We were thrown high above the ground. A sharp wind immediately hit my face. I looked down and saw a massive, rocky terrain filled with debris, destroyed buildings, and steep rock cliffs. A landslide zone.
A fall from this height would mean certain death or serious injury for an ordinary person. Toru panicked wildly in my arms, her invisible body shaking like a leaf. "We're falling! We're going to die! Mephisto!"
"Calm down, Toru. Hold on to me," I said in a calm, deep voice that didn't have a single ounce of fear in it.
I activatedquirkand let the energy flow freely into his back. The anatomically divided metal joints on my armor immediately adjusted with a quiet click and cleared the way. In the next second, the giant, white angel wings I had awakened within me spread from my shoulder blades with a mighty swing. Their massive span immediately cut through the air, and a sharp gust of wind stabilized our free fall.
With a single powerful flap of my wings, I completely braked our landing speed. We slid down through the air and I landed with complete ease on both feet. The rock beneath my boots cracked only slightly. The wings then folded gracefully back to my chest and tucked into my armor, while the torn cloak settled back around my shoulders.
I carefully placed Tora on the ground, but I still held her shoulder so I knew exactly where she was standing.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"I... I'm alive?" she blurted out in shock, touching her face and then turning to me with her head movements. "Wow... you have wings?! That was absolutely unbelievable, Mephisto! You saved me! I thought I was going to shatter on those stones!"
"It was just the beginning, Toru. Look around you," I said coldly, letting my armor dim slightly so as not to attract unnecessary attention. But it was too late.
Dozens of figures began to emerge from behind the rubble of buildings and massive boulders. They were villains that the Alliance had sent specifically to this zone to eliminate anyone who fell here. There were at least thirty of them. They held iron bars, machetes, some had Quirks that turned their hands into stone blades or allowed them to spit acid.
"Hey, look at them! We only got one kid!" laughed a disgusting voice from a guy with tattoos all over his face, raising a giant axe above his head. "Some kid with horns in weird armor and... wait, there's another one and he's invisible? All I see are boots and gloves!"
"Kill them! The boss said we can't let anyone leave alive! All Might isn't here, so at least we can have some fun with those heroic brats!" another one shouted, and the whole gang ran towards us with a wild roar.
Toru instinctively took a step back and slammed her back into my armor. "Mephisto... there are so many of them. What are we going to do? I... I can't hurt them, my Quirk is useless in a fight like this!" her voice was filled with tears and utter despair.
"Your Quirk is useless, Toru," I said quietly but firmly. "Your invisibility is your greatest weapon. I want you to get out of here and take off your gloves. Now."
"What?! But..."
"Do it. Now. No one will see you in this chaos. Stay behind me, move quietly, and as soon as you see the opportunity, run towards the central square. I will hold off these wretches."
Toru didn't hesitate for a second. I saw her boots and gloves fall to the rocky ground. She was now completely invisible to the human eye. I could only sense her presence through my energy perception, which was in my Ether Core.
"Thank you... be careful, Mephisto," her voice whispered from somewhere to my left.
I turned to face the approaching wave of bad guys. Red lightning began to flash around me. "You want to play bad guys?" I spoke, my voice so icy and deep that some of the bad guys in the front row instinctively stopped. "I'll show you what real fear looks like."
The first villain, the one with the axe, reached me first. He roared and charged down with his axe, aiming it directly at my head. I didn't even move. I just raised my armoured left hand slightly.
GROUP!
The sharp blade of the axe struck my armor. Instead of cracking, the axe shattered into a thousand tiny metal shards in a split second. The villain's eyes widened in shock. "What... what kind of armor is this?!"
I ignored him and with my right fist, covered in red lightning, I hit him directly in the stomach. The shockwave of my blow, shot him backwards with the speed of an artillery shell. He flew through the air, broke through two stone walls of the building's rubble and lay unconscious.
The other villains froze for a second. "He... he took him down with one blow! He's not a normal kid! Use Quirky from a distance!"
At that moment, a whirlwind of attacks came at me. One villain fired volleys of sharp stone spikes at me, another spat streams of corrosive acid at me. I crossed my arms in front of me and activated a full energy rotation, forming an impenetrable barrier of lightning and air pressure around me. The acid instantly evaporated in the heat of my lightning, and the stone spikes bounced off my armor like children's toys.
"My lord, these worms are not worth your time,"Agron spoke, his shadowy presence resonating wildly within me."Let me massacre them."
There's no need, Agron. We can't show the teachers everything right from the start. I can handle this myself.
I seized the moment. With lightning speed, I turned into a blur. I appeared in the middle of their formation. My movements were completely invisible to them. Every blow I threw meant the end of the fight for one of them. A left hook and the acid-wielding villain flew around the rock. A right knee and the guy with the stone Quirk collapsed to the ground with a broken rib cage.
In less than two minutes, all thirty bad guys in the landslide zone were lying on the ground. Those who were conscious were just moaning desperately and trying to crawl away from the "horned monster." My armor was completely untouched, not a scratch, only a faint smoke from molten acid and lightning was rising from it.
I turned and sensed Toru's presence. She stood a little way off, hidden behind a boulder, her quiet, shocked gasps echoing out of nowhere. "Mephisto... you... you defeated them all? Alone? In an instant?"
"The way is clear, Toru," I said, looking down at the central square. From this height I could see what was happening down by the fountain. And what I saw immediately drove all peace from my body.
Aizawa was at his wits' end.