Chapter Text
Day 2: 14 hours, 2 minutes (2:02 pm, local time)
Katsuki growled to himself as he focused on the Tower.
Icy Hot’s orders had been clear; wait until one of the heroes report that they found Deku, then take him out. No fucking complexity, no hesitation, no letting the freak get free.
So he watched.
He watched Icy Hot stick a glacier through the Tower.
He watched as half the heroes infiltrated the top while the other half ran containment. Shouts and orders and tactics were thrown around as the unfrozen floors in the bottom of the building erupted into chaos and all-out war.
It had been a fucking nuisance to keep himself from jumping into the fight. Only the fact that he could feel Icy Hot’s eyes on him, waiting for Katsuki to fuck it up, kept him from saying ‘fuck it’ and just blowing up villain heads.
And then.
Some fucker started playing music.
Katsuki snarled, his already thin patience shredded apart as he took the first step forward, eyes locked on the Tower.
That's the only reason he saw it. A guitar rift drowning out the sound of the window shattering as a block of metal went flying, the mass twisting and cavorting through the air.
Straight at Icy Hot.
Katsuki cursed, already blasting off towards the dichromatic bastard, who looked at Katsuki with surprise. He wasn’t even aware of the threat, already two seconds from the Tower and gaining speed from gravity.
It took three more seconds to reach Todoroki.
One second to grab tight, ignoring the start of a startled shout.
Another second to check the path, seeing where the object, glinting in the sun, would make impact.
Two seconds to shove and throw both of them up and at the glacier, away from the explosion of debris the impact would cause.
He dropped Todoroki and turned, tracking the streak of metal as it struck the building where Icy Hot had taken cover.
It hit the roof and simply kept going. For almost half a second he could see it, shattering and caving in the office building and carving a trench through almost half the floors before stopping, unseen in the depths of the building.
“Fuck,” Katsuki muttered. It wouldn’t have hit Todoroki straight on, but it had crashed through close enough that the debris could have knocked his ass out.
“Get up, Icy Hot, that was a fucking opener,” Katsuki looked up at the top floor, seeing a figure appear. Too far away for any details, but Katsuki saw what he wanted. Green and black, with that crackling green electricity that’s been showing up for the last few weeks whenever the nerd used his Quirk.
Deku was here.
“SHITTY NERD!”
Without hesitation, he thrust his hands back and blasted himself up at his rival, shooting up in an almost perfect inversion of the fucking meteor from earlier.
He was almost halfway when the nerd leaped out, swan diving to meet him.
This close, he could make out more details. The black jacket that wrapped across Deku’s form was layered with thin plates of dull metallic armor across his chest and shoulders. His mask wrapped across his entire face, green LEDs lighting up and showing a smile with X’s for the eyes.
As the two closed in, Katsuki focused, readying himself to meet Deku in a clash of firepower.
Setting off one last blast to shoot him up, Katsuki brought his hand back, already condensing as much sweat into his palm as he could.
And then Izuku twisted, a shift of arms and legs and sleeves, the green lighting arcing from his figure as he contorted his form and flew by. The change of orientation meant that they passed face to face, the mocking green smile aimed his way as Bakugou tried to twist and reorient himself to give chase.
Kodai was looking and preparing to engage as the Kingpin entered the fray.
She kept close watch, readying her stance as the streak of green and black kept twisting and falling closer, until he began to pass the highest of the thin spires of ice.
And then he twisted one more time and came into contact with a long, sloping spire of ice stretching from the dead center of the glacier.
He landed on the spire, skidding and sliding as he tried to use the ice as a ramp, burning bright with speed.
Before Kodai's eyes, his form seemed to boil, black and green seeping off his form and blowing out behind him.
It took half a second of hesitation before she understood; he was spewing smoke. Green and black clouds, thick and dense were spilling and pushing out from his sleeves and collar, from the sides of his boots and from under his jacket. It was all back-lit and laced with the glowing green arcs of power that she had been informed were a sign of his Quirk. All that was clear of the Kingpin himself was the glowing face in the mist, a green smile that looked demonic and gleeful, as it slid and rode the wave of ice.
She finally snapped out of her staring and charged, tracing the most likely path to the end of the pillar. But it was too late, she could see the form as it tensed, shifting so that it slid and arced straight down out of a curve at the center of the glacier.
She was close enough that she could hear him yell, and on instinct crossed her arms in front of her face to protect herself.
“PULSE, SIX CHANNELS, FIRE!” The cloud of smoke brought its arm, glinting black and green in the darkness, down. The fumes were blown away for just a second, revealing a rapidly spinning ring of green and black around his arm as it made contact with the ice beneath him.
And then she had bigger issues to deal with.
A wave of sudden green light and snow kicked up, blinding her and making her skin sting at the speed and chill of the explosion. Beneath her, the glacier shuddered and then shattered under the force, packed snow and loose ice turning into water vapor under the pressure. The larger structure broke and shattered, unable to maintain cohesive force as the kinetic energy flowed across it. She yelped in surprise and fumbled, falling and shifting through the now loose snow and vapor before she caught herself and angled to roll on impact.
As she hit the ground and adjusted before shifting to look up and regain her bearings, she had to simply stop and stare.
Where there had been a solid mass of ice encircling the Tower before, there was now a field of wreckage that covered the street for half a block in every direction. Massive pillars of ice lay stretched across the area, while the ground was littered with chunks of shattered ice. The air itself was awash with diamond dust, the sparkling mass thrown so high that the sun peeking out from the clouds and behind the buildings almost blinded her simply by the refraction.
And there, perched on one of the remaining chunks of ice near the Tower, rose the form of smoke and lightning, sparking with that same smile.
“Sorry, this is going to hurt,” came his voice, slightly distorted as it was amplified by the mask.
She had to brace and bring her arms up to block once more. The smoke burst, the figure of the Kingpin, shooting in a deceptively fast arc, arm raised for a strike-
The contact was like getting hit by a truck.
She staggered back, suddenly losing her balance as he hit dead center on her guard, the Kingpin himself getting thrown back by his own punch.
‘What the HELL. Is he even human?’
Mezou spun once more, deflecting a charge from Kirishima into Uraraka, sending both rolling back. He immediately pivoted, an open arm wrapping around Tetsutetsu as he charged past and twisted the metal man’s force around before sending him crashing into the slowly recovering duo across the room.
“The ground is clear! Shouji, get going!”
Well, he didn't need to be told twice.
Twisting on his foot he broke for the center of the building, one arm stretching out to snag the duffle bags as he charged for the elevator shaft.
Two arms reached down, grabbing and twisting the hilts of both Escrima even as he turned back, standing in the doorway to the center of the tower.
“URARAKA!” he called, getting her attention. Her gaze, still slightly dazed, snapped up to meet his. “YOU MIGHT WANT TO GRAB YOUR TEAMMATES BEFORE YOU HIT THE GROUND!”
And then he tossed the Escrima sticks into the room, though they now looked very different. The sides of each staff seemed to expand out, long thin rods holding the rounded surfaces away from a pair of ominously glowing crystal cores, with long purple cracks across their once green surfaces. He watched as they soared through the air, an eye on his arm catching sight of Uraraka’s panicked leap at her team even as he turned and dove behind cover himself.
With a glass-shattering pulse of energy, the wall around the support pillar he was against blew out, plaster and drywall littering the hall around him.
He glanced out and saw three figures floating out and across the sky away from the now destroyed expanse of window.
Uraraka looked stressed, but it seemed they were alive.
Good.
Turning back to the elevator shaft, Shouji pried it open and blinked.
There, looking up at him with a surprised expression, was Sero, both elbows aimed up to where he had already covered the elevator mechanisms with tape, disabling it in case they had planned to use it. “Uhhh… Well shit.”
“Sorry, I would give you a fight but I’m short on time.” Shouji raised the gun held in the lower arm at his side and shot Sero in the mask, chest, and side before his larger upper arm tentacle grabbed him and dragged him out of the shaft.
“See ya.” With a wave, Shouji leaped into the darkness of the elevator shaft, one tentacle already wrapped loosely around the cable leading down as he rappelled into the darkness.
Yui staggered back once more, though with far more control than the earlier three collisions, setting her stance quickly and swinging low at the form of Kingpin as he landed on the ground, only for the smoking form of the leader of the villains to spin out of the way, bending and contorting around the punch, before she felt him grab at her wrist. His two thin arms were barely able to grasp her tree trunk thick wrist.
And then, to her utter shock, she was being Judo flipped, the world around her shifting upside down before, with a thunderous crash, she felt her back and shoulder crush through the asphalt of the street.
She blinked, and it was only because she was looking up that she saw the smoke-wreathed form of Bakugou spiraling down in a tornado-shaped ring of air, with what looked almost like a miniature sun in the palm of his hand, aiming straight at the smokey form of the Kingpin in the street.
“HOWITZER IMPACT!”
The concealed form of Kingpin shifted but didn’t move, the explosion hitting him seemingly head-on, and blasting the last of any nearby ice into steam.
“HA, TAKE THAT DEKU!” Landing nearby, Bakugou eyed the smoke, and Yui took the opportunity to shrink back down so she could pull herself free from the debris of the street, rolling to her hands and knees even as she eyed the large cloud of smoke and steam in the center of the intersection.
Looking around, she could see the heroes had converged around them. Iida sprinting to come to a stop on a pillar of ice to the left, the forms of Tetsutetsu and Kirishima landing on the street to the right, a panting Uraraka behind them. The fire across from her and Bakugou fading to reveal a fully balanced and fresh Todoroki. From behind her and Bakugou, Pony darted up, hooves digging into the asphalt as she took her own stance.
Slowly, the smoke cleared and revealed the standing form of Kingpin, the smoke no longer drifting off him for the moment.
More importantly, it revealed the black metal of his left gauntlet, raised between him and Bakugou. It also revealed the kite shield that extended from its back, still smoking faintly from the explosion, but undamaged. From where she was, she saw that Bakugou tensed, an almost animalistic fury over his features and posture.
“I’ve seen that before… Kacchan. Blast shield, retract.” At the soft but distorted command, the shield folded back, the black metal collapsing into a long straight plate along the back of the gauntlet, glowing purple lines shining in the space between where it was stored and the casing.
“Why not show me something new? ...Or better yet,” Once more, smoke began to drift from his armor, the glow of his mask becoming his only recognizable feature again. “Let me demonstrate some new tricks.”
“Full Cowl.”
The green lightning returned to wreathe his body once more.
“Pulse Fist.”
The ring of green light and black steel around his right arm began to spin, slowly at first, then faster.
“Full Visor.”
The green LED face shifted to V’s for eyes and a wide grin that slowly blinked opened and closed as if it were laughing, and across the rest of the head, red dots appeared.
And then, with a crack like thunder, the Kingpin moved.
Bakugou was the first casualty, shifting into a guard even as the black and green blur appeared directly in his face, right hand raised and a glowing green circle shining in his hand visible for just a second before it pressed to Bakugou's chest.
“Fire.”
Yui swears she blinked, because one second Bakugou was in front of her, and the next he was blurring past her into a pile of ice. Reflexively, she turned back to watch the fight, habits ingrained in sparring and combat classes kicking in.
“GET HIM!”
Mei glanced at the bike they had wheeled in from where it was stashed on the floor for refueling, and checked that the quickly forged supports Momo had built were solidly attached, before her comm came on, Izuku shouting over the noise of impacts around him.
“I got all eyes on me, ladies and gentlemen. If you’re gonna get out, do it now!”
“Bike crew about to leave. Loading bay, status?” she checked in first, stepping back and grabbing her coat and duffle bag from where it sat to her side. Lastly, she grabbed the large silver and bronze gun she had set aside when the siege first started.
“Dammit, we’re still sealed in. The side alley is filled with larger chunks we can’t clear away, they’re stuck around the garage door,” Awase’s voice was sharp and energetic, which Mei could agree with right now.
“Fuck!” She slammed her hands onto her table and tried to focus and come up with a solution, but the comm crackled once more and broke her train of thought.
“Give me a minute to clear it, but you better be ready to go. Bike crew, get going. Head to the northern safehouses.”
“FINE!”
Mei turned and looked at the other three who were set up in the room to follow Kendou on the bike. Momo had a rappelling anchor and coils of rope set up, strapped to the supports of the building behind them. Jirou had shown up a few minutes ago and was already finished getting her ‘Amp Tech’ greaves and bracers situated, and Monoma and Shinsou had made it up just a minute ago, each still reloading and stashing as many weapons and grenades from the secondary weapons supply on their persons as they could.
With that last communication, however, all of them nodded and turned to the window. “Let's get going. The faster we get the objectives to safety, the faster we can go save our battle junkie of a boss.”
Kendou got on the bike and carefully kicked the engine on, checking her grip and the controls she needed.
Jirou walked past her and placed her speaker against the tall glass window. With one last look, all five villains nodded, and with a soft whir, the glass broke, sound waves dancing across its fragile surface to crack and break the delicate silicon bonds.
As the glass fell, all five readied, before with a squeal of tires on the carpeted floor, the bike shot out through the window, blue fire flaring at its sides as it dragged the objectives with it, the weight forcing the bike to almost point straight up even as Kendou lessened the jets and began to descend.
After her, the other four villains started out after the bike, leaping and sliding down the side of the building on lines of rope.
Across the street from them, Kinoko smiled with a gleam in her eye, and released the spores she’d been holding.
“Ah, hope you all have a fungi time!”
Izuku frowned and grimaced as he threw himself backward, avoiding the blue flare of Iida’s Reciproburst as it passed within a foot of his face. A flicker of red, arrows alongside the left side of his HUD flashing, alerted him to yet another attack. Mid-air, he fired off another pulse from the right gauntlet, using the recoil of the blast to contort and spin around, avoiding the wave of ice that surged up and under where he had been, even as it shattered under the force of the shockwave.
Skipping off the ground and twisting up into a ready stance, he glanced around, seeing each of his opponents outlined in red circles with distance markers, despite the cloud of black smoke that wreathed his form, the work of the eight drones that floated above the intersection.
Shifting slightly to set his footing on the loose ice, he checked the distance marker on the edge of his HUD that pointed behind and to the left of his position. The alley that was apparently still sealed off.
12 meters.
He focused back on the fight as two of the icons flickered, Bakugou and Pony.
The two charged, drifting wide to hit him in a cross pattern, Pony leading from the left as Bakugou built up sweat for a larger blast to the right.
“HORN CANNON!”
Shifting, Izuku tensed his left arm to deploy the shield once more, spinning as he stepped back, taking on the points of Pony’s horns as she shouted her attack’s name.
From her horns, a tremendous force slammed into Izuku’s shield, even as the impact was reduced and dampened by the compensator in the gauntlet. The force shoved him back several feet, left arm thrown back and guard wide open for Bakugou to take advantage.
But as Bakugou swung his half-opened palm down to strike, Izuku brought his right around to meet it head-on.
“DIIIIEEEEEEEE!”
“Pulse Burst.”
From his right gauntlet, four of the spinning channels lined up and fired in quick succession from the ring, the air in front of him bulging and warping as the kinetic energy was released into it. Multiple shock waves formed a bubble of force and pressure that met the collected sweat and explosive force of Bakugou's finisher, resulting in a much larger explosion midway between the two, sending both of the leaders, and Pony, flying away as a result.
Izuku tried to correct himself before he felt his shoulder slam into a pile of ice behind him. Panting, he looked up to see the heroes advancing and closing in, Todoroki throwing up more walls of ice to keep the fight contained.
Checking, Izuku grinned.
0 meters.
He turned and brought his right arm around, slamming it into the ice pile that blocked off the side alley.
“Fire.”
The shockwave washed through the ice, the villains huddling behind their vehicles as snow and shards of ice splashed off and across the loading bay floor.
As the crystal dust cleared, they could see that the ice that had blocked them in had been reduced to a mere fragment of its previous self.
“Alright, everybody on, we’ve got places to be!”
Nine villains jumped and scrambled onto and into the two vehicles, Awase grimacing at a twisted ankle as he sat down to take the wheel of the first car, a truck with a flatbed for the back. Reiko and Kuroiro slid in next to him, filling the rest of the truck cab. In the back, Tokoyami grabbed the netting over the top of the cab, Sen joining him.
In the SUV behind them, the other four villains prepared for a fight. Kouda was crammed in the driver's seat and holding onto the wheel, Aoyama climbing into shotgun. In the back, Juzou and Mina were gearing up to fight as well.
On the signal from the SUV, as they all got secure before Tokoyami started them off. Dark Shadow burst ahead of the team and clearing the last of their way through the ice field, even as Awase revved the engine. The truck jumped, wheels screeching as they grabbed at the concrete and asphalt of the floor before catching and accelerating. Out and up, the truck lept and swerved over the end of the loading bay and turned towards the opening of the alley as Awase gunned the engine, the SUV following behind.
In the back of the truck bed, holding tight, Sen began to laugh.
And then they swerved out into the intersection, into the fight between their leader and their enemies.
Sen grabbed tight to the gun in his hands, setting his stance as he swung it around, four barrels gleaming in the light of the sun as it peeked through the crowd. As the barrels and sights lined up, he pulled the trigger. The click-clack of his gun was music to his ears as countless red goo rounds began to pour out across the street. Once more, a wave of red paint rounds fired from his hands, and he could only laugh. Painting a river of red as he swung the four barreled mounted gun around, he started focusing on his first target.
Kodai Yui.
The afternoon before the exercise
Izuku sighed and leaned back in his seat on the train, eyeing the roof as it passed through the streets heading home. Mentally, he was stuck looping through the plans and preparations he had taken, the skills he had pushed everyone to learn.
The announcement that they were reaching his stop broke him from his stupor, and sighing, Izuku stood and headed to the door of the train. He would go home, give everything a final check over, and then sleep as well as he could before the exercise started.
He began walking down the street, bag hanging from a shoulder and eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance.
“Hey, IZUKU!”
Well, he was. The shout had gotten his attention, and he turned and blinked in surprise. Apparently, he was far more distracted than he thought since there was now a freaking limo keeping pace to the side of him.
And out the window was Shinsou, looking at him expectantly.
“Hey Shinsou, what–” Izuku felt his body go slack as Shinsou’s power took hold.
“Get in the limo and take a nap.”
Izuku had no choice but to comply. He barely had a chance to see that the limo was filled with the other villains before the second part of the command took over and his eyes closed.