Darkest Before Dawn - 18 (Patreon)

Chapter 18

[Shoto Todoroki]

Throughout most of his life, his stance in regards to his Quirk had been very solid. Fire was bad and Ice was good. Fire would burn and destroy anything and everything. Ice, on the other hand, was safe, for the most part. He was determined to prove that to the world and rub it on his father’s face that his fire was good for absolutely nothing, just like him.

And yet, there he stood.

The sight before him froze him better than even his Quirk could have managed when he overused it. Hagakure, the invisible girl of his class, was trapped in his ice. His careless use of his power had locked the girl in place and practically frozen her into the artificial lake.

“Please don’t forget that each of you possesses a Quirk that can go awry. One wrong step is all it takes to kill others accidentally.”

Thirteen’s words rang through his mind as he looked at the odd way the ice shaped itself, showing the space Hagakure was in but not her, since her Quirk was still active. Ashido was panicking, using her acid to try and free the girl but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough, that much was evident with but a glance.

Shoto stood there, for what felt like ages but instead was more likely to be seconds, if that. Intellectually, he knew the answer to the problem at hand. It was laughably easy to do too, almost making the whole incident irrelevant, really.

And yet, he stood there.

Part of it was the shock. He was good at using his Quirk. His father might have been terrible at a lot of things, but teaching him how to use his Quirk hadn’t been one of those. Despite his hatred of anything related to the fire part of his Quirk, Endeavor had made sure that he could at least use the part of his power that he actually wanted to use well enough. It’d been a long time since he’d done something he didn’t intend to with it, really.

Even this time, it wasn’t really a mistake. Shoto had wanted to freeze the water, after all. The fact that Hagakure had been submerged in it had been the part that was an accident. He hadn’t known. He couldn’t have known, could he? He’d checked as best he could and there were villains around and…

And the girl was trapped in his ice.

It was like suddenly everything was wrong with the world.

“Todoroki, help me! We have to get her out!” Ashido shouted and it snapped him out of his thoughts really quick. Because the girl, Hagakure, had been speaking before, but her voice had grown weaker as time passed. Worryingly so. ‘Is she dying? Hypothermia?’ a horrified part of his mind whispered.

‘No,’ another part all but shouted. He refused to cause harm with his ice. Ice was supposed to be good. His ice was supposed to be the antithesis to Endeavor’s fire. This couldn’t happen. He wasn't going to be the reason someone died. No, he refused.

Gulping down his reservations, nerves, fear and so many other emotions that he wasn’t about to start sorting out at that moment, his left hand burst into flames. It wasn’t a huge fire, to be sure. It covered his arm and little else, but it’d be enough… It had to be enough.

Moving forward, careful to keep the heat close but not too close as he set out to free Hagakure and also help her against the cold. The last thing he wanted was to add burning her to the seemingly growing list of mistakes he was making that day. Encasing a classmate in ice, hesitating to help her and burning said classmate alive. Yeah, that’d be something, he was sure.

Despite him knowing it was the right thing to do… It felt wrong to use his fire. He half expected to cause damage anyway, despite being careful and going slow. As far as he was aware, nothing good could come from him using the fire part of his Quirk. It’d only do damage… And yet, it’d been his ice that hurt one of his classmates and his fire that could help her.

‘Get it together,’ he told himself. What did it matter if he felt bad when his classmate might be dying? God, he was aware that he was likely some sort of messed up already, but he really didn’t need the reminder. He needed to get his priorities straight, apparently.

It seemed to him like the sort of bullshit Endeavor would worry about. Something else entirely other than doing his actual duty as an actual fucking hero. Popularity, rankings, power, that was all that his father had ever cared about.

And there was Shoto, worrying about using an aspect of his Quirk that he hated instead of focusing on saving his classmate with it. For a moment, as he finished melting the ice around Hagakure’s torso, he felt terrible. What sort of person was he, if he was thinking that kind of stuff while a girl was likely dying? What sort of person was he, if he cared more about his own problems than he did someone that was in front of him, in need of help, in need of saving?

“You are gonna be fine, Toru, you are fine,” he heard Ashido whisper to the girl. In response, the invisible teenager mumbled something he didn’t quite catch. “You are fine, don’t worry. Todoroki is helping you,” the girl added then.

She was unaware of how much worse that made Shoto feel. Because he could have helped a whole lot more if he hadn’t decided to have a crisis instead of starting to melt the ice right away. He could have helped more but no, instead he’d let his hatred of his father and all things Endeavor make him hesitate.

He was a failure, he realized. After so long cursing the man and doing his best to be all that Endeavor was not… He’d ended up doing the exact opposite of what he wanted. He’d done what he had sworn he would never do. He’d been like Endeavor.

‘He won in the end,’ Shoto thought bitterly.

[}-o-{]

[Momo Yaoyorozu]

Things were getting out of hand, and fast.

Asui had been hit, repeatedly. The girl had continued to stand up despite that, but the wounds were accumulating and there was even a cut on her costume that was staining it away from its green color into red. Fortunately for her, none of the wounds were serious, at least as far as Momo could tell. However, that wouldn’t remain the case. They were nowhere near done with the villains, after all, and that meant the battle of attrition was lost if they went for it.

So was the case with Kaminari too, it seemed. The boy had done a wonderful job at keeping up his taser-staff fighting going, for sure. However, there were only three of them and a whole lot of villains. That meant that sooner or later there’d be an opening for the group of criminals to take advantage off. There was just no way for them to cover each other, let alone cover themselves. Not with Asui having to move around to be effective and Kaminari being a risk of electrocution for anyone close by.

Momo herself wasn’t holding up so well either, if she were honest. She was doing better than her two classmates, that was for sure, but that wasn’t saying much. She had a very ugly bruise spreading over her thigh and several other places hurt too. She’d almost ended up like Asui, only barely dodging the bladed arms of a villain.

As it was, their chances were looking worse and worse as time passed.

“Yaoyorozu!” Kaminari called and she hesitated. She knew what he wanted. He’d already asked for it several times. Each time, Momo wondered if it was the right call or not.

Should she allow the teenager to take out as many villains as he could and risk them all once he overloaded? It was a difficult question, especially since she didn’t know how effective that move would be to begin with. Maybe it’d take most of them out… Or maybe it wouldn’t. What then? Asui and her were already having enough problems without having to worry about covering Kaminari because he’d fried his own brain.

On the other hand, they couldn’t afford to wait forever. Things were looking worse and worse by the second. It was a possibility that they’d run out of time and then not even Kaminari’s last resort attack would be able to help them. What if it was already too late? What if Asui and Momo were already too tired and injured to cover for the boy, contrary to how it would have been if they’d gone for it to begin with?

What if she had already failed?

“We can wait some more!” Asui called, her voice flat even as she shouted from where she jumped on the face of a villain. “We can wait!” the frog-girl repeated. Maybe it was the wrong call, but Momo envied the decisiveness she put into her words regardless.

It was certainly better than her, overthinking things in the situation they were in. It was much better to make a quick decision and stick to it than second guess her every thought. They just didn’t have the time to ponder on things as if it were a homework exercise for heroics. They needed to make a decision quickly.

“We can wait, Kaminari!” Momo shouted her agreement. They could wait… The true question was if they could wait long enough for help to arrive.

Because help was coming, right? Surely someone must have noticed that things weren’t going well with them. Surely there was a security protocol or something that would pick up on their situation. Surely someone had been able to call or get help or… Surely they weren’t on their own…

Right?

The thought made Momo be even more afraid than she’d already been. She didn’t want to consider that, but it was inevitable. What if nobody was coming? What if they were on their own? What if they’d have to get themselves out of their situation?

Heroes-in-training they might be, but they had only been part of U.A. for days. They were certainly not ready for something like this. Momo knew they’d join actual pro heroes later to help them learn and such but this… This was too much, too much for them to be expected to do much themselves.

A fist hitting her side snapped her out of her thoughts… Or as much as something could do that, at least. Her mind had always been good, but it had also sometimes been too good. She could think a lot, and that meant she got easily sidetracked. Especially when she felt like she had to think a lot, such as the situation at hand.

After all, Momo had to focus on fighting back against the villains. She also had to look after her two classmates, in case they needed help or they could lean on each other. She also had to try and find a way out of their current situation too, else they might end up at the mercy of villains.

All in all… It was turning out to be quite the shitty day, if Momo allowed herself the bluntness and the language. It was also not looking like it might get better anytime soon. And that wasn’t even considering what would happen if things didn’t work out for her and her classmates.

She’d been doing a remarkable job at keeping those thoughts out of her head, at least.

All of a sudden, there was a commotion behind her. It took a great deal of effort not to immediately turn to look, and she only managed because from the screams and shouts she heard, none of them seemed to come from either Asui or Kaminari. Finally, after realizing that whatever that was had gotten the attention of the villains around her too, she dared to glance in that direction.

She blinked then, before her eyes widened and a grin appeared on her face.

There were black feathers falling from above like a deadly kind of rain.

[}-o-{]

[Minoru Mineta]

Breathing was getting harder and his limbs were feeling heavier.

‘Should have done more physical training before U.A.,’ he lamented to himself, plucking yet another one of the balls from his head. It hurt, which was a telltale sign that he’d been using his Quirk too much. That was nothing new though, he’d been feeling that for a while already.

Glancing towards his hand, he saw the bead in his hand stained with red, same as his fingers. He felt the blood running down the side of his head too. ‘So, today officially sucks,’ he thought, looking at the mist villain. ‘Come on, just gotta keep going…’ Minoru urged himself.

They were fine, they just needed to keep going.

And that was the problem, he knew.

Minoru looked at the rest of his classmates, who had been trying and failing to do any real damage to the mist villain. At most, they had managed to be annoyances, covering him in trash and rubble with the help of Minoru’s Pop Off. In exchange for that, they’d only tired themselves out. None of them had anything to do any real damage to the criminal, after all.

To make things worse, he was fairly sure the guy was toying with them. After all, he’d taken out Thirteen, a pro hero. Sure, he’d used the woman’s Quirk against her, but surely he could attack them too. Why wasn’t he though?

He was grateful for that, he really was, but it still worried Minoru. Was there a plan going on? Was the guy buying time because that was all he needed to do? Were they helping instead of hindering their efforts?

Minoru knew he didn’t have much going for him, but he’d always taken pride in being intelligent. Maybe not smart per se, but intelligent. He knew a thing or two and he had a good head on his shoulders, he knew. Maybe not so much when there was a pretty girl involved but… But there were more important things to focus on at the moment…

Just a bit more important.

“Come on, guys!” Uraraka cheered them, even through her own exhaustion. If Minoru wasn’t so tired and probably suffering from some blood loss, he might have gotten more excited with the effect her little jumping in place had. As it was, it was barely an afterthought as the teenager tried to cling to consciousness.

‘Come on. It’ll be really lame if I pass out right now,’ he thought, trying to motivate himself. Instead, all he got was downtrodden thoughts about how he was lame regardless. Because his brain sucked, even if he wasn’t a complete idiot.

Then, a laugh caused Minoru to freeze. Turning slowly, he saw a group of villains making their way towards them. Was that the misty one’s plan? To buy time so someone else would deal with them?

“Guys!” he called, his fingers digging into the ball he’d pulled off a moment before. He was more of a capture hero – in-training, but whatever –, he wasn’t fighter material, not really. What’d he even do against a group of villains? He wasn’t that good at fighting! That was Endo’s thing!

“Shit,” he heard Ojiro curse behind him and, quite honestly, he fully agreed with that statement. It seemed they were screwed. ‘Man, and I didn’t even get to have a girlfriend before dying. This sucks,’ Minoru lamented to himself.

He’d go down swinging though. Maybe he could be cool in his last moments, if not any other time. Or, that’s what he thought, before something interrupted his pessimistic mind. The same thing that gave pause to his classmates. The same thing that stopped the mist villain and all the others.

The criminal that was the closest to them, warping villain not included, was tackled to the side by a dark figure. A very familiar one, for Minoru too. Hell, he’d fought one of those terrifying things himself… Once, and never again.

‘Thank you, Endo, I could fucking kiss you…’ he thought, sighing in relief to have some reinforcements. Besides, he knew from experience that his friend’s creatures were pretty goddamn hardcore.

Then Minoru paused.

‘Not literally though,’ he corrected, even if he hadn’t actually voiced his previous thought.

With a grin on his face as he watched at the beowolf biting onto the villain’s clothing and throwing him towards another one, Minoru decided that he couldn’t leave all the fun to his friend. Thus, he threw the ball that he’d been holding in his hand. The thing flew true – because his aim was just that amazing, obviously – and smacked a poor bastard in the face, covering one of his eyes.

‘Sucks to suck, idiot,’ Minoru thought to himself as he pulled another bead. It hurt and it made him grimace, but there were more concerning things going on. Better a bit of pain on his head and some bleeding than a lot of both courtesy of villains, after all.

[}-o-{]

[Kazuki Endo]

Someone kicked the back of his knee, making him kneel down. Unfortunately for the poor bastard, a beowolf had Kazuki’s back… Or front, as it turned out at that moment, because when he went down, the beast gave a swipe with its paw and sent the villain flying back. He was still surrounded, but group fights weren’t quite as bad when you had someone by your side too. Especially if you could coordinate perfectly with that someone because you basically shared a hive-mind kind of deal with them.

Controlling his Grimm was still weird though.

Furthermore, he might be pushing things a little too much. He could easily keep three of them out, of course, but Kazuki didn’t usually spread them out like he was doing at the moment. Most of the time his creatures stayed in his close proximity, where he could kind of mesh the incoming information into one thing for easier processing.

No such luck when he had a beowolf helping out Mineta and company and a nevermore flying over Yaoyorozu and the other two. He’d wanted to help everyone but… Well, there were logistical problems with that idea, obviously. He’d done his best to pick up the most desperate groups of students to send his two extra Grimm too and as it was Kazuki wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

Of course, he was perfectly willing and happy to help out his friends and classmates. That kind of thing was expected and what he wanted to do as a hero, for sure. However, doing that was leaving him with only a single Grimm as back up.

On the other hand, Kazuki had done his best to take out as many villains in his “area” – for lack of a better word – as to be somewhat safe himself before sending reinforcements for others. Things had been a little close though, and he’d had to rush things a little bit. Enough that he could easily get in trouble himself if he wasn’t careful.

Which was kind of difficult when he had to keep a close watch on three different and unrelated fronts. He would have loved to give the Grimm far away from him some more freedom and focus on his own situation. He couldn’t do that though. Somehow, he was sure it would look kind of bad if he caused another massacre, even if it was villains in this case…

Just a lil’ bit.

As it was, he had to strain his multi-tasking capabilities to their limits and hope it’d be enough. ‘Something else to train on after we get out of this mess,’ Kazuki thought to himself, grabbing the arm of a villain and throwing them over his shoulder. There was an “if” supposed to be used somewhere there, but he didn’t feel like being pessimistic.

He was already plenty angry-tired-hurt-afraid-worried and so on courtesy of the fucking shitshow that their training trip had turned into. There was no need to add more negativity to that, quite honestly. So he decided to channel some of the fury he was feeling and use it to push everything aside.

It made for quite the cathartic experience whenever he got a hit on one of the assholes around him. Like the poor bastard he kicked in the nuts or the bitch his beowolf slapped into the ground. Why did the second sound worse than the first one, he wondered idly as he kicked another female villain in the stomach.

“No mercy for women? Some hero you are,” another female commented and he almost paused to stare at her. Instead, he had his beowulf claw at another criminal while he turned towards the one that spoke.

“My creatures and I are rated E for everyone, lady,” he replied incredulously. “Especially fucking idiots like your lot… Sorry, villains. I get confused, they are so similar,” he said with a chuckle that grew a little manic as someone took advantage of the distraction to punch his face.

Kazuki barely registered that enough to punch the guy back, first on the jaw and second on the stomach. He kicked the poor sod away when he went down. On the bright side of his shitty Quirk, he was already feeling quite a bit of pain through his classmates, the villains and what not. A punch was barely a drop in the ocean at that point.

“You really tried to take a moral high ground while attacking a school trip for teenagers?” he asked then, feeling himself getting oddly fixated on that issue. “Are you fucking stupid or what?” he continued, still laughing as he and his beowolf made their way towards the woman in question. He really wanted to give her a piece of his mind.

And by piece of his mind he meant some punches and kicks.

“You, are, fucking hilarious, you know that?” Kazuki said, laughing out loud. “God, and you are all getting your asses kicked by teenagers too. Must be embarrassing, huh?”

“Shut-” a criminal to his side started, before getting interrupted by Kazuki’s beowolf tackling him to the ground. The creature’s sharp teeth hovered menacingly right over his face then and he remained silent.

“I’m really tired of all of your shit, I gotta say,” Kazuki continued talking. He was so done with the whole thing. These assholes couldn’t even let him make it into an actual patrol or something before having him fight villains? What was their problem? Wasn’t there something else they could do with their fucking day other than attacking a school? Why not just rob a bank or something that made a little more sense, at least?

Nooo, they had to attack fucking teenagers.

“I have half a mind to just mess you all up,” Kazuki said, his control slipping as another beowolf formed beside him. He was tired of having to hold back. These bunch of idiots deserved whatever happened to them. He was weary, angry, fearful and a number of other very shitty feelings and his friends were in danger. He had zero shits left to give, if he was honest.

‘Just one more Grimm. What’s the harm? I can keep it under control,’ he thought to himself, grinning widely. ‘Maybe another, for extra ass kicking,’ he decided then, laughing loudly as another beowolf formed before the first was even done. Rushing was a bad idea, but fuck that. He just wanted all those idiots to suffer.

With as much malice as they were bombarding the place with? Kazuki couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about letting his control slip through his fingers. That is, until a sharp peak of pain broke his concentration, or lack thereof.

It came from somewhere in the center of the USJ, he noticed. That was where Aizawa was, but surely the man was fine and it was a villain that felt like that. The man was a pro, after all. Surely…

Except, he saw it then, the silhouette of a monstrous thing standing on top of a dark figure. It was the flash of a small object, a bright yellow one somewhere around the latter’s head. Just like Aizawa’s goggles.

Kazuki froze.

He remembered then, in a second, the afternoons he spent with the man. Idle moments of the man grumbling in a way that made it look like he hated teaching. Complaints that Kazuki knew to be mostly fake.

“I can already tell you are going to be a problem child.”

He remembered the push the man had given him with the vice-president thing. Reminding him that he was supposed to be a normal student, not a villain pretending to be a hero. Reminding him that his past didn’t have to define him in his entirety.

“We offered you a chance to be a student here, to become a hero. That’s what we are going to give you. As far as we are concerned, you are just another student.”

He remembered that moment when the man had told him that his goal might be achievable. That he could be a hero. One of those few, precious few people that gave him hope. Those few people and comments that made him think that maybe he had a chance of being more than a monster and a criminal in the eyes of everyone.

“You did a good job, Endo.”

“You helped someone today, Endo.”

“You were a hero.”

And that man was currently looking to be at death’s door.

If he wasn’t dead already.

Kazuki’s shadow exploded outwards from under him.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Everyone’s having fun on this school trip! Neat, right? Nothing like a bit of pain and some life threatening situations to really make some memories, right? Everything’s going great all around for these characters, all things considered. I’m sure you guys agree.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: What do you think about the chapter? I really wanna know.

See you.