In the landslide zone, Todoroki Shoto was freezing villains left and right. "Pathetic," he said, sliding forward on his ice and freezing another one up to the neck. "This League of Villains did a poor job of recruiting skilled troops."
"Sh-shut up, kid…" one of them stammered, trying to struggle free of the ice.
Shoto raised an eyebrow at him. "If I'm a kid, what does that make the lot of you? Not adults, that's for certain. I wouldn't struggle if I were you. That will only speed up the process. All your nerves are shutting down right now, one by one."
"You're training to be a hero," another said, a bit more confidently than the first, and remaining still. "You'd never dare to kill another human."
"Is that truly a chance you're willing to take?" Shoto asked. He took a step forward, and brought his right hand up to the villain's face. There were only a few truly dangerous foes in this group, and none of them are here with me. In that case… I should try to get information.
He began to spread cold wind over the villain's face, threatening to freeze it. Tears began to swim in the villain's eyes. "Tell me," said Shoto. "What makes you think you can kill All Might?"
***
Yaoyorozu Momo felt strange. She was panicked and afraid, of course, but also strangely focused at the same time. The villains were closing in, and her mind raced. Think. Think of a way out of this. My Quirk has nigh-infinite possibilities… there must be SOMETHING!
The panic was threatening to take over. She swatted an enemy away with her staff, feeling the metal weapon connect with a solid CLANG. I hope I didn't just kill you! She flipped backwards, dodging the punch of another enemy, putting her back to Jiro again.
Kaminari rushed to regroup with them, ducking under the clutches of a massive villain. "My life just flashed before my eyes!" he squeaked. "Seriously, this is crazy!"
As he slid to a stop next to Jiro, she flicked her earphone jacks in annoyance. "Stop talking and focus! We need to come up with a plan to get away from all these losers."
Yes, Momo thought, kicking another villain away gracefully. A plan, yes. But what?
"Give me a weapon, then!" Kaminari pleaded.
"You're the electric guy, aren't you? Just attack them with that!"
"It doesn't work that wayyyy!" he complained. "I can't focus what direction my shocks go. I'll just end up hitting the two of you. And the signal is still jammed, so I can't even contact help! I can't do ANYTHING right now! I'm counting on you two!"
"Shut up and quit whining. I know just what you can do." Jiro gave him a kick towards the massive villain, and Kaminari panicked, running right into him with a SMACK. And then… electricity lit up the clearing.
Momo's eyebrows rose, and she gasped out of her mouth.
"Oh," Kaminari said nonchalantly, shocking the villain who was five times his size into submission. "I guess it does work."
Jiro rolled her eyes. "What an idiot." She plugged her earphone jack in and sent out a sonic wave, causing two more attacking villains to fall into Kaminari's electricity, getting shocked too. Another guy leapt towards her, but Momo instinctively created a net and tossed it at him at the last second. The net snared the villain and he fell to the ground, getting shocked as well.
"You both need to stop joking around!" Momo cried breathlessly, feeling her fear begin to take over.
Jiro gave her a sheepish look. "Sorry. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Hey, Kaminari, you should have gotten something for your costume that lets you aim your damn attacks!"
Then Momo knew. If he's afraid of hitting us… I've got it!
"Jiro, give me twenty seconds!"
"Huh? Okay." She sent another sound wave out towards the approaching villains, taking out several more. Momo clenched her teeth in concentration. Just a little more…
A villain jumped off the cliff behind them to pounce onto Jiro and interrupt her sound attack, but Momo dives forward and kicked him away. "Done!" she declared, and sent the blanket erupting out of her back. "Sorry about the delay! I need more time to make something big!" The blanket spread out over her and Jiro.
"What the hell's this?" one of the villains snapped, getting close.
"It's an insulation sheet," said Momo, smiling now. I managed to come up with something!
Kaminari smirked. "I get it, Yaoyorozu. You're telling me that I can be…" he held his hands up, yellow sparks shooting out. "… INDISCRIMINATE!" He threw his hands into the ground, and electricity flooded the clearing, shocking all the villains into a smoking, charred mess.
When it was over, Jiro sighed from beneath the blanket. "That was pretty metal… uhmmMMM, your CLOTHES?!"
Momo made a sound of confused intrigue and turned to the other girl. "Oh?" Jiro was a frantic, blushing mess. "Oh right. I can just create my costume again. One second…"
Jiro had suddenly pounced on her, hugging her front. "Kaminari! Don't you dare look in this direction… huh?"
Both girls stood up, Momo having finished repairing her revealing uniform. Their electric classmate was walking around in dazed circles, holding two thumbs up, blood leaking gently from his nose. His eyes had gone all loopy.
Jiro rolled her eyes. "Typical."
***
Ojiro Mashirao had never really considered fire before.
When you were a kid, there were the standard fears. The dark. Falling from a great height. Tight spaces, perhaps. But fire? How come he'd never thought about it?
Because now, it was ALL he could think about.
A villain dashed forward to grab him, and Mashirao flipped sideways to dodge, using his tail to spring off the ground. But upon completing the flip, he skidded too close to the raging inferno that reared up on the sides of the street, and faltered, cringing back. The villain managed to land a blow in that moment, sending him flying… toward another fire.
Frantically, Mashirao flipped over in midair and dug his tail into the ground to slow down. It hurt his bare skin like mad to scrape against the pavement, but it was preferable to getting cooked. He had no intention of becoming Roast Tail today. Where the hell is everyone else? Am I all alone in here?
"You're out of your element in this zone, kid," one of the villains called from down the street. "This is a bad matchup for you, with all that loose cloth and exposed skin you've got. Just lay down and surrender and we might let your death go a little faster."
Mashirao winced. "Sorry, but I don't really feel like it. I've got my whole life ahead of me, see? Meanwhile, you guys are old and wasted your lives getting recruited into some lameass criminal club. Maybe you should be the ones to get burned."
"Gaaaaah… we're not THAT old! Get him!"
Two villains came rushing up, one of them running THROUGH the flames. They sent those with compatible Quirks to the various zones. This was well planned. Mashirao used his tail to swing up onto a lamp post, and then kept swinging, using his momentum to punch both villains away as they came at him. He straightened himself again… and a fireball filled his vision, lighting his eyes up, racing right towards him.
Mashirao panicked and sprang backward off the lamp post just as the fireball blew it to pieces with a rushing crash. Okay, that's new. The wall of flames seemed to part into two as another villain walked towards him, their silhouette slowly resolving into a person, backlit by the fire. It was a woman, holding another floating fireball above her hand. She was grimacing in fury. "NO ONE calls me old and lives to get away with it." She threw the fireball.
Mashirao slid out of the way, but nearly fell into another fire, skidding to a halt as the villain's attack exploded next to him. Disoriented, he turned in a circle… and a third fireball grazed his tail.
Mashirao screamed in pain and fell to the concrete. The street was unbearably hot on his bare skin, and his tail was smoking, the hair on the end of it singed.
The female villain walked toward him slowly, laughing. "You children think you can put up a fight because you've been at hero school for a few days? Pathetic. It's already over for you, and you only lasted a few minutes. Consider that a last lesson before I silence you for good."
Absurdly, Mashirao noticed a floating piece of rebar behind the woman. He said nothing.
She raised her fireball up. "DIE!"
But as she brought it down, the rebar swung across the back of her head, colliding with a painful-sounding CLUNK. The woman's arm fell, her fireball dissipated, and she swayed, her eyes rolling back. Then she collapsed, out cold.
"Ojiro-kun, I saved you!" said a bubbly voice.
"Hagakure?" His eyes widened as he felt a hand close around his and help him up. "You've been here the whole time?"
"Yeah, I left my gloves and boots at the end of the street and just went beast mode on the other villains. They were all big dumb goons anyway."
Mashirao's eye twitched. "Are you sure it's okay for you to be naked with all this fire around?"
"Maybe not! That's why we should get on out of here, don't you think?"
"You have a point. Come on."
***
Koji Koda was terrified.
First of all, there'd been that awful situation on the bus. Everyone crammed into the same space, forced to socially interact? It was a recipe for disaster. How could they just start TALKING like that?
Then, things had gotten even worse when he'd discovered that they were doing rescue training. Sure, there had been a forest biome by the looks of it, but would there be any other animals for him to use in the other places? Would he even be able to rescue anyone? Probably not. He'd been less than useless during the battle trial, only getting lucky by having the smartest girl in class as a partner. Surely his classmates would start to look down on him soon.
Oh, and some villains had shown up. All those things added together built a terror inside Koji that was unshakeable, unremovable. When the portal guy had scattered them, he could have landed in the forest where there might have been something to work with, but no. He'd gotten sent to the squall zone. This rain hurts! And now he had no plan. No animals. Just… well. Maybe there was ONE animal.
As he got cornered in an alleyway by two villains, Dark Shadow came sweeping out from the building, slamming both of them into the wall hard enough to stay stuck there. Tokoyami emerged, following his Quirk out into the rain. "Taken care of!" Dark Shadow declared, giving a thumbs up next to the defeated villains.
"That was six," said Tokoyami, addressing Koji as if they were partners or friends or something. "They will keep sending foes at us. I can keep repelling them for as long as necessary. Dark Shadow thrives in this environment, after all. But it might be useful to find some kind of exit to the central plaza."
It must be nice, having a Quirk that works here. Hold on, wait! Because Koji had been warped to an area where there were unlikely to be animals, he'd assumed that the villains knew what their Quirks were and had deliberately crippled them. But… if Tokoyami was here too…
"They don't know our Quirks," he squeaked, barely perceptible.
"Huh? Speak up, lad!" Dark Shadow made a show of putting a talon up to his shadowy ear, as if listening hard.
"Stop it, Dark Shadow. You make a good point, Koda-san. That explains why these enemies have been unprepared to combat me." In the torrential rain, the cloaked Tokoyami looked like some kind of brooding warrior. "That info may be useful to some of our classmates as well, if they are similarly locked in the throes of battle. It may affect our overall strategy in a positive manner."
I'm sure the others have figured it out anyway. I'm not that special.
"But as I was saying," Tokoyami continued, "let us find the exit. As good as this gloomy rain is for Dark Shadow… it is starting to ruffle my feathers a bit."