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Rescue Training at the Unforeseen Simulation Joint was supposed to be the first 'real' test of students' natural affinity for Heroics. Were they willing to put their own comfort aside to help another? Would they be so filled with the villain-focused misconception of the heroics industry and refuse to participate entirely? Were they strong enough to hold a life in their hands without buckling under the pressure? Would they understand that heroes aren't meant to fight villains, that they were meant to save lives?
Today would begin to answer those questions.
Sure, they were supervised by one of the highest ranking Rescue Heroes in modern history. And only working through scenarios that were completely planned out and actively controlled by UA staff members. Today’s training was in no way, shape, or form dangerous for the students involved, but it was a good test of character. One in which the worst case scenario was expulsion from the Heroics Course.
"I wonder if some dead kids would bring All Might here?"
A villain attack on UA grounds, far from any backup from the main campus, with no way to contact outside help, was so much worse than a simple expulsion. And the situation only continued to deteriorate from the very moment that black mist filled the USJ.
First, Shouta had foolishly separated himself from his students to engage the interlopers directly. The mist, which he hadn’t realized was a villain rather than the effect of a quirk, consumed many of the students behind him before he even hit the bottom of the stairs. They vanished out of sight and into danger from right between him and Thirteen. two Pro Heroes who had been trusted with their safety were completely powerless to save any of them.
"Begone. Writhe in torment."
Second, he had completely underestimated the villains. They had numbers on him and with a high percentage of heteromorphic quirks on display that made Eraser practically useless. More concerning than knowing a teacher and class would be here at this time was the fact that they knew specifically that Eraserhead would be here. They knew exactly who he was; knew his quirk and its limitations, knew his ambush fighting style, knew just how to swarm him with a large mob that didn’t bother waiting their turn for an ass kicking.
This was an extremely well-coordinated sneak attack.
But no good hero was a one trick pony, and Shouta had plenty of experience fighting outnumbered and disadvantaged. This untrained mob was truly more of a danger to themselves than to him. But they didn’t really need to be the best fighters. It was clear to him that they were just warm bodies hired to wear him down until the boss villain—obviously the guy covered head to toe in severed hands that was just waiting around at the back of the mob—got bored with all of this nonsense and joined the fray.
"I'm not the boss around here."
Third, Shouta hesitated for the first time in years.
At the sound of what was clearly a code phrase, the tattered remains of the mob scattered around the central plaza, exposing the hand villain and one other figure standing behind him. A kid. There was a kid here in the middle of the villain attack. Not one of his, but clearly just as young and not well taken care of. He was short and plain looking, with skin so pale it almost seemed translucent in places where it stretched too thin over his boney elbows and joints. The dark circles under his vacant eyes made Shouta wince in sympathy. The kid was clearly not all there as he looked out over the distance at the Flood Zone, seemingly muttering to himself as he ignored the man ranting away in front of him.
"Oi!" The kid's head snapped towards them at Shigaraki's loud call. "Stop daydreaming; you're ruining my monologue."
Even as he looked their way, Shouta could tell the kid wasn't registering anything in front of him. His eyes roved around the building, snapping from hero, to villain, to the mob of downed henchmen, to something far off behind them both. Always moving, never stopping on one subject long enough for Shouta to quite figure out what he was looking at. In his experience, that hyper awareness of surroundings was a prominent trait of heroes.
And abused children.
"It's the same," he finally said in a low voice. "Why is it still the same?"
"Are you glitching again?" Shigaraki asked in a dangerous sounding growl as he turned back towards the kid. "Do you need a reset ?"
"Hey! Your fight is with me!" Eraser threw out his capture weapon, but the villain simply grabbed the end of it without even looking back at him as he stalked towards the kid. In an instant, the cloth dissolved away to dust and Shouta was left with much less of his scarves to manipulate. Something was obviously wrong with the kid, beyond just finding him in the middle of all of this. Either he was being coerced into participating or the pressure of actually attacking UA had caused him to mentally check out.
Villain or not, this was still a child and Shouta was still a hero. He would try his best to save him and figure out the rest later. “Run away!”
Instead of listening to Shouta, the kid just continued to stare blankly at the both of them. He didn’t try to escape Shigaraki or even flinch as those deadly hands encased his shoulder and neck. If either of them so much as twitched, Shouta would have a front row seat to his decapitation. Fuck, this was all going so wrong. Why hadn’t he run away? Were they actually allies? Did the boy trust Shigaraki with his life?
“Why is it always the same?” he asked again, all while still moving his head within the confines of his cage. One tiny slip of the finger and—
The skin of the boy’s neck suddenly began to crack like porcelain and dark black blood began to drip down to stain the collar of his ratty shirt. The kid didn’t flinch, twitch, or even seem aware of the pain Shouta knew he must be feeling given the damage to his capture weapon.
“Typhon.” Finally, there was some kind of reaction. The kid—Typhon? Was that his actual name or just an alias?—looked up at the villain behind him which caused his neck to bleed even faster. The Black spread nearly down to his heart. “Stop getting distracted. You’re here for a reason.”
“But…All Might isn’t here. He’s never here on time.” Shigaraki growled and tightened his grip on the throat caught in between his fingers.
“Let him go!” Shouta yelled as the cracks spread high up onto gaunt cheeks. Soon enough, there wouldn’t be anything left to bury when Shigaraki was done with him. “He’s just a kid!”
An ugly smirk crawled across Shigaraki’s face. “You can’t even imagine what this kid can do.” He shook said kid hard enough to snap his mouth closed with an audible click, cutting off his repeated mumbles. “Stop being such a little glitch and show him.”
“Typhon, look at me.” The kid flinched, flinging black droplets of blood to the ground, but he finally met Shouta’s eyes. In all his years of being a professional hero, he’d only seen such a dark, haunted look in his own mirror after watching his best friend die. This kid had experienced true horror in his life and not a single person had ever saved him. “Everything will be just fine.”
Surprisingly, Typhon wasn’t looking at him like the usual victim would a hero. Instead of hope or relief, the kid just looked resigned, like he knew just how powerless Shouta was in this moment. If he moved to attack Shigaraki, the villain would dust the kid before he even got close. Same result if he somehow convinced Typhon to save himself. Same result if he tried distracting them both long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Same result if one of his students somehow escaped from their own fights around the USJ and tried to interfere here.
All roads lead to death. It was all the same, no matter what Shouta did. But even false hope could be somewhat comforting, and if giving him permission to follow Shigaraki’s orders would save him from some pain, Shouta would do so.
It was the only small bit of mercy that he was able to give the kid right now.
“You said that before,” Typhon muttered as he raised his hand to hover over one of the unconscious villains scattered around their feet. His tone was heartbreakingly bleak. “But you’re wrong this time.”
Purple-black wisps of static quickly began to gather around the villain’s head and in less than a minute, his form was completely engulfed by the writhing energy. Typhon jerked his hand up sharply and the thug’s eyes jumped open, burning with an unnatural bright white light. His subsequent scream of pain was almost deafening before it broke off into an inhuman roar as the body exploded into wet pieces of viscera.
A monster stood where the villain once laid. The new creature was still humanoid in shape, but alien in proportion: a much thicker chest that rose up and over the thin, hunched neck that was somehow still strong enough to support a head with no discernible features besides the glowing white eyes. Instead of arms and legs, the limbs seemed to be columns of purple energy wrapped up in ever moving black tendrils. The creature let out a warbling roar that echoed around the plaza before turning those white eyes on Shouta.
Shigaraki’s smile was sharp enough to cut glass as he let go of Typhon’s neck and stepped away. He was pleased with the new development, pleased with the transformation of his own ally, but at least his hands were off the kid’s damaged throat. Shouta could be just a little happy about that. Whatever happened now, he at least had another chance to save the kid.
“Kill Eraserhead.”
One moment the creature was several yards away from Shouta and the next it was right in his face, instantaneously. He backflipped, just barely out of the way of the creature’s arm that slammed into the spot where he once stood. The cement cracked like an eggshell underneath its limb. Shouta knew couldn’t get hit by this thing, not even once. He wouldn’t survive it.
He needed to keep its arms occupied.
Shouta leapt backwards and threw out his capture weapon at the same time. His goal was to cocoon it up like many of the villains around the plaza, but it instead raised up its arm. The thick tendril split into three distinct pieces before spiraling back together, tangling the scarves within its own body. It then yanked him forward. Shouta braced for a moment, but quickly realized that this wasn’t a game of tug of war that he even had the possibility of winning.
He allowed the creature to yank him off his feet.
It was clear that this thing was strong, but it didn’t seem too complicated move-wise. Or perhaps brain-wise, considering that it had just shortened the gap in between itself and a close combat specialist like himself.
Shouta threw out the other end of his capture weapon around its feet. It was immediately caught up in the darkness that swirled underneath its torso, but that was the plan. The improvised anchor gave him the leverage needed to redirect the momentum of its own pull to slide underneath it, completely out of the way of its grasping tentacles.
He leapt up from the ground as soon as he was clear and jumped up its severely bent back to land on its shoulders. He twisted up his scarves around its neck and started a countdown in his head. Shouta was still a hero; villain or not, he couldn’t cut off circulation for too long or he’d kill—
“Some hero you are,” Shigaraki smirked from a safe distance away from the fight. Shouta looked around the villain, but Typhon was completely out of sight. Hopefully he wised up and used it as a chance to flee. “Trying to choke out a corpse. What an idiot.”
Corpse.
The realization shouldn’t have been enough to distract Shouta, he knew better than to lose focus in the middle of an incident, but it did. The man, villain as he had been, was alive one moment and then dead the next by Shouta’s own empty reassurances to Typhon. It was just enough to make him hesitate when the creature’s arm twisted completely around in its socket to reach over its own shoulder to grab his scarf and jumpsuit in one large hand. It ripped him right off and slammed him into the ground. Shouta was sure he heard something pop but the pain didn’t have time to settle in before it raised him right back into the air.
A corpse. This was a corpse. Not a person. Just a body; twisted and reformed like clay into this monster.
This was, while a horrifying fact, at least the out Shouta needed. While he was a hero and not authorized to use deadly force, there was no law against desecrating a corpse to save your own life. Because why would there be?
Instead of struggling out of the hold, Shouta instead reached back for the utility knife he always kept at his back. The blade slid in between its eyes with little to no effort; it simply split the creature's skin like it was silk. It screamed out a hair-raising sound that put Shouta’s teeth on edge as it dissolved into purple-black static.
Shouta dropped down to the ground, but he wasn’t even given a single moment to breathe before another inhuman roar echoed out over the USJ. Shouta turned to the side to find Typhon crouched closed down to the ground, almost hiding behind another creature of ever shifting static. This one was almost identical to the other, if not more purple than black, but Shouta had absolutely no idea what that meant.
Yet again, he blinked and the creature was right in front of him.
Shouta attempted to stab it like the other one, but wisps of static leaked out around it like a cloud and burned like fire in his chest. He managed to dodge the first swing of its thick arm, but not the second; it slammed into his side and sent him skidding across the floor. Even when he rolled to a stop, his limbs felt shaky and weak as Shouta’s vision split and waivered like a heat mirage. His stomach flopped over itself and it was only his training that kept Shouta’s breakfast down.
Clearly this was a more advanced monster. Still, tangling it up at a distance was his best bet at getting a chance for a quick, fatal attack. One of the two creatures in his vision leapt at him while the other let out another warbling roar. So it wasn’t just a concussion; there really were two of them now.
Shouta ducked under the swinging limb and stabbed at where its kidney would be if it were human. The blade sunk deep into its roiling flesh, but it didn’t even flinch. It simply grabbed him up with one long tentacle and threw him back across the plaza. Shouta hit the ground hard, but rolled into the momentum to stand upright on his feet. His head was a bit woozy; his vision was darkening at the edges and there were far too many static creatures around for him to really focus on.
He needed to end this. Fast. And he could only see one way to do that.
The next time one of the creatures jumped at him, Shouta stood firm. It was risky, and any sentient creature would probably realize that it was a trap, but this thing was just a puppet following orders. It closed in on him at a pace that would have been impressive if he didn’t already know it could teleport. Running at him now made no sense, but he threw the concern out of his mind. Maybe it was as tired as he felt.
Shouta stepped to the side just before it reached him. It flew past him a few meters before turning around with a scream of rage and rushing him once again. This time, Shouta took a couple more steps to the side. Instead of his body, it grabbed a handful of his scarf, once again wrapping its limbs around it until it was a tight ball of useless cloth. Well, useless in a minute, at least. Right now, it served its purpose to completely trip up the creature.
With a solid kick, one that Shouta threw the pitiful amount of energy he still had in his exhausted body, the creature rolled across the plaza. The tangle of cloth and tentacle slammed through the second creature, which dissipated into static, before slamming right into Shigaraki. It wasn't very heroic, but Shouta smirked at the villain’s scream of rage as he hit the ground hard. Shigaraki was free just a moment later, but it accomplished what was needed. The decayed creature was worth the loss of his capture cloth. Now Shouta just needed to prevent Typhon from—
Pain.
Blinding white pain.
He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think , he was going to die here.
It hurt, it hurt, it hurt .
What felt like an eternity later, Shouta blinked back to reality. His chest shuddered as he struggled to take in shallow breaths. His stomach rolled as his nose was filled with the smell of burning flesh.
Shouta threw himself to the ground and actually rolled, even as the pain and nausea attempted to force him to lie still. He made three full rotations before he was sure his uniform was no longer on fire. His back screamed at him in pain, but he forced himself to stay upright as surveyed his surroundings. Almost immediately, he was forced to squint at the blinding light that assaulted his eyes.
Typhon had created another monster, this one wreathed in white-hot fire. The air shimmered around it from the heat and the floor was slick at its feet; even Shigaraki was edging towards the waters of the Flood Zone and looked to be contemplating jumping in. The kid stood right next to the thing, uncaring or unfeeling as the skin on his face began to blister.
The creature leaned forward and the spikes on its back seemed to glitch in and out of existence as the fire around its body whipped up into an inferno. Its jaw unhinged and a ball of light shot out towards him. Shouta’s dodge was more like a stumble to the ground, but he did manage to get just low enough for the attack to sail over his head.
The reeking scent of burning hair clogged his lungs.
He knew he couldn't beat this demon wrapped in the fires of Hell itself. With his capture weapon nothing more than dust and his knife more likely to melt than be useful, Shouta was running low on options at this point. It had a long ranged attack and even if he managed to get in close, the sheer heat the thing put off rivaled Endeavor on a bad day. Shigaraki wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice, but maybe if he could figure out how to dunk it into the Flood Zone itself…
“Have no fear!” In an instant, All Might was there, slamming one meaty fist into the creature’s face hard enough to scatter it into nothing more than embers and static. “For I am here!”
Shouta had never been so happy to hear that god-awful catchphrase. He fell to his knees in relief and only barely managed to keep himself awake by sheer force of will. All Might, the Number One Hero, was here to save the day, just as he always was. Shouta would never make fun of that stupid yellow suit ever again.
“Young Aizawa, what is the situation?” Shouta couldn’t see it, but he could feel the heat of the man’s hand hovering over his back. It was agony. But it wasn’t so distracting that he missed Typhon reaching out for another unconscious villain. Shouta pointed at the kid right as the static began to overtake the body.
“He’s—”
All Might was on the move before Shouta could even hope to stop him. One blindingly fast punch to the gut sent the kid flying into the dark waters of the Flood Zone. A moment later, he crashed into the training ship hard enough that it began to sink. The two heroes held their breath, but the unconscious villain collapsed back to the ground as the static dispersed from around him.
No monster was in sight, but neither was Typhon.
A demented cackle broke the heavy silence. Across the plaza, Shigaraki was holding his sides as he just laughed and laughed . “So this is your state sponsored violence,” he began between guffaws, “using lethal force against a kidnapped kid.” The villain reached up to cradle his face and pulled down the severed hand that was hiding his identity. Red eyes stared at them with dark glee as a large smile split his face in half. “He’s been waiting for a hero to rescue him for years.”
Obviously startled, All Might took a shaky step backwards. “I didn’t—”
“Didn’t know?” Shigaraki interrupted. “Isn’t it a hero’s job to save innocent people? Not attack them? But violence in the name of saving others is admirable, isn’t it All Might?”
“He was going to…do s-s-something to that man, right?” All Might looked around at the destruction of the plaza, at the scorched ground, cracked columns, and unconscious villains that littered the place, as proof of his necessary action. Shouta felt his eyes linger heavy on his injured back and could see the justification hardening All Might’s eyes. “He needed to be stopped.”
Shigaraki’s smile never wavered. “Heroes and villains both thrive on violence, but we’re still categorized as ‘good’ and ‘evil’. You’re just a tool made to keep people like me down. You decided the kid was a villain so that your level of extreme violence was justified. Does that in turn justify my level of violence against him?”
His voice grew louder with each question until he was almost lecturing them. Accusing them. “Am I a hero for decaying his skin away every time he disobeyed? Am I a hero for keeping him locked up in a smaller cage every time he escaped? Am I a hero killing the other one? When the actions of the Number One hero are on par with a villain as low as me, it begs the question: Can I be a hero too?”
Shigaraki spread his arms out wide in front of him. “Our hands are stained the same shade of red.”
The uncomfortable questions put a heavy weight in the air. Their hero society was built upon certain moores. Ones that had been cracking for years now, with heroes pursuing brand deals and sponsorships instead of villains. There was a reason Shouta went underground. There were always problems of course, ones the government was seemingly willing to just paint over. But that didn’t excuse anything that Shigaraki had admitted to.
Though it did shed light on the actions of Typhon. He’d been dismantled, bit by bit, to fit into the role Shigaraki had forced him into. He would have to answer for his crimes of course, but Shouta would see to it that he was given a fair chance to get the help he needed.
If he could be fished out of the Flood Zone alive, of course.
“Idealist criminals have a different fire in their eyes.” All Might finally said while taking a decisive step forward as the strength slowly returned to his voice. “They have an indomitable spirit. A truth that burns so brightly that others will follow like a moth to a flame. But not you. You’ve just been having fun torturing an innocent child!”
Shigaraki, in turn, just shrugged nonchalantly, “Got me.”
All Might growled in aggravation and took another step forward. Shouta forced his body to move through the pain in order to grab his arm and pull himself up to speak into his ear. “How much time do you even have left?”
“Admittedly, not much,” All Might whispered back from the side of his mouth, “but enough for this.” Angry blue eyes turned towards Shigaraki and Shouta saw just exactly what the other hero meant when he talked about fires in the eyes. “I will always have enough time for this. Never fear, for I—”
Frantic splashing from the Flood Zone grabbed everyone’s attention. Typhon rose up from the waters, his jaw hanging low and obviously dislocated as black blood billowed out around him from hidden injuries. His eyes seemed to almost glow with a white-hot rage as he trudged towards the shore. He wasn’t headed for the heroes, however, but rather Asui. The young girl was uncharacteristically clumsy in the water, constantly slipping and struggling to stay upright as something repeatedly dragged her head underneath the water for a moment before she would push herself back up with a desperate gasp of air.
It wasn’t until she’d dragged herself fully out of the water that Shouta could see the problem: Mineta had stuck himself to her chest with his quirk and Asui struggled to get her feet underneath her with the extra weight pulling her down. He was crying and gasping for air as he was dragged along the bottom of the pool, but the apparent pain wasn’t enough to release his classmate.
A slow dread started to build in Shouta’s stomach as time seemed to slow down and speed up all at once. He could see every single detail of the scene happening in front of him, but the sequence was too fast for him to do anything about it. As soon as they cleared the water, Mineta threw first his purple balls and then himself away from Asui. He bounced once, then twice, before he launched himself across the plaza. Asui fell hard into the cement from the force of it and was unable to get back up, stuck to the ground by the very same quirk that saved Mineta’s life. Typhon emerged like a shark from the water as his jaw snapped itself back into place with a sickening crack.
“You aren’t supposed to be here.”
Mineta Minoru had been unlucky enough to place last in both the Entrance Exam and Quirk Apprehension Test. His attention in class was all over the place and his classwork was mediocre at best. Shouta felt a little bad for the kid initially; it couldn’t have been easy growing up with such a technical quirk and short stature. He had intended to use the USJ training as a gauge for Mineta’s aptitude for rescue heroics since it was clear that combat wasn’t his wheelhouse. Everyone deserved the chance to prove that they were cut out for the heroics industry.
If it hadn’t been for Shouta’s own pity, the coward wouldn’t have even been here in the first place. It was a harsh insult. Coward . Mineta was just a kid, untrained and abandoned, thrown into a situation that would end many adult heroes. He was just doing what he needed to survive. But why did it have to come at the cost of his own classmate?
And then Typhon stepped over Asui. He ignored her completely and for a moment, Shouta felt like he could breathe again. Until the kid reached out a hand wrapped in a hazy purple energy and spoke again.
“You aren’t supposed to exist.”
Mineta screamed as an invisible force pulled him backwards at an incredible speed. He caught himself on a pole for a moment, only to be ripped violently away, and land right into Typhon’s raised hand. Shouta could see his student’s skin immediately begin to redden where fingers pressed tight against his throat. Mineta struggled in his hold, but his short arms couldn’t even reach his captor’s torso. He should have been focusing his strength on prying the hand off his throat, but it was probably hard for Mineta to think through the lack of air and experience.
These were just children. Shouta took a single step towards them but fell back down to his knees in pain. All Might’s heavy hand on his back, something that should have been a comfort, seared against his burnt and blackened skin.
“You’re just a glitch.” Typhon raised his other arm; the limb dark and twisted into a tendril that matched his demented creations.
“No!” All Might and Shouta yelled at the same time, but only one of them was capable of movement. The Number One Hero leapt forward as the very tip started to glow with a bright golden light. He was too late to do anything but watch as the tendril stung Mineta right between the eyes. Instantly, the boy fell fully limp in Typhon’s hold.
“Monster!” All Might yelled as he threw a punch aimed right for his head. Typhon exploded into a cloud of static, only to reappear several feet away. The hero didn’t give chase, but instead hovered over Mineta’s limp form. He tried everything from his name to gentle smacks to the face to try to wake him up. Without warning, Mineta suddenly jerked upright with an unholy scream of pain that rippled through the USJ.
Then, he began to change .
He lost all of his color, becoming pale and gray until it was the same purple-black as Typhon. Static started to evaporate off him like sweat as worms danced underneath his skin. His limbs shook as the muscles bulged, growing in size until his skin simply split and a gush of thick, black ichor fell like waterfalls from his body.
All Might abandoned Mineta to grab Asui before the toxic sludge could reach her. The quirked balls may be strong, but they were nothing in the face of his sheer strength. They landed next to him for just a moment before Shouta himself was scooped up in All Might’s arms. He gagged at the sudden sharp pain of his burns against his suit jacket. He thanked anyone that was still listening when he was set back down near the stairwell and the pain fell to a more manageable level.
Now much farther away from them, Mineta’s body suddenly ballooned in size. His already split skin ripped apart completely and tendrils of all shapes and sizes swallowed his remains up in darkness. The form of pure night rose up on thin, humanoid legs made up of several writhing tentacles that continued up and up until it stood at two stories tall. What was clearly a torso took shape out of the static, its form a mass of shifting, undulating, body parts that constantly wrapped and unraveled around each other.
The whole creature jerked forward as massive spikes tore out of its back and sent purple-black viscera splattering to the ground. A flat, almost beak-like head formed out of the shadows, dotted with rows of eyes that glowed white-hot. The creature roared, filling Aizawa with a fear that he’d never experienced in all of his years of being a hero. No villain, hostage situation, or dangerous rescue could compare to the sheer wrongness he felt looking at the mass.
“Carolina Smash!”
Arms made up of several thick ropes of black and tipped in sharp claws tore themselves out of the creature and smacked All Might into the far wall before his attack landed. The air pressure alone was enough to send Shouta flying backwards into the bottom stair. Asui was knocked away from him, but the girl had the good sense to run. She was up and gone from his sight up the stairs before he could order her to retreat.
She was just a kid, after all. Mineta had just been a kid. All of his students were just children and he had absolutely no idea where any of them were. He hoped Asui could make it out of the building, that at least one student of his was safe.
The same could not be said for the villains still down in the plaza. One woke up screaming as they were crushed under the weight of the creature. Another tried to run away, but a swinging tendril sent them flying into the covered ceiling of the Conflagration Zone. The glass roof shattered underneath the force of the human projectile and began to collapse. One of the villains managed to hit the creature with a volley from his machine gun arms and was reduced to a fine red mist that sprayed out from underneath a massive coiled fist.
All Might flew out of the pile of rubble that was part of the Landslide Zone with his fist raised high and landed a strike to the creature’s flank. Its spindly leg collapsed underneath it, but its head turned towards All Might and unraveled . Golden light poured out of the middle of its body and slammed into the hero with enough force to send him skidding across the tiles. He threw himself back into the fight with only the briefest of pauses and the creature of ever shifting blackness and static met All Might head on.
“This is a nightmare.”
It repeated through Shouta’s mind, over and over and over again, as he watched All Might fight their—what was once their student. The monster was strong enough to meet the Number One Hero blow for blow without showing damage other than a splattering of oily black blood and chunks of something that wiggled for a moment when it hit the ground before going still. Any noticeable damage taken out of the creature were quickly healed over by tentacles and purple static before All Might could take advantage of the weak spot. It fought with no clear strategy other than relentlessly smacking its opponent around the USJ like a cat with a mouse. Simple, but effective, when it could shake off a Texas Smash like it was nothing.
“This is a nightmare.”
“You’re right,” Typhon said as he suddenly appeared out of a cloud of static next to Shouta. The kid folded himself down into a painfully small squat, with his bone-thin arms wrapped tightly around his knobby knees. He must have learned to make himself small and ignorable from a very young age. If the pale patches of handprint scars that littered his skin was anything to go by, it was definitely the villain leader’s influence. “It is a Nightmare,” Typhon continued. “Have you seen one before?”
Of course not, where the fuck would he have seen a child turn into such a monster? Instead of saying any of that though, Shouta only shook his head.
Typhon looked disappointed in his answer and turned to the fight with a small frown on his face. “I didn’t want this to happen. None of it.”
“You didn’t want to attack the USJ?” Typhon slowly shook his head, but kept his full attention on the fight in front of them. The Nightmare’s head opened up to shoot several balls of light at All Might, who knocked them away with a Nebraska Smash before retaliating with a punch to the creature’s chest. Black spewed out from the wound to cover the hero in a wave of sludge that seemed to stagger him. All Might didn’t even have a chance to block before the Nightmare swung back around to headbutt him into the outer wall of the USJ.
Several different questions popped into Shouta’s head as he stared at the apathetic boy next to him, most of them were why. Why are you here then? Why did you kill Mineta? Why did any of this happen? But instead he asked, “ What did you want to do then?”
”I wanted to be a hero.” That wasn’t too surprising, most kids his age and younger would say the same thing; Shouta’s entire class for example. “But you weren’t there this time.”
All Might leapt back into the fight, but it was clear that his energy was waning. He landed a solid punch to the Nightmare’s side, blasting away a large portion of twisting flesh, but wasn’t fast enough to dodge the tentacle that slithered around his wrist and slammed him into the ground in retaliation. He was slower to get up out of the crater. He took more hits than he landed on the creature, even as its blood coated the floor.
But most importantly, he wasn’t smiling anymore.
“All Might saves everyone with a smile,” Typhon said sardonically as he pushed up the edges of his mouth with his fingertips in a facsimile of a smile. It was a sad, broken thing, that he dropped after a minute of sullen silence. “But he didn’t save me. Or any of the other ‘me’s. He’s always late to show up to the USJ.” He turned to look at Shouta with a sad look of accusation on his face. “You were too late to save me this time too. I waited for so long. But no one came.”
Shouta had no idea what this kid was talking about; he’d never seen him before or even heard of the League of Villains before this afternoon. But, injured as he was, Eraserhead was still a hero; one that believed that everyone deserved to be helped. “You can still be saved, here and now. You just have to put a stop to this.”
”…No,” Typhon said after a long moment of contemplation. “I don’t care enough anymore to stop it. Nothing I do matters. It always ends up the same.” He waived his hand through the air dismissively. “The other one cares. He cares so much that it hurts . He’d be better off not caring at all.”
“ MISSOURI SMASH! ”
Shouta and Typhon both jerked back to the fight just in time to see All Might take the Nightmare’s head clean off its shoulders. The ground shook as the creature somehow screamed through its severed throat before it exploded into chunks of black flesh that rained to the floor. All Might himself collapsed to one knee, exhausted and bleeding, but with eyes that still burned with rage as he stared at the boy across the plaza.
The boy met his glare without flinching.
“Typhon!” Shigaraki’s grating scream shattered the heavy silence that had fallen over the battlefield. The villain sat propped up against rubble from the Landslide Zone with Kurogiri right by his side. “Stop playing with your food!”
“I really wish you could have saved me,” Typhon said.
His voice was hopelessly resigned, he sounded like the lost child that Shouta now knew him to be. His hero training called for him to get up, reach out, anything to help the kid that clearly needed it in front of him. This was a hero’s duty, not to defeat villains, but to help people in order to prevent them from even existing in the first place. His mind was willing, but his body refused to cooperate.
“I am going to kill All Might and then I am going to die.” The kid said it so easily, as if taking two lives wasn’t a decision he was making but a predetermined path that was impossible to deviate from. Typhon stood up, every joint in his body cracked audibly from the motion. “Something glitches every time I reload this quest line. This save file is corrupted; nothing but a hard wipe will fix it.”
“Hey!” Shouta jumped forward to grab him, back screaming in pain as his burnt skin twisted, but his fingers closed around empty static. Typhon was now suddenly ten feet closer to All Might, who was holding his side with a grimace on his face. He looked like even a strong breeze could take out The Number One Hero. “Kid, let's talk about this.”
“There’s no point, I told you, I’ve done all this before and the gameplay never progresses because you never believe me.”
“I believe you!” Shouta yelled as he took another step forward, but the kid vanished again, inching closer and closer to the struggling hero. He had absolutely no idea what Typhon was talking about, but it didn’t matter. He would spew out anything the kid needed to hear in order to save his life. “You don’t have to do this!”
But it was clear by the look on his face that Shouta’s lie wasn’t enough to break through whatever abuse and brainwashing the kid had been put through by the League of Villains.
“I hope the other you believes the other me.”
“Typhon!”
“Izuku!” Bakugo’s scream was almost as loud as his explosion; it gave Shouta just enough of a heads up that he was able to tackle his flying student to the ground before he could reach the villain. Bakugo writhed in his arms. He twisted like a snake and threw sharp elbows into his chest to reach the kid he obviously knew somehow, but Shouta held tight despite the pain.
“Please don’t let him watch, Eraserhead.”
With those final words, Typhon, Izuku , vanished into a swirl of static not dissimilar to the teleportation villain and reappeared as a spider-like creature that scuttled towards All Might at a rapid pace. The hero punched down at the new creature, but it jumped to the side. In one smooth motion, it twisted itself backwards in half, grabbed All Might's arm with its tentacles and latched on to his forearm.
The hero grabbed the creature to tug it off, but couldn’t get a good grip on the constantly moving surface of its skin. One of the four limbs reared back and stabbed him right in the face. No, Shouta realized a moment later, the creature had stabbed itself directly into All Might’s mouth. Instantly, the Number One Hero dropped to his knees, his arms limp at his side, and his face a twisted and gray version of itself, drained of all life.
Those dark, dead, empty eye sockets stared right back at Shouta.
All Might and death; two concepts that were antithesis of each other. Sure, All Might was considered old for a hero, but he was an icon. A standard. A constant. Shouta had never known a world without the strength and protection of The Number One Hero. But he was still just a man. He got old. He bled.
He died .
Like some kind of horror movie, the bundle of dark tendrils fell from his mouth to land in a shivering mass on the ground. The mimic shuttered once, then again as black static began to grow around it, before suddenly expanding. White light tinged with veins of gold flickered from inside the dark cloud surrounding the creature until jagged spikes erupted out of its back as it grew to more than double its original size.
But it didn’t stop there.
It continued to grow, expanding and stretching up into the air with a very human scream of pain. The shadowy shape took on the form of Typhon, but made of star-studded space. Golden threads exploded out of his onyx skin and wrapped around his feet in a shimmering web. It would have been beautiful if it wasn't so horrifying.
Bakugo struggled at the scream of pain, but grew still as the creature in front of them continued to expand. First into the shape of the creature that Shouta fought, then the larger one that had burned him, and finally into the monster that took on All Might. The Nightmare roared before grabbing its own head and tearing itself in half. Golden threads of light spilled out of the wound like blood, swirling through the air until they filled the top of the USJ with an entire web of the stuff.
Even still, the body continued to grow. The two halves of Typhon contorted around themselves, coiling together and doubling in size before slamming back into each other. Tendrils grew out of the beast to entangle anything in the vicinity, alive or not, and pulled it into the body to bulk up its mass.
A grotesque, alien face with a mouthful of razor sharp teeth emerged from the center of the mass, lit from the inside by golden light.
Instinctually, Shouta activated Erasure and looked upon the horror that Typhon had made himself. The USJ vanished before him as he plunged into the icy darkness of space. A cacophony of voices echoed all around him; male, female, everything and anything in between, staticked and not, multiplied and alone all at once.
Kill them.
The ground shook underneath him and his vision suddenly returned to him just in time to realize one of the multifaceted limbs was headed right for him and his student. He couldn't do anything but watch as death loomed above them. He was too weak, too afraid , to do anything but stare. The ground continued to move beneath his feet, but it wasn’t until the tentacle slammed into the floor without hitting them that Shouta realized that they were moving. Cement buckled as it moved like a wave, scooping up as many bodies as it could before the whole lot of them were dumped at the top of the stairs.
Shouta caught the barest glimpse of Cementos before he was on the move again. Someone grabbed him around the shoulders and attempted to take Bakugo from him, but Shouta held tight. After everything he saw today, he wasn't letting go of any of his students until he knew it was over. A force heaved both of them up into their arms and ran for the door. Sunlight blinded him, but several voices fell heavy on his ears like physical weight.
“Shouta!”
“Eraserhead!”
“Sensei!”
“Oh dear, I do believe that we must evacuate the campus.”
Nedzu’s voice in particular was enough to snap Shouta out of his stupor. He blinked past the brightness of the afternoon sun
They were still much too close to the USJ. Even as they stood there and watched, a pair of massive claws appeared out from the top of the destroyed roof to pull the creature out from the crumbling structure. A bank of glowing eyes peered down at the group of heroes and students for a moment before turning up to the sky. The ground shook underneath them from the force of the roar that rippled through the sky.
One arm continued upward, as if it reached for something unseen in the heavens themselves. Waves of fear shook through the crowd, freezing them solid in place and stealing the breath from their chests, as it reached ever higher.
Until it just…stopped.
The arm fell from the sky, crashed back down into the USJ, and suddenly Shouta could think, could breathe , again. Typhon gave one last mournful roar before it exploded into golden filaments of light.
The world mourns the loss of All Might tonight. He was lost as he lived: defending the people that needed him the most…
Shouta wasn’t completely sure that he was allowed here. On one hand, Bakugo was his student. Or well, had been his student, considering that UA’s standing as a hero school was a bit shaky at the moment. Even if they got through the safety investigation and the structural survey, it was unclear just how many students were willing to come back to the school.
Those first two were currently a very big if.
Back to the point. On one hand, Bakugo was his student. On the other, Shouta didn't feel like he'd earned this kind of trust from a boy he met just a few weeks ago. The boy he failed just a few weeks ago.
Watching his student cry as he hugged an inconsolable woman that was nearly identical to Typh— Izuku felt like penance.
A simple training exercise wasn't supposed to end this way.
Heroes across the world have rededicated themselves to excellence in the wake of All Might’s passing...
All For One kicked over a pile of rubble that was once his nomu factory. His body strained to keep him alive without the support of machinery, but he wasn't willing to die just yet. The rage burning through his veins functioned as well as oxygen during his rampage. Eventually, he allowed himself a single moment of rest before starting the arduous task of figuring out what to do next.
All For One settled back into his grand chair with a heavy sigh, his feet propped up on Tenko's cooling corpse.
The stupid child wasn't actually supposed to succeed at his task.
Cleanup is under way at UA, where the League of Villains attacked Class 1-A, also known as the Lost Class, destroying a training facility. The incident resulted in extensive damage to the school and a web of gold threads that has left a trail of soot for miles…
Deep in the ruins of the USJ, a tight bundle of coral that never lost its light, despite the rest of it fading away into ash, slowly contracted and expanded in a heartbeat not its own.
Typhon wasn't supposed to die here.
Of all the ways the tests could have changed you, this is the last one I expected. You’re just…quitting.
We failed. This isn’t the one.