Chapter 25: USJ Arc Part 9
| Before Stella Traps Izuku In The System, Izuki P.O.V |
As Izuki soared through the air to meet Shadow's thralls in their midst, her heart ached. She didn't know why, just that it did and it felt awful, especially when she heard Bakugo's pleading for her not to fight. Though it was illogical to try and stay safe because her resurrection was temporary and once Stella willed it she would fade away. Izuki felt compelled to do so anyways after hearing the pain in her friend's voice.
But that was not important right now, stopping Shadow and saving the class was -so she would put away her feelings and fight. However, Izuki figured that if she was going to be off her leash for the day she would at least have fun. So, as she reached the zenith of her jump and was about to start descending, she used one of the base abilities that came with the power Stella gave her, pyrokinesis to do an original special move.
"IZUKI...," she shouted the name of her technique as red-hot flames burst from the soles of her feet and flowed upward to her hips as she straightened her body out and crossed her arms in front of her chest. To the on-looking class near the bus it looked like a small meteorite had appeared out of nowhere with a crash course into the midst of the enemy, "...BOOOOOOMB!
When Izuku landed, unlike what the name of her technique would suggest, there was no boom, only a swoosh as her form exploded into a wave of flames that consumed every enemy within eight meters of her and reduced them to nothing.
When the flames died down Izuki was standing in a small crater of her own making with a smile on her face. "Looks like Pyrokinesis works just fine," Izuki said out loud to no one in particular as she was being surrounded by the thralls who were outside the initial range of her attack. "But this power is much more capable than that, I just need to fight harder for it to show. Probably means I can't keep using fire to area-wipe them if I want my power to grow."
As Izuki finished her sentence the enemies had closed the distance between them and her and began attacking. Their attacks were wild and undisciplined like a drunk, allowing her to weave through the attacks with little difficulty. She did not want to get hit with their attack after she saw them punt a boy hard enough to tip over a bus even if it would probably help her power grow.
Not wanting to continue dodging forever, Izuki falls into a martial arts stance from the knowledge of fighting she received from Stella before swiftly deflecting a straight punch of a thrall in front of her and countering with a full-power punch to its center mass. The thrall would have gone flying into its brethren if not for Izuki grabbing onto its outstretched arm and judo-throwing over her shoulder and it into the thralls closing in behind her. The force of the throw knocked over every thrall in its path and caused a domino effect that reached at least a few other thralls before stopping.
Seeing that her full strength was adequate to knock over the enemies, Izuki began throwing out punches and kicks all around her, sending shadowy bodies flying in every which direction she attacked with a smile on her face. Izuki enjoyed throwing the thralls around because not only was it funny looking and cool but it stopped them from gathering adequately enough to surround her again.
Distracted by her single-minded enjoyment of sending bodies flying, Izuki didn't see a thrall had jumped into the air and over its fellow subordinate constructs to bring down a hammer blow onto her head. However, through a sort of fighter's sixth sense, she felt it coming and quickly spin-kicked the thrall she had been engaging to raise her arms and block the strike.
The ground beneath Izuki's feet crumbled under the power of the blow and Izuki could also feel her knees involuntarily bending from the force of the blow. But just as soon as the strain appeared it was gone and replaced with surging strength. With a grin that nearly split her face, Izuki pushed her attacker away with her new strength causing them to briefly hover helplessly in the air.
Cocking her first back and setting her arm ablaze, Izuki jumped into the air after the thrall and threw an uppercut that connected to the underside of its jaw. With the glee of a fan girl meeting her idol, she screamed to heaven, "Shoryuken!"
The effects of her copied technique were instant, the thrall was set ablaze by Izuki's pyrokinesis and sent flying higher up in the air than when it had jumped to reach Izuki. When it stopped ascending from the force of her attack it disappeared into nothing.
Izuki felt elated at being able to use a move from one of her favorite games to play with Stella, however, the fun of landing another cool attack was a bit overshadowed by the disturbing realization that she was showing similarities to a lazy slob like her friend. "I can't believe I'm getting so easily distracted like Stella," Izuki grumbled as she landed on the face of an enemy below her, and kicked off its face to attack another hard enough to nearly embed it into the ground. When his feet finally touched the earth Izuki immediately grabbed the downed thrall, spun on the heels of her feet, and knocked the others away with it sending the newly gathered thralls flying. "And when is this stupid transformation going to start!"
As if her power was responding to her, Izuki began to feel her body change, her height increased, her muscles grew more prominent, and she felt something shift a bit underneath her skin. All of this was followed by the familiar feeling of surging strength.
"Wow this power is cool," Izuki said as she observed her newly changed body with glee as her before going back to attack thralls. She noticed that her attacks had become faster and stronger in conjunction with her power growth. Where before she would have to put her full strength to send the thralls flying, now her casual punches and kicks could achieve the same result. She had even kicked the feet from under the enemy at one point and it had spun in the air like a helicopter propeller. Something she found extremely hilarious.
"DIIIIIIE," a loud and coarse voice shouted before it was drowned out by a loud explosion and multiple bodies flying into the air and disappearing into nothing.
*BOOOOM*
The person kept on shouting and more explosions followed. Izuki couldn't see what was going on because she was surrounded by shadows, and she was barely five feet five right now, but she didn't even need to figure out who was making such a ruckus.
Another boom went off followed by more bodies flying. Not wanting to be outdone by Katsuki, Izuki picked up the pace of her attacks, forgoing putting in much power for greater attack speed. Putting lots of power in her attacks was not all that was needed anymore when she was now constantly growing stronger.
Izuki was better for it too as now she was going through the thrall ranks like a whirlwind of death, dispatching almost a hundred thralls in a mere minute. Her strikes were so fast and precise that she was sending multiple thralls into the air and then some before the first could even hit the ground to disappear.
However, there was a problem for Izuki. The efficiency with which she was now dispatching the enemies made everything boring. Even as she jumped into the air and split-kicked two approaching thralls it felt like she was doing a chore instead of fighting and she didn't want to have to go back to the System like this. She could of course slow down and just start doing attacks from video games and anime she played/played with Izuki and Stella but...
As Izuki twisted around a puch from a random thrall, grabbed its head, and then proceed to drive her knee into its face, she was taken out of her thoughts by a familiar voice, "Everyone, don't stop what you're doing but please listen. I have a few announcements to make," The loud and booming voice of the ponytail girl Izuki had seen on the bus spoke out. "First and foremost, Midoriya's healing power is stopping the drawback of our quirk. I'm sure those of us with quirk recoil from USJ have noticed that the effects have worn off and haven't affected us since. So you're free to use your quirk more freely from now on. However, I don't recommend going all out in case Midoriya's quirk can't support all of us."
Izuki smiled at the news and puffed her chest out in pride even as she grabbed the leg of an enemy that tried to kick her and spun it around at dizzying speeds only to release it into the air where it sailed toward the horizon. 'That's my bro, even when he's asleep he's still being a hero!"
The voice of the pony-tailed girl continued speaking while Izuki was having this thought. "Second thing to mention is that if you see a green-haired girl with a resemblance to Midoriya while fighting, don't attack her she's an ally. Finally, I'm going to make earpieces so that everyone can communicate but please do not talk into it unless there is an emergency or crucial information comes to light as I'm going to be using it to direct the class until help arrives or we beat back the villains. I need Toru, Sero, and Koda to come to me to help with setting it up and distribution. That is all for now, please continue fighting until one of the mentioned three comes to you."
As the announcement was going on Izuki had grown another few inches, nearly reaching six and a half feet. Dark green scales had begun coming out of her skin to cover her arms and legs making Izuki stop for a few seconds to look in wonder at the cool new addition to her body. Four of them had tried to jump her at the same time but Izuki's reflexes had improved with her body, allowing her to react with lightning speed and strike all of them at the same time in one swing.
Stella had told her that she would turn into a dragon the more she fought but it hadn't really sunk in for Izuki what that would be like. However seeing the transformation in action, made her excited. She wanted to see, feel, and know what it would be like to be a full-on dragon but the transformation was slow. She wondered if it was because she wasn't fighting hard enough or because she was considering this fight more a chore than actually fighting.
While she was lost in thought again, her attacks became less efficient which allowed the thralls to gather in number around her. It was then that Bakugo, who had been making sure to stay nearby in case she needed help, dropped in from above their encirclement right as they were about to attack and began blasting them away with his smaller-scale attacks.
"OI Izuki, head in the game!" He shouted at the now much taller girl while not looking directly at her.
"Ah, sorry Kaachan," Izuki sheepishly apologized to him while internally cursing Stella for giving her whatever brain disease it was that made her easily distracted. "I got a bit distracted but don't worry. It won't happen again." Bakugo merely grunted in affirmation before he readied himself to go off on his own. At least until Izuki stopped him. "Wait Kaachan, wanna play?"
"Huh," Bakugo rotated his head to look Izuki in the face so that he could see if she was serious. "Why would we play now, we're kinda in the middle of a fight?" He punctuated his words with an explosion that blasted incoming thralls into nothing.
Izuki rolled her eyes at him as she also began fighting again. "Not like actual playing but more like….a competition! Whoever defeats the most villains by the end of this wins."
Izuki couldn't see Katsuki's face but she could hear the smile in his voice. "A competition huh? Alright, I'm game, I've wanted to defeat you for a while now anyways."
A smile formed on Izuki's face as a memory of her beating Bakugo in the last spar they had popped up. "Been hurting for a rematch all this time huh?"
"You…have no idea," Bakugo's voice contained a hint of melancholy when he spoke—making Izuki feel that heart-clenching feeling again.
"A-anyways, previous points don't count. Starting in321," Izuki didn't wait for any response as she dashed through the moob of shadows surrounding them. Bowling them over like she was a fright train to try and escape the heart-clenching feeling Katsuki's words made her feel again. Believing in her child-like mind that if she ran away like last time the feeling would disappear again.
"You cheater!" Katsuki shouted from behind as he let loose another explosion. He didn't chase after her -which Izuki was grateful for. Instead, he decided to continue fighting and counting his points.
To distract herself from the feeling while also trying to win the competition, Izuki became fiercer in her attacks, downright brutal. With her growth hitting the seven feet range, she was almost completely covered in green scales and now had clawed fingertips. Now instead of throwing punches and kicks, she began slashing and tearing enemies apart with brute strength. She barely remembered to count her points as she moved through them like a lawnmower through thick grass and at some point, everything began blurring together for her but this time feeling never left.
| Momo's P.O.V |
Momo had just sent her three helpers out to the class with the earpieces. She had chosen them in particular because, in direct combat like they were in now, their quirks and physical abilities weren't very helpful. She was planning to hand them weapons after the whole class was linked up.
After her news of Izuku's quirk being able to rejuvenate them. A few members of the class had begun going haywire with their abilities despite her warning not to. Todoroki and Kaminari in particular were pushing their quirks hard.
Todoroki had begun flash-freezing everything in front of him making the area around him look like an icy wasteland and making other students give him a wide berth to stay away from the freezing cold. Normally this would put a massive hole in a defensive line but Todoroki was handling the area on his own just fine.
Another one the class made a wide birth around was Kaminari. The electricity quirk user was laughing madly while firing off his lethal amounts of power around him like a walking plasma ball. Any time the electricity made contact with the shadowy villains they vanished with no traces left behind.
Seeing the phenomenon happen made Momo breathe a sigh of relief because she realized there was no need to hold back against the villains as they were not human. Even if Kaminari was (impossibly) putting out enough electricity to atomize someone on contact there would still be something like a dust cloud after the event. The fact that there was none at all meant they were not human or even made of regular matter.
The idea of the enemies not being human was further backed up by there being no bodies around the field anywhere despite the class and the new girl defeating multiple villains.
"Momo," her invisible friend called to her from the bottom of the bus making her look down instead of out at the field. "Everyone but Bakugo and the new girl have an earpiece and we can't reach them through the enemies. The others are coming back but they had to go further than I did so it'll be a little bit before they arrive."
"Thank you Toru, I'll call Bakugo and the new girl over now," Momo responded while lifting the mic to her mouth. "In the meantime can you check on the condition of everyone on the bus?"
"On it commander!" Toru's said playfully as her gloved hands did something that looked like a salute before going to the entrance of the bus.
With that done Momo turned on the microphone and called out to the two solo elements that were taking most of the pressure off the defensive line set up by the class. "Bakugo and Izuki I need you back to the bus for your coms."
Once her message was sent out, she began to prepare weapons for herself. After all, it wouldn't be good for a class rep to sit on top of the van shouting at people while doing nothing to help the battle efforts themself.
With just a bit of concentration on her quirk, she began making a large, gray, unassuming box from her chest that once completed fell onto the right side of the bus with a large bang. The weight of the box dented the roof but did not cave it in. Seeing that the roof could handle a lot more, Momo created one more of the unassuming boxes, this time on the left side of her. When both boxes were complete she completed her load out with a gun. A bit unheroic but the class was in danger, her opponents weren't human, and if she was being honest, after seeing Midoriya's guns she wanted to try one for herself after so long.
Momo hadn't seen many schematics of guns because of an embarrassing stint in her childhood where she one day declared to her parents that she wanted to be a badass mercenary arms dealer. At first, her parents had tried to convince her to simply take over the family business but young Momo was adamant about a combat-related job. Knowing they could not stop her from making dangerous weapons in secret with her quirk, they instead opted to limit her exposure to said weapons and hire people to train her in their safe usage of them. However, it all came to nothing when she exited that phase of her life and decided to become a hero, at least until now.
After grasping the schematic from memory, Yaoyorozu activated her quirk and began to give it form. From the center of her chest came the form of the AK-12 or otherwise known as the Avtomat Kalashnikova 2012, a fifth-generation Kalashnikov rifle. Seeing the rifle reminded Momo of her cringe past making her blush a bit as the embarrassing memories of the time came back.
If not for Bakugo landing harshly on the bus she probably would have been stuck in her memories. "Yo class rep," he greeted her while sticking out his gauntleted hand towards her. "Heard you got something for me."
"Umu yes," Momo replied as she stopped blushing and slipped back into her "reliable leader mode" and handed Bakugo the small earpiece which promptly put in while she activated her own to begin explaining to everyone in the class how to use it. "Using the communication earpiece is simple, double tap the button on it to speak over the network and use a single tap to stop. You can also disconnect from communication completely by holding the button longer than five seconds so please avoid that. Multiple people can talk at the same time so you mustn't leave your mic on to avoid clogging up the coms. Did everyone get that?"
"Ai Ai Comander."
"Sure did boss."
And other confirmations came through the coms before it goes quiet again. "Good," Momo replies before turning off her coms and turning to Bakugo. "Why hasn't Midoriya's sister come?"
"I don't know" he replies causally. "But I don't think it'll be any help to give her one with how she looking right now."
And it was true, one good look at the girl and Momo saw that she was now covered in scales from head to toe and had grown to a considerable height, about ten feet. "Bakugo, what was her quirk when she was alive?" Momo asked in awe seeing the towering behemoth that was now Izuki tear through enemy after enemy.
Bakugo looked at Izuki and then her before answering. "The way I remember it, she could control matter of and near her body almost completely. So it doesn't really surprise me that she's going all lizard monster over there but the fire is new."
"Her quirk is incredible," Yaoyorozu said as she watched Izuki smash through tens of enemies at a time. "But her current form is getting in the way of communication, so when you get the chance, tell her to make normal human ears so that she can use the class coms. It's important that she does because if she doesn't I can't use these..." Momo gestured toward the plain metal boxes she had onto the bus.
Bakugo looks at the boxes in confusion and if the look on his face is anything to go by, correctly guesses that the boxes are some sort of weapon. "Gotcha," was all he said before jumping off the bus and taking off into the sky with explosions.
When he was gone, the helpers -and a plus one- that she had assigned to give out their coms had made their presence known to her.
"Hey Commander," Sero greeted with his usual wide smile next to Koda, Toru, and Mineta, who had probably been woken up by Toru when she was sent into the bus by Momo. "Got another job for us?"
Momo was about to answer when Bakugo suddenly spoke through the coms. "Yo class rep, Izuki said she can't control her transformation right now so changing her ears is impossible but she'll keep the communicator to listen in on what we're talking about."
Momo was once again about to reply until another voice spoke up on coms. It was Aoyama, and he spoke plainly, without any of his usual flamboyance mixed in. "Class rep, this is Aoyama on the left flank and we have a situation. The enemies on our side are spreading out beyond the reach of the defensive line.
Then someone else spoke up, "This is Asui on the right flank ribbit. The same thing is happening over here, what do we do class rep."
Momo would have liked to say that she had immediately thought of an answer but she couldn't. There were too many factors to consider when it came to moving the class. For example, if the enemy's movement changing was a trap. At first, she thought the shadowy enemies were unintelligent, a mob trying to overwhelm them with sheer numbers and brute strength. But just now they had shown a clear shift in strategy which opened up some worrying questions.
Was someone directing them? Where were they? How would they respond to her next move? All these questions and more went through Yaoyorozu's mind as her face scrunched in concentration. That is until she realized she was taking too long to answer her classmates.
Taping the button on her earpiece Yaoyorozu stopped hesitating on what to do and started giving orders. "Everyone, start closing the distance between yourself and the bus slowly. Those of you on the left and right flank, please start bending the defensive line around the bus. That will be all for now." Yoazoru wanted to do more like place members of the class in certain positions of defense depending on their quirk but trying to accomplish all that with the class in the current state would be impossible.
Seeing that the class was following orders properly, she turned to her three turned four helpers and started instructing them too. "You are now our intelligence division." She stated matter of factly shocking all of them. "Can any of you fly a drone?" Sero and Mineta raised their hands but Koda and Toru did not. Momo nodded before exerting her power again to make four black cases that fell off the bus and into the surprised hands of the fours below her. "Sero and Mineta, you have five minutes to teach these two how to use them. After that, begin scouting the direction where our enemies came from. They are directed and learning from us. It's time we start learning about them, dismissed."
"Yes ma'am," they all chorused while saluting before getting to work.
Not paying much attention to her classmate's eccentric behavior, Momo got to work finalizing her defenses, though it would be more accurate to call it an offense in her opinion. Reaching behind the plain metal boxes she had made earlier, she pressed a near-invisible button on the back that began shifting the design of the box from featureless metal into an unmanned twin-barrel turret.
These turrets were the reason why it was important for everyone to have an earpiece because built inside their coms was another device that put out a signal to the turrets that designated the wearers as friendly. Natural, because there were several situations that could occur in which her classmate's coms could be destroyed, damaged, or lost, there were fail-safes in the turrets to prevent them from immediately targeting and shooting them. However, Momo highly doubted she would need them when she considered the competence of her classmates and how tough she made their communications.
The turrets weren't firing right now because they were belt feed and had no ammo, something she would change as soon as she informed her classmates that she was going to use them. A quick tap on the coms and some explanation later followed by questions she mostly ignored about why she made guns and she was ready to activate the turrets.
A quick tear to the hips of her hero costume and an exertion of her quirk to continuously create two belts of ammo on both her sides that she fed to the ammo compartment of the turrets. Seconds later, when the ammo's been processed by the turrets, the one on her left begins targeting enemies in between the nearly fifteen-foot-tall Izuki and the class. While the one on her right starts taking out a large gathering of enemies on the right flank.
Momo herself smiled in what she guiltily recognized as anticipation when she positioned her own gun up to start firing. Despite how bad the situation was, things like this were kind of her childhood dream. Being a badass heroin that leads her men into battle against impossible odds and coming out on top. But then she started blasting and then the guilt mysteriously started disappearing along with the enemies.
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A/N: Sorry this came out late, real-life stuff happened and i had to take care of it.
Now I know I said I was going to make the chapter shorter so I can post faster but I'm probably going to ditch the idea for a little bit since im trying to wrap up this arc in the next like...two chapters.
Now onto thanking my great and awesome supporters. The water that keeps the boat floating, the fuel for the engine of the metaphorical train, and so on. Big thanks to Genskot, real777, Revered_1, and 2zero500 for the stones. If you dropped a stone last chapter but don't see your name on this list, blame Genskot and Real777 for being too awesome because these two absolute units filled up most of my notifications with their Power stone drops. I literally can not go back to the day -and a few days after- when I released the previous chapter to see who dropped stones, so it will forever be a mystery. I'll make a list and take down names so your support will not be lost to the abyss but immortalized in a chapter.
Lol anyways, got more real-life stuff to take care of. I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Author out.
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