The air itself seemed to recoil from Muscular's presence, warping around the grotesque swell of his quirk-enhanced musculature like heat haze off scorched pavement. His latest enhancement had pushed his body beyond human proportions, veins stood out like cables beneath skin stretched taut over bulging tissue, his neck thickened to the point where his head appeared to sink between mountainous shoulders.
Every exhale came as a wet, guttural rasp, his lungs compressed by the sheer mass of himself.
Midoriya could smell the copper wafting through the air.
His left eye begun to swell shut from their last exchange, the skin around it pulsing with each hammering beat of his heart. Blood, his own, he realized distantly, dripped from a split in his lower lip, spattering onto the cracked concrete between his boots.
One For All thrummed beneath his skin, that familiar electric burn, but something new coiled within it now. Something darker.
Muscular rolled his shoulders with a sound like tearing canvas.
"Y'know," he mused, voice dripping with the same casual malice as a butcher discussing cuts of meat. "I used to think I was doing this for some great reason. Actually I was, had an actual boss and everything..."
A half-step forward. The street buckled under his weight.
"First kill was an accident, believe it or not." His tongue swiped across yellowed teeth. "Some two-bit hero who caught me on one of my early mercenary missions. His nose made this..." he snapped his fingers. ",,,little crunch, like stepping on a roach. And then he just... stopped moving."
Midoriya's breath hitched at the cold malice that was radiating from the man's eyes. Uraraka's face flashed behind his own eyes, how her head lolled against shattered brick, the slow creep of crimson through chestnut bangs.
Muscular's grin widened. He could smell the rage on the boy.
"Took me about a day to stop shaking," he continued, flexing his fingers that could crush a skull like overripe fruit. "Kept seeing his face every time I closed my eyes, like he wanted me to know something. Then the next one..." A chuckle, low and viscous. "Next one cried. Begged. And something just... clicked."
The attack came without telegraphing, one moment Muscular stood relaxed, the next his fist had erased the twenty feet between them in a blur of malformed knuckles and compressed air.
Midoriya barely had time to raise his forearms.
The impact sent lightning fractures spiderwebbing through his makeshift guard, vibrating up into his shoulders with enough force to make his teeth clack together. His boots screeched backward, soles smoking against asphalt, but Muscular didn't let up, his other fist was already coming around in a haymaker that warped the very air in its wake.
Midoriya ducked.
The missed punch created a vacuum that tugged at his hair, then detonated outward in a concussive blast that shattered every remaining window on the block. Glass rained down like jagged hail as Midoriya pivoted on his heel, One For All flaring brighter along his right leg...
"Manchester....!"
His shin connected with Muscular's ribs in a crescent moon arc. The sound was less an impact and more a depth charge going off, muscle and bone compacting inward before rebounding with enough force to send the villain skidding back, his boots carving molten trenches in the pavement.
Midoriya didn't wait.
He surged forward, green energy crackling in his wake, but Muscular was already recovering, twisting his torso with a wet pop of realigning cartilage, that same maddening grin never slipping.
"See, that's what I mean!" Muscular roared, swinging an arm wide. Midoriya barely arched backward as the limb whistled past his nose, close enough to feel the heat radiating off overworked muscle fibers. "You heroes always go for the clean hits! The safe shots!"
His knee came up like a piston.
Midoriya crossed his arms, bracing...
The world whited out.
When his vision cleared, he was airborne, tumbling end over end through the skeletal remains of an office building. Drywall exploded around him in chalky plumes, steel support beams bent like taffy in his wake, until finally...
CRASH.
...he came to a stop embedded in what had once been a conference room table, its splintered remains jutting from the crater his body had made in the far wall. His ears rang. His ribs screamed.
And Muscular was still coming.
The villain moved with terrifying economy, no wasted motion, just pure predatory intent as he strode through the wreckage. His breathing had grown ragged, sweat sheening his distorted physique, but his eyes...
"After the fifth one," he continued, as if they were discussing the weather, "I started noticing the little things." A fist the size of a cinder block swung down. Midoriya rolled, the floor erupting upward in a shower of laminate and rebar. "The way their pupils dilate right at the end. The exact pitch of a scream when ribs puncture lungs!"
Midoriya's fingers found purchase on a length of broken pipe.
"By number twelve," Muscular sighed, almost wistful, "I was addicted."
The pipe whistled through the air...
Muscular caught it one-handed and crushed the steel like tinfoil.
Midoriya was already moving, feinting left before driving a fist wrapped in crackling energy toward the villain's solar plexus. Muscular twisted, letting the blow graze his side, then retaliated with an elbow that clipped Midoriya's temple.
Stars.
Nausea.
Midoriya stumbled, vision swimming, just in time to see Muscular's knee rushing to his face...
He barely managed to pivot, taking the blow on his shoulder instead. Something popped. White-hot agony lanced down his arm as he was launched backward through another wall, landing in a heap amidst cubicle debris.
"You're not special kid." Muscular called, footsteps growing closer. "Just another body waiting to happen."
Midoriya spat blood. His left arm hung limp, the joint screaming in protest when he tried to move it. One For All stuttered in his veins, not failing, but straining against the sheer wrongness of Muscular's strength.
A shadow loomed over him.
Muscular's foot came down.
Midoriya rolled, stomp cratering the floor where his head had been. He kicked upward, catching the villain under the chin with enough force to snap his head back, then used the momentum to flip onto his feet.
"You're wrong," Midoriya gasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "About heroes. About everything."
Muscular rubbed his jaw, amused. "Enlighten me."
Midoriya's good hand clenched.
"You had a choice," he said, voice gaining strength with each word. "Every single time, every life you took, you chose this." Lightning danced along his skin, brighter now, almost blinding. "And that's why you'll never understand."
Muscular threw back his head and laughed, the sound echoing off broken buildings.
"Oh, I understand perfectly," he wheezed, wiping tears from his eyes. "You think I don't know what I am?" His muscles rippled, expanding further, veins standing out like roadmaps to hell. "I live my truth and I love living it!"
He lunged.
Midoriya braced.
The distance between them evaporated in an instant.
***
The alleyway stank of burnt rubber and spilled soda, the sticky remnants of a festival turned warzone. Iida Tenya adjusted his glasses with a gloved hand, the left lens cracked from Spinner's last desperate swipe before dissolving into mud. Beside him, Ashido Mina wiped sweat from her brow, her usual neon vibrancy muted beneath a layer of grime and soot.
"Multiple clones of League of Villains members confirmed throughout the city," Mt. Lady's voice boomed minutes prior, shaking the streets with its urgency. "Do not engage alone. Prioritize civilian evacuation!"
A shiver ran down Iida's spine, not from fear, but from the sheer scale of this attack. The League had turned the inner city into a hall of mirrors, each reflection a potential killer. They planned it all so well, it was evident that there was poison spiked into the food and drink, maybe some of the vendors were members of the League too. And then there was obviously Twice, his quirk was a danger no matter how you put it.
Although Iida hadn't seen any clones of Dabi, he thinks he would be the most dangerous in this situation with his fire burning down everything.
'Where did the heroes get their information?'
He doesn't know if it was enough to even combat this.
Mina exhaled sharply, his engines humming faintly. "Okay we took down another Spinner. How many more of them do you think there are?"
Iida straightened, his engines humming faintly. "Given Twice's capabilities there is a chance that they haven't stopped. They also have their warp gate, so Twice may not even be in the city, only transporting his clones. We should find a hero and integrate out efforts. Coordinated response will yield the highest efficiency."
Mina shot him a look, half amused, half exasperated. "You literally just said, 'yield the highest efficiency' out loud. To Me!"
Iida, blinked... "Is that... not correct?"
She snorted. "Its very you." A grin flickered across her face before fading. "But yeah, okay. Safety in numbers. Lets—"
A giggle cut through. And then a blare of lights.
They looked to the entrance of the alley to see a big truck racing towards them, and in the driver's seat was the League's Himiko Toga.
She stepped on the pedal and sped forward.
Iida's body moved before his mind caught up. His leg snapped up in a piston kick, revving with the force of Recipro Burst—
He burst through the window and... SPLATTT.
The Toga clone barely had time to even twist her smile to a frown before she burst apart, her form collapsing into a slurry of mud and rainwater. The remains splattered against the seat that was now bent backwards and through the headboard due to Iida's kick.
Mina's fists were raised, acid already bubbling at her fingertips. She blinked. "...Well. That was fast."
Iida adjusted his glasses again, the motion deliberate. "The clones possess the original's appearance and mannerisms, but their physical durability is significantly reduced. Even if that had been the real Himiko Toga, a strike of that caliber would have merely incapacitated, not killed."
Mina opened her mouth—
"He's right."
A voice, dry as old paper, drifted from the shadows.
Both students whirled.
Aizawa Shota stood beneath a flickering streetlamp, his capture scarf coiled around his shoulders like a living thing. His eyes, dark and exhausted, but razor sharp flickered between them.
"Aizawa-Sensei..." Mina blurted out
"On the field it's Eraserhead."
Iida snapped into a bow so sharp it could have cut steel. "Sensei!..."
"Save it." Aizawa rubbed his temple, the gesture more weary than annoyed. "We don't have time."
Above them, the wind shifted.
A rustling, like a thousand pages turning at once.
Aizawa's head tilted upward...
Paper birds.
Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, their wings fluttering in perfect unison as they soared through the smoke-choked sky. Each carried a civilian, children clutched in delicate beaks, elders cradled in woven talons, their faces pale with shock but unharmed. The flock banked as one, streaming toward a half-collapsed department store whose upper floors had been converted into a makeshift shelter.
Aizawa's eyes narrowed. "...That's new."
Mina gasped. "Are those...?"
"Follow them." Aizawa ordered, "The direction their going in is to a hospital. Get there before them, help whatever medics could be onsite, keep the people calm." He turned to leave.
Iida stepped forward. "Sir! What will you be doing?"
Aizawa paused. The wind tugged at his scarf, at his unkempt hair. For a moment, he looked like a teacher and more like something wildly, a stray dog who'd scented blood.
"The reason I fought to be stationed in Tokyo." he said quietly, "is the same reason I've spent the last five years drinking cheap coffee and grading terrible essays."
A beat.
"I have to look out for the Problem Children."
And then he was gone, swallowed by the gloom between buildings.
Mina exhaled. "Well. That was intense."
Iida adjusted his glasses one final time. The cracked lens split the world into fractured pieces, but his resolve remained whole. "We have our orders." He revved his engines, the hum building to a crescendo. "Let's move."
Mina grinned, acid swirling around her fingers like liquid neon. "Try to keep up, Class Rep."
***
Kyoto was burning.
Not with fire, though the remnants of Endeavour's battle still smoldered in the distance, with chaos. The streets, once vibrant with festival lights, now lay fractured under the weight of war. Yaoyorozu Momo wiped soot from her cheek, her breath coming in sharp, controlled bursts as she scanned the wreckage. Beside her, Kendo Itsuka clenched her fists, her usual confidence tempered by the eerie silence that had settled over the district.
Above them, the sky churned.
The massive shadow that had once been Tokoyami's rampaging quirk now dissipated thanks to Todoroki. Distantly, Momo could hear the winged hero barking out orders.
Kendo exhaled, rolling her shoulders. "Alright. If we head east, we can..."
A snap echoed through the streets.
Not the crack of breaking stone or the groan of collapsing buildings. This was sharper. Colder. The sound of ice breaking and forming.
She thought that Todoroki had come to find her again. But Momo's spine stiffened before her mind could catch up. Instinct screamed at her to move, but her body refused to obey. The air itself had turned to glass, her breath frosting mid-exhale. Beside her, Kendo's fingers twitched toward her enlarged fists, but they trembled, locked in place by an unseen force.
Then, the cold spoke.
"You won't be going anywhere heroes."
The voice was smooth. Detached. The kind of calm that came not from patience, but from the certainty of a predator watching prey stumble into its jaws.
Momo's eyes flicked upward.
A figure floated atop a jagged spire of ice, his silhouette backlit by the moon. A heavy blue jacket swallowed his frame, the hood drawn low over his face, leaving only the barest glimpse of pale skin and the faintest curl of mist where his breath should have been.
His hands, bare, fingers long and unnaturally still, rested at his sides, but the air around him warped, shimmering with the promise of frost.
Kendo gritted her teeth. "Who the hell—?"
"That's pointless." The ice beneath him rippled, elongating like a living thing as it carried him closer. "You'll be dead before you need to remember mine."
Momo's mind raced.
Cryokinesis. Advanced. No visible emitter source. Likely requires direct contact with existing ice or moisture. Jacket suggests insulation against his own quirk's backlash. Weak point: heat or—
A flick of his wrist.
The street exploded in a fractal bloom of ice, jagged spears erupting like the jaws of some primordial beast. Momo barely yanked Kendo back as a spire impaled the space where her head had been, the frozen tip grazing her ponytail.
Kendo didn't hesitate. Her hands ballooned, slamming together in a thunderclap motion that shattered the nearest ice formations. "Momo, go. I'll—"
"You'll what?" The figure tilted his head. "Die trying?"
Another wave of his hand.
The ground beneath them lurched, the pavement splitting open as a glacier surged upward, swallowing storefronts whole. Momo's boots skidded, the cold seeping through her soles like needles. She could feel it, the moisture in the air, the sweat on her skin, all of it turning against her, slowing her limbs, stealing her breath.
Kendo roared, swinging a fist the size of a boulder toward the ice user's floating perch.
A wall of frost erupted between them, swallowing the impact with a hollow thud.
"Pathetic." The figure sighed, as if disappointed. "I expected more from UA's so called elite."
Momo's finger's twitched at her belt. A plan formed, thermite, flashbangs, anything to buy time, but the cold was inside her now, creeping through her veins like a poison.
The glacial prison tightened around them, jagged teeth of frost creeping up their legs. Yaoyorozu Momo's breath came in shallow, visible puffs as the cold gnawed through her hero suit. Kendo Itsuka strained against the ice encasing her enlarged fists, teeth bared in a silent snarl.
The figure observed them from his frozen perch, head tilted like a scientist examining failed experiments.
Then Momo's fingers twitched.
A spark, small and desperate, flickered against her palm.
The ice shattered.
Not from brute force, but from precise, sudden heat, a chemical reaction born from a magnesium strip she'd manifested between her fingers. The frost recoiled like a living thing, giving her just enough space to wrench free. Kendo followed suit, her massive fists pulverizing the weakened structure in a shower of splinters.
For the first time, the ice user moved.
His hood shifted slightly. A pause, then...
"Clever."
The word hung in the air. It was a quiet approval, more unsettling than any taunt. He drifted lower, boots barely grazing the fractured street as his glacier carried him toward them. The temperature plummeted again, but this time, Momo saw the pattern, the way the frost spiralled outward from his fingertips, the slight delay between his breaths and each new wave of cold.
Kendo planted herself between him and Momo, knuckles cracking. "Round two, frostbite."
The figure ignored her, his hidden gaze locked on Momo.
"You calculated the exothermic reaction's midpoint," he mused, voice still devoid of inflection. "Most would've panicked. Or relied on brute force." A glacial spire erupted beside him, twisting into a razor edged mimicry of Momo's own posture. "I'll adjust accordingly."
The threat was clear. This time, he wouldn't underestimate them.
Momo's hand found Kendo's wrist, a silent signal. Their escape route was clear, but so was the truth... they'd earned his attention.