Chapter 19: Training Camp
The UA traitor rolled his eyes at his classmates antics as the bus rolled to a stop. He quickly sent a text sharing his location with Shigaraki. This would show those class A assholes.
Why did Shouto have to be paired with Bakugo of all people for the test of courage. It wasn't that he hated him, it's just that Bakugo was just so loud. They were almost to the halfway point when they saw smoke in the distance.
"Hey Icy-Hot, I thought you never used your fire…"
"I don't." Shouto said. "I didn't light that."
"Well then who did? Because we're the only ones here with fire quirks and it sure as hell wasn't me."
Shouto looked around as he prepared to use his ice, "Be quiet."
"Don't tell me what to do, Icy-hot!"
"Be quiet! There might be villains!"
Bakugo scowled, "If this is some trick by those class B losers…"
Shouto rolled his eyes, at least he wasn't yelling anymore. The boys both crinkled their noses as a smell like rotten eggs started wafting through the forest along with a pink mist.
"What the..?" Shouto put his hand over his nose as he began to feel lightheaded, "This smoke is poisonous, we have to get out of here."
"No shit, Sherlock!" Bakugo growled, keeping his own mouth and nose plugged.
They ran away from the smoke, coming across a class b student who had passed out on the trail. Shouto hesitated a moment before putting the boy on his back. Heroes never saved him, but maybe he could save this classmate. They continued on, slower than before due to the extra weight.
Because he was no longer covering his face, Shouto got lightheaded much quicker than he had before and it was only the practice he had working through the pain of his father's training that kept him going. That was probably why it took him longer than it should have to see the black figure kneeling on the path in front of them.
"Who's that?" Bakugo asked, then he noticed the severed hand, "Which group was in front of us again?"
"Tokoyami, I think…" Shouto replied softly, trying not to think that the hand might be one of theirs "And Shouji."
"...so pretty…" The figure whispered, "No! Have to work...but it's so delicious…beautiful flesh…" The man turned around, revealing a wide mouth held open with hooks. Despite the fact that the man's eyes were covered, Shouto could feel he was looking straight at them, "...I have a job to do…"
Aizawa watched in horror as his capture weapon went through the villain.
As the flame villain melted into goo, he smirked, "I wonder if you can save your students?"
"Mr. Aizawa! Help!" Eraser looked to see Ida running out of the woods ask fast as he could, panic on his face.
"Show me your Blood!" a giant villain barrelled after him, muscle fibers bulging. Aizawa's eyes widened as he recognized Muscular and he activated his quirk.
"What the…? What did you do?" Muscular screamed as he deflated, but Aizawa quickly wrapped him in his capture weapon and kneed the villain in the face, knocking him out before blinking. He took in the sight of Muscular's blood-coated fists before turning back to Iida, "Are you alright?"
Iida nodded, "The rest of our classmates should be along shortly, I told them to hide because I was the only one able to outrun the villain."
Aizawa nodded, "Good work. Head inside, Vlad King is already waiting for you with the other students. I'll be back!"
He didn't look to see if Iida obeyed as he ran into the woods. If he had heard the flame villain correctly, his students were the targets. He had to save them, or at least get to Mandalay and give them permission to fight back. His heart gripped in panic, it was like the USJ all over again, only this time the villains wouldn't let the students live because they'd already got what they wanted. The students were what they wanted, which was infinitely worse.
The only students he passed as he ran were Ojiro, Mineta, and Kouda, who promised to go straight to camp. It wasn't long before he reached the clearing where the test of courage was supposed to begin. A lizard looking villain with a sword made out of other swords was bearing down on Mandalay and Aizawa managed to pull her out of the way with his capture weapon just in time to prevent her from being cut into ribbons.
"Mandalay, are you alright?"
"Eraser! Have you seen Kouta?"
Aizawa felt his stomach sink, "No, I haven't, but I need you to send a message to all the students. Tell them to use their quirks and training, that I'm authorizing them to engage in combat with the villains."
Mandalay looked shocked, "Are you sure?"
Aizawa nodded, "I'll take the heat. Our students are the targets and they need to be able to defend themselves."
"Ahh," A large woman in sunglasses said as she ran at them, "Who squealed?"
"Wait!" The lizard villain cried, "That's Eraserhead, he's an underground hero and if Stain were still alive, he would likely judge him a true hero!"
Aizawa wasn't quite sure how he felt about that, but the important part was that the villains were too busy arguing to attack.
"So what?"
"So we must be sure we're abiding by Stain's princip…" the lizard villain was cut off by a kick to the head from Mandalay at the same time the other villain was knocked out by Tiger.
"Thank you for the help, Eraserhead," Tiger said as Mandalay sent the message to the students, "Things were getting kind of rough there."
"Where are Pixie Bob and and Ragdoll?"
Tiger looked behind him and Aizawa paled as he saw Pixie Bob lying on the ground, "Ragdoll hasn't checked in."
Aizawa took a deep breath, he couldn't worry about that right now, "Get her back to camp, I need to go look for the rest of the students."
Tiger nodded as Aizawa ran further into the woods.
Shouto put up another ice wall to stop the blades, careful to avoid the class B boy he'd laid on the ground, "Don't just rush into this fight Bakugo!"
"Whatever Icy-Hot! We've been given permission to fight so that's what I'm gonna do!"
Shouto swore as Moonish dodged his ice wall again and took off into the trees, "This guy's quirk is too good at navigating this terrain."
"This freak looks like a scrawny little sidekick to me!" He shifted into a battle stance, "Come at me you bastard!"
"You can't use your explosions Bakugo! You could start a forest fire and kill our classmates!"
"Whatever, Icy-hot, I'm not an idiot."
Todoroki doubted that. Right now, Bakugo was acting just like Endeavor. Take down the villain, show his own strength, don't care who gets hurt in the process. He looked behind him, where the wall of poison gas was now clearly visible. Between Moonfish and the gas, they didn't have anywhere to run.
Bakugo ran at Moonfish with an explosion, breaking some of the blade teeth and causing the villain to cry out in pain. Bakugo smirked.
"Watch out!" Shouto cried as Moonfish's blade teeth flashed, but Bakugo couldn't move out of the way in time. He grit his teeth in pain as he was stabbed through the shoulder.
"You fucker!" He yelled, "I'll kill you!"
Shouto knew he should send an ice wall to protect his classmate, but he could already feel hypothermia setting in. That combined with the gas was making it almost impossible to think straight.
"...flesh...blood...sweet…" Moonfish stabbed Bakugo again, but this time he got close enough for the student to grab his face.
"Die." Bakugo screamed and let off a full force explosion in Moonfish's face. Shouto idly wondered if it was bigger than the one he used during his fight with Ururaka at the sports festival. When the smoke cleared, several trees were smoking and the villain was heavily singed and unconscious.
"Weak ass villain." Bakugo spit a dollop of blood on the ground before looking at Shouto, who just barely had time to wonder about the look of alarm on his face before he felt himself collapse like a telescope. By the time the nauseating sensation had ended, he was surrounded by blue glass walls and neither Bakugo nor the forest were anywhere to be seen.
Uruaka and Tsu shifted into battle stances as they stared down the villain in front of them.
"What kind of person slashes someone out of nowhere?" Tsu said, "Who do you think you are?"
The girl pointed at them with a bloody knife, "I'm Toga! You two are super cute, Ururaka and Asui."
"She must know who we are from the sports festival," Ururaka said.
"But we don't know anything about her, so we're at a disadvantage," Tsu replied.
"There's not enough blood," Toga pouted, "Normally, I'd suck it straight out of the cut to get it flowing, but there's no time. Don't worry, girls, my fun new toy will start pumping as soon as I stick it in you. I'll get my fill in no time!" She looked at them from beneath her lashes, "Who's first?"
Tsu threw Uraraka in the air with her tongue the moment Toga started running, "You have to get back to camp! We have permission to defend ourselves, not counterattack! Ahh!" Tsu cried out as Toga slashed her tongue.
"Tsu!" Ururaka yelled.
Toga stopped for a moment, "Tsu? That's so cute! I think I'll call you that too!"
Tsu backed away in fear, "Only my friends call me that!"
Toga laughed as she pinned Tsu against a tree with a needle, "I guess that means we're friends then! You're so cute when you bleed!"
"Get away from her!" Ururaka yelled. Toga turned and came at her with the knife, but Ururaka used her Gunhead martial arts and pinned her to the ground.
"That was amazing, Ochacho!"
"Ochacho? You're cute too!" Toga stabbed her in the leg and let her machine pull the blood out.
"Uraraka!" Aizawa called out her name as he ran into the clearing and activated his quirk.
"Aizawa-sensei!" Tsu cried in relief, "You have to help her!"
Toga jumped away from Ururaka and ran off into the forest, "I don't feel like being killed tonight," she giggled, "Toodles!"
"Ururaka," Aizawa knelt beside her on the ground, "You're hurt."
She shook her head, "It's not bad."
"Good," He nodded, then stood, "Make your way back to camp, I've cleared the forest between here and there, so you should be fine if you hurry."
Ururaka nodded and the girls were about to leave when they heard rustling in the trees. All three tensed and prepared to fight, but instead of a villain, it was Bakugo who entered the clearing. He was carrying another student on his back and looked halfway between exploding and crying.
"Bakugo?" Aizawa said, "You were paired with Todoroki for the exercise, where is he?"
Bakugo shook his head, "They took him. Those damn bastards stole Icy-hot!"
Aizawa's stomach dropped, this was bad. In terms of worst possible scenarios, a kidnapped student was pretty high on the list, "Did you see where they took him?"
Bakugo just shook his head again, "It was some asshole in a yellow coat. He collapsed Icy-hot into a fucking marble and took off through the treetops. I tried to follow them, but.." he grimaced, "I overused my quirk fighting the one who was trying to kill us and the bastard was too fast for me to follow on foot." All of a sudden he screamed and kicked at the base of a tree, "I just feel so fucking helpless!"
Aizawa put a hand on his shoulder, "Bakugo, you and the girls get this student back to safety. There's not much else you can do out here anyway if you're suffering from quirk exhaustion. I'll find Todoroki."
Bakugo looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he just scoffed, "Fine. They were headed east when I lost track of them."
Aizawa nodded and ran east. It was a long shot, but if there was any possibility Todoroki was still here, he had to try and save him.
"Now we just gotta wait for the others to regroup here. This place was supposed to be hard to find because of the wall of flames and poisonous gas," Dabi sighed, "but it looks like the gas is gone."
Aizawa hid in the trees, following the flame villain from earlier and a guy named Twice who kept arguing with himself. At one point he'd seen Aoyama cowering behind some bushes, but Aizawa had just put a finger to his lips and gestured for him to leave.
Aizawa wanted nothing more than to take both villains down right now, but he held himself back. Bakugo had said the one who stole Todoroki had a yellow coat, and the forest was large enough that Aizawa would never be able to find him on his own. His only hope was to follow Dabi and Twice to the meet-up point and retake Todoroki from the villain who had him.
Dabi and Twice stopped walking as Toga emerged from the trees.
"Hey, Crazy, did you get the blood? How many different kinds?" Dabi asked.
"One person!"
"Just one?" Twice whined, "Good job! Weren't you supposed to get three?"
"That's just the way it went down. I thought those brats were gonna kill me and then a pro showed up!"
"Whatever, it's fine." Twice said, "Shouldn't you be full of shame?"
"Both of you shut up." Dabi ordered, "You're too loud. Welcome Mr. Compress. You get the kid?"
Aizawa moved the moment a yellow coated figure jumped down from the trees, tripping him with the capture weapon and activating his quirk. A ripping sound filled the clearing and suddenly Mr. Compress's coat was in tatters and Todoroki was kneeling on the ground looking disoriented.
"Todoroki!" Aizawa ran toward him and saw his eyes widen before a massive wall of blue flame blocked his field of vision.
"It's been five minutes since the signal," a voice declared, "let's go."
Aizawa activated his quirk and tried to see anyone, but the flames were too bright and Dabi made sure to stay hidden behind them so Aizawa couldn't see him. When the flames finally disappeared, Aizawa readied his capture weapon for the fight and looked around for the villains.
But all he saw was an empty forest.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone