Darkest Before Dawn - 17 (Patreon)

Chapter 17

“There’s a chance that these villains got around the sensors!” Aizawa called and Kazuki really didn’t like the grim feeling he was getting from the man. Especially combined with the… resolute way he was walking towards the villains in question. “Thirteen, evacuation procedure and try to call the school. You too, Kaminari, try to use your Quirk to contact someone!” Right, the guy had commented that he got some comms device from support with his costume, right? Kazuki had to give the teacher props for remembering that.

A second later Aizawa launched himself at the villains. They couldn’t see a whole lot of the ass kicking their teacher delivered though, shame that it was. ‘Pull it together,’ he thought, feeling the emotions shift for the worse on the villains’ side, together with the fear from his classmates.

“Come on, Aizawa said to evacuate, let’s move!” he called out.

“Over here!” Thirteen followed with, already guiding the class away from the villains. However, it was not to be, it seemed. Barely a few steps into their escape, the dark, purple mist that had appeared before moved around him until it blocked their way.

A pair of bright, yellow eyes looked at them from within the wispy figure.

“I’m afraid I can allow that,” the villain said, casually, almost politely. “Greetings,” the man continued then, in the same eerie tone. “We are the League of Villains,” he introduced himself and the group that was currently fighting with their teacher.

Kazuki was only half hearing though. His mind ran a mile a minute as he tried to find something he could do. Aizawa wanted them out of the place, but that wasn’t looking very likely at the moment. Besides, if they did get away, the man would be alone with the small army of villains…

He had faith in Aizawa, truly he did, but Kazuki didn’t like their teacher’s odds in that situation.

‘The crazy bastards are really after All Might?’ he couldn’t help but wonder incredulously as the misty villain confirmed what the other guy had said before. What kind of crazy maniac willingly went after the Number One Hero? Were they just insane or were they that overconfident? Even with All Might’s condition… But that was supposed to be a secret.

‘Do they know?’ Kazuki wondered then, feeling dread creep inside him.

“No- Wait!” he called, seeing Bakugo and Kirishima rush the villain that kept blocking their path.

“Just run!” Thirteen told them all then, when the attempt proved to be less than fruitful. ‘But where?’ Kazuki wondered, considering the path they had been taken was blocked.

“The side!” Yaoyorozu exclaimed and sure enough the sides were clear… Until they weren’t. The shadowy mist extended from the front until it started encircling them.

“You will be scattered,” the villain said then and the mist closed in on them. His classmates started panicking and it was all Kazuki could do not to follow right after them. ‘Come on, think!’ he demanded of his brain, but he received nothing. “And tortured,” the villain continued. Soon, the darkness was surrounding them, covering them, wrapping around them. “And slain,” the villain punctuated before the floor seemed to disappear under Kazuki.

The next thing he knew, he was falling down somewhere before hitting the ground so hard it knocked the air out of his lungs. Coughing, he pulled himself into a sitting position. Looking around as he placed his feet under him, he noticed, through his sense as well as his eyes, that he was surrounded. Surrounded by villains.

There were destroyed buildings around him, fake ones considering that they seemed to still be at the USJ. There was earth all around in a slope that led to the center of the joint. Unfortunately, that direction was also the one with the most villains. ‘Because of course it is,’ he thought.

Looking around warily as the chuckling criminals approached, Kazuki tried to use his sense further away. The fear of his classmates and friends was very different from every slight fright that the villains might feel. With that in mind, he grimaced as he realized that they’d been scattered all over the place.

“You will be scattered and tortured and slain,” the villain had said. ‘First step taken, it seems,’ Kazuki realized grimly. ‘But not a single one more,’ he added, determination flooding him.

“Just like in juvie, huh?” he mumbled under his breath as he took in his specific situation more than the general one. It was almost a familiar sight. Evil looking people circling around, ready to take advantage of the weak, be it of body or mind.

“If you surrender peacefully,” one of them said. ‘Monologue guy, huh? There’s always the gloater, I guess,’ Kazuki thought, pulling from the pool of negativity in him. Once he summoned the first Grimm, shit would hit the fan. Before then though, the villains didn’t know what he could do, and he needed to take advantage of that. “I promise we won’t hurt you… much.”

Looking between them, Kazuki noticed that most of them either seemed to have mutation quirks or generally bulky builds. It was a little risky to guess that they were all physical fighters from just that, but it was what he had. Thus, his mind warily worked with that information.

And then he grinned.

It was show time.

“It’s cute that you think I’m trapped here with you,” Kazuki replied, his shadow extending backwards before a beowolf formed behind him, to cover his back. With the growling beast seemingly appearing out of nowhere, all the villains shifted where they stood. Not quite frightened, but certainly wary. As they well should be. “When it’s you guys that are trapped here with me.”

[}-o-{]

[Toru Hagakure]

She hit the water before she even knew what was going on.

Instinctively, her hands and feet started flailing around, trying to get stability that they wouldn’t find. For a brief, panicked moment, Toru thought that’d be it, that she’d just drown. Just like that, as if she weren’t a hero student or something.

That moment passed as fast as it came though, her mind finally catching up before she started swimming up. Not before her eyes noticed something swimming in the water around her. Several somethings, actually, but she couldn’t really make out what those were.

Considering what was going on around her before she appeared on the water, Toru didn’t like the chances of those things being good.

Breaking through the surface of the water, she looked around as best she could. There was the boat in the middle of the water and then… Just more water, as far as she could see, or at least far enough that she couldn’t realistically get anywhere too fast. Starting moving towards the ship, though, Toru made the mistake of looking down at the artificial lake.

There was something swimming in the water alright. ‘The villains,’ she realized, watching as a person with shark-like features moved entirely too close to her. ‘I have to get out of here, I have to,’ she thought, panicking as she started desperately swimming towards the boat. She was invisible, sure, but the water around her wasn’t. It’d be painfully obvious that something was going on where she was if anyone send more than a passing glance her way.

She counted herself lucky that there was a fair bit of chaos going on around.

‘Yes!’ Toru thought, barely stopping herself from exclaiming that celebration out loud. It’d have been bad if she gave herself away, especially when she noticed that there were a lot more villains swimming around the ship. ‘... Oh no,’ she thought then, her gloved hand hitting the side of the boat.

Looking around, she saw no way to get on the thing.

‘No, no no no, nonononono-’

Her panicking mind ground to a halt when she saw a portion of the artificial body of water freeze over. ‘Todoroki?’ she thought, ecstatic. That was her chance. She just needed to get on the newly made platform and she’d be safe!... Or, at least, out of the water. ‘Come on,’ she urged herself as she started swimming again. She didn’t have time to waste, not when she could be noticed at any moment.

It didn’t take her long to reach the edge of the frozen surface. Her hands slipped and the thing was cold, but she persevered. Anything to get out of the water and out of the villains’ reach.

‘Come on, come on!’ she thought, more and more desperate with every failed attempt to get out of the water. And then, one of the worst things that could have happened did just that.

The ice platform extended.

Freezing her in place.

“No!” she cried out, her everything feeling even colder than it had before. It was cold, it hurt, it- “Help!” she pleaded, screaming as loud as she could. Breathing was hard, speaking even more so. The least said about shouting, the better. “Help me, please!”

“Bubbly?” she heard then, and she didn’t know who it was, but Toru couldn’t have been happier that there was someone to hear her pleas.

“Help!” she called again and heard some strange slipping sound before the voice returned.

“Bubbly!” they answered, and it took Toru no time at all to place the voice. A second later, her guess was proven right as Ashido appeared in front of her frozen body, in all her pink, black and yellow-eyed glory.

“Pinky, help me, please,” she said then, her fear and desperation so very painfully clear in her voice. She must have sounded pathetic, she was sure, but she couldn’t have cared less at that moment.

“Todoroki! Ease up on the ice!” Ashido called over her shoulder. “Hagakure is trapped in it!” she added, before crouching next to Toru. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out… This might not be pretty though.”

“Please, get me out here,” she mumbled, looking as Ashido used her Quirk to try and melt the ice around her. A corner of her mind was suddenly very wary of the acid that was being used to free her. It was, however, very firmly overwhelmed by the sheer desire to be free of the ice. She’d never felt so helpless.

Were her legs in the water still? Was she completely encased by ice? Could the villains get to her if the former was true? She couldn’t feel her legs very well, were they moving? Were they frozen?

She was… fairly sure that she could move her feet, but the cold was so… numbing.

“Pinky,” she mumbled, her voice coming out a lot weaker than it would have before.

“Todoroki!” Ashido shrieked, and suddenly she was sounding very afraid. Toru could relate.

Although, she wasn’t feeling as afraid as she had before, weird that.

She was feeling tired and cold.

“Am I going to die?” she asked, her mind feeling sluggish and cold. Who’d have thought being frozen over would feel so… calm after a little while.

“No, you are not! Bubbly?! Bubbly, come on! Hagakure! Toru!”

[}-o-{]

[Momo Yaoyorozu]

They were surrounded.

“What do we do?” Kaminari asked from beside her and Momo could honestly say she didn’t have a single idea. None of them had the firepower to take on so many opponents at once. There were more villains than she cared to count and that said quite a bit.

“You think we can hold on until help comes?” she heard Asui ask as the three of them stood back to back, facing the criminals around them. “Because things aren’t looking so good.”

‘You can say that again,’ Momo thought to herself grimly. They were students, barely so, really. They weren’t ready for this kind of scenario. They might have some fighting training, but not to face as many opponents, proper villains. ‘How I wish Endo was here,’ she thought. ‘Or Todoroki, or Midoriya. I’d take Bakugo too…’

Those people would have an easy time. They had more powerful, more battle oriented Quirks. As for Momo? Asui? Kaminari? They were no weaklings, for sure, but they couldn’t take a small army of villains by themselves.

She blocked an attack with the staff she’d made and let her mind run. Kaminari did have quite a bit of power, if she remembered well from the Battle Trials. However, he couldn’t control it, and if he used too much, he overloaded and basically incapacitated himself. That was something she could work with though.

With narrowed eyes, she created another staff with her Quirk.

“Kaminari!” she called, passing him the weapon.

“Is this…” the boy started asking, before electricity cackled around the object. “Oh, now this is cool,” he said with a grin, smacking a villain that was going for an attack and giving him a good shock that left him smoking and twitching on the ground.

Momo couldn’t bring herself to be too upset about that, if she were completely honest.

She could hold her ground well enough, but she was worried about both the number of villains and the criminals that were staying far back. Some of them looked like they might have a Quirk that did more than just make them a close combat threat. They didn’t have anyone with range, however, except maybe Kaminari if he went all out. Momo could probably make him something to use at close range, a wire or chains, but he probably wouldn’t be able to use that effectively.

She was very against letting the blonde go overboard with his Quirk. If anything happened afterwards, then he’d basically be helpless, after all… It was the last resort, the option to call on if everything else failed, basically.

Asui was more or less in the same boat as Momo herself was. She was holding up well, jumping around and kicking villains left and right. However, sooner or later, she’d slip up, making a mistake… And then what? They couldn’t hold on forever, Momo knew.

They had to try at least.

And hope it’d be enough.

[}-o-{]

[Minoru Mineta]

Fear gripped at his heart.

They were screwed, he knew that. There was no way they’d get away from that place. USJ was flooded with villains all over the place. And now, the hero that was supposed to help them reach safety, Thirteen…

She fell to the ground, her space suit costume torn apart at the back, where the mist-Quirk seemed to have wrapped even her black hole power. She’d barely screamed before going silent. And now the hero laid on the ground, unresponsive.

What were they supposed to do?

What could they do when even a pro hero had fallen in the face of this enemy?

“Where’s Ida?!” Ojiro called and Minoru had absolutely no idea. Most of the class wasn’t around anymore and he could only wonder where they’d gone. Were they fine? Were they in an even worse situation? The mist villain could have sent them literally anywhere! “He could run and get help! We have to get help!”

It was easier said than done, however.

Ida was nowhere in sight, after all, taken to wherever the villain might have taken everyone else.

Then Minoru's mind was snapped out of its haze by a loud sound that seemed to shake the surroundings. Turning to the side, he saw Jiro, with her lobe-jack’s connected to her boots. The latters seemed to be the source of the noise that he heard, which he wasn’t even sure he could place what it was.

“I’m not just gonna roll over and die, I can tell you that!” the girl shouted at the mist villain while her attack hit him. Minoru couldn’t help but be in awe, even as he looked around fearfully. What if the man did the same thing he’d done with Thirteen and hit them with Jiro’s attack? Fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case.

‘For now,’ a pessimistic corner of his mind mumbled, but he pushed that aside.

‘We can’t get away from here with that guy,’ he thought, looking at the mist villain that seemed mostly unaffected by the sound attack. The criminal was just floating, moving around as if nothing had happened. If anything, it seemed to be a mild inconvenience at most. ‘What can I do against something like that?’ he wondered despairingly.

He just had stupid sticky balls for a power. He didn’t have something cool, like creating monsters or invisibility or sound attacks or making himself indestructible. He was a short piece of shit with stupid sticky balls.

But he had to do something.

He couldn’t just wait there to die.

And what about his friends? Endo, Hagakure and Yaoyorozu were who the fuck knew where, probaby fighting for their lives. Maybe even in worse situations than the one he was in. Jiro was right there with him, fighting. Was he going to let her do everything and sit on his ass until the villain attacked her?

‘Ain’t no way you are gonna pick up chicks like that, Tiny,’ a voice said in his head, which sounded annoyingly like Endo. Still, it wasn’t wrong. He had to do something. He was a hero-in-training dammit all.

‘That’s the spirit, Tiny!’ another corner of his mind called and he imagined Hagakure enthusiastically bouncing on her feet. She was easily excited like that, after all.

If Endo could take all the fear in the school and still be cool with the press incident, then he could deal with his own fear no problem. He had classmates with him. He wasn’t alone. They could at least put up a fight, right? And if everything went well, then they’d have a cool story that might get him a girl…

Yeah, that’d work, for sure.

No reason to fear…

‘Fuck it all, I’ve gone crazy,’ he thought, even as he grinned through the crippling fear that gripped at his heart. ‘Fuck it all,’ he repeated as he pulled off two of the balls on his head. ‘Might as well go down kicking and screaming, right?’ he decided with a delirious chuckle escaping his lips.

Minoru looked at the mist. Surely there was something there he could hit, right? No way it was all mist. There were the eyes, but looked just about as solid as everything else. However… There was the metal thing that peeked through sometimes.

‘Yeah, that’ll do,’ he thought, narrowing his eyes. He’d practiced his aim since forever ago. It was the one thing that could turn his useless power into something half-decent. There was no way he wouldn’t practice that.

So he pulled his arm back and threw the ball when he saw a good chance.

It hit, and for a single second, Minoru was almost happy. It wouldn’t do anything though, he knew, but he had to do something… Even if it was useless, if he just sat there and something happened to him, to the others… He didn’t want to be useless anymore…

“Uraraka! Ojiro!” Midoriya called then, his voice cutting through the haze in Minoru’s mind this time. “Help me get rubble! Jiro can you send it flying at the black mist?!”

“Sure, just get it between me and the villain!”

“Mineta!” the green-haired boy called with more authority and power than Minoru had ever heard from the guy. “Stick more of those to him!”

“Sure thing!” Minoru thought, feeling a rush at the fact that he might be able to do something. ‘Take that, Junior High bullies! I can do shit!’  he celebrated, even if it felt somewhat shitty due to the circumstances.

[}-o-{]

[Izuku Midoriya]

Was what they were doing enough?

Sure, Mineta had managed to land another of his… things on the villain, and Ojiro and him had worked with Jiro to send some rubble so it got stuck too but… It didn’t seem to be doing anything, really. Furthermore, even if they were buying time… What was that good for? Everyone else was in probably worse situations, wherever they had been sent by the warping mist.

Worse still, Thirteen probably needed medical assistance quickly and Aizawa was facing who knew how many enemies on his own. If these villains were really there to fight All Might, surely they had at least one strong person, right? What if Aizawa wasn’t enough to fight against those people?

They needed help.

He needed help.

Because as much progress as he’d made, he was still useless. Just like he’d always been.

Once a Deku, always a Deku.

But maybe, just maybe, he could do something.

“Uraraka!” he called then, earning himself the girl’s attention once more. Normally, he’d be panicking right about then. How was he to even talk to a girl? What to say, what to do… But not then and there, because he needed to do something.

He could panic and be nervous later.

“Use your Quirk on me, please!” he asked, moving to be closer to the girl. Fortunately, she did so immediately and without hesitation, which saved them some time. Time was definitely something they could use as much as possible, after all. “I need you to not let go for as long as possible, ok?... U-Unless you need to, of course, then feel free-”

“Ok,” she interrupted, giving the slightest of smiles despite the circumstances and nodding firmly. “What are you gonna do though?”

“I’m going to get help,” he said, determination settling in before he sprinted for the door. Ida wasn’t around to make the run himself, so he had to do it, Izuku decided. Someone had to call for help because… Because they weren’t good enough against the odds they had stacked against them.

He wasn’t good enough, despite being All Might’s chosen successor.

He was still a Deku…

But he could do something, still. He could run, he thought. One For All coursed through his body towards his legs, much like how he’d channeled it through his arms for the Battle Trials. Using it on both limbs lowered the strain, even if it was still painful and his legs felt like they’d explode at any moment. ‘I’m sorry, Endo,’ he apologized in his head.

Although, the other boy probably had many other things to feel besides Izuku’s pain.

It wasn’t a very reassuring thought though.

That wasn’t important at the moment though, even if it made Izuku feel very bad to think about. No, the important thing was to get help from other heroes. He needed to get back to the school, that was where he was sure he’d find at least someone and surely they’d know what to do. Maybe they’d call someone, or maybe-

“How rude of you to just leave,” Izuku heard the mist villain say. Worse still, he sounded close. “I won’t let you get out-”

“Over here, you freak!” someone shouted and it took the green-haired boy a moment to realize that it was Mineta. Turning slightly, against his better judgment, he saw the purple and white-clad teen flying through the air somehow with a series of his purple beads stuck together into some kind of makeshift chain. “Got you!” the boy celebrated when the end of his creation attached itself to the rubble they’d thrown on the villain.

‘This is my chance!’ Izuku exclaimed in his mind as he reached the door. One For All no longer ran only towards his legs but his arm this time too. He needed to get past the door and quickly, else the villain caught him. A diminutive part of his mind noticed that the strain on his legs seemed to lessen when he did that, but he needed to focus on his objective.

“Smash!” he shouted, breaking apart the gates. With the opening made, he jumped, putting as much power behind his legs as he could without completely destroying them. He’d need them working if he wanted to be able to get to U.A., after all. He couldn’t afford to break them, he couldn’t. ‘Tone it down, spread it… Spread it more,’ he realized, channeling One For All through his arms, his torso, his head…

It worked, the strain went away. The power was low, of course, but he didn’t feel like he’d explode at the smallest twitch!

‘Focus,’ he told himself then, frowning as he continued running as fast as he could. ‘Everyone depends on me now…’

And was it bad, that thinking that made him feel good?

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Oh boy, the infamous randomizer strikes again! Yes, I brought back the randomizer to see how the class would be divided. Surprisingly, a lot of things stayed the same, but some others changed quite drastically, as you may have noticed.

I’m surprisingly happy with this chapter, or at least I was when I first wrote it. I want to think it’s still as good as I felt it was back then, but now that I’m about to post it, I’ve given my brain time to start feeling like it might not be. With some luck, I’m just being silly.

I hope you liked the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: How are you liking the story so far?

See you.