….
"M-Mineta?" Aizawa muttered, the name slipping out like a curse.
That was the snap and recognition.
Mineta's slack, drooling face twisted into a grotesque imitation of a smile, and then, he laughed.
"HAHAHAHHAHAAH!" the laughter was loud, ragged, and utterly unhinged. "Finally, Sensei... Finally!"
Mineta's bloodshot eyes bulged. "But it's too late."
Without warning, Mineta reached into his pocket.
He pulled out a glass filled with a dark, churning liquid, and without even bothering to uncap it, he just shoved the entire bottle into his mouth, shattering the glass between his teeth and swallowing it whole while continuing to laugh.
Not far away, few of the surviving mercenary minions backing up the Vanguard Squad noticed the movement.
"Hey! Why are you using that already?!"
"Right… It isn't time yet!"
The minions didn't get an answer.
In the next second, Mineta's body violently destabilized, and something truly disgusting and horrifying took over.
The oversized woven basket strapped to his back burst at the seams and fell, crashing into the dirt.
The dense, dark purple spheres spilled out, rolling rapidly across the forest floor, and the instant they touched the ground, they let surrounding sand and dirt melt into bubbling pools of highly corrosive acid directly in their path.
But it didn't stop there, because of the drug Mineta had swallowed, it also transformed his skin to boil as massive dark-purple spheres erupted from every inch of his body like soap bubbles, only to burst, reform, and multiply in a continuous cycle that expanded exponentially.
Within seconds, Mineta's humanoid shape was entirely swallowed by the rapid cellular expansion.
He became a towering, writhing pillar of acidic, purple spheres, growing wider and taller, threatening to crush and melt everything in the immediate vicinity.
Aizawa just stood there.
For a single, fatal second, the sheer shock of seeing his former student mutated into a suicidal bio-weapon paralyzed him.
By the time he snapped out of it, the shadow of the expanding, corrosive pillar was already looming over him.
A massive wave of acidic spheres aimed at him.
He was slightly too late to dodge, and [Erasure] couldn't stop a physical chain reaction of this scale once gravity took over.
Aizawa braced for the burning impact.
CRACK-THRUM.
A thick, jet-black tendril laced with green static whipped through the air from the center of the clearing.
The [Blackwhip] lashed securely around Aizawa's torso.
Before the highly corrosive acid could even touch him, the tendril retracted with bone-rattling force, yanking the hero backward and landed him safely out of the blast zone in a single pull.
"Aizawa-sensei, are you okay?"
Midoriya's voice was remarkably steady, though the green lightning of [Full Cowling] flickered erratically around his forearms; he gently released the tendrils as he put a safe distance.
Before Aizawa could even catch his breath, Midoriya turned his gaze back toward the writhing, bubbling pillar of purple spheres.
He swallowed hard, his throat dry.
"And... is that...?"
He had heard the name–
Mineta.
Aizawa didn't speak. He pulled himself upright, his capture scarf settling around his shoulders, and gave a single, grim nod.
Midoriya clearly understood the meaning.
Despite practically not even interacting with his formal classmate as he was expelled on the day one itself, it is disturbing to know how someone he shared a class for a day turned into like this.
It was a sickening, suffocating realization.
But to his credit, Midoriya didn't let the horror paralyze him. He forced the raw emotion down, locking the revulsion and grief away.
Right now, he and his fellow classmates need to get away from this situation.
Across the clearing, the rest of Class 1-A had also managed to scramble backward, putting crucial distance between themselves and the creeping tide of acid.
None of the other students seemed to have heard it, and there is no way they could recognize the twisted face hidden inside that monster.
Nevertheless, quirk mutation was not something common in the middle of a battle; ignoring their teacher Dani that is. For them, he is just a special being, capable of anything.
It was the same with Pro Heroes.
But the elite villains witnessing the power enhancement, they completely abandoned their humanity, and only saw an advantage the absolute second it presented itself.
They reached into their pouches, retrieving the same glass bottles as Mineta.
"Sensei!" Sero shouted, his tape dispensers whirring as he anchored himself to a higher branch. "Can you erase that Quirk?!"
Midoriya answered before Aizawa could. "He can't. Aizawa-sensei's Erasure requires a direct line of sight to the physical body of the user. Whoever… is inside that thing is completely buried under layers of multiplying spheres."
He continued pointing at the pooling sludge eating through the tree roots. "And we can't get close to dig them out. Coming in contact with those spheres without any protection is not an option either."
The situation was critical.
They had managed to back away from the immediate blast radius, but the purple construct of mutated spheres showed absolutely no signs of stopping its expansion.
The Vanguard Action Squad watched the heroes retreat, grinning as they prepared to press the advantage. They had the U.A. students and the isolated Pro Heroes exactly where they wanted them.
But before they could seize the opening, a new sound cut through the roar of the battle.
Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip.
The heavy, rhythmic chopping of rotor blades tore through the night sky.
Before anyone on the ground could even look up to identify the chopper's markings, a white blur launched itself from the open bay doors, plummeting toward the earth like a guided missile.
BANG–!
The figure bypassed the ground entirely.
…and the target was Muscular.
The hulking battle-maniac was cracking his knuckles, laughing as he prepared to charge the student line and crush them into the dirt.
However, he never got the chance.
The white figure connected dead center with his chest.
It was a kick of such force that the sound barrier shattered on impact. The raw transfer of momentum didn't stop there. Muscular was ripped from his feet and launched backward like a cannon shell.
He tore through the forest, clearing almost half a kilometer in seconds, snapping trees in half before slamming into the distant mountain ridge.
As the dust settled in the clearing, the students and Pros finally got a clear look at the person who had just turned an A-Rank juggernaut into a ballistic projectile.
It was the–
Rabbit Hero, Rumi Usagiyama.
…..and she looked absolutely…. terrifying.
Her white hair whipped wildly in the downdraft, and her crimson eyes glowed with an unhinged, predatory fury.
"I have been wanting to vent my anger on someone for a while now..." Rumi snarled, her voice carrying a lethal, echoing edge as she slowly turned to face the rest of the stunned villains. "And for the love of god, you just had to show up in front of me?"
The sheer, suffocating intimidation radiating from her caused the battlefield to freeze.
Everyone, from the exhausted Class 1-A students to the remaining Vanguard members, believed the fight with the heavy hitter was over. There was no way a human being, regardless of their quirk, could get back up from a direct, unmitigated strike from a top-tier Pro Hero.
Rumi let out a sharp exhale, and turned her back to focus on the rest of the trash standing in the clearing.
Then, a heavy, wet shifting of rubble echoed from the distance.
?...Rumi paused.
She turned back around, her crimson eyes narrowing into slits; deep inside the cratered mountain ridge, Muscular was pushing himself up.
He wasn't just back on his feet, his muscles seemed to grow.
A glass vial fell from his grip; a quirk-enhancing serum was already surging through his bloodstream.
His muscle fibers writhed and expanded violently, tearing through his skin to form a massive, impenetrable dome of meat armor that grew bigger and denser by the second.
Seeing their heavy hitter trigger his trump card and rise from a fatal blow, the remaining Vanguard villains realized their window was closing; they cannot lose the current element of surprise since the backup had arrived.
"Looks like we aren't holding back anymore." Magne sneered, her grip tightening on her weapon.
From their pockets, the core members of the squad; Magne, Moonfish, Mr. Compress, and Mustard, produced their glass vials filled with the same dark liquid.
Without a second of hesitation, they consumed it.
The effect was instantaneous; the air pressure in the clearing spiked as their Quirks violently mutated and amplified.
Moonfish's blades erupted into a chaotic, extending forest of razor-sharp steel. Mustard's toxic gas thickened, pouring out in suffocating, highly pressurized waves.
For a second, every Pro Hero and student was completely taken aback by the situation.
But Rumi didn't step back, nor did she flinch.
"HAhahahaha….!"
Instead, she laughed. It was a mad, feral laugh that echoed across the clearing, sending a chill down the spines of both the villains and the students.
She reached up, gathering her wild white hair and tying it back into a tight, practical knot, baring her neck and sharpening her focus.
"I am so happy to see you back on your feet..." Rumi grinned, baring her teeth at the towering, mutated form of Muscular as he stepped out of the crater. "We do have something to settle between us... can't have you down in one kick."
She was, of course, referring to the incident years ago.
The day Muscular had nearly killed Dabi, leaving him bleeding on the street as he risked his life to save the Water Hose heroes.
According to Rumi, Dabi had survived that day by the skin of his teeth, pushing his body to the absolute limit; and she had been holding onto that grudge on the one who put Dabi through that.
"Come at you, Bitch! I will have to be satisfied with messing you up this time I guess." Muscular roared, the sound vibrating the ground beneath them, ready to crush the Rabbit Hero into paste.
Rumi just dropped her center of gravity, her powerful legs coiling like high-tension springs.
"Let's see if that extra meat can save your life." she whispered, and launched herself directly at the monster.
.
….
[To be continued…]
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