For a moment, everything stilled.
The mist parted just enough to reveal the next villain's silhouette—a tall, wiry figure with glassy eyes and twitching fingers, standing ankle-deep in the artificial tide. He looked half-feral.
"Too many," Momo murmured, breath shallow. "We can't fight all of them if they regroup."
Izuku opened his mouth to reply—
But the villain struck first.
He raised both hands, and the water obeyed.
It wasn't graceful. It didn't surge like a wave or spiral with beauty.
It slammed upward, grotesque and violent, like a hand trying to grab them.
In an instant, they were both submerged.
The force knocked Momo off her feet. Izuku tried to hold his breath, but the weight and shock choked his lungs. His limbs flailed, the cold pressure folding around his ribs like iron bands.
No spell would form.
His eyes burned.
He saw Momo reaching for him, panicked, her creation fizzing uselessly in the water. She was trying to make something—anything—but the liquid scattered her biomaterial mid-formation.
She couldn't do it.
Not here.
He had to.
Somewhere between the panic and pain, the magic inside him ignited.
It wasn't a chant.
It wasn't a spell circle.
It was instinct. Emotion. Desperation.
His fingertips sparked again—but brighter, more violently.
Red and green. Not in balance now. Not restrained.
He reached out through the water—not physically, but magically.
Repel.
The single word bloomed in his mind like a scream.
The water shattered away from them.
A violent burst of steam erupted where the spell made contact—boiling mist rising with a hiss. The two of them hit the surface hard, coughing, gasping, sputtering as air returned to their lungs.
The villain stumbled backward, clutching his head in shock. The water stilled.
"I—" Izuku gasped, on one knee. "I didn't… mean to push that hard—"
Momo grabbed his shoulder, stabilizing them both. "It's okay. We're alive. That's what matters."
He nodded, barely able to speak, but Momo caught the shimmer still flickering faintly over his fingers.
The magic was changing.
Becoming something more. Something wilder.
Elsewhere in the USJ
Landslide Zone
Iida's glasses were cracked, but he didn't stop running.
The rocky terrain shifted beneath him as a villain with stone-manipulating boots chased from above, gleefully tossing jagged boulders in his path.
Iida's voice boomed over the chaos: "Retreat in formation! Help the injured! Regroup!"
But the villain didn't care about rules.
He cared about blood.
Behind Iida, two other students scrambled up a slope, covered in dust and panic.
Burn Zone
Kirishima and Kaminari ducked behind melted debris, breathing hard.
"We're getting cooked alive!" Kaminari yelled.
"No—someone's got to be worse than us right now," Kirishima replied, half-laughing, half-panicked.
A villain with fire streaming from his arms stalked the perimeter, muttering about "purity" and "cleansing flames." His steps were slow—deliberate.
A rumble echoed as something huge crashed through a wall nearby.
Both boys flinched.
"That wasn't fire," Kirishima said, voice tight. "That was something bigger."
Mountain Zone
Yaoyorozu's voice crackled faintly through a communicator someone had managed to keep.
"We need to pull back. I repeat—do not engage directly unless you have no choice. There's a pattern here. They're not just trying to scatter us—they're dividing us to study us."
The communicator buzzed, then cut.
Scene 7 – Water Zone, Reeling
Back in the water zone, Izuku and Momo collapsed behind a half-submerged crate.
Villains still lingered on the far side of the shipwreck, but none dared approach after the magical burst.
Momo pressed a cloth from her belt kit to Izuku's forehead.
"You overdid it again."
"I know," he groaned. "But we're not dead."
She smiled faintly. "Well, that's improvement."
Izuku sat up slowly, wincing. He stared at the fading marks of magic on his hands—his veins still glowing faintly under the skin, like rivers beneath frost.
Something was calling to him.
He didn't know what.
But he knew this much:
That thing from before—the force behind the portal… and the Nomu…
It wasn't just villain tech.
It was magic.
Dark magic.
And it was watching.
Third POV
Kurogiri stood still, composed as ever, the vortex that made up his form pulsing softly at the edges. His golden eyes gleamed from within the mist, tracking student movements.
"They're scattering slower than anticipated," he said with a hint of displeasure.
Behind him, Shigaraki crouched low by a broken terminal, scratching at his neck with uneven, impatient fingers. His red eyes flicked with irritation, bouncing from monitor to monitor.
"Too many variables," Shigaraki hissed. "That's what's wrong with this. They're not stupid. And that Eraserhead guy is more of a problem than you said."
"We accounted for Pro Heroes interfering," Kurogiri replied. "But not the students adapting this quickly."
Shigaraki growled, then stopped mid-motion, hand hovering inches from the terminal.
A deep, low growl vibrated through the floor.
Something moved beyond the smoke-choked catwalk below them.
Nomu.
The creature's massive silhouette prowled silently just beneath the broken platform, bone and sinew flexing under unnatural pressure. Its brain pulsed wetly, exposed and slightly glowing with a subtle red shimmer.
"Still obedient," Kurogiri noted calmly. "But there is a fluctuation in the aura surrounding it."
Shigaraki twitched. "What does that mean?"
"It's… reacting to something. Or someone. Not a Quirk."
Kurogiri turned, slowly.
"Almost like resonance."
"Don't give me riddles," Shigaraki snapped. "Can it still kill All Might?"
"It will," Kurogiri said with certainty. "It was made for that."
Shigaraki glanced back down to the battlefield with a childlike pout twisting across his lips.