right across from the open space and were covering the groups right side from being flanked. The group seemed to have just cleared out the area, with dirt mounts all around them that acted like the corpses of defeated foes.
The closest person to them as they made their way over was Kirishima. His skin was hardened by his Quirk, and his fingers were pointed at the end, though as they approached him, he deactivated his Quirk with an audible chink, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The cuts and scratched he received from the attacks he endured when he was using his power to defend himself were transferred onto his regular, default body, though he didn't seem to suffer any pain from them. "Man, the Pro's aren't holding anything back..."
"Of course the Pro's aren't gonna fucking hold anything back." The Explosion Quirk user responded sharply, pulling his hands in and out of a claw-like grip on nothing, his hands still smouldering from the effects of his power. "There's no damn point otherwise."
Hagakure seemed to be bent over, her hands resting on her knees as she attempted to recapture her breath. Mina did have to question - What the heck had she even done in the fight? She didn't have the first clue of what Hagakure was capable of. Was she some kind of Kung-Fu master underneath that invisibility? The signs she'd been in a battle were there, though they were only clear because of her clothing, all scratched and dirty.
"You doin' okay, Tooru?" The Acid Quirk user questioned her friend, making sure that she was doing okay before anything else.
Her arm moved slightly, followed by a simple explanation, broken up by brief pauses for the invisible girl to get her breath back. "I'm... Giving you a thumbs up right now... I'm too tired to do anything else."
From behind Bakugou, Izuku came into vision as he returned from the location he had been at, still some residual electricity crackling from his body, the after effect of his Quirk in full force. Dusting some of the earth from his shoulders, he focused his attention right now on the group forming just in front of him. "Is everyone alright?"
His question of care was answered with little more than passive aggression from his childhood former friend, who simple growled at Izuku, looking like he'd thrown a gasket, though that wasn't anything new whatsoever for Bakugou. It'd be a more surprising day when he actually cracked a smile for once. The very idea of Izuku showing any sort of concern for the blond haired boy seemed to just anger him. He simply stormed off to the other side of the field, without a word.
"Alright, so Bakugou's fine then." Mina commented dryly as he walked away. As she did so, she began to brush her palms against one another, removing the dirt that she'd gathered from her brawl. She then stretched her arms and allowed the joints within the limbs to click, before turning to her boyfriend and the rest of the group.
What she saw quickly made her widen her eyes in fear.
Behind Izuku, without any sound whatsoever being made, the dirt of the defeated creatures was beginning to compile itself once again. The earth with which their bodies were made began to meet, building itself up, layer by layer. It began to take form, right behind Izuku, at speeds to quickly, and with barely any sound, no one even managed to see it until the last second.
Now towering over Izuku, while the green haired boy was still completely oblivious to the threat now behind him, was a four armed behemoth, twice the size of anything they'd faced before, parts of each of the previously fallen opponents all frankensteined together, like out of some sort of horror movie. A huge jaw, muscular reinforcements, spiral horns, and a gargantuan size to boot.
The only reason Izuku noticed himself was because it started to block out the sunlight due to its size.
It was Hagakure that called it out before anyone else did, having seen it behind their classmate first, and before anyone else had the chance to react. "Watch it, Midoriya! Behind!"
Mina was the first to actually make a reaction of any sort. Moving without even thinking about doing it, her hand quickly generated a huge amount of her strongest possible acid, a concoction that even stung her own hand and the skin on her wrists and forearms due to the sheer corrosive nature of it. Surprisingly, weight came next, something that rarely happened when Mina used her Quirk. Even the colour of the Acid was different to the normal pale-green-transparent concoction that she typically made - A side effect of what she was creating. The sheer amount of the stuff she generated left her arm feeling like it was being weighed down with a metal-based dumbbell, though she still managed movement, through her refusal to give an inch, she still moved with absolute ease. Her body moved far quicker than ever before, taking a large step forward and slinging her attack like she was serving a baseball pitch, with pinpoint accuracy.
Her Acid struck against her targets chest, causing it to roar as its outer layer was corroded and eroded away. Amazingly though, that didn't appear to be enough to destroy the being, but merely weaken it. In spite of the sheer dangerous nature of the Acid Mina made, it just wasn't enough to totally put the thing out of commission.
After a brief stagger, the monster had recovered and had poised its claws, ready for another strike.
"You've gotta be kidding me!" That wasn't enough? The pink girl just stared for a moment, watching this absolute demon prepare for its next attack. The Acid she had thrown at it was the single most powerful one she could manage - She herself wasn't immune to its effects! - But it just proved to not be enough!
"Back up, back up!" Kirishima called out, getting in front of the rest of his classmates as they pulled back. Using his Quirk, he acted as a shield, in an attempt to defend them.
Just a mere second after he'd managed to activate his power, he was met with a fierce slash by earth claws, striking him with equal force to that of a fire engine. The Hardening Quirk user took the hit head-on, though it didn't stop him from feeling the full blast, even through the armour his power gave him.
Though with gritted teeth, he stood his ground. "Nhng! Someone take this thing down! I'm not gonna be able to hold back another one of those attacks!"
Activating his own power, Izuku took a leap up towards the head of the mammoth of a dirt creature, and added a spin to his movements, before unleashing a devastating back-fist strike, straight to the neck of the beast. His entire fist and forearm skimmed straight through the neck of it with ease, like a knife through water, decapitating it with absolute ease.
Only then did the beast finally die.
Once he landed, Izuku turned towards the red haired classmate, whom had just deactivated his own Transformation Type Quirk. "Kirishima, you okay?!"
"Haaah... Yeah, I'm fine." The sounds his body made indicated the last of his hardening had just worn off, after which he allowed himself to fall down into a crossed legged position on the ground. He held up his right arm and looked at the damage done to it, his red eyes following the scratches and scars. "I think my Quirk is at its limits right now though."
"I don't see any blood..." Hagakure commented, apparently inspecting their battered classmate. "I don't think you're too badly injured."
"You guys alright?!"
Running towards the smaller group, the remainder of their classmates quickly converged on the latest scene of battle, wanting to inspect the damage done to their comrades, and attracted by the sounds of battle. Ojiro was the one who had called out to the group, and was the first one to actually arrive there, followed closely Mineta and then by Todoroki.
"I think we're all okay." Yaoyorozu informed the Martial Arts Hero-in-Training, creating some ointment for various wounds using her Quirk. "That last attack caught a lot of us off guard, though."
Both groups began to interact with one another, tending to those who had injuries that needed attention, which were thankfully limited to just Kirishima in need of some disinfectant and cleaning, and perhaps some ointment to help him deal with the pain, Sato, who had taken a few hits due to his Quirk lowering his responsive abilities, and Sero, who had overused his Quirk and was suffering from dry skin. Yaoyorozu, Jiro and Hagakure went about doing that, while Todoroki, Uraraka, Iida and Bakugou all went about on a defensive layout, shielding the group and watching out for any further attackers.
As they all went about their business though, and before Izuku could go and join the watchers on the perimeter, Mina grabbed hold of his arms and tugged him over slightly to the side. While Izuku would normally have protested getting dragged aside, he had a curiosity about what Mina had done with her Quirk moments prior.
Plus, he was worried about the burns on her arms, and wanted to bring attention to them the first chance he got.
"Izuku, you okay?" Mina winced, once she'd brought him just a little bit away from everyone else. "My Acid didn't hit you or anything? Or did that... Huge thing?"
A lot had just gone down, Izuku supposed, scratching the back of his head as he formulated an answer. His brain already had a couple of thoughts about the situation right now, and only his girlfriend had the answer to one of the ones that he was most curious about. Shaking his head, Izuku assured her he was okay. "I'm fine Mina. You didn't hit me... Though, speaking of that... That Acid looked different to other times I've seen you use your Quirk. What was that?"
Now it was Mina's turn to scratch the back of her head, but she quickly stopped, hissing as her arms stung up as they brushed against her hair. "Ow... Its uh, It's kind of a Special Move I've been wanting to try out." She explained, shaking her arms in an effort to get rid of the pain.
"Special move?"
"Yeah. Well, it's more an idea that I've been toying with that just sorta worked." The pink girl nodded. "I just make my Acid as corrosive as I can. Makes things a lot easier to beat than my regular stuff... Only thing is, it hurts me as well." She shrugged as she explained, showing the wounds that her own attack had caused her. "Not exactly much good if I hurt myself with it."
"It's an impressive move... But..." Conflicted, Izuku folded his arms. Truth be told, it was actually a pretty good idea, if they were talking about a finishing move, or an all-or-nothing type of situation. Mina's Quirk was powerful on the basic level, and she was capable of controlling the level of corrosiveness her power unleashed. Pushing it to the absolute maximum... It opened up a lot of routes for her. Though the downside being self-harm...
It was a strong move. A very good one at that...
Though Izuku certainly didn't like the idea of Mina having to hurt herself to use it. At all. He already had a very clear idea regarding how painful using ones Quirk, only to have it backfire and hurt its user was. One For All battered him every time he used it, for months. If he could avoid it, he wasn't going to go back to that method of combat. It was too self-destructive in hindsight. He'd pushed his own powers too far...
And if there was one thing he wanted to avoid, it was Mina going down that same route of pain in order to use her own Quirk.
But if hypothetically, she was in a bad situation where that was her only get around...
Then it was worth looking into.
He was stuck between suggesting she refine it... Or telling her to stay clear of it. Both options had merit... And both had nasty consequences.
Seeing what that ultimate Acid could do up close... It convinced Izuku that if she really put herself to it, she could beat even Todoroki in combat if she wanted to. And to throw that away...
"...Go see Yaoyorozu about those wounds. She's handing out some sort of treatment for wounds. She'll probably make you some bandages if you ask." He told her, deciding he'd discuss the move with her later on. It was a worthwhile discussion having... Once he'd thought about it some more.
Class A arrived at their lodgings in tatters, beaten and battered in every single aspect imaginable - Physical, mental, and Quirk wise. The last few hours had been nothing but a slog, a forced march through all manners of hell. Creature attack after creature attack, and all manner of other obstacles in their way thanks to the Earth Flow Quirk of Pixie-Bob's, including moving floors, walls blocking off the most direct routes, traps, and a whole other manner of ways of messing with the students that they hadn't even noticed.
Every inch of Izuku and Mina both felt the throbs of pain coursing throughout their systems. Of the two, Izuku was the worse one off, since he'd been in the thick of it much more than Mina had, and his Quirk relied on physical contact, not long-range emission like Mina's did. He was covered in dirt, head to toe, as was Mina, though she was probably one of the better ones off in all of 1A. Like her comrades, she was dirty and hammered down by combat, but she was in relatively good shape when put next to everyone else. She didn't feel it though. Like everyone else, she was absolutely exhausted.
Upon arrival, Pixie-Bob, Mandalay, and Aizawa were waiting at the entrance to the building that they would be staying in. A fairly large building, they noted, big enough to fit easily another forty students outside of them and 1B. Once they escaped the clutches of the forest, their first glimpse of human contact outside one another was their homeroom teacher finally pressing the stop function on a stop watch.
Which felt like an added insult to everyone there.
"We made it..." Mina managed to say to her boyfriend, taking in sharp, sharp breaths as she did so. Honestly, she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to remain stood up for much longer. Unsure, she used him as a pole to lean on, wrapping her arm around the back of his neck. "We finally made it..."
The green haired boy said nothing, focusing on catching his breath, and maintaining his balance thanks to her added weight, more.
"It goes without saying, but you didn't make it for lunch." The Pro Hero Pixie-Bob declared in response, her paw-gloved hands resting on her hips. She almost seemed to be taunting the students as she stood there, looking pleased with herself, and the trouble that her Quirk had caused the students.
"Like hell that'd take three hours!..." Sero groaned, rubbing his canister-shaped shoulders in an effort to numb the pain he was feeling.
"I meant that that was how long it would have taken us to complete it." Mandalay said, looking smug, though she expressed serious impress at the skills of the students in front of her.
"To be honest, we actually expected it to take you a whole lot longer, mew mew mew.." the Earth Flow Quirk user giggled in a manner similar to that of a cat, an odd action considering that she had no obvious adaptations that were feline in any way. The only explanation that was viable at this point was that she was intentionally putting on a cat-themed persona, for whatever reason. "Though you did take out the Dirt Beasts I made for you pretty well…. Pretty good, especially you five."
The cat obsessed Hero pointed towards the grouped up strongest in the class – Izuku, Iida, Todoroki and Bakugou, and she also included Mina in her overall assessment as well. It caused the pink skinned girl to blink a couple of times, and to stare at the blonde woman.
"My guess is that you've all had past experiences that helped you to act, right?" The Pro Hero quickly noted, before she began to feel shivers running down her spine. In a truly bizarre action, and in a real feline fashion, she suddenly began to shoot mouthfuls of spit at Bakugou and Todoroki, patting at them repeatedly. "I'm marking them as mine! I'm gonna have some fun in three years time!"
This woman's eccentric behaviour earned her quite a few stares from all of the class, and Aizawa as well, who seemed to be in a mild amount of surprise himself though this did translate to him just widening his eyes a little bit. Turning to the other Pussycat member in the room and muttering something in conversation to her. As the pair of them conversed, Pixie-Bob went down the line to Iida, 'Marking him as hers for later on'.
"She's worried about being a spinster her entire life." Mandalay openly explained to Aizawa, disregarding any sort of whispering or muttering that the Erasure Quirk user may have been doing. Apparently, whatever the issue was with Pixie-Bob, no one within her team was particularly quiet about it.
"A spinster?" Izuku questioned, without even thinking about what it was that he was saying. "Are you really that old – Mmf!"
His sentence was cut short by the paws of what was increasingly looking like a deluded older woman hit him in his face before he could utter a single other word that she didn't like. "I'm not old! Not at all!"
"And that would be why you don't comment on a girl's age, Izuku." Mina commented, before turning her attention back to Pixie-Bob. The Pro Hero looked ready to mark Izuku before Mina quickly put her arm in the way to stop her, much to Izuku's gratitude, and Pixie-Bob's confusion. "Uh, could you please not do that to my boyfriend, thanks?"
Frankly, Mina wasn't too keen about Izuku being covered in spit, or being 'claimed' by a Pro Hero, even if it was in jest.
For a second, Pixie-Bob just stood and stared right back at Mina, before she then turned to look at Izuku. Then back to Mina. Then back to Izuku. Back to Mina, and then Izuku. Back to Mina, and then Izuku.
To Mina, then Izuku.
From Izuku, back to Mina.
And then she slammed her hands on either side of her face and let out a cats imitation of a shrill shriek. She looked an inhumane mixture of disappointment, disposition, and outright horror at the sentence Mina had just uttered. "How, so young?! One of the best kittens has already been claimed by another one of the best kittens!" She then began to hiss at Mina, like she was trying to start some sort of cat fight between her and the horned girl, as though they were a pair of alley cats fighting over table scraps.
She was even clawing towards Mina, like she was trying to threaten her. To be honest, Mina wasn't sure if she'd seen anything more insane in her life.
"Well done, Ashido, Midoriya." Tsuyu commented from behind them, her tongue slightly stuck out as she did so. "Looks like you've broken a Pro Hero."