[The Fox and the Hare] Chapter 41 - Besieged (II) (Patreon)

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Shigaraki Tomura's hair was still white, and his face was still pale, but the rest of his body was extremely muscular, and his skin was entirely black… He looked like a Nomu.

"I… I will kill you… destroy… DESTROY EVERYTHING!" Shigaraki let out an unhinged scream.

The ground under his feet exploded when he lunged at the blonde, a dark grey light flickering around his clawed hands.

⁂

Naruto's first thought was to block Shigaraki’s wild slash with his tails, but his survival instinct kicked in at the last moment, and he quickly threw himself to the side.

‘I can’t let him touch me,’ he thought, a serious look appearing on his face as he watched how, after narrowly missing him, Shigaraki’s palm touched a tree trunk, reducing it all to dust in a second.

Shigaraki threw himself at Naruto again but the blonde jumped to the side once more, and instead of engaging in a fight against him, he sped towards Kurogiri.

Although he had almost died the first time Naruto rushed at him, Kurogiri was on his guard now since he was expecting the blonde to attack again. This time, he was prepared. When he saw the boy charging at him, he opened a portal between them.

‘With how fast he’s running, he won’t be able to stop his momentum in time!’ Kurogiri thought, planning on teleporting Naruto into the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

His plans crumbled alongside his portal when Naruto’s Adamantine Sealing Chains stabbed through the portal, nullifying it, and he resumed his charge.

‘Not good!’ Kurogiri cussed and quickly opened another portal, this time for himself to escape.

But he was one step too late. Only half of his body managed to get through the portal before a golden chain wrapped around his waist.

The purple portal suddenly ceased existing, and Kurogiri burst into a cry of agonising pain when, together with the portal’s disappearance, half of his body was ripped out by the spatial phenomenon too.

Just as Naruto willed his hand to turn into vicious claws, Shigaraki appeared at his back, howling like a revenant.

“DIEEE!”

But Naruto ignored him completely, choosing to finish Kurogiri off. As long as Kurogiri was alive, there was no end to the number of Villains and Nomu that could be teleported there.

Despite the fact that Naruto was wide open to his attack, Shigaraki didn’t even get to touch his clothes. At the very last moment, a red fist smashed into his cheek out of nowhere. It was Kurama. His punch was so powerful that even Shigaraki’s Nomu-like body couldn’t withstand the impact. He was smashed back through over 30 trees before colliding against the concrete wall of a building outside the woods surrounding UA High.

In the meantime, due to the Adamantine Sealing Chain wrapped around his waist, Kurogiri could not adopt an ethereal state.

‘Since he’s wearing armour around his neck, that has to be the most vulnerable part of him.’

Bearing that thought in mind, Naruto stabbed his claws through the metallic brace around Kurogiri’s neck, breaking it as if it were drywall. His claws pierced his throat, and he slashed upwards too, splitting his black fog-covered skull in half as well. He killed him right there, on the spot.

He didn’t have time to revel in his victory because, in the next moment, a huge appendage smashed into him, forcing him to raise three of his five tails as a shield to block it. He didn’t suffer any damage from the hit, but the ground underneath his feet crumbled from the strength behind the enemy's attack.

“You… are strong…” the creature spoke with difficulty before letting out a cackle as it retracted its large arm and sized him up.

The moment that the second Nomu arrived, the other villains ran away in all directions, as if the devil were on their heels.

“A talking Nomu,” Naruto said, narrowing his eyes at the creature, who was now grinning like a loon, exposing its large, inhuman teeth.

“I am…not like the rest… I am a… High-End.”

Suddenly, five red rivets stabbed through the self-proclaimed High-End Nomu’s chest before lifting it up and throwing it away violently.

“Move aside… he’s mine!” Shigaraki growled.

But the High-End’s supposedly fatal injuries healed in the blink of an eye, and he landed on the opposite side of Shigaraki, behind Naruto.

“I said… go away… Nomu!” Shigaraki screamed.

“You are… a Nomu… too,” the High-End cackled. “You cannot…. Beat him alone… the Master said… work together.”

Unknowingly, the High-End Nomu revealed an important piece of information.

‘Shigaraki is a Nomu now? …that would explain the weird way he talks. And how he’s not injured despite Kurama punching him into the next week,’ Naruto thought.

Unexpectedly, a third black Nomu flew over and landed at Naruto’s left side. It was a female-looking humanoid creature with a muscular body and large breasts, but her exposed brain and disfigured mouth prevented anyone from having any sort of strange thoughts about her.

⁂

A deafening gong-like sound reverberated as Izuku crashed painfully into the UA Barrier, his body actually sinking into the metallic wall, leaving a human imprint in it.

Picking himself up with difficulty, Izuku felt chills go down his spine as he raised his head and looked at the 4 black Nomu creatures flying above him.

‘They’re different from the other Nomu I’ve seen,’ Izuku thought as he stood up and used his Float Quirk to fly, to be on the same level as the Nomu.

He looked at them, trying to discern what kind of quirks they had based on their appearance. But he wasn’t given much thought to ponder before one of the High-End Nomu’s hair-like head protrusion elongated and became spear-like, almost impaling him.

His Danger Sense flared again, and Izuku had to use the Black Whip to pull himself away in mid-air in order to dodge when another Nomu’s eyes glowed and fired two laser beams from his eyes.

‘This isn’t good; they don’t even give me time to fight back,’ he thought when the fat-looking Nomu enlarged his two arms to enormous proportions and punched at him.

He managed to avoid the Fat Nomu, but its double-hammer-fist punch smashed into the UA Barrier instead, creating a large and deep depression in it.

The fourth Nomu decided to attack at that moment too and launched at him with an elephant-like charge, his body increasing and bulking up monstrously with every step it took.

“Detroit Smash!” Izuku yelled and met the elephant-Nomu’s charge head-on, punching explosively.

However, it felt as if he had hit a block of rubber because not only did his 80% One For All punch not injure the Nomu but his own fist was bounced back, making him lose his balance.

Right as the other three Nomu lunged at him, intending on finishing him off now that he had revealed an opening, a large cloud of smoke blanketed the entire area, making them unable to see anything. It was another one of Izuku’s quirks, Smokescreen.

The boy thought he was momentarily safe, but that proved to be a mistake when the Nomu who had fired laser beams from his eyes did it again and nailed him in the thigh this time around, seemingly not affected by the smoke in the least.

“California Smash!” Izuku heard a scream.

Merely hearing the voice of his mentor filled him with hope and gave him renewed strength.

Following All Might’s shout, the Laser Nomu was punched in the head from above and slammed into the ground below like a rocket.

While he was still in midair, All Might’s right arm bulged beyond its normal proportion as he put his entire strength into it, intent on finishing the Laser Nomu off with one hit.

“United States of-”

His words were cut off and his body bent like a bow as a gigantic fist caught him in full and slammed him violently into the UA Barrier. It was Gigantomachia.

Luckily, the enormous villain didn’t follow up on his attack. Instead, he cocked his fist back and punched at the UA Barrier, aiming for the same spot that he had struck the first time.

The enormous fortress of metal shuddered and creaked as Gigantomachia smashed a second, a third, and a fourth fist into it.

However, right before the giant could punch the wall for the fifth time, a landslide of sand appeared under his feet and swept them off the ground, making him lose his balance and fall on his back.

“Great job, Gaara-shonen!” All Might said as he stood up and wiped the blood pouring out of his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Sensei, are you okay?” the normally stoic boy asked in worry when he saw his teacher’s battered and bloodied face.

All Might wasn’t given the chance to answer because the Fat Nomu enlarged its arms again and punched in his direction.

The Nomu was taken completely by surprise when, instead of punching back like he always did, All Might caught his enormous fist with both hands and didn’t let go. Instead, he started rotating fast, increasing the speed until both he and the Nomu appeared like an indistinguishable blur.

“Oklahoma Smash!”

The Fat Nomu’s body smashed violently against the UA Barrier, its blood and organs splattering all over the place.

But All Might couldn’t go for the finishing blow and had to run away because the Hair-Nomu turned its hair-like appendage into sharp spears and started chasing him around.

At that moment, Izuku burst from the cloud of smoke with such speed that a sonic boom was left in his wake.

“Fa Jin! One For All, Faux 140%!”

“Texas Smash!”

It was the strongest attack he had thrown in his entire life. The Fa Jin empowered Texas Smash punch levelled the woods and smashed the Hair Nomu’s head and body into a paste of gore and blood, obliterating it.

At first, Izuku was ecstatic at having destroyed the Nomu in one punch, but when his eyes fell on the devastated scenery ahead of him, a look of horror appeared on his face.

His Fa Jin Texas Smash didn’t just kill the Nomu and flatten the land. Just from a quick glance around, it could be seen that roughly 30 or 40 villains had been turned into mincemeat as well.

The realisation that his great power had led to such a massacre made the boy instantly bend over and throw up, unable to stomach his revulsion.

That moment of weakness was a grave mistake. When he started throwing up, the Laser-Nomu who had gotten up from the ground by then and regenerated, aimed its open hand at him and slowly rotated it.

Izuku’s Danger Sense flared, but he was unable to react in time when the space started twisting around his right arm. He screamed in agony as the Nomu used its Spatial Distortion Quirk to twist and break his right arm beyond recovery.

“Midoriya-shonen!” All Might shouted and cocked his fist back before throwing a wide-area attack: “Nebraska Smash!”

A vortex of air burst from the power of his punch and swept up in the air the three remaining Nomu and many of the corpses of the villains below, creating a macabre tornado of death.

He wanted to rush to Izuku and check up on him, but it looked like Gigantomachia got up to his feet at that moment too and was preparing to launch another attack.

‘If he punches the UA Barrier one or two more times, he’ll break through,’ All Might thought in anxiety.

Too many lives were at stake. With Gigantomachia’s ability to tunnel through the ground, the evacuating students won’t be safe from his pursuit.

“Don’t worry, sensei, we got this!” Kirishima yelled.

“You can go all out against Nomu. Leave Gigantomachia to us,” Todoroki said too, and, at that moment, he stomped his foot on the ground, creating a massive wall of ice. It was so large and thick that it even dwarfed the UA Barrier and Gigantomachia too.

All Might wanted to put his trust in them, but the sight of Gigantomachia smashing away Todoroki’s ice as if it were brittle glass didn’t fill him with confidence.

“Dark Shadow: Ragnarok!” Tokoyami shouted, and the shadowy being coming from his gut grew to immense proportions despite the fact that it was still light outside. It smashed head-first into Gigantomachia’s chest, pushing him nearly 30 metres away from the UA Barrier.

“Sorry, everyone. And thank you. I’ll be counting on you,” said All Might.

He had no other choice but to trust them with this. After all, quite a few of the students from 3-A were even stronger than some Professional Heroes and Izuku couldn’t win against the High-End Nomu all by himself, not after one of his arms had been compromised.

Saying those words, he rushed at Izuku who was standing up on shaky legs. His face was wet with sweat from the unimaginable pain. It wasn’t the first time he broke his hand, but it had never been twisted like a pretzel before.

“Don’t worry, All Might,” Izuku said through gritted teeth as he watched the Nomu stand up to their feet unharmed after the tornado generated by All Might’s punch died down. “I can still fight. I won’t hold you back.”

All Might didn’t bother trying to convince him otherwise. He was a Pro Hero so he understood Izuku’s resolve. They couldn’t afford to give up now. They couldn’t allow the villains to pass through until everyone evacuated.

“We just have to hold on until reinforcements arrive,” All Might tried to encourage him, but Izuku shook his head and smiled bitterly.

“If we were to get any reinforcements, they would be here by now… I think this isn’t the only place the villains attacked.”

⁂

Izuku’s guess wasn’t off the mark.

The Meta Liberation Army had over 100,000 members before All For One took command of it. Their numbers were even larger now.

With such immense manpower at his beck and call, AFO launched a series of coordinated attacks on all the medium and major Hero Agencies across the entirety of Japan.

The reason why nobody was answering UA High’s distress calls was that all the Pro Heroes were caught in a fight against numerically superior Villains in their own home cities.

Two teams of Villains were carefully selected in order to accomplish tasks that were significantly more difficult.

The first team was sent to UA High to kill All Might and the rest of the Pro Heroes and fledgling heroes among the students before razing the whole school to the ground.

As for the second team, it accompanied him to Tokyo.

Unlike the bitter battle taking place at UA High, All For One and the elites accompanying him didn’t struggle in the least.

Their first destination was the National Diet Building.

Once the villains killed all the security staff who tried to stop their advance, they surrounded the parliament building from all sides, making it impossible for any of the politicians inside to escape. Turning towards his followers, All For One spoke:

“We are finally here, in front of this nest of vipers. Our status as pariahs, the injustice dealt to us, and this society that labels us as Villains and negates our rights… …all these are their doing. They are the ones who shaped our country into this dystopian present.”

“Today is the start of a new era. We will eliminate this cancer from society and create a new world.”

“Today we take over Japan.”

At the end of his little speech, the thousands of villains accompanying him burst into loud cheers and roars.

All For One sat back and smiled as he watched from a distance how the villains stormed the National Diet Building. Wails and death cries filled the sky as the Villains ruthlessly massacred everyone present in the building at that moment.

AFO could have ended it all instantly and painlessly with the use of his Air Cannon quirk. He could have turned the building and everyone inside into mincemeat with one attack. But what was the fun in that? No, he was going to revel in their pain and suffering. Today, he was going to become the ruler of Japan, so he wanted to enjoy the full experience thoroughly.

Merely 20 minutes later, not a living soul could be found inside the building except for AFO’s army of Villains.

With the first objective of their visit to Tokyo accomplished, AFO took his place in front of the army and led the way to the Hero Public Safety Commission’s headquarters.

‘Once I cut the head of the snake, the rest will fall too.’

With the HPSC eliminated, the Pro Heroes would be like a herd of sheep without a shepherd. They would become easy pickings for the wolves, they would be ripped to shreds.

⁂ Back to UA High ⁂

The 3-B class and their teachers were fighting off the flying Nomu and the flying-type villains, the 3-A class and some teachers were doing their best to hold back Gigantomachi, and All Might and Midoriya Izuku were fighting a bitter battle against the 3 High-End Nomu.

Outside the UA campus, on the side opposite of where Izuku and All Might were fighting the Nomu, Naruto himself was locked in a high-speed battle against the Nomu-Shigaraki and two other High-End Nomu.

Although Shigaraki and Hood appeared to be at odds at first, once Hood reminded Shigaraki that their master wanted them to work together in order to kill Naruto, the two of them stopped arguing.

Naruto didn’t wait for them to attack him and made the first move. The ground under his feet crumbled as he suddenly broke the sound barrier, launching himself straight at Shigaraki.

Despite his inhuman speed, Shigaraki reacted in time and raised both his hands to meet his charge, activating his Decay. But Naruto slid on the ground, avoiding his lunging hands, and swept him off his feet with his fox tails.

“Kurama! I’m counting on you!” Naruto shouted as he threw his Adamantine Sealing Chains at the falling Shigaraki. Seeing as he was using his chains to attack, he would not be able to defend his unprotected back from Hood who grew 5 immense arms and threw a heavy barrage at him.

Shigaraki was just a second away from getting captured by the chains when a massive air explosion burst from his back and propelled him over a hundred metres in the air.

“Shit, he has AFO’s quirk too,” Naruto cursed under his breath when he recognised AFO's Air Cannon from when he was attacked two years ago at the training camp.

At the same time, Kyuubi came out of his shirt and met Hood’s barrage of attacks with his own claws, slicing through Nomu’s limbs like a hot knife through butter.

“Air cannon!” Shigaraki screamed, and Naruto turned into a blur as he used his great speed to escape the radius of the attack.

His run came to an abrupt stop, and he raised two of his fox tails to block the female Nomu's attack who appeared at his side like a ghost and kicked with her entire strength.

His tails were powerful and tough enough to withstand her monstrous strength, but he wasn’t prepared for her entire leg to suddenly inflate and blow up. The explosion sent him flying through the air, and several cuts appeared on his forearms and legs as the pieces of flesh that exploded from the female Nomu’s leg turned into blade-like projectiles.

His Adamantine Sealing Chains quickly formed a sphere of light around him, just a split second before Hood smashed 10 gigantic fists into him.

Hood lost control over all of his 10 artificial arms when they touched the golden sphere of light, and Naruto used that opening to cancel the protective dome of light and throw 8 kunai at him.

“You… missed… Haha!” came Hood’s mocking laughter when not even one of the 8 kunai managed to hit him.

His laughter stopped, and he tilted his head in confusion when his body was suddenly tied up by a metallic wire from head to toe. He couldn’t understand when and how that happened.

The Nomu had yet to get over his confusion when Naruto suddenly appeared in front of him with a burst of speed and smashed his foot into his chin.

As Hood was flung up into the air, Naruto jumped after him and seemingly defied gravity as he slammed a series of brutal kicks into Nomu’s gut, sending him flying even higher into the air.

Despite the vicious hits, Hood was relatively unharmed thanks to his inhuman constitution. Nonetheless, he wouldn’t allow the boy to get any hits on him anymore. His Shoulder Mounted Jets quirk activated and propelled him further upwards, away from Naruto’s kicking range.

Then, his muscles bulged, and he let out a scream as he broke free of the metallic wire that had immobilised his body. However, taking his eyes off Naruto for even a split second had been the biggest mistake he could’ve made.

The moment Hood lost sight of Naruto while straining to break out the metallic wire, the blonde launched his Adamantine Sealing Chains at him.

The High-End Nomu had just gotten out of his restraints when he was ensnared again, this time by four unbreakable golden chains.

“What…what is… this?” Nomu said in a mixture of panic and confusion as his Shoulder Mounted Jets stopped functioning and started falling down to the ground.

“Why… my quirks… not working?!” Hood screamed, but Naruto didn’t answer him.

Instead, he tightened his chains on Nomu and stuck his body close to him before pulling hard to the side.

The two of them started rotating at an incredible speed as they plunged towards the ground head-first from a height of over 30 metres in the air. They looked as if they had transformed into a gigantic drill.

It was Rock Lee’s Reverse Lotus taijutsu move from Naruto’s previous life.

A massive crater appeared in the ground, and a thick cloud of dirt and dust filled the air, making it impossible for anything to be seen for a while.

Anxious to see what had just happened, Shigaraki activated his Air Cannon and blew all the dust and dirt away.

Both he and the female Nomu were stupefied at the sight in front of their eyes: the bottom of the crater was splattered with an obscene amount of blood and gore, all of it belonging to their fellow Nomu, Hood.

With the Adamantine Sealing Chains sealing away Hood’s toughness and super regeneration, Naruto’s Reverse Lotus had been devastating.

Hood became unrecognisable; his entire body was ruptured and crushed into a paste of blood and fleshy remains.

Naruto wiped the blood staining his face with the sleeve of his jacket before stepping out of the crater with a feral look in his now crimson-red, slit eyes.

“Who is next?”

His inhuman, demonic voice sent chills down Shigaraki's and female Nomu’s spines. For the first time since they were created, the two Nomu felt fear.