Chapter 26: USJ ARC Part 10
"Illinois Smash!" All Might roared as he buried his fist deep into the ground and caused the entire crater to rumble and crack like an earthquake was happening. Revenant, Shimura, and the other shadows stumbled on the shaky ground like drunks trying to regain their footing.
Using the opening to finish the fight once again, All Might dashed forward turning into a blur as he moved from shadow to shadow, laying in devastating blows to every one of them in mere seconds. By the time his form had solidified, Reveant and every other shadow were either destroyed or sent flying to the crater's edge.
All Might knew his attack wouldn't keep them down for long, he had been fighting them for about twenty minutes with this cycle of fighting, death, and respawning being completed over and over again. This time he decided to use his downtime to formulate a plan that would end the cycle once and for all.
'It's been twenty minutes since the fight started and I'm no closer to defeating Revenant than I was at the beginning.' All Might thought while his mind raced with memories of previously fought villains in the hope that his experience from those fights would give him the figurative silver bullet he needed to end this fight and check on his students but he was coming up with nothing. All Might had never fought an opponent like Revenant before, he doubted anyone had and lived to tell the tale. 'Every time I kill him or the shadows they come back after a few seconds with no injuries or loss of function, so how do I stop them for good?'
The symbol of peace had tried to target Revenant most of the fight and succeded in taking him out nearly every time. However, the simulacrum's temporary death did not affect any of the shadows attacking him.
'It's as if Revenant's quirk isn't tied to him at all,' All Might thought, and as if a light bulb went off in his head, little clues that didn't make sense to him before started coming together into actual intel. The mysterious way Revenant had escaped him in Dubai, how all the shadows of the villains who died in USJ came from one side of the crater even though most should have died in different places, and most importantly, the information he had bought from the hacker about Ayirodim and Revenant.
The information stated Revenant was a machine through and through, not some person with a mutation quirk that made them look like a machine or someone who had his body replaced with cybernetics. So logically speaking, there was no way for him to have a quirk, something only biological beings possessed. All Might had completely dismissed this information as false when he had read it because he had seen Revenant use powers similar to quirks and technology was not so advanced that people could make something like Revenant yet. At least according to David Shield, one of his best friends and a genius scientist/inventor.
Now, with all the information All Might has, there were several theories he could come up with as to why the shadows kept reappearing. The first one was that another villain was still around and was responsible for making Revenant and the Shadows unkillable. That theory was unlikely due to the hazardous way he and Revenant were fighting and the unlikeliness of someone having followed Revenant for decades without ever getting noticed by any informants.
The second theory and the most likely of the many he had thought up was that there was another device hidden outside of USJ, but close to it, that allowed Revenant and his shadows to return to life as long as it was working.
"Slowing down, Symbol Of Peace?" The mocking but menacing voice of Revenant asked from directly behind All Might.
Toshinori, with a reaction speed that would make even his precognitive ex-sidekick jealous, turned around just in time to catch the wrist with the sharp digits that were millimeters away from stabbing him in the back. Without any words to the machine, All Might reared his fist back and brought it down toward Revenant but the machine escaped his grasp and the attack with a teleport that took him behind All Might again.
All Might used the momentum from his missed attack to turn his body to face the simulacrum again but much to his surprise Revenant hadn't gone in for another attack. The symbol of peace was confused as to why until he felt an impact from behind him that took him off his feet and sent him flying forward and skidding on the ground. All Might had to use his finger to dig into the ground in order to bleed off the momentum and prevent himself from smashing into the side of the crater. Then he quickly leaped to the side and dodged Shimura's shadow when it tried to follow up on its sneak attack with a diving tackle.
'Dammit, I don't have time for this,' All Might thought as he began to be surrounded by the shadows for the umpteenth time. 'I have to find the source of their immortality or I'll be fighting forever.'
With that thought, All Might tensed his muscles to make a massive leap away from the surrounding Shadows and toward the side of USJ that they all had come from at the beginning of the fight. But before he could, a roar of rage from Shadow Shimura drew his attention up and he could see that she was coming in hot. All Might could still jump to meet her in the air and destroy her again there but instead, he decided to take the blow.
The punch from the shadow was strong enough that All Might knew he would have some serious bruising on the arm he used to block but more importantly the attack blew away every shadow that had surrounded him.
'Now's my chance,' All Might thought as he grabbed Shimura by the arm she used to attack, spun, and threw her away from him before she could do anything.
Revenant once again appeared out of nowhere, this time as silent as the dead, so close to All Might that if the symbol of peace tried to swing at him it would surely be too slow and awkward to stop the simulacrum's attack. So All Might did the next best thing and brought his knee up to smash into Revenant's chin faster than any man his size had a right to be, destroying him in a single attack.
'Annoying,' All Might thought as he once again was about to leap when the familiar sound of rapidly displaced air made its way to his ear a second before he felt something smash against his body hard enough to take him off his feet and send him rolling in a tangle of limbs with whoever had crashed into him. Without even needing to see who it was, All Might knew who had done this. 'Teacher's shadow, but how?! It should still be flying through the air...unless.'
Before he could finish his thought a pair of feet smashed against his chest hard and sent All Might bouncing off the ground like a basketball. All Might got up immediately and so did his teacher shadow but he was faster to go on the offense. Immediately he tried to punch her hard enough to bury her in the ground but to his surprise, shadow Shimura punched his fist away instead of trying to clash with him like she usually did, effectively parrying his attack.
While one of All Might's arms was flying wild from the unexpected counter, shadow Shimura moved in closer and tried to land a blow on All Might's exposed front. However, she failed to realize All Might could still defend himself with his other arm and so was also caught off guard when he caught her fist and held it firm in his grasp. Before she could even begin to struggle out of his grasp All Might brought his other hand down like the fist of God and struck the shadow hard enough that it was almost brought to its knees.
A normal person would be too dazed from the attack to do much of anything other than continue to get beat on until they passed out but a shadow was neither normal nor a person. It could not be affected by mental ailments like concussions or confusion and so was able to attack right after All Might with a punch so hard it folded All Might over its fist and sent him flying up.
All Might felt like his stomach was doing backflips from that attack as he sailed through the air. But while the attack hurt a lot it did not stop his mind from thinking rationally and planning. 'Like I thought, teachers shadow is beginning to learn as it fights. It must have used air pressure to launch itself back at me when I threw it away earlier," All Might surmised with a grimace. "I have to end this fight fast before it becomes an actual threat."
In a regular fight, All Might would not be too worried about fighting someone on shadow Shimura's level of power and skill. Even if she was fast enough to react to him and strong enough to hurt him, All Might was still faster and stronger. As for skill, he had decades of fighting and training behind him, Shadow Shimura would not overcome that in just twenty-odd minutes of fighting. The threat lay in the fact that she was immortal, untiring, and unrelenting. The longer she lasted in her engagements with him the harder it would be to continue fighting unless he could figure out and destroy the source of the shadows and their immortality.
"Raaagh," All Might heard shadow Shimura's roar before seeing her leap into the air toward him. He thought she was going to tackle him again but to his surprise, she leaped past him. At first, he thought she missed him but when he turned around mid-air to see where she went he saw her with her arms outstretched like she was about to hug him. All Might was not fooled and immediately braced himself for the incoming attack he knew the shadow would do. His instincts were proven right when the shadow brought its hands together and unleashed a deafening boom and shockwave toward All Might that sent him hurtling toward the ground like a meteor. Incidentally, this attack sent All Might into the regathered group of shadows and destroyed them.
All Might got up feeling tired of fighting the shadow of his teacher. Even though he wasn't holding back anymore, the lookalike remained troublesome. A perplexing situation considering there were few villains that could force him to use 100% of One For All, even fewer that stayed up after the first blow, and even rarer to fight two such individuals on the same day. Regardless of the shadow's strength, All Might now had a plan of attack to end this once and for all.
When the shadow landed on the ground to follow up on its previous attack, All Might immediately jumped backward and high into the air toward the edge of the crater. landing on the side and holding on by digging his fingers into the dirt and stone. Not seeing the bait, the shadow lunged after him, perceiving the retreat as a weakness and thus fully committing to the offense like All Might wanted.
Before Shimura's Shadow reached him, from up in the side of the crater All Might could see all the other shadows he killed recently once again drop down from the northeast side of USJ.
'That at least confirms that the source of their immortality is over there,' All Might thought as he launched himself off the wall into the air toward where the Shadows came from just as Shadow Shimura crashed into where he used to be.
"RAAAAAGH," She howled in rage as she bounded toward the airborne All Might and easily caught up to him. Just as she was about to grab his leg All Might twisted his body to the side and twirled into a spin kick that connected to her jaw and made her start twirling uncontrollably in the air.
"California..." Then with the roar of his special move and a couple of extra spins in the air, All Might sends a destructive gale of air pressure into Shimura that sends her crashing into the crater below. "...Smash!" The air pressure also had the effect of boosting All Might's speed to his goal even faster.
Down on the ground, Revenant was feeling panic. All Might had discovered the location of his totem earlier than he anticipated. If he destroyed it now, the mission to kill All Might would fail. There had been more totems stashed in and around USJ but the resulting fight between All Might and his strongest shadow had destroyed all but the one on the outer edge of USJ.
So thinking fast and smart, when Shimura's shadow impacted the ground he quickly teleported over to it and stabbed it in the head to send it back to the totem. It would take a few seconds for the totem to remake and chances are that All Might would destroy the totem before she was remade but it was either kill Shimura and hope she would be remade in time or do nothing, lose the totem, and fail the job.
The weaker shadows had already made their way down the crater so there was no way for them to even be fodder against All Might's attack. All the simulacrum could do was hope for the best.
All Might was soaring through the smoke-filled air desperately looking for anything out of the ordinary that could provide a hint of what was giving the shadows their seemingly immortal forms. However, no matter how hard he searched in this dust-laden air he could see nothing. So he decided to clear it.
"Detroit SMASH!!" All Might roared as a massive gust of wind swept through the entire area and cleared all the thick dusty air.
With renewed visibility, it didn't take long for All Might to spot his target. It was made even easier to find due to shadow Shimura standing next to it, who also spotted him and let out a growl of challenge. All Might, done wasting time on these villains decided to end everything in this next attack.
"United States Of...." All Might said with deadly intent as he was descending from the air toward his teacher's shadow and the totem. For the first time since the conception of this dangerous and lethal move in his mind, he was going to use it for real. He considered the possible repercussions of using such a dangerous and untested move but dismissed his concerns. After all, by now, his colleagues should have already retrieved the students and set up a perimeter around the fight. That and Revenant needed to die by his hands today. All Might was sure that without the resurrection machine keeping him alive, this time for sure, Revenant would be vanquished. "SMASH!!!!!"
"Raaa-" Shadow Shimura tried to scream in defiance of her impending doom but was silenced when she ceased to be. This overwhelming power would not allow her to exist a second longer in the presence of its weilder.
Then all was white.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
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A/N: Hello my readers, I am back! I know it's been a while but real life started picking up again so this chapter's completion got pushed back.
Speaking of pushed back, I'm extending USJ for another chapter or two.
People who have been waiting for me to get off this arc since November of last year: "He can't keep getting away with it!"
I know, I know but I figured a little more fighting would be needed for this arc before I felt okay about closing it out and I didn't have time for one giant chapter. So the next chapter will be General Momo leading an attack on Umbra and then after that, we can close off USJ with an epilogue to explain what some characters like the UA staff and Lida were doing the whole arc.
Now thank you to genskot, real777, Minichip, and others who dropped stones during the story drought. I keep forgetting to make that list but I'm sure I'll get to it...someday. Anyways next chapter soon be on the lookout. Peace.
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