….
'Still… they're holding their own' Dabi realized, the tension in his chest easing just a fraction.
Suddenly, Dabi's spatial awareness snapped back, reeling in from the camp five kilometers away, shrinking down until it refocused entirely on the massive, moving heat signature currently shaking the earth just ahead of him.
Gigantomachia was still marching.
With a sharp, sickening pop, Dabi's broken bones finished knitting together.
He flexed his fingers, the white-hot sting of the new marrow settling into a dull ache as his lungs cleared completely.
'Eighty-one percent.' Dabi thought, pulling a clean, deep breath into his rebuilt chest as blue fire sparked faintly at his knuckles.
The system was overriding his physical limitations, and the titan thought he was dead.
Dabi raised his head, his eyes locking onto the colossal silhouette moving through the distant trees.
"I didn't hear a bell, you ugly bastard."
He pushed the rubble off his chest.
The heavy stone shifted and fell away as he hauled himself upright, his body completely realigning under the aggressive push of his healing factor.
He stood in the center of the shattered bedrock, his presence practically radiating a lethal aura.
But when he reached for his flames, something inside Dabi finally gave way, not because his body had failed.
If anything, it was stronger than ever, but because the stubborn, fundamental core that had carried him through years of relentless agony had finally begun to crack.
A sudden stillness washed over him.
His left hand twitched, but he didn't command it to move, nor did he want his muscles to contract.
The movement came from somewhere beneath conscious thought, a raw, primal reflex firing straight from the brainstem.
And it was cold.
Frost bloomed across his open palm.
It wasn't his usual Blue Fire or the ultraviolet-white plasma that had defined his miserable existence since childhood, but something entirely different, something buried so deeply beneath the overwhelming dominance of his father's genetics that it had never once seen the light of day.
His mother's Quirk.
Ice.
The realization hit him through the clearing fog of battle.
He had always possessed it, and the Quirk had been there his entire life, but his original body had simply been too weak as it was violently consumed by his father's fire, to ever let the cold surface.
But his body wasn't a fragile, self-destructive vessel anymore.
The [Super Soldier] serum had optimized his biology to absolute peak efficiency, forcing every single cell to operate at maximum potential, and the [Arachnid Genome] had mutated those cells further, rewriting the rigid rules of his DNA, making his genetics adaptable, malleable, and completely capable of handling the strain.
Frost spread across his left knuckles and crept up his forearm in jagged, organic fractals, carrying not the biting chill of winter but the absolute, unyielding cold of absolute zero.
At the exact same moment, his right hand flared to life, roaring with his signature, blinding blue fire.
Fire on the right and Ice on the left.
It was the exact balance of Quirks his father had been obsessing over for decades, and finally, for the first time in his entire life... Dabi felt perfectly balanced.
The suffocating thermal backlash that usually cooked his internal organs was instantly swallowed by the absolute zero of the frost.
His blood stopped boiling.
The two opposite Quirks didn't fight each other for dominance, instead, they complemented one another, creating a flawless, homeostatic loop of energy.
He stood in the center of the ruined earth and looked down at his hands.
Blue fire. White frost.
Two opposing forces of nature that his optimized body had finally bent to his absolute will.
A jagged, dangerous smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth as his eyes locked onto Gigantomachia's retreating back.
"Let's see what I can do with this."
….
The perimeter Class 1-A had established was holding, but the fight was anything but clean, having devolved into a chaotic, grinding brawl in the dirt.
At the vanguard, Katsuki Bakugo was entirely in his zone.
He moved through the remaining mercenary minions with terrifying, surgical aggression, and he wasn't holding back, but he also wasn't wasting sweat on wide, flashy detonations.
Every blast was compressed, targeted, and highly lethal.
"Die!" Bakugo roared, driving a concentrated explosion through a mercenary's reinforced shield, shattering the metal and launching the man into the trees.
He spun, catching another attacker by the collar.
"Kill him! Crush the flank!" he barked to Kirishima, who was acting as his defensive anchor.
For a long time, Bakugo had thrown those words around like casual punctuation.
Die. Kill. Murder.
They used to be empty noise, the tantrums of a kid who thought sheer volume equated to strength.
But Stain had fixed that as he pinned him to the floor months ago and forced him to understand the actual, physical weight of taking a life.
Bakugo wasn't throwing tantrums anymore.
When he screamed those words now, his red eyes were dead calm.
He meant every single syllable.
He had accepted the brutal weight of the battlefield.
If dropping bodies was what it cost to protect his classmates, win this war, and hold the line, he was fully prepared to take that responsibility and carry the consequences.
A few dozen yards away, isolated near the dark tree line, Aizawa Shouta heard the distant, commanding roar of his explosive student.
He also heard the raspy, disjointed voice of the monster standing directly in front of him.
"I don't understand..."
Aizawa ducked beneath a lethal sweep of Moonfish's extending blade-teeth and immediately lashed out with his capture weapon, aiming to bind the straitjacketed cannibal, but the second opponent and a towering, stretched aberration carrying a basket on its back, stepped into the way and knocked the scarf aside with sheer brute force.
The creature's slack jaw unhinged further.
"...how can that guy become a hero, but not me?"
Aizawa's eyes narrowed as he erased Moonfish's quirk for a split second, forcing the extending blades to retract, before turning his gaze toward the towering mutant. He knew exactly which student the creature was referring to.
"Don't lump my students into your garbage." Aizawa snapped, his voice a low, dangerous warning. "They are entirely different from you."
The towering figure stopped moving. Its long, multi-jointed arms hung limply at its sides.
"How is he any different from ME?!" the creature roared.
The voice was distorted, twisted by whatever bio-engineering had stretched its vocal cords, but the sheer, petulant entitlement beneath the monstrous tone cut sharply through the air.
Aizawa landed softly on the dirt, his capture scarf drifting around his neck. He didn't reply immediately. His eyes locked onto the tall figure, his tactical mind suddenly snagging on a jarring inconsistency.
There was something about that whine, that specific, pathetic cadence of self-pity, that felt incredibly and disgustingly familiar.
"No... no, no, no, no..."
The creature abruptly stopped attacking entirely.
It dropped to its knees, its impossibly long fingers clutching at its stretched, veiny scalp, rubbing its head in frantic, erratic motions.
Moonfish clicked his metal teeth, visibly irritated by the sudden loss of support. The cannibal lashed out at Aizawa again, muttering through the restraints holding his lips apart.
"Get up, Purple... The flesh is right here... Stop whining and get up..."
The creature ignored Moonfish, and just kept rocking back and forth on its knees, fingers digging into its scalp.
"There is a difference..." the monster whispered to the dirt. "He has a flashy Quirk... So even if he is a murderer... a bully... a complete villain... he gets to stay."
The creature's bloated, bloodshot eyes rolled upward, locking onto Aizawa.
"While me... with a useless Quirk... with a personality that just... appreciates beauty... I gotta leave?!"
The monster's voice pitched up into a hysterical, broken screech.
"It's all about flashiness?!"
The creature dragged itself back to its feet, its elongated joints popping sickeningly.
Aizawa froze as his mind raced back to the very first day of class, remembering the Quirk Apprehension Test and a short, purple-haired boy who had spent the entire morning harassing his female classmates, wielded a Quirk that produced sticky purple spheres from his scalp, and had been expelled without hesitation because he lacked both the character and potential required to become a hero.
His eyes widened in sheer horror.
The dots connected, drawing a straight, horrifying line to the freakish giant standing before him.
"M-Mineta?" Aizawa muttered, the name slipping out like a curse.
.
….
[To be continued…]
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Author's Note
Hey guys, it's me, WrightBrothers.
I just started a new Naruto fanfic called Naruto: As In Iruka Sensei.
It currently has around 8 chapters, and I'd really appreciate it if you gave it a try. If you do read it, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
They genuinely help me improve.
And if you don't have time right now, no worries! You can always add it to your library and read it whenever you're bored.
Thanks for all the support, and I hope you enjoy the story!
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Author Note:
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-->[email protected]/WrightBrothers