Darkest Before Dawn - 109

Chapter 109

[Chikuchi Togeike]

Annoying.

The two villains were annoying.

One of them seemed to be able to smack away any amount of ice or water they sent his way and the other was a fucking tank. Not literally, but metaphorically. He kind of reminded Chikuchi to the one boy in 2-B, except more purple bald gorilla than furry beast. So, there they were, unable to deliver true damage to any of their two opponents.

And that was concerning, because as far as they were aware, there were more villains going their way.

They needed to end the fight soon or things could get out of hand very quickly. ‘How though?’ she thought, scowling as she continued to rain water spikes on the two. It might not do anything to them, but it was distracting. That worked for her. Neito and Todoroki could do the rest of the heavy work for the moment while she thought.

Because their current approach wasn’t doing much for them.

Neither of the boys were using the fire aspect of Todoroki’s Quirk, but Chikuchi wasn’t surprised. They were surrounded by plants, after all, in a facility where those were probably very important. Causing a fire there could do a lot of damage and, sure, that probably shouldn’t be a concern in the middle of a terrorist attack, but… It’d be better if they didn’t destroy the whole place, right? Covering the non-planted areas in ice was probably better than shooting erratic fire around.

‘Last resort,’ she decided, but that left the question, what other resorts did they have? Ice wasn’t doing the trick with either of the two villains. Chikuchi’s water wasn’t much better either. At least Todoroki’s Quirk could freeze the brutish villain in place for a certain amount of time. The other one though? He was annoyingly fast and good at covering himself with his Quirk. 

How does one hit someone that can just smack away any attack?

‘Having too many attacks,’ she thought, narrowing her eyes. Then she looked downwards at the floor. There was some water there, but not a lot. Unsurprising, considering the guy kept teleporting her spikes away. Still, with a deep breath in, Chikuchi resolved to change that.

With a purpose now, she started shooting more water, this time aiming more than a few of her attacks off on purpose. They hit the ground “harmlessly” more than once, slowly pooling the water there. The annoying part was that the guy wasn’t standing still, but she could rain water anywhere so long as she had a source and she did have that.

“Getting tired, brats?!” her current target, the displacer, called after once more noticing how she “missed” her mark. “Just give up already and I promise we won’t hurt you!” Yeah, right. As if any of them would be stupid enough to believe that. And besides…

“We’re winning though!” she called back, a smirk on her face. “Isn’t it embarrassing to be beaten by kids?” she added and the gorilla guy roared. Chikuchi really hoped that Neito had that one well enough in hand.

“If you give up-” her clubmate called, joining in without an issue. Unsurprising, considering his tendency to gloat and generally be an annoying little shit. Chikuchi was glad for it then and there though. “-we promise we won’t tell anyone!”

“We’ll see who-”

“You shouldn’t be talking,” Todoroki said, interrupting the displacer with a wave of ice. Whether he meant the villains or Chikuchi and Neito or everyone, she didn’t know. Maybe it’d been a little much to expect him to understand though, since he wasn’t part of their team.

The damage was done though, and Todoroki not joining might even work in their favor. Chikuchi just wanted them too distracted to notice what she was doing. The one guy could teleport her water away if he did, after all, and that’d ruin everything. She needed their attention on her companions, not on her and her water.

“That’s it!” the displacer exclaimed, clearly frustrated and angry. “Daigo, come here!” he called and the purple gorilla of a man responded by jumping straight towards Todoroki, breaking through Neito’s ice.

‘Oh uh, that’s bad,’ her mind helpfully supplied as she took a gasping breath in. Then she got into action right away. In her mind, Daigo turned into a Beringel and the displacer into a Beowolf. She had plenty of practice with Todoroki and especially with Neito with Todoroki’s Quirk too, so…

‘Give him something to freeze,’ was the simple solution she came up with. Todoroki could seemingly make ice from nothing, but it wasn’t quick enough, at times. There was a limit to it. If he had to be fast, then there’d be no control, or the ice would be fragile, or something else. If there was no weakness to it, then it was because he had been slow about it. Problem was that the guy couldn’t afford to take his time with the hulking mass of muscle that had jumped his way.

Or, it would have been, if not for Chikuchi and the thorns of water that she shot right between Todoroki and the villain. In an instant, those spikes froze mid air, giving her companion more surface to work with to create a shield. And as all that happened in the span of a second, she grinned.

“Good job, Thorn!”

Was it silly, that she was pleased to be called that? She still wasn’t even an official heroine-in-training, after all. She was just a General Studies girl with dreams, no matter how much progress she’d made. Thorn was, as of that moment, an imaginary thing, a hypothetical, an idea. Nothing more. And yet, hearing Neito call her that in that moment made it sound more possible, a more solid goal.

Thinking that was how Chikuchi found herself raising her hand and pointing at the displacer.

“Focus on him!” she shouted and she was pleased to see both Neito and Todoroki immediately shoot ice at the guy. It did nothing, of course, because he just slapped chunks of the stuff away, but what he didn’t slap away were the water spikes that shot at him from the ground and other sides. He had two hands, after all. “Got you,” she declared, grinning widely.

‘Yeah, I can do this,’ she thought, more sure of her dream than ever. ‘I can be a hero.’

[}-o-{]

[Kazuki Endo]

His friends were in trouble.

Hina had heard them talking about UA students. Apparently, they were doing a great job at making nuisances of themselves, which Kazuki was proud of them for. Still, he could have done without worrying about how they were doing.

If only he could do something.

However, no matter how much he and everyone else in the room thought and discussed, there was nothing they could do. The villains were right there, with the metaphorical gun pointed at I-Island. The only reason they weren’t making good on their threat because of his classmates was that the heroes would take action if that happened. Hero wannabes weren’t enough to warrant giving up that kind of power over everyone else.

“It’ll be fine, Kazuki,” Hina told him and he almost believed her. She was that good at acting, but he knew the truth. He just gave her a wry smile. Had she forgotten that he could feel her emotions, feel the lie? “It will,” she repeated, despite the fact that he could tell she wasn’t being honest. “Because we are here,” she added and that…

That wasn’t a lie.

In a single moment, he lost himself in her expression. Her golden eyes had never looked so… golden, metallic, hard. Her expression had never looked so serious, set in stone and determined. She was sure of what she said, she believed that they could do something…

And that moved him, the smallest bit.

Because there was nothing to back that up. They were trapped, rats barely resisting the wire over their necks. There was nothing they could do but hope for his classmates to make it through to their destination. All of them were useless, even All Might, with all his power. And yet Hina believed that everything would be fine, that good would win in the end.

And he wanted to believe that too, he wanted to be that sure.

The sound of boots on the floor pulled his attention away from his mentor then and he saw the villain leader walking out of the room. ‘That can’t be good,’ he thought, dread filling him as he glanced at the other villains around the room. If the leader himself was going to – presumably – deal with his friends…

‘I have to do something,’ Kazuki told himself, but he’d already tried to come up with something all that time. What was going to be different now? Everything pointed to him being useless this time. There’d be no rescue like with the USJ. He wouldn’t be able to make Grimm to send… ‘... Won’t I?’ he thought, pausing to consider that.

He couldn’t make Grimm with the room full of villains, that was a fact. However… What if he made Grimm outside the room? ‘Can I even do that though?’ he wondered idly, considering that idea as he flexed his shadow on the floor. Then he glanced towards Hina, who was staring at him rather intently.

“You have an idea,” she stated rather than asked and he gave her a nervous grin.

“The beginnings of one,” he replied and she grinned right back at him.

“Let’s hear it.”

And that’s how they got to work. Talking through messages with everyone else in the room, he got bits and pieces of information. Not everyone had sensory Quirks, but there were a few that did. There were others that remembered the lay out of the place well, and that’d come in handy for what he wanted to do. He’d also need a distraction, so the more resilient heroes offered to decoy for a bit.

Eventually, it was time to get to it.

Taking a deep breath in, Kazuki tried not to let the pressing events get to him. Letting out the air in his lungs, he focused on his shadow and extended it towards the door. He did it fast this time, that’s why he needed a distraction for the whole thing. He couldn’t afford to waste time re-casting the same shadow several times and making a Grimm. That’d take way too long if he had to be careful. It’d be useless if he did it that way.

So, he silently thanked the heroes that were getting beat up for his plan and continued working.

His shadow reached the door of the room and then moved underneath it towards the corridor. There, he moved alongside the wall on the outside for a bit to reach a good enough blindspot. Moving his shadow where he couldn’t see it was not something he’d ever tried and he found that it was hard. It was like closing your eyes and trying to grab something off to the side from where you were. You might have an idea of where you should go for, but more likely than not, you’d miss the mark. ‘Thank God it’s not far,’ he thought to himself.

That was definitely something to work on in the future.

Once there, he let all the anger in his Wrath node flow through him and into the Grimm he was making. It rose with practiced ease, one of his most used creations. It growled with all the frustration he felt for the entire situation. Its claws twitched, itching to take out all his negative emotions on the villains around the place.

With another deep breath in, Kazuki smiled and glanced to the side. Hina wasn’t the only one staring at him then and there. Everything was quiet once more in the room, and it was a wonder none of the villains had realized what was going on. There were more than a few relieved expressions – and diminished negative emotions – when Kazuki nodded to them all.

And then, he closed his eyes, focusing on his one Grimm, controlling it and making it dash through the corridors. He concentrated on it, taking what it could see, what it could hear, what it could smell. He controlled it more thoroughly than he likely had ever controlled any of his Grimm. He was that one Grimm, because it was all he had. His one card to play.

The one Alpha Beowolf would have to be enough.

[}-o-{]

[Minoru Mineta]

Things were not looking good, at all.

They were doing well enough against the robots, but the problem was that there was no end to them. For every piece of engineering that Minoru trapped with his spheres, there were three more coming down the hall. The same could be said for every one that Kyoka blasted with Momo’s cannon, or that Ashido melted with her acid, or that Iida kicked.

None of them were making any difference and they were running out of energy and time.

“There’s only one path that the robots can’t block,” Shield, gorgeous girl that she was, said with panic in her voice. Something told Minoru that what she had to say wasn’t good for them. “But we’d need to fly to get there,” she added and he grimaced. Yeah, that explained the nerves that bled into her words.

None of them could fly, unfortunately. Midoriya could jump like the best of them though, but maybe that wouldn’t be enough? ‘Where’s a Nevermore when you need one?’ he thought despondently. Kazuki wasn’t there to bail them out of trouble though, unfortunately. It was them that had to bail him out, actually.

Which made it all the more frustrating that things were looking so bad at the moment.

‘Think, Minoru, think,’ he told himself, considering their options.

“What about through the robots? We can probably make a path through,” Momo asked, and that was a good question. Shield said that the way without robots needed them to fly. Sure, the robots looked like they’d overwhelm them eventually, but they were fighting back for the moment. They could probably fight their way through.

“It’s… possible, I guess,” the girl said, and she obviously didn’t go to UA. Doing stuff that was unlikely or improbable was kind of part of what they did. Plus Ultra and all that. Minoru wasn’t one to subscribe to that motto a whole lot, admittedly, but that seemed like a good moment to do so.

Because if they couldn’t manage, then they were screwed.

“Let’s do that,” he said, pursing his lips and reaching for his head once more. His scalp was already hurting and he felt the trickles of blood on the sides of his face and the back of his neck. He could keep going for a little longer though. ‘This is gonna screw over my progress, man,’ he lamented.

That was the kind of intense use of his Quirk that he’d been warned might set back his recovery from years of screwing himself over. Alas, between being short and being dead, he knew which one he’d pick. It still sucked though. He better get some freaking appreciation for what he was doing, or he’d be right pissed.

The least he expected was people telling tales of his heroics to hot girls.

Minoru thought that was a reasonable request.

“-Smash!” he heard and the robots were sent flying away and to the sides like Midoriya had punched the Red Sea open. ‘Some people have all the luck,’ Minoru lamented as he looked at that before glancing at the few robots he’d trapped on his spheres.

There was no time for lamentations though. He was another set of hands that was needed if they wanted to have a chance to reach their destination. Shield couldn’t fight at all and she was still helping. She knew the place like the back of her hand and she was their one hope of solving everything. So, he’d just have to suck it up, put his inferiority complex aside and do his part.

Things weren’t looking too good though, because once they got through a little bit, everything got worse. After all, no longer were they fighting from one side to the other. Once they managed some distance through the robots, they started getting surrounded instead of charged at through a corridor. That complicated matters a whole lot, but they’d have to manage.

Minoru was getting really nervous though, because he might actually start damaging himself in a serious manner if they kept going as they were. Furthermore, Momo was looking very tired and, more importantly, thin. Her Creation was draining her too much already, it seemed. He also noticed that Iida’s legs were starting to make strange sounds, which didn’t bode well for them.

Everyone else seemed relatively fine, but if any of them let up…

Things weren’t going to be fine for much longer if that happened, that was for sure. As it was, they were making progress still, so Minoru tried to focus on that. ‘Don’t think about the impending doom. Don’t do it,’ he chanted in his head, throwing more and more spheres around and ignoring the pain in his scalp. His friends needed him to keep pushing, so he’d keep pushing.

What else could he do? Give up? Let the robots overwhelm his friends and doom the island? What kind of hero would he be then? Who would like him if he did that? Who would remember him and say “he was a hero” if he failed?

He was a pervert, but he didn’t want to be remembered as one, damnit.

So, he kept throwing spheres and wiped off the blood that threatened to fall into his eyes.

“Hey, everyone!” a voice called before both sides of the corridor were frozen over together with the robots. Minoru didn’t have words for how relieving it was to see that happen. His shoulders dropped and his shaking hands fell to his sides. He allowed himself a pitiful whimper, finally acknowledging the pain he felt. “Hope we didn’t make you wait too long!”

Monoma was an annoying asshole, but man was it good to hear his smarmy voice.

[}-o-{]

[Neito Monoma]

He felt on top of the world.

Fire, ice, acid, defense… all readily available, all in his grasp already. Right then and there, he felt like the strongest. Certainly the strongest in the room and that felt so sweet. Todoroki and Midoriya were beasts, but they were nothing to what Neito was then and there. He literally had the Quirk of the former on top of several other very good ones.

He was the best!

Yet… it was not enough. ‘Where the fuck are all these robots coming from?!’ he exclaimed in his head as he continued blasting the security pieces of engineering and resisting their attacks with Hardening. Mineta was basically out, having been told to step aside when it was obvious to everyone that he was on his last legs. He was, in his words, “on stand by”, but nobody was going to ask him to keep fighting when his head kept bleeding and there was a noticeably low number of spheres in his hair.

Yaoyorozu was taking a break too, swaying on her feet but also stubbornly refusing to be counted out entirely. They were all stubborn bastards, but Neito respected their drive. Much as it galled him to acknowledge it, he could see why they were held in so high regard.

“Just because someone is thought highly of doesn’t mean you are being looked down on,” he remembered Inui telling him. And he understood that, intellectually, but he couldn’t help feeling like that.

That wasn’t the time for that though.

Kirishima was starting to slow down, same with Iida. Not that Neito blamed them. He’d been using Hardening for a little bit and he was already feeling the strain in his stamina. He tried not to use it too much and was starting to consider dropping the Quirk entirely. Unfortunately, he kind of needed it so that the stray shots from the robots wouldn’t risk taking him out when he was spearheading the whole group.

“How far away are we?” someone asked, behind him, but Neito was a little too preoccupied with a new wave of robots to really pay attention. He was much more interested in the answer though, because he wasn’t sure how much more they could last. He’d be fine for a little more, but if the rest of the group kept dropping… Then they’d have a problem in their hands.

“Not too far, almost there, everyone,” Shield said and that wasn’t a direct answer. Neito wasn’t very reassured at all. Alas, it wasn’t like saying anything would help. They’d still have to go forward. So, he ignored the worry gnawing at his insides and pushed forward.

Neito could only hope that he would be able to keep going long enough to reach their destination. Because if he couldn’t, with all the power he had, then who would? For once, there was no pride in such a thought. Instead, there was only fear, fear that he wouldn’t be enough. Because then it’d all be over.

“Please, everyone! Just a little longer! You can do this!” he had to give it to Shield. At least she was offering support. He’d have liked it if she could do something else, but she was supposedly the one that could try to fix everything if they managed to reach their destination.

The problem was that it wasn’t looking very likely that they would.

When Iida faltered, it was felt. When Kirishima dropped, it was felt even more. They were losing their momentum, their strength. Hagakure was injured and essentially taken out eventually and even that took a hit to their advances, with as little as she’d been able to do given the situation and the opponents.

It was just Chikuchi, Ashido, Jiro, Midoriya, Todoroki and him by then. Not a weak team up, if he did say so himself. And yet they weren’t able to make as much progress as one would expect. The corridor took away a lot of their strength by virtue of not wanting to hit allies or block their own path. And the infinity of robots on all sides was its own obstacle.

‘Come on, come on,’ he thought. The heat and the cold were seeping into his arms. The acid burned his palms, nevermind the dehydration. His body didn’t have the inherent resistances that Quirks offered, after all. At least, not completely. Which was fine in short encounters and regular fights. But in drawn out battles like that one? He was starting to feel it.

He couldn’t drop though. If he did, then they might stop advancing all together and that’d spell their doom. No, he needed to hold on. Just a little longer, as Shield continued telling them. They were almost there.

He had to believe that.

Neito heard an exclamation behind him but he kept his eyes forward. He had to trust the ones behind him to cover the rear and the flanks. He was the spearhead. That was his job. If he stopped, then they all stopped, so he couldn’t stop.

It was odd though, they almost sounded excited.

Maybe they were seeing something he wasn’t? Maybe they were actually almost there? Maybe they were close? Had Shield seen the door or whatever they were moving towards? He really hoped so, because for as powerful as he felt, he knew he’d reach his limit sooner rather than later.

He didn’t want to fail.

He couldn’t fail.

A roar overhead made him blink. That was no robot. Nor was it one of them either, Neito was pretty sure. ‘A villain?’ he thought, a cold shiver running down his spine as he looked up. Only for it to be immediately replaced by warm relief.

“Took you long enough, Boss,” he mumbled as he saw the Alpha Beowolf drop right in front of him, clawing through a robot.

Never had Neito been so happy not to be the one at the top as he was at that moment. 

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Well, things are a bit all over the place, aren’t they? At least everything seems to be going alright… sort of. That’s a lot of robots to guard an entire island. Who’d have thought, huh?

Not gonna lie, I’m not greatest fan of this arc myself, for some reason. I don’t know what my problem with it is though. I like the scenes and some things are interesting to write about. There’s just something that makes me go “ugh” whenever I remember that I’m still in this arc.

Anyway, I hope the same doesn’t go for you and that you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: Do you have a favorite arc in MHA? I… don’t, not really. With a gun to my head, I guess I’d pick the forest training arc. 

See you.