"You sure you can't climb?"
Izuku winced at the question, still cradling his broken hand.
"If he had more experience he could run up walls without using his hands, but we haven't really covered it yet, so no."
Mina nodded, having seemingly accepted the reasoning. Then she put forth her hand and melted the lock on the door to one of the buildings, the two young heroes hurrying in, and quickly, with as little extra sound as possible they began making their way up the stairs towards the roof.
It would be an obvious tell about where they had gone to regroup if the two saw the door, but frankly, their best shield right now was them not knowing where they had gone in the first place.
With any luck, the Villains would have to search all the buildings to look for them. That could take half an hour, just checking the doors.
And that was assuming they didn't just do less subtle means.
Izuku was painfully aware that if Rhino and Shocker decided to just start leveling the buildings in a methodical manner, there was nothing they could do to stop them.
It wasn't before they reached the top, that both of them finally stopped moving. Mina was breathing hard, while Izuku desperately tried coming up with a plan, ANY kind of plan.
After a short while, it was Mina who first put the big question forth.
"What… What do we do now?"
Izuku opened his mouth. Then closed it again. Then finally got managed to croak forth an answer.
"I don't know."
A silence arose again, this one awkward, with a hint underlying panic beneath it.
It was then that Venom formed a head from Izuku's shoulder.
"Well, at this point, a full retreat seems the most logical option."
His head turned towards the nearest part of the walls of the great dome above them.
"We can make it to the end of this arena, then use Mina's acid and quietly make our way out. Then, it's just a bit of running and jumping back towards the school."
It seemed such a logical suggestion, and a large part of Izuku wanted to agree with him.
"We can't." He said instead, gritting his teeth through the pain in his hand.
Both Mina and Venom turned to look at him.
"Why not? We do not have the weaponry to deal with Rhino, and given his face is almost as indestructible as his body, most likely Mina's Acid won't do much damage against it either. And even if it does, he'll be on guard for attacks against his face now." The symbiote hesitated briefly, before continuing. "Or at least that is what any warrior with any semblance of battle sense would do. Which, granted he might not have."
"If we run away… Then those two are just gonna move on to the next area, and join the battle there. And if we can't beat him, the rest of the class won't be able to either. Unless he's unfortunate enough to run into Uraraka-chan or Kaminari on the first move, he will Kill whoever it is he finds next."
The chances of him running into the gravitation girl or the living battery who seemed to be the only natural counters he had in this class were far, far too low for Izuku to EVER bet lives on it.
"We can't avoid them forever either. If we just run away and they never see us, they'll sooner or later decide we are not here anymore, and then move on."
It was an awful, awful situation. Mina also seems to agree with him, judging by how worried and stressed she currently looked.
"So, it's basically like we're Luffy at Enies Lobby, and they're Lucci."
Izuku blinked. Who?
"Yeah, pretty much." Venom affirmed. "We'll have to fight them, and soon, or they'll go on and murder the rest of the class."
Mina bit her lip, but then suddenly lightened up.
"Why don't we go get them then? Kaminari and Uraraka I mean! One of us could stay here, and act like a distraction, while the other one goes and find them and bring them back here!"
Mina sounded so hopeful and back to her usual happy self, that Izuku felt really, really bad about having to kill this plan immediately. There were way too many holes in it.
"We don't know where either of them are." He winced as he instinctually, and very stupidly, motioned with his hand towards the other zones.
"They could be anywhere right now. And the absolute worst-case scenario, we'd have to go through every single zone to find them, unless we have the incredible luck to run into them immediately. Sure Venom's ability to sense people would help with the search, but I'd still have to go physically to every single location to scout, given the maximum range of that sensing is…"
He looked questioningly over at the liquid head.
"70 Meters or so from our any piece of our self."
"...Right. Point is we DON'T have that kinda time. Neither of us is capable of stalling Rhino alone for what could take over an hour, not to mention that Shocker will be there for support."
He did not mention his own feelings. Of just how unwilling he was leaving anyone to potentially die, while he ran off to safety. It might have made perfect logical sense, but it was still a concept that made him feel incredibly uneasy.
Mina's briefly reawakened cheer deflated, as quickly as it came.
"So what do we do then?"
Izuku thought. He REALLY thought. Thought harder and with more effort than he had ever done in his life about this problem, and any way, any possible way they could bypass Rhino's skin.
There was one more weapon he hadn't used yet. But no, even if he had been willing to use it, he'd still have to get it into Rhino's veins.
OK, what did he know about Rhino's strengths and weaknesses?
The first thing that came to mind was the one he had admitted himself.
Electricity. Lightning. But no, that didn't help them much here. Although…
They were in the ruined building's section of the park, or more accurate, a section full of buildings that hadn't been toppled or submerged underground.
There were still lights on inside the buildings here, which would mean there had to be electricity of some kind.
The problem was first to locate it, then how to utilize it. Then whether or not the kind of energy that kept the lights on in this building would be enough to take out Rhino.
Luring rhino inside a building without toppling it would be a hard enough task, without also having to lure him to he electrical outlet, wherever that was.
There was also another weakness, one obvious one, that he had deduced himself, but utilizing it was another story.
His gaze turned to the distant fire zone, where the red glimmer of flames was visible in the distance.
If he could somehow get Rhino all the way over there, then mayhaps-
Izuku's thoughts were interrupted by a massive, and incredible loud explosive sound from somewhere directly beneath their feet, along with the entire building shaking to it's very foundations.
Then, the entire building began to collapse sideways.
Fear instantly gripped Izuku as both him and Mina shot back up to their feet, and began sprinting towards the edge.
This time though, they didn't manage to jump over it in time, as another massive explosion burst apart another huge chunk of the building beneath them, seemingly making the toppling building literarily crumble into pieces as it fell.
The ground literarily fell from under them. As the toppling roof broke to pieces.
Izuku's good hand Instinctually shot towards mina, and a web shot out, and linked the two of them, with a 3-meter long web.
Then, with a scream through gritted teeth, he pointed his broken hand towards the side of another, still standing building.
It was at this point that Izuku learned what happened when he shot a webline to swing from, but rather than maneuvering his hand to grab it, he instead let the black suit around the two shooters hold it.
Namely, that as he suddenly moved in that direction, he felt a sharp, and tight wrench sideways, localized in his hand.
Normally, it was something he could have dealt with with a bit of discomfort.
However, with said hand having 4 broken fingers, an unimaginable pain shot down from the broken digits, and he screamed in pain.
Pain which blinded him, and made him slam directly sideways into the wall he had attached himself to. Further down below, Mina also slammed into the wall, though unlike him she hit feet first, and didn't have the wind knocked out of her.
Suddenly, Venom disintegrated both the webline holding Mina up and the one who had been holding Izuku himself up.
Which was good, because the place his body had been just 3 seconds earlier, suddenly burst to pieces as another explosion hit the wall exactly where he had just been.
The explosion still sent a bang of pain throughout Izuku's body.
Izuku twisted around in the air and managed to land on his feet, barely missing Mina, who scrambled out of the way, having done the exact same.
They then leaped out of the way from a wall of Grey that suddenly charged towards where they had fallen.
Rhino smashed into the wall, and, judging from the sounds, just kept on trucking until he smashed out the other side.
That the Rhino made himself scarce from the battlefield for a brief moment was very fortunate for the two heroes. For they had enough problems avoiding Shocker's bursts of air, which he was very liberal with as everything burst around them, showering them in small rocks, like hail.
Then, Mina produced something Izuku hadn't seen her do before, as a wall of Grey goo suddenly formed in front of her, between her and Shocker.
The wall looked like melting ice cream and wasn't particularly stable. Even without any interference from Shocker, the thing would probably not have lasted too long.
As it was, an explosion hit right to the side of it, bursting it to pieces, showering the entire battlefield left of where it had stood with acid, and the moment it hit the ground the concrete immediately began to disintegrate into smoke.
Mayhaps Shocker thought the plan had been to hit him with acid and hadn't hit it straight on.
...
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