Chapter Text
As always, Natsuki Subaru just wasn’t fast enough.
He should have trusted his instincts and started running the second that familiar, foreboding feeling hit his gut. Something had started to feel wrong as soon as they’d cleared Pleiades Watchtower, but naturally, he’d ignored it like a fucking idiot. Great job, Subaru. You’d really think he’d be better at avoiding certain death at this point, what with all of the dying Subaru did, but nope.
Then again, up until this point Subaru had been too busy avoiding a different certain death to worry about this one. But that wasn’t important—right now, he had to get Ram, Rem, Beatrice, and Patrasche out of here.
And that was going to be pretty difficult because all of them were in varying states of injury, and Subaru himself was barely better off.
“Patrasche,” Subaru called, “take Ram!”
“Barasu? What are hell are you—”
Subaru picked up the injured, pink-haired oni and heaved her towards the Green Room’s entrance with all of his might. Being the best dragon ever, Partasche received Ram smoothly on her back before turning on her heel and dashing away out the doorway at top speed.
Subaru forced his exhausted body into overdrive, sprinting to grab a comatose, feather-light Rem off her ivy bed with one arm and lift a drained Beako up with the other. If only he could make it to the exit—
And then it appeared. A black, ethereal shadow emerged out of the Green Room’s floor like an inky mass of death and destruction, creeping towards them with terrifying, single-minded focus.
“Damn it!” Subaru hissed. “Even though I made it this far!”
The immense darkness flowed in from every direction, swallowing up the grass and leaves like a flood of silky oil. Subaru’s teeth ground together as it lapped against his legs and licked up towards his face. Rem and Beako vanished into a formless void within moments—which was darkly ironic in a way Subaru didn’t appreciate.
Purple fuzzed at the edges of his vision, and then he couldn’t see anything at all.
It was too familiar. It was too strong. It was too late.
He hated this, being so fucking helpless. Despised it. If he could see his fingers, he’d see them gone white with the strain of how hard he was clenching them.
Subaru couldn’t get out of this.
All he could do was clutch the two girls tight to him as the ground faded away beneath his feet and his consciousness swirled off into nothingness.
“Mmm...”
The first thing Subaru registered as he came to was that his entire body was aching and sore. Then he registered the sunlight pressing against his heavy eyelids, blooming an unwelcome orange. And then he noticed that whatever he was lying down on was hard and not comfortable at all, wow, what was he thinking, seriously, sleeping in a place like this—
Wait, sunlight?
Subaru blinked his eyes open to see sheer walls of rock and, in between them, a bright blue hole in the sky. The rock looked tall, and far away—was Subaru in some sort of mountain range? Was this what mountain ranges looked like? That would explain the new ache in his back, ouch. Subaru was never a fan of sleeping outside.
Except last Subaru checked, he’d not been sleeping outside. He’d… been in the Pleiades Watchtower, trying not to let anyone die. And then… she showed up.
Subaru writhed, looking around desperately for someone—anyone. He’d been carrying Beako and Rem when the shadow came—that’s what’d brought him here, right? So Rem and Beako should be nearby.
And nearby they were, lying on the rock. So they’d been warped here with Subaru— here being in the middle of a maybe-mountain range of some sort. Weird, but not Subaru’s priority.
Beako was curled into his side, a frown on her little sleeping face. Her red dress was dusty from the battle he had put her through and she still looked like she could use some more mana, but otherwise she seemed fine.
Rem was unconscious, of course, just like she had been for over a year. Her expression was calm and peaceful like the sleeping beauty she was, and her bright pink cloak was still firmly tied around her.
Relief hit like morphine. Subaru’s hands shook with it. He exhaled and squeezed his eyes shut and bit the inside of his cheek until adrenaline sharpened his senses once again.
Subaru sat up. The big rock they were on was craggy but flat and tilted a little bit down towards a crevice. Whoa. It looked pretty deep—vertigo and the completely normal but also debilitating terror of heights hit Subaru hard, and he braced himself with his hands even though he probably wasn’t in immediate danger of tumbling down and falling.
Carefully he took a few deep breaths and looked around further. More rocks jutted up around them. Their shape of them was blatantly unnatural and bluntly challenging. Ominous, right? Subaru would rather not wander through those.
But unless someone was hiding in the rocks—or in the crevice beneath them—they were alone.
Subaru poked Beako’s cheek. Nothing happened. He poked her again, and again, softly at first and then more insistently until she finally stirred.
The small spirit batted at Subaru’s hand and mumbled incoherently. Adorable. A pang of guilt hit Subaru almost immediately at having to wake her up—she was obviously still low on mana—but there was just no way he could do this without her. Besides, Beako liked it when Subaru relied on her!
“...W-What is it, in fact?” Beako sat up, rubbing her eyes.
“Morning, Beako!” Subaru chirped. He flourished his hands toward their strange surroundings. “Looks like we’ve done some fast-traveling in our sleep! You O.K.?”
Beako bobbed her head, long-used to his strange expressions. “Yes, we’ve been teleported quite far from the Watchtower, it seems…” she mumbled, clearly still out of it. Then something shifted. “How strange,” she said, abruptly much more alert. “I can’t sense any trace of Patrasche or Ram.”
“Well, that’s not good.” Subaru hid a wince. He looked around again, back up to that odd blue sky. “We went all the way from a desert to some kind of mountain place—weird. Do you think we can portal back?”
“I’m not sure,” Beako admitted, holding her palm up to him. Subaru took it automatically and flowed a steady stream of his mana through their interconnected hands, recharging Beako’s batteries.
“How exactly did we even get here, Subaru?”
“...The tower’s final obstacle,” Subaru answered after a beat. “An overwhelming shadow. I couldn’t get us out in time and it kinda uh, yeeted us all the way over here.”
Beako huffed. “So you aren’t going to tell me what it actually was, I suppose?”
“Aw, Beako, I’d never lie to you!” Subaru deflected, shoving down his existential fear with practiced ease. “You’re being too cruel to your doting father.”
Beako’s look told him that she didn’t consider that worth acknowledging. “That’s alright, in fact. I trust Betty’s Subaru.” Then she glanced down at the comatose blue-haired girl. “And the little sister is here too, hm. How is your condition?”
“I’m in tip-top shape, actually!”
Beako gave Subaru a once-over with narrowed eyes.
Subaru gasped at her clear suspicion, clutching at his heart. “I can’t believe that my adorable Beako’s so quick to doubt me! Oh, what sort of father am I?!”
“Betty is hundreds of years older than her Subaru,” Beako reminded him. “And Betty knows very well that her contractor doesn’t always take good enough care of himself.”
“Well, I’m honestly pretty tired right now,” Subaru admitted. “Probably overused my awesome abilities a bit. But it’s nothing some good rest won’t fix!”
“Hmm, you do seem relatively uninjured—that’s good, I suppose.” Beako blinked. “That said, the mana around here… it’s odd.”
“Odd?” Subaru squinted at the air as if he could see the energy himself if he tried hard enough. “How so?”
“Betty is not sure, I suppose,” Beako replied vaguely. “I just know that it’s nothing like anything I’ve seen before.”
That whole thing was concerning, but there was nothing to be done about it at the moment. Subaru had lots of experience suddenly showing up in strange places, so he knew that the best possible course of action at the moment was to get more information.
Subaru slung Rem over his shoulder, and they started walking.
The further they went, the less made sense. First of all, there was a very conveniently placed path right next to their boulder, which Subaru was pretty sure wasn’t standard for mountains.
Sure, Subaru wasn’t super experienced with mountains, but he’d hiked a few with his family back in Japan and he was also pretty certain they weren’t supposed to be so steep and jagged and treeless. And they definitely weren’t supposed to have a glass ceiling.
But, as was soon obvious, there was a glass ceiling. A glass dome ceiling. That wasn’t normal for mountains or for Lugunica, as far as Subaru was aware.
Not only was there a glass ceiling, yet there was also a huge, man-made plaza stretching out in front of them. It was surrounded by more of those almost mountains and looked almost like it was made of plastic. This was also not normal at all. Seriously, what the hell?
“Beako, I think—”
He was cut off by loud footsteps. Subaru whirled around to see two men approaching them from a different path through the mountains, wearing matching grins.
“Hey there, kiddos,” said one of the men, all rough purr and swagger. “Looks like you’re here like they said...” Then his eyes landed on Beako and narrowed. “Wait a minute, aren’t you a bit too young to be a student here?”
“Why are your arms flamethrowers?” Subaru asked politely, instead of letting Beako answer the man’s question.
Indeed, where the man’s forearms should be, there were instead two small flamethrowers. They seemed to be a part of his body, somehow—fully intact with a nozzle, igniter, and gas can.
It was one of the most bizarre things Subaru had ever seen—and since being isekaied he’d definitely seen some wild shit.
Flamethrower Man raised his strange, weapon-like arms up proudly. “You like my torches, huh? My quirk, Flamethrower, is so badass!”
“...That’s a lot more than just a quirk, dude,” Subaru stated, utterly baffled. What even was this day?
The other man gave his partner an annoyed look. He looked like a demi-human—tall, with the head and claws of a grizzly bear. “There’s no need to talk to the kids, man. Let’s just kill all three of them and get this over with.”
Flamethrower Man rubbed the back of his head—which looked both uncomfortable and dangerous, considering that he was a literal fire hazard. “Yeah, yeah,” Flamethrower Man grumbled, “whatever.”
Abruptly he aimed his arms at them, and Subaru’s eyes went wide.
“Sorry about this, kiddos—it’s nothing personal!”
Subaru pulled Beako to the side just as a large jet of flame scorched the ground where they stood. So those things were perfectly functional, then. Subaru had thought that was the case—because yeah, why else would someone have flamethrower arms—but still, what the fuck?
Flamethrower Man laughed. “Oh, we have an agile one!”
Defensive maneuvers!
“Beako, make us weightless!”
Beako threw out her hand. “Murak, in fact!”
The Yin spell activated instantly, and Subaru, Beako, and Rem sprung high into the air to dodge the next fire blast. Mid-air, Subaru carefully shifted Rem’s weight on his shoulder so that she wouldn’t fall off and reached for the whip strapped to his side.
Flamethrower Man tilted his nozzles up, but before he could fire again Guiltywhip snapped down towards his forehead and connected with a sharp crack. His eyes rolled up in his head as he fell backward, unconscious.
Wow, it’d been ages since someone Subaru had fought went down that easily.
Bear Man was a little sharper, dodging Subaru’s awesome whip strikes as best as he could and blocking the ones he couldn’t with his weird bear arms. But it turned out that their power was just too un-bear-able for the man and with a quick Minya from Beako, Bear Man was knocked out and lying next to his partner.
After a few more moments of hanging in the air to make sure both enemies were done, Subaru and Beako touched down lightly to the ground.
Subaru stared at the two unconscious people for a moment, his eyes lingering on the one with fucking flamethrowers for arms. Then he turned to his pseudo-daughter-spirit.
There was only one conclusion here.
“...Beako,” he said slowly, “I think we’ve been isekai-ed.”
Beako did not look enlightened at all. “What does that even mean, I suppose—”
She was cut off by a shout. Subaru’s gaze snapped up to see a person scrambling over one of those sharp almost-mountain peaks, approaching them fast. Then more motion caught Subaru’s eye—another person, on another peak. And another person, and another, and another, approaching Subaru, Beako, and Rem from every angle.
Within seconds they were completely surrounded. Fuck.
Subaru was starting to think that he wouldn’t like this new world very much.
A few of the people seemed like demi-humans, wielding animal features and limbs. Yet some were like Flamethrower Man—having actual Earth technology literally built into their bodies.
And plenty of others were something else altogether. There was a woman with an extra arm coming out of her stomach, a guy with lasers shooting out of his eyes, and another guy who had two yellow fireballs burning in his hands. That last one would be explainable, at least, if only for the fact that there wasn’t a hint of mana coming off him.
“Oi, oi. I think we just jumped genres from fantasy to superpower...” Subaru muttered aloud.
“Those are the kids we need to kill, right?” someone asked from the crowd. “Ha! One of them isn’t even conscious, the girl’s just a child, and the guy looks weak as fuck. This’ll be easy!”
Subaru coughed. “Well that’s just rude, isn’t it?! I don’t even look that weak!”
A man with a skull mask walked out in front of the rest of the group, clad in a dark-green bodysuit that really wasn’t doing him any favors. From the way everyone around him moved out of his way, he was probably the leader of this merry gang. “Hate to break it to you, kid, but you totally do.”
He paused and glanced at the two enemies laid out on the ground. Sounding grudgingly impressed, he continued, “But you did take out these two, I’ll give you that.”
Subaru tightened his grip on Guiltywhip. “Why exactly are you all trying to kill us?”
“My team’s orders are to kill every one of the students in this zone,” the man replied. “We’re all going to get paid a pretty penny when this little plan works out, you see.”
“Students?” Beako repeated. “So this is some kind of academy, in fact?”
“‘Course it is. You trying to play dumb or something, girlie?”
“We never play at being dumb,” Subaru said, making his voice as scathing as he could.
The man paused for a moment, obviously trying to figure out whether Subaru had just insulted himself and Beako on purpose. And in that breath of hesitation, Subaru took his chance.
“Shamak!”
The entire area exploded into black smoke, enveloping it in darkness. The spell robbed their opponents of their spatial awareness too, leaving all of them blind and senseless. Lasers, electricity, and fire blasted out wildly, coming nowhere near Subaru and Beako’s position.
And while every enemy was completely helpless, they struck. Screams fell on deaf ears as Subaru took the enemies all out with quick lashes of his whip and Beako’s purple projectiles.
Subaru wiped away a bead of sweat from his forehead as the skull-masked leader finally collapsed, little bits of lightning still crackling between the man’s fingers. The smokescreen slowly dissipated to reveal almost a dozen unconscious humans around them.
Shamak-san was the best!
“How’re we doing on mana, Beako?”
“...I have a decent amount left, I suppose,” Beako replied after a moment. “But Betty’s Subaru isn’t in any shape to provide much more—we need to be careful with what we have, in fact.”
Subaru nodded. “Then we should really get out of here before the next wave shows up.” He turned to go.
And then, since the universe clearly loved to fuck with him, a portal immediately opened up a few meters away. It was colored dark purple, a couple of shades lighter than her shadow. Subaru shifted his stance and prepared himself to face more enemies.
But instead of more adult threats, it was three teenagers who tumbled out of the misty gate. They fell to the ground in a disoriented heap, eyes wide, and the portal quickly closed behind them.
The tall, black-haired girl got her wits first, then the purple-haired girl with strange, long earlobes, and finally the blonde guy with a lightning bolt running through his hair. They were all wearing wacky costumes that somehow also seemed battle-proof—except the black-haired one, who was literally only wearing a leotard. A leotard with an uncomfortable amount of holes in it.
They seemed young, or at least younger than Subaru. They also looked unprepared. These were probably the students that all of those guys were sent here to kill, right?
The students looked around as one, visibly startled by the large number of unconscious bodies around them. Then they saw Subaru and their postures turned wary.
“Hello!” Subaru almost waved, but he realized just in time that he was holding a loli and a whip. Instead, he just tried to smile as non-threateningly as possible. “You guys are students here, right?”
The black-haired girl straightened up. “Yes, we are. Are you a villain?”
Villains, huh? That confirmed the genre shift.
“Nope!” Subaru answered cheerfully. “I’m just an ordinary guy passing through. Name’s Natsuki Subaru, and this here’s my adorable daughter, Beako!”
“...My name is Yaoyorozu Momo, and this is Jirou Kyoka and Kaminari Denki.” The black-haired girl in the scandalous leotard gestured to her two companions in turn. Her voice was sharp. “If you aren’t a villain, then why are you trespassing on a secure training facility? During an active attack on our school, no less.”
Subaru scratched the back of his head. “When you put it like that, it is pretty suspicious, huh?” Luckily, Subaru had lots of experience being suspicious! “So we were just minding our own business when boom, we suddenly ended up here with all of these villains. They thought we were students and tried to kill us—crazy, right? We don’t even look like we’re your age!—so we beat all of ‘em up.”
The purple-haired girl, Jirou somehow managed to look judgemental and skeptical at the same time. “You mean two beat up all of these villains? Really?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“No offense, dude, but you look super weak,” said Jirou bluntly. Wow. “And you’re literally carrying an unconscious girl—what’s with that, by the way?”
“Jirou-san!” Yaoyorozu admonished. “You can’t just say things like that about people!”
“Sorry, Mom.” Jirou rolled her eyes but didn’t seem too chastised.
Aw, these kids were kinda cute! “We’re a lot stronger than we look, you know.” Subaru glanced at Rem, then, and smiled through the familiar guilt that churned in his stomach. “And this is Rem.”
He did not elaborate.
Beako broke the following silence with a huff. “If the introductions are all over and done with, then we should be on our way, in fact. If there were this many enemies here, then there might be dozens more threatening the rest of your class.”
Yaoyorozu’s eyes widened. “Oh, you’re right! We need to hurry and go help Aizawa-sensei—he was facing all of those villains alone when that warp villain teleported us away!”
The blonde boy, Kaminari, hesitated. “...Are you sure, Yaoyorozu? We don’t really have the experience to help him against that army. And the hand guy and giant bird villain seem super strong! What if we just get in his way?”
Beako squeezed his hand. Subaru looked down to see her staring up at him with her please don’t do something stupid face. She had that expression on a lot.
Jirou shook her head. “Denki, Aizawa-sensei could die if we don’t do something. All contact was cut off and everything—what if the pros don’t get here in time?”
Subaru sent Beako his best pleading glance, and her pink butterfly eyes twitched.
“It will be dangerous,” Yaoyorozu said stoically.
Subaru gestured at her desperately.
Yaoyorozu didn’t seem to notice, continuing with the slightest bit of a tremble in her voice. “But we need to at least check—”
“Alright, fine !” Beako finally broke with a shout. “We’ll help the little humans, I suppose!”
“Yes!” Subaru exclaimed. The only reason he resisted the urge to spin her in circles was that Rem was still on his shoulder. “Thanks, Beako! You’re the best!”
“...I already know that, in fact.”
Subaru turned to the confused trio with a beaming grin. “We’re going to help you save your Sensei.”
Yaoyorozu blinked owlishly. “...We would be very grateful for the assistance, but why? According to your story, you’re just a bystander.”
Subaru struck a cool pose. “Being a bystander and doing nothing makes you complicit in the crime!” he claimed. “There’s just no way I’m letting some kids die on my watch!”
“That line sounded cool, but you still look lame,” Jirou muttered. Subaru pretended that he couldn’t hear her.
“Betty’s Subaru is too kind for his own good,” Beako complained with a heavy sigh, but Subaru couldn’t help but notice that she was the first to set off towards the Sensei in distress. Man, Beako was the best.
They made their way out of the mountain zone, stealthily approaching the main plaza. Well, Subaru, Beako, Yaoyorozu, and Jirou were stealthy, while Kaminari was constantly in danger of face planting into the ground. Poor guy.
It didn’t take too long to get there—the students seemed to know where they were doing, and Subaru pretty quickly caught on that they were heading towards the sound of screaming.
But by the time they’d made it to the main plaza—and the junctions of the other sections of this place, apparently—the screaming had stopped.
And the sight that met them wasn’t pretty.
At the center of it all was a tall, hulking bird-man with inky black skin and an arm thicker than Subaru’s head. The birdman was pressing a man’s face into the ground, his palm so large that it almost entirely covered the man’s dusty black hair. A trail of blood was trickling steadily down the man’s face.
From the way Yaoyorozu’s hands leaped to her mouth, that was probably their Aizawa-sensei.
Behind the two was a man with extremely pale skin and light blue hair. By the way he was literally covered in severed hands and cackling at the fallen hero like a lame cliche, he was probably the asshole leading this whole attack.
After a closer look, Subaru realized that there were three more students hidden on the other side of the plaza—a frog-like girl, a boy with broccoli-like hair, and a short kid with balls for hair.
Hmm.
“Right, kiddos, so here’s the plan,” Subaru whispered decisively. “Me and Beako’ll distract the head honchos over there with our joint power, and in the meantime, you three need to meet up with your friends and get Rem and get your Sensei outta here.”
“But that leaves you to face the two main villains!” Kaminari protested. “And shouldn’t we take the kid with us, too? She’s like eight!”
“Beako isn’t a child, in fact,” Beako retorted sharply.
“What—”
“Don’t worry about us.” Subaru cut Kaminari off by forcibly placing Rem in his arms. “I told you that we’re a lot stronger than we look,” he continued, bulldozing over Kaminari’s stuttering and fumbling. “And your reinforcements are going to get here soon, right?”
Yaoyorozu bit her lip and nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
“Then we just need to hold out until then. But if we don’t get your Sensei out now, he could be seriously injured,” Subaru pushed. “We can’t just watch.”
Yaoyorozu visibly waffled.
Subaru eyed her for a moment, then uncoiled his whip from where he’d placed it on his belt. “I know I don’t look like much, but I have combat experience. Way more than I could ever want. And Beako’s really strong, too.”
He gave her another smile—smaller, this time, more genuine.
“Trust me, Yaoyorozu. I won’t let anyone get too hurt.”
“Minya!”
A purple crystal streaked through the sky, straight for the main asshole.
The massive birdman noticed just in time, stepping in front of his boss to take the blow. The attack stabbed clean through the thing’s arm, but then it simply tore the projectile out and healed back to normal within seconds.
Strong, fast, and regenerative—a nasty combo.
The main asshole’s head whipped to the side, registering the near miss a beat late. “Huh? Who the fuck did that?!”
On cue, Subaru and Beako touched down to the ground in front of him. Subaru smirked.
“Us, actually! Hey there—you’re the guy behind this whole thing, right? We'd like a word.”
“More NPCS?” the asshole muttered, scratching at his neck. “Tsk. Where’d you two even come from?”
“What?” Subaru recoiled, offended. “We’re not NPCs! If anything, you’re the NPC here. Tell him, Beako!”
Beako, who had no idea what an NPC was, bellowed, “That’s right, in fact!”
“Wh—How fucking dare you! I’m Player One here, bitch!”
Subaru laughed. “Really? C’mon man, you look like the lame tutorial boss that gives you a bunch of free rewards! Like, you’re literally wearing a bunch of hands right now. That just screams handouts! ”
The supervillain screeched, unable to resist Subaru's time-honed ability to incite homicidal rage. “Nomu, kill them!”
Nomu blurred into action. Beako clenched her hand around Subaru’s and they leaped, rising high into the air as its fist crashed down into cement. The impact was loud enough to shake the ground and send rubble flying out in every direction.
Subaru and Beako landed, still almost completely weightless, just in time for Subaru to scoop Beako up completely and drive out of the way of another supersonic strike. They sidestepped another, then another, and then another, playing a desperate game of keep-away with all and none of the normal stakes. Why was that thing so fast?
“Minya!”
Three shards shot forward, piercing the monster’s legs and chest all the way through—only for it to recover from the wounds almost instantly.
“It’s useless, you dumbass!” Handout taunted, like the classic tutorial villain he totally was. “My S Tier summon was created to kill All Might himself—none of your weak attacks are going to even faze it!”
Subaru twisted out of the way of a terrifying grab, firing another Minya straight into Nomu’s exposed brain. It didn’t go down straight away but did waver and pause—so that bought them five seconds, at least, before it was at them again. Damn it, it was healing even quicker than Elsa!
Subaru grit his teeth. Minya wasn’t doing any lasting damage, and the moment they ran out of mana Nomu would catch up and smash them to pieces. It was way too risky to go for an EMM, and none of their spells would work on this thing. Well, none of them except—
“El Shamak!” Subaru and Beako shouted together, feeling a decent amount of their mana drain away.
A mass of shadowy mist shot towards their hulking opponent, exploding on impact and flooding the arena with darkness. Unlike normal Shamak-san, this buffed variation froze every enemy in their tracks, leaving them completely paralyzed for a single, vital second.
Subaru and Beako fired Two Minyas.
The first purple stake struck Handout’s… hands—except it didn’t hit it at all, somehow, because the blast vanished and Handout’s handy hands were left as whole and handsome as ever.
The second purple stake, though, landed a clean cut on Handout’s thigh. The dark mist shivered away as the villain fell to the ground with a harsh scream, the severed hand on his face falling off to reveal angry red eyes and ugly chapped lips.
His crimson blood stained the plaza cement, and the Nomu stayed frozen in place, order forgotten.
Subaru bared his teeth in a grin. “Gotcha.”
Handout struggled to push himself to his feet. Strangely enough, the terrain around his hands seemed to fall and bend and melt where he placed them like he was sinking his hands through cobwebs. No, not that—the ground was disintegrating in front of Subaru’s eyes, crumbling into ashy dust.
Ah. That must be his superpower. Not the scariest ability Subaru’d ever seen, but definitely up there.
Subaru stepped forward to knock him out, and—
The same portal from earlier swirled into existence, but this time it remained in place as some kind of sentient, black mass. When Subaru looked closer he realized that it had two yellow slants for eyes, and a glint of metal hidden within— the warp villain that Yaoyorozu mentioned.
“Shigaraki Tomura,” the strange portal thing called. “I have scattered the students—”
It suddenly froze, realizing that the guy it was looking for was, in fact, writhing on the ground and brutally injured.
“Kurogiri,” Shigaraki rasped, one hand covering his bleeding leg. His ability didn’t seem to work on himself. “Is Thirteen dead yet?”
“...No,” Kurogiri responded after a beat. “I destroyed her suit and left her heavily damaged. However, a boy managed to escape—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Shigaraki’s voice breaks with his screech—wow, he’s infuriated. “I do all this work with a bunch of cannon-fodder NPCs and then it turns out that All Might doesn’t show up and my supposedly OP summon can’t even kill two annoying little brats—”
“Oi, I’m 18,” Subaru interjected, his voice cracking awkwardly.
“And if anyone is a brat it’s you, in fact!” Beako huffed.
“—and it turns out that you can’t even do your one, simple job properly either!” Shigaraki ranted. “If you weren’t my ticket home I’d have turned you to dust, Kurogiri! I’m bleeding out here, and you’re being completely useless!”
While they were distracted, Subaru and Beako fired off a purple crystal straight at the villain's face. Was it rude? Sure. Did it matter when that guy was actively trying to murder them? Nope. Chivalry was stupid and Subaru didn’t care what Julius said.
Unfortunately, Kurogiri managed to catch the attack with a portal just in time, and their sneak attack only made Shigaraki even angrier.
“You toxic, shitty excuse for a hero! I was paused! You can’t attack someone in time-out!” Shigaraki furiously scratched at his neck. “That’s it, fuck you two! I’m going to go kill every one of those shitty hero students and then, maybe you’ll see who you’re really dealing with—”
Shigaraki turned around to see an empty plaza.
“...huh? Where’d—?”
He finally looked to the steps, where a growing group of students was escaping. Yaoyorozu was at the front, organizing and leading everyone out of the gate. Aizawa-sensei was being carried by the broccoli one and a guy with spiky red hair, and Rem was held carefully in Kaminari’s arms. Every one of the fodder villains was already unconscious.
“They were stalling!” Shigaraki howled. “Kurogiri, stop them!”
Before they could do anything the villain vanished, reappearing to cut off the student’s path. The portal villain towered over the class to warp them off again.
And then the gate burst open and a booming laugh filled the entire plaza.
A man stepped into the USJ; tall, blonde, incredibly buff, and dressed in an iconic red, blue, and yellow. His very presence made Kurogiri freeze in place and instantly calmed down the terrified teenagers.
Ah, Subaru instantly realized, that must be this world’s Reinhard. Always arriving just in time.
Kurogiri was down in a single punch. One second the villain was completely fine—the next, the hidden metal part of the villain was smashed into the ground and wind was sweeping up from the force of the blow.
Powerful blue eyes then scanned the rest of the USJ and saw the odd group left in the center— Subaru, Beako, Shigaraki, and the Nomu—and appeared in front of them in a blink.
Shigaraki, still on the ground and clearly insane, cackled up at the new arrival. “Haha! Finally, a Continue! Nomu, kill him!”
The Nomu blurred toward the blonde hero.
What followed was an amazing, drawn-out battle as both powerhouses went head-to-head. Subaru held onto Beako’s hand tight as the two fought. Each blow was faster than the human eye could catch and powerful enough to topple buildings, shaking the ground beneath their feet.
The hero weaved through a storm of inky black fists, throwing his own barrage into the monster’s chest. It barely stumbled before charging back in.
They both seemed evenly matched, despite the blonde’s clear power advantage. It was—well, it would be awe-inspiring, if Subaru hadn’t already met Reinhard.
Shigaraki looked pretty inspired, though. “Nomu was created to beat you, All Might!” he crowed with a laugh. “His Shock Absorption means that you’re famous punches won’t do a thing!”
Subaru blinked. Oh, man. Did Shigaraki seriously just reveal his secret weapon’s secret?
All Might grinned. “I see, that’s certainly impressive! However, his quirk is shock absorption, not shock nullification, yes? That means that there must be a limit!”
The barrage of blows got faster and faster, red and blue blurring together to completely overwhelm the birdman. Soon Nomu’s impact resistance was nullified and with a final, victorious shout All Might uppercut it into the sky. The Nomu crashed through the glass ceiling and pierced the clouds, streaking higher and higher until it was out of sight.
Holy shit.
All Might looked down at Shigaraki, steam literally rising off of his shoulders. Shigaraki looked back, stunned, like a deer-in-headlights. All Might stepped forward and knocked him out with a chop to the neck. Then he turned to Subaru and Beako, who were both still staring at him.
Subaru immediately held up his hands in surrender, raising Beako’s in the process.
“We’re not villains, man! Please don’t punch us into the sky!”