Dragon's Pride (Ch 55)

I couldn't think of what to do, so we're skipping ahead to the USJ! For background information:

Yagi is the homeroom teacher for 1-A, mainly just doing announcements, study period, and ensuring the students can come to him with concerns or questions.

Eraserhead and Stendhal co-teach the hero lessons for both 1-A and 1-B, with All Might making the occasional guest appearance.

All Might's second form isn't shared with the staff. As far as most of them know, Yagi is just All Might's secretary who wants to be a teacher. Aizawa knows so that he doesn't erase All Might's quirk where people will see his skeleton form.

Kyoka can’t help but curse out loud when the purple mist villain warps themselves in front of the exit to the rescue facility, the USJ, and announces that they’re here to kill All Might. Oh, but since that giant fucking idiot isn’t here, it obviously makes sense to kill the forty high schoolers who haven’t even been at UA for a full damn week! What the hell!? They haven’t even gotten a combat lesson yet! All they’ve done that can be considered ‘hero training’ is the quirk apprehension test and a trio of teachers critiquing their hero costumes.

Hers and her friends’, thankfully, didn’t have anything glaringingly wrong with them, so apart from recommending more protective padding they were given the green light to wear them for today's rescue exercise. But their outfits were personally augmented by Mei Emerald, so they are much, much sturdier than anyone would guess. They’re much better off than half the students who are stuck in the school’s gym uniforms due to needing a complete costume redesign, like Yaoyorozu and Hagakure.  The rest of them have some protections, but not nearly on the level of the rest who are in their costumes.

But that’s not a very big reassurance when faced with a fucking warp quirk when half of their four teachers jumped down to take on the hoard of villains gathered in the building’s central plaza. Why the fuck wasn’t Eraserhead erasing this guy’s quirk!? That seems like the first thing the man should have done when he told Thirteen and Vlad to get them to safety!

The rescue hero points her finger at the warper and activates their quirk while the blood hero shoots streams of blood that quickly morph into nets, but they just open a portal in front of and behind them, easily redirecting the attacks back to their origins. It’s a good thing that Kyoka and her friends have regularly sparred against both each other, and Himiko Toga, so they don’t freeze up in the face of true villains like the others.

Kyoka’s jacks dart down to the speakers attached to her legs and she uses the support equipment to blast soundwaves at Thirteen and the quirk behind them. It makes the hero stumble and instinctively deactivate their quirk to avoid accidentally injuring the other students, but it also manages to disperse the mist making up the warp portal behind them. Meanwhile Yui is leaping for the villain with her electrified tonfas and Hitoshi throws a pair of foam grenades that expand to stop the blood nets. What surprises her though is the fact that Bakugou, the blonde boy she encountered at the Entrance Exam, is right alongside the resident battle junkie with explosions propelling him faster than he would otherwise be.

Yui swings for the villain’s head while Bakugou aims a powerful explosion at their chest, but both attacks simply pass through him without making contact, making her click her tongue. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. Warp quirk users are tricky to fight against unless you take them off guard, and even then you have to hope that they haven’t figured out a way to make the damn thing protect them passively!

Utter. Bullshit.

“My, how dangerous,” the man says in a voice that seems to echo ominously. “Of course, what else could I expect from the golden apples of UA?” His quirk flares just as a blonde boy from class 1-B charges towards him, quickly engulfing every first year hero student. “Which is why we shall ensure you do not become threats in the future!”

Kyoka shields her eyes with her jacket-covered arm as the mist blocks her vision, and when it clears she finds herself in a rocky environment, surrounded by villains. She flexes her hands at the cruel faces surrounding her, prepared to do whatever it takes to get out of this trap. But then three other people drop from the mist just above her and she scowls at the added complication.

Momo Yaoyorozu, Pony Tsunotori, and Mina Ashido get to their feet, clearly nervous at being so utterly outnumbered. At least that’s what it seems like until Yaoyorozu uses her quirk to eject a sword from her hand that she skillfully catches before darting forward to slash at a villain whose quirk makes him look like a stereotypical orc from fantasy shows, causing him to cry out and fall to the ground in pain from the cut stretching from his shoulder to the opposite hip. Meanwhile the hoofed and horned girl yells and lowers her head before ejecting her horns to stab into the knees of a bull-headed man. She kicks off the ground hard enough to crack it as she charges at him while he falls before dropkicking him right in the head and knocking him out.

…Probably.

Ashido, in contrast, joins Kyoka and the villains in taking a moment to stare at the surprisingly vicious girls before shaking her head and whipping her arm at the closest villain, flinging acid that causes the walking jackal to howl and clutch his eyes in pain. Kyoka shakes her head in disbelief before charging towards her own first opponent, a woman whose skimpy outfit could give Midnight a run for her money, and slams her palm into her stomach before channeling her heartbeat through her hands. The sudden assault of vibrations applied directly to her internal organs obviously doesn’t agree with the woman if the fount of blood that spills from her mouth is anything to go by.

Kyoka spins on her heel to face the other villains while the woman falls behind her, a smile unknowingly pulling at her lips. In response to this situation, to her classmates, there’s really only one thing she can say. “UA is officially the most batshit insane school in the world.”

`~`

It’s only been five minutes in the ruins zone of the USJ, but a number of the villains are either already knocked out or are running away in fear. What’s causing this fear in the criminals who were so confident in accepting the job of assaulting one of the top hero schools in Japan?

Boom! “DIE, FUCKERS!”

Crack-Zap! “My l-e-e-e-e-e-g!”

A spiky haired blonde boy telling them all to die while slamming explosions into them and a black haired girl in a red outfit smiling widely while slamming electric tonfas into them hard enough to break bones. A few of the villains look tearfully at the shirtless red headed boy, the orange haired girl in a qipao, and the boy in sparkling armor in the hopes of one of them stopping the rampage, but they all just look away awkwardly.

Sure, they’re villains who decided to attack them at school, but isn’t making them piss themselves and run away in terror a bit much…? That collectively sums up the three’s thoughts on the situation, who don’t believe that the villains would have actually been aiming to kill them. They’re just too… pathetic, for that? At least that’s what it seems like given the current situation.

Ignoring the silent objections of their fellow students and the not so silent pleas for mercy or mothers from the villains, Yui Kodai and Katsuki Bakugou continue their rampage through the villain ranks.

`~`

Fumikage is of the firm belief that the villains failed to plan adequately for their foray into crime this day, for they sent him, of all people, to the storm zone. The storm zone is shrouded in rain and darkness, empowering his sister and aiding him in becoming one with the shadows, preventing the mass of villains from targeting him. This is especially helpful for him since it allows him to stand guard for the ten other students who were abandoned to this den of darkness alongside him. Meanwhile Maleficent is using her expanded reach to silently take out the villains she can and intimidating those she can’t to get them to scatter, then remove their threat.

Ideally the students in the building behind him would aid his sister in her goal, but it is a difficult thing, to embrace the benefits of the abyss rather than fight against it. To venture forth when simply standing their ground can accomplish their goal. Though there is one who is, perhaps, even more within the dark than him and his sibling.

Fumikage gives a nod of greeting to Kuroiro as he returns from his own excursion, traveling within the darkness within the darkness to avoid foes so that he might rest. His 1-B counterpart returns the silent greeting before separating from the shadows and walking into the building where he is bombarded with questions by the residents.

`~`

Hitoshi wants his money back. UA is a hero school, which does come with the implication that villains will want to target the school to prevent more heroes from coming into the job. Admittedly most would be aiming to destroy the school instead of killing a bunch of kids, but villains are more dangerous nowadays than in the past. But UA is supposed to have a great security system so even if someone does attack, it would be stopped at the wall and not put the students in any danger! So can someone explain to him why villains are not only deep into UA grounds, actively trying to kill them, but that one of their hero teachers is unconscious and the other is working to tend to their injuries!?

Use the money from their enrollment to invest in a better security system, damn it!

The villain left after warping a ton of the students to different locations that he’s assuming is somewhere in the USJ, given the fact that Hitoshi doubts they’d want to run the risk of word of the attack getting out. This theory is supported by the fact that one of the warp portals appeared above the plaza and dropped half a dozen students into the melee between the villains, Eraserhead, and Stendhal. He wants to go down to help, but he’s helping guard the people up here at the top of the stairs from villains that might come from the warp blocking the exit or from the plaza.

He only hopes that everyone makes it out of this without too many injuries.

`~`

There are times that Eraserhead wishes he had quit working at UA when he had the chance. Then something happens that makes him glad that he decided to stick around, like that time Nezu gave everyone a Christmas bonus large enough to buy a decent house. Or right now, where he can help protect kids from psychopath villains.

“Fucking insane fuck-nuggets!”

…The sight of Uraraka beating a motherfucker with another motherfucker is something he is very happy to see, though he would still rather that the students were out of danger.

“Aim for the tendons if you want to disable but not cripple,” Stendhal lectures another student with an insect mutation and a quirk that lets him make blades from his body. The man himself doesn’t pay attention to his own advice, almost casually cutting arms and legs from bodies with a complete disregard for what their lives will be like after they’re arrested.

As he once said: “Stains will remain stains, regardless of how much they stand out, so why bother trying to be careful with them?”

He really doesn’t like the man, but he can’t really argue with his methods in this situation since the villains decided that killing kids is ok. So fuck ‘em.

They’re making steady progress through the low-level villains, which is enough for alarm bells to go off in the Underground hero’s head. Villains who came here to kill the Symbol of Peace (ignore the fact that he’s officially only a guest lecturer, stupid media sensationalists…) wouldn’t be so easy to take down. Especially if they have a warp quirk on their side. Hell, half of the villains are barely more competent than the students! No, something’s not right here.

His instincts are proven right when the pale-haired man in a black shirt and pants with hands gripping his arms and blocking his face scratches his neck in a bored manner before turning to the warper. “I think this is enough of a tutorial. Kurogiri, it’s time to start the actual game.”

Let's be honest, we've all wanted to see Uraraka grab someone by the leg and beat someone else with that person.