….
The fight was going badly from the start.
Midoriya engaged the thin Nomu, Bakugo took the larger one, and Todoroki supported from the rear, yet within seconds it was clear: three against two, and they were losing.
Midoriya kept Full Cowling at twenty percent, pushing higher when needed and brushing thirty in brief bursts whenever the thin Nomu closed in.
But even that didn't work - the thing was faster.
Every time he lined up a hit, committed to the motion, planted his foot and threw the punch, the Nomu simply wasn't there, blurring sideways or vanishing altogether and reappearing meters away as if the space between never existed.
Even as he was getting beaten to hell, his mind kept working - this was a speed type with layered quirks, reflex enhancement over raw acceleration, maybe even boosted perception, because it moved as if it anticipated events before they unfolded.
The Nomu's fist caught him in the ribs.
Something cracked, Midoriya used the momentum to roll, came up on one knee, coughed, and there was blood on the concrete in front of him.
Across the room, Bakugo was doing better against the fat one.
At least his hits were landing.
Every explosion connected solid, and each blast was strong enough that the building's foundations shook and dust rained from the ceiling joints.
But the larger Nomu didn't care, tanking every hit and kept advancing.
Meanwhile, Todoroki supported from the rear, using both ice and fire
During the rest days after the Sports Festival, and after a great deal of internal debate, he finally chose to stop hesitating and make the fire truly his.
Ice surged from his right to create barriers and slow the thin Nomu's angles of attack, fire from his left to cut off escape routes and funnel the fat one into Bakugo's blast zones.
Was it working?
Barely.
But running both quirks at the same time was still something his body wasn't used to, and he could feel his stamina draining faster than it should have been.
He threw up an ice wall between Midoriya and the thin Nomu, bought him a half second of breathing room, then superheated the wall instantly, the temperature differential blew it apart into a steam explosion that filled half the room.
The thin Nomu came through the steam without slowing down.
For the first time, it ignored Midoriya, switched targets, and drove a fist into Todoroki's jaw.
His vision went white.
He hit the ground as the thin Nomu was already turning back toward Midoriya, having taken out their support in passing like swatting a fly on the way to a meal.
The three of them scrambled back to the center of the room, forming a jagged triangle with Koda huddled trembling at the hub
All of them were bleeding, and whatever plan they thought they had was already slipping away.
The two Nomu circled, the thin one tracking Midoriya with blank, lifeless eyes, the larger one rolling its shoulders as it faced Bakugo.
Todoroki spat blood to the side. "If we have any room to maneuver, we need to reposition now, because we're not dealing enough damage and we can't keep up with their reaction time, and if this keeps up we're going to get overwhel–"
"HAAH?!" Bakugo's hands were sparking even though his palms were raw. "Pull back where, Half-and-Half, you think this is the moment to run, because if you want out then go, but I'm not moving an inch and I will take both of them on myself!"
"I' am not telling you to run, I am saying we need a strategy that actually works instead of throwing ourselves at them blindly–"
"HERE'S YOUR PLAN! I KILL THEM BEFORE THEY KILL US!"
Shoto's eyes widened slightly.
After Stain's warning, Bakugo had stopped throwing around words like 'kill'.
It had only taken one confrontation, but it had sunk deep.
So if he was saying it now - He was serious.
"That's not! You can't just charge in like that, Kacchan, Todoroki, just listen to me for a second." Midoriya wheezed, and the wheeze turned into a cough that bent him double.
His broken ribs made every breath feel like someone was twisting a knife between his lungs. "Just… hold on, alright? I managed to get a message out to Dabi-sensei, he's on his way, so we just need to buy a little more time and then–"
The thin Nomu vanished and reappeared behind Midoriya, seizing his already broken arm and twisting.
The sound that tore from him wasn't a shout or a yell, but an involuntary scream.
"DEKU!!" Bakugo broke away from the fat one without thinking, explosions flaring white-hot, trying to reach Midoriya, but the fat Nomu stepped into his path and Bakugo couldn't get around it.
….
The fight was a slaughter - there wasn't a better word for it.
Midoriya's Full Cowling flickered and surged as he pushed it higher than he had ever tried.
Thirty.
The thin Nomu was still a ghost, moving according to a set of physics that ignored momentum and friction. It appeared and disappeared faster than Izuku's eyes could register the motion.
He snarled, his teeth bared and stained red.
Thirty-five.
His muscles locked in protest as micro-fractures formed, tiny structural failures spreading through his bones like cracks in ice.
The thin Nomu drove a localized, high-velocity fist into his solar plexus, launching him clean off his feet, and crashing through a concrete wall into the next room.
Midoriya hit the ground hard, coughing blood as his vision swam and threatened to fade, each breath cutting like a knife.
But he got up soon again.
Forty - something in his arm cracked, loud and sharp, the pain shooting to his shoulder, but he didn't stop.
Back in the main room, Bakugo was fighting the fat Nomu like something had come untethered inside him.
His Quirk had always pushed back against him, the more he used it, the more strain it put on his arms, the recoil stacking with every blast.
Normally that was a limit.
Right now, it wasn't.
The harder he fought, the more he sweated, nitroglycerin pooling in his palms, feeding his explosions and driving them stronger with every detonation.
His hands bled from the recoil, skin splitting and peeling under repeated maximum-output detonations.
"DIE! DIE! DIE DIE DIE!"
He wasn't thinking anymore.
Whatever part of his brain handled tactics and timing and spatial awareness had been overridden by something older and simpler.
Every explosion was powerful enough to level a building, yet the larger Nomu absorbed them all, hit after hit, blasts that would have killed a normal person ten times over, without slowing as it kept advancing.
Bakugo's hands barely resembled hands anymore. His costume hanging in shreds as blood from his nose, and ears, along with a gash across his forehead, streaked down his face, yet he didn't slow down.
And beside him, Todoroki had finally stopped holding back, too.
He had given up trying to support both fights and was throwing everything he had at whatever was closest.
Ice and fire erupted from him in massive, simultaneous surges, flash-freezing the oxygen on his right while superheating the air on his left.
The pressure differentials between the two extremes generated violent winds that ripped through the facility like a localized storm system.
His right side was encased in frost thick enough to resemble plate armor, while his left burned so intensely that his costume charred and curled away from his skin.
He threw up an ice wall to block the thin Nomu as it chased Midoriya through the breach, but it tore through like paper; flames followed toward the larger one to give Bakugo space, yet it walked through without flinching.
His body was failing even with both quirks active, the sheer output was overwhelming his thermoregulation, his core temperature destabilizing beyond what his body could correct, pushing his organs toward collapse.
He was going to die if he kept this up.
The thin Nomu, having temporarily neutralized Midoriya, knocked him through another wall with a backhand that would have caved in a car door, and turned on Shoto.
It had figured out who was providing support, appeared beside him and drove a fist into his ribs.
He felt bones break, a jagged edge punching into his lung before he hit the ground, coughing up bright red.
The thin Nomu lost interest immediately.
In its cold, programmed logic, Shoto was no longer a threat. It turned its head toward the debris where Midoriya was currently clawing his way back to his feet.
Around them, the facility was coming apart, support columns shattered, sections of the ceiling collapsing, fire spreading through the structure as it burned from the inside.
Through a massive breach in the far wall, whether from Bakugo's explosions or the larger Nomu's fists, impossible to tell, early morning light filtered in.
Beyond it, about forty meters away, stood another building.
A sign on the front, still legible through the dust and smoke: [Sunshine Home for Children] - Special Needs Care Facility.
This was the same orphanage Midoriya mentioned earlier.
Through the broken walls, he saw staff in colored scrubs rushing to evacuate, pushing wheelchairs and IV stands beside beds, while the children, unable to walk or move on their own, lagged behind, needing to be carried.
Evacuation would take time - minutes they didn't have.
If the Nomu got past the three of them and reached that building–
"NO!" Midoriya screamed, and pushed Full Cowling to
Forty-five percent.
His left leg gave out, splintering instead of breaking cleanly and buckling at an angle it shouldn't, but he kept fighting.
He hurled himself at the thin Nomu using his right leg and his one good arm, dragging the ruined limb behind him like a broken wing.
If he let go now, there would be nothing left between that monster and those children.
Bakugo caught sight of the orphanage, his eyes widened for a fraction of a second before narrowing into lethal slits.
His expression hardened past rage into a terrifying, crystalline resolve - an absolute refusal to yield a single inch of ground.
"YOU'RE NOT TAKING ANOTHER STEP PAST ME!" He put himself squarely between the fat Nomu and the blown-out wall, the explosions he was putting out generating shockwaves that knocked down walls on their own. "NOT ONE STEP, DO YOU HEAR ME?! YOU WANT THROUGH - THEN YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO KILL ME FIRST, YOU DISGUSTING PIECE OF SHIT!"
Bakugo's hands were ruined, the skin stripped from his palms and fingers, blood-slick flesh as every explosion sprayed a fine mist, each blast tearing him apart even as he fired them faster.
Todoroki dragged himself upright, blood in his mouth and lung, ribs grinding with every breath.
He couldn't hold both fronts or even stand properly - but he could still do one thing.
So he built walls.
Ice rose between the Nomu and the orphanage - massive, layered, reinforced with fire to harden them.
But the thin Nomu shattered the first layer without breaking its stride. The larger one punched through the next while advancing on Bakugo.
Shoto didn't stop, as he forced a third wall, then a fourth - each thinner than the last, each costing him a piece of his consciousness.
He wasn't fighting them anymore.
Just trying to keep something, anything, between them and those kids.
Both sides of his Quirk were guttering out.
The ice was forming in brittle, incomplete sheets and fire was sputtering, flaring and dying like a lighter running out of fluid.
He thought of his mother and the simple truth, he was going to die here because he hadn't been strong enough.
The thin Nomu pinned Midoriya against a collapsed pillar while the larger one drove Bakugo back toward the far wall.
Todoroki tried to throw one more ice wall in front of the larger one and his right side barely responded, a thin, cracked sheet that the Nomu walked through like it was tissue paper.
It turned from Bakugo, not because he had stopped, he was still blasting and screaming, but because he no longer mattered.
It reached through a cloud of desperate, bloody explosions, seized Todoroki by the throat, and hoisted him off the ground.
Through the orphanage windows, close enough to see through dust and smoke, Midoriya spotted a little girl in a wheelchair, watching in terror, unable to move, with no one reaching her.
He pushed Full Cowling to sixty percent.
His right arm shattered completely, bone tearing through flesh as it collapsed into something useless, but the surge was enough.
He broke free for a split second, closed the distance, and, unable to use the ruined arm, drove a kick with his one good leg, putting everything he had into it.
The blow broke larger Nomu's grip, and Todoroki hit the ground, gasping for air.
"GET THEM OUT!!" Midoriya screamed at the orphanage staff visible through the wreckage. "PLEASE!! TAKE THE CHILDREN AND RUN!! WE'LL – WE'LL HOLD THEM HERE, SO PLEASE JUST–"
Evacuation crawled at an agonizing pace, children who could barely move, staff carrying them and forcing wheelchairs through rubble, and even with all that effort, they still needed five more minutes.
The three of them didn't have it.
The thin Nomu was already behind Midoriya the moment he stopped, a hand closing around his throat and lifting him off the ground.
The larger one turned back toward Bakugo, who charged again with a broken scream and ruined hands.
Todoroki lay paralyzed, unable to summon even a spark of frost.
It was over.
Midoriya hung there with a broken arm at his side and a shattered leg dragging uselessly.
His vision closing in at the edges, leaving him with no strength to fight back.
Wait….
One For All didn't flow through his limbs. It flowed through him. All of him. Every cell. If he pulled on the source itself - not channeling it through an arm or a leg but releasing it from his core, from everywhere at once–
It would kill him.
The output would tear him apart from the inside, leaving nothing behind.
But it might be enough to destroy the thin Nomu, stagger the larger one, give Kacchan an opening, buy time for the evacuation.
That was reason enough.
Mom… I am sorry. You told me to be careful. You asked me to come home, and I promised I would. I am so sorry.
All Might… you gave me everything. I was supposed to be the vessel. I was supposed to carry the fire forward until I was worthy of the name. I wanted to see that future, I really did. But this is the only way I can protect it. Please… forgive me.
He pulled on One For All - not from a limb, but from the source.
Seventy. Eighty. Ninety.
One hundred…
His body began to come apart, blood vessels rupturing across his chest and arms as something deep inside failed, a spreading wrongness he couldn't even name.
Still, he pushed further. Because he knew it wasn't enough.
A thousand …and one millio–
The temperature spiked.
So sudden and violent that even as his body shut down, organs failing, vision darkening, throat crushed, Midoriya still felt it:
Heat?
.
….
[To be continued…]
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