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Boom. Explosions detonated one after another across the battlefield, the death cries of the beast were heard in the thousands as the hoard was leveled by a fraction. The sounds of heavy boots rang out as Izuku reached the top of the stairwell, the flash of daytime bursting onto his retinas as he made it out onto the wall's vantage point. The reflection of mana swirled in his eyes as he took in the scene, battle plans and strategies being made and discarded in seconds.
”From the sounds of the explosions Kaachans already out there, I swear if he left his core stone behind again cuz ‘he’s not holding a damn septar’ I'll wring his neck” Izuku muttered behind his hand as he marched over to Mei. The moment Mei noticed him she started rattling off the current status on the field. Estimated number of beasts, casualties, who’s on field and who’s on standby.
“Glad to have you here Zuku, we haven’t had numbers this bad since the first waves appeared three years ago. We were holding on pretty well but the wall's energy field was taking a hit, we used almost half of a Nejire crystal in 6 hours. Bakugou got here about 2 hours ago and has been out on the field for about 20 minutes. I was able to outfit his gauntlets with some core stones, so he’s been packing some serious heat. We’re currently having the heavy hitters taking 30 minute intervals since it looks like this wave is going to be here for a while. They haven’t made any big moves, which is really suspicious, but they keep adding to their number once it looks like we’ve made a dent. The current speculation is that there is a mother creating new ones. They honestly aren’t hard to beat. Insect like creatures, luckily no flight, has mixed traits of a roach and a bobcat almost. We have a couple of our usual biologists dissecting one of the more intact corpses but with the rot this field will start we’ll be lucky if their bodies don’t summon any scavengers.” Mei rattled off in one continuous string of info, long since affected by Izuku mumbling habit.
“No doubt Tenko’s gonna be called here within the next day or two. God I miss his quirk already.” Izuku muttered aloud, earning a snort from Mei.
”He’s likely already heard about the front over here from the HPSC, if he’s not toted over here by Hawks himself by tomorrow I’ll be pretty surprised.”
“Seriously? Wasn’t he in Okinawa Dusting a landfill, I swear he gets the weirdest jobs. He’s gonna be pissed once he arrives, he hates riding on ‘air Keigo’” Izuku's finger quotes have them both giggling, anyone who’s taken the Keigo express has their own colorful review to give.
”I guess I’ll have to make the trip worthwhile then.” Izuku remarks as he takes off his robe which was protecting him from the elements revealing his scarred and bulging arms. Lines of mana pulsing along his body in the shape of the symbol for enhancement.
“I’ll go tap Kaachan out” Izuku calls back as he puts one boot onto the ledge of the wall. Looking down he sees what Mei was talking about. Monsters that look like giant roaches with paws press against the energy forcefield and occasionally ram against it. Definitely acting weird. With a mana infused kick he’s soaring through the air towards the sound of explosions. Leaving a fair bit of space, he plummets down into the hoard, pushing the creatures with a shockwave. In one smooth strike Izuku pulls back a long blade that was strapped to his back and sweeps it forward across the endless bodies. The strike cut through numerous bodies in a wave. Using the momentum of the original push back he charges forward using long cuts to cleave the bodies apart and powerful punches to create pushback with wind pressure. In no time he’s back to back with Katsuki who had a manic smile as he blew a group of monsters up with a compounded explosion. To the naked eye it looked like he was exploding the monster twice over, like an after image. But really Kaachan had the unique affinity of time. He mostly used it to slow everything down so he could double the attack or do quick pivots. In sync, Izuku meets Katsuki in combat and they work in sync, blowing up and cleaving hoards of monsters, maneuvering over and around the growing piles of corpses with familiarity. Later Izuku will think about how far they’ve come together but in the heat of the moment he can only think about how this stubborn bastard knows it's his turn to clock out.
”As fun as it is to team up, you've been out here for 30 minutes. Mei will chew you out big time if you’re not back on the wall! I know for a fact you’ve used up your cores!” Izuku shouts over the roaring of death cries.
”SHUT UP SHITTY NERD! I CAN LAST LONGER THEN SOME PUNY CHUMPS!” Izuku sighs, not really wanting to have this conversation right now. He’s much more suited to human crime, but nooo, there had to be a monster invasion every fortnight. At least ‘boss' monsters usually had fighting patterns he could analyze but there usually wasn’t a whole lot of strategy involved in battlefronts like this.
With another sigh of exasperation Izuku activated the tattoo on his throat and channeled the core on the pommel of his blade. With a moment to let the flame build in his throat, he let out a stream of fire out his mouth in a spin as he lit the crowd of beasts aflame. With powerful kicks he flies over the field, drawing a line in the mob with fire. Circling back he sees a sweating Katsuki hovering over the field. Activating the core in the sole of his boots, Izuku hovers by Katsuki for a moment as he surveys the carnage.
“I’m not arguing with you on protocol. Get back onto the wall so the others can better watch the spread of the flames. If killing too many of these soldiers brings out the boss I’d prefer you rested. You need to exchange your cores in your gauntlets anyways.” Izuku says in a no nonsense tone before dropping back into the flames. He can hear Kaachan's profuse swearing but the explosions are becoming dimmer not louder so it seems he’s seemed to begrudgingly acquiesce for the moment.
After that it becomes a blur of cleaving monsters and spewing flames as he makes his way back and forth in the hoard. Mei was right, the moment the hoard started to really show signs of slowing a new wave seemed to appear. Once the realization set in fully he settled down for doing sweeps of flame and cleaving to try and minimize the corpse piles. At some point Izuku noticed another hero appear, Sootstorm, he was an upperclassman by a year while attending UA, has a fire quirk and complimentary fire affinity mana. Mei probably decided to continue the same strategy of crowd control. Making his way back to the wall Izuku noticed a couple familiar heads of hair in the distance. With a big smile Izuku touched down in front of his two favorite flame users.
“Shoto! Dabi! It’s rare to see you out in the same place, I guess the new strategy was put into action pretty quick if you’re both already here!” Izuku reached over to give them a hug. Shoto smiled and reciprocated the hug while Dabi scoffed and made a token protest to push away.
“It was pretty much dumb luck, we were off duty together when the call came in,” Dabi remarked looking over the field.
“Though as pissed as I was to get pulled on a break I’m not surprised with how big of a cluster fuck this is. We’ve only really been here for 10 minutes but they’re worse than rabbits. Where the fuck are they even coming from?” Dabi looked over at Izuku who was covered in monster blood and ash.
”Before heading out I speculated with Mei that there was a mother boss somewhere, but after being out there I think it's pretty much confirmed. While doing my sweep it almost seemed like they were appearing out of thin air so I’m gonna make a guess and say it's underground. I’m gonna confer with Mei and we'll make a call to get an optics specialist over here asap to get a scan underground. If we’re lucky we can gas it while it’s down there but it might just pull itself to the surface if it feels threatened enough. Then we’ll be thrown into a full on boss battle.”
“Ey ey captain” Dabi gave a cheeky salute while Shoto rolled his eyes and patted Izuku's shoulder as he passed. Making a b-line to Mei Izuku noticed at some point Kora had made it from Logistics to her side and was deep in some paperwork analysis while Mei was typing something on the mainframe keyboard in front of her.
“Sit rep” Mei barked the moment Izuku was in range.
”Mother boss all but confirmed, monster appearance likely from underground. Primary strategy would be to gas it but likelihood of it surfacing would be imminent. I want a scan from Vall or Tia asap. A full scan.” Izuku pressed when Mei gave him a look. “I got a bad feeling while on field, not just a gut one but something went off in my mana. Couldn’t get an answer but something isn’t right.” Izuku and Mei held a stare for a moment before she furrowed her brows. “That bad huh… Well Vall is still in Kyushu and won't be back for at least two days so I'll phone Tia, I think there was also someone being mentored on staff who was a mana sensor. I’ll let you know once they’re here but that’s upwards of 2-10 hours so I want you with the bio team looking over the corpses before heading to the engraving room, the big gun is in its final stage and the others are too slow. If we’re possibly fighting a mother boss in the next 24 hours I want that core done before that. Got it?” Mei rattled off her orders and Izuku nodded and took off to the bio team, he’d be glad for their hazmat room anyway with all the blood drying on him.
The next 2 hours had him elbow deep in half a dozen of the creatures, taking notes and feeling for magic levels. Once again Izuku felt that something was off, the others on bio agreed. The creature's mana veins were underdeveloped. It could be a symptom of how fast they were created but something felt…wrong. The deformation in their systems were giving Izuku a niggling feeling of recognition that he couldn’t put his finger on. Feeling the frustration start to set him on edge, he went back through the hazmat room and walked his sterilized butt over to the engraving room where he spent the next 5 hours hooked on the belay with heavy duty mana tools on the side of a 10 foot core stone.
Over the muffled sound of sparks and drilling Izuku could hear his name being called. Powering off the drill and lifting his protective face shield he turned his head to see a sheet pale Mei, Tia and an equally pale intern. Sensing the urgency Izuku belayed down the stone, waving his hand over to the others to continue engraving. Shucking off his gear and pacing over to the trio, Izuku questioned with well earned trepidation.
“How bad is it?” Mei shook her head a bit and showed the sketches Tia and the intern made. The mother was a massive living hive, seemingly holding millions of the buggers. That was already enough to make Izuku sick, but what made him pale like Mei was what was in the center. A mass of signatures that were reminiscent of what mana looked like around a human quirk factor.
With a shaky inhale Izuku took out a piece of paper and drew out two different sketches. One where the mana wrapped around the mass of signatures and one where the mana wrapped around each quirk individually. Pointing to the sketch he turned back to the two specialists.
”Which one does it look more like?” Tia looked at the sketches before taking a deep breath and slowly turning her head to peer in a downward direction. Izuku politely looked away as her hands started to shake.
”What does the difference make?” The intern asked a bit hollowly. Izuku looked over to her before pointing to the sketch where the mana wrapped around the quirks individually.
“If this is what’s going on, it’s already pretty awful. The only way they would be this close is if they’re stacked on top of each other like a Nazi death pit, and since they showed up in your scenes that means they’re alive down there.” Izuku grimaced while the intern turned green.
“and the other one..?” the intern asked, knowing she didn’t want the answer. But before Izuku could explain, Tia turned back around and pressed her eyes shut with a haunted expression.
“It’s the other one.” Her voice shook out. At that reply Izuku and Mei shared a solemn expression.
“I had a feeling when I saw the way they were clustered. Guess your feeling checked out Zuku, though I wish it wasn’t” Mei said looking down at the paper.
”Looks like we’ve got another Nomu.” They held their silence for a moment, Tia and the intern too green to break the silence.
”I’m going to call Naomasa, he can get into contact with the appropriate channels, make sure Nedzu is apprised of the situation... It seems Tenko will be getting here on time after all.” Mei nodded to Izuku's words and turned away, waving Tia and the intern to follow as Izuku turned away.
A grim look settled on Izuku's face as he made the appropriate calls before looking at Tenko's contact. He sighed before hitting the call button. It rang twice before picking up.
“Zu? What’s up? Aren’t you usually neck deep in core chunks by now?” Tenko’s cheerful voice rang out of the tinny receiver. “I heard you already did your rotation at the front. Hawks turned out to be in Ginza so I’m on a break for the next 3 hours while he takes a glide over here, if you're calling I’m guessing priority is up so the flight over is gonna be brutal. Fuck, its always so fucking cold when he flies me places. He better have some of your fire etchings cus I’m gonna bitch the whole way there otherwise, even if he uses a stork chair now instead of rawdogging that shit it still sucks.” Tenkos rants lightheartedly for another minute before it peters out.
”Zu? Everything ok? Is it bad?” Tenko asks again but Izuku doesn’t know how to say it. Finally he is able to muster up his voice.
”Koko it's bad.” Tenko is silent at that, Izuku only calls him Koko when they’re alone together, so he knows it's serious.
”Bunny what is it, you can tell me.”
“It’s a Nomu Koko, it's a Nomu.” Hot rage burns through Tenko at the words. Memories of Mutated creatures and a cruel laugh of a man he barely even knows but it set on his misery. He takes deep breaths until the red in his vision starts to fade, Izuku's quiet repetition of 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4, along with the occasional call of Koko.
“Thanks for telling me Bunny.” Tenko says quietly into the phone, his voice hoarse.
“Was… either of their quirks there?” He asks hesitantly.
“Im sorry… There was no way to know. If it had hers I would know close up but..”
”no, that’s…. I knew that.. I just..” Tenko bites his lip at the injustice of the situation.
“I'll see you there, I’m gonna rest for a bit” He says, knowing he won’t rest at all.
”See you soon bunny.. Love you.”
”Love you too Koko. See you soon.” Izuku hangs up the call and leans his head against the wall behind him. Memories of him and Tenko playing with Hana flash on the back of his eyelids.
“We’ll make you pay for this AFO.” Izuku promises to himself with righteous indignation.