Chapter 18: Inverse Gravity and The Touch of Decay
The wind at the summit of the Mountain Zone didn't just blow; it screamed. It tore through the jagged peaks, carrying with it the distant, muffled sounds of chaos from below.
Yaoyorozu Momo and Jiro Kyoka stood at the precipice, peering down into the abyss. The Central Plaza was a blur of concrete and dust, hundreds of meters below. The drop was fatal. The path down was choked with villains.
"Kuma-san," Yaoyorozu's voice trembled, fighting against the gale. She gripped her creation staff so hard her knuckles turned white. "We need to find a route. Sensei is... if we don't hurry..."
"There is no time for a path," Kuma interrupted. His voice was not loud, yet it cut through the howling wind with gentle authority.
He stepped to the very edge of the cliff. His trench coat snapped violently in the updraft, but his massive body remained immovable, like a lighthouse amidst a storm.
"Hold on to my coat," he ordered, extending his arms slightly. "And do not let go. Under any circumstances."
The girls exchanged a terrified glance. The drop was madness. But looking at Kuma's broad, unyielding back, fear was replaced by a desperate trust. They grabbed the thick, Kevlar-reinforced fabric of his coat.
Kuma scooped them up securely, tucking one under each arm like fragile parcels.
He didn't bend his knees for momentum. He simply stepped off the ledge.
"Kyaaaaa!" Jiro screamed as gravity claimed them.
The world blurred into a vertical streak of gray and brown. The wind roared in their ears, whipping their hair across their faces. The ground rushed up to meet them with lethal velocity—a concrete slab waiting to shatter bone.
Twenty meters above the ground. Death was a second away.
Kuma narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. He thrust his heavy boots downward, soles facing the earth.
"Pad... Cannon."
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
He didn't just kick the air; he assaulted it.
Three rapid, violent concussions erupted beneath his feet. He compressed the atmosphere so densely that it became solid for a fraction of a second. The invisible platforms of pressurized air caught their descent with jarring force, turning a fatal freefall into a series of heavy, thunderous steps on the sky itself.
They landed behind a mountain of debris near the edge of the plaza. Kuma set the girls down gently. They stumbled, dizzy from the G-force, clutching their chests as they tried to reorient themselves.
"Stay here," Kuma whispered, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Do not engage unless necessary. Survive."
He peered over the jagged concrete slab.
The scene before him was a nightmare painted in high definition.
Eraserhead—Aizawa Shota—was lying in a pool of his own blood. His arms were twisted at angles that defied anatomy, the bones pulverized. Looming over him was the biological horror, the Nomu. The beast grabbed Aizawa's hair, lifted his head, and smashed it into the concrete.
THUD.
It was a wet, sickening sound. The sound of meat striking stone.
Standing a few meters away, observing the carnage with the detachment of a child watching an anthill, was the man covered in severed hands—Shigaraki Tomura.
"You're so cool, Eraserhead," Shigaraki rasped. His voice was dry, scratching against the air like sandpaper. It vibrated with a manic, unhinged energy. "But you're not All Might. You can erase Quirks, but you can't erase raw power. That is the tragedy of your existence."
Kuma adjusted his glasses. The lenses glinted coldly. His enhanced vision scanned the perimeter.
There. In the artificial lake.
Tsuyu Asui and Mineta were huddled in the shallows, frozen in terror. They had been spotted.
Shigaraki turned his head slowly toward the water. The hand covering his face couldn't hide the malice radiating from him.
"Game over," Shigaraki sighed, scratching his neck violently. Flakes of dry skin fell away. "But before we leave... let's smash some of his pride and joy."
He lunged.
Time seemed to warp.
For Kuma, the world slowed to a crawl.
Shigaraki moved with terrifying speed toward the water. He reached out his right hand—the hand of death—toward Tsuyu's face.
"No..." Aizawa groaned from the ground, a gargled, desperate sound. He tried to lift his bloodied head, tried to open his battered eyes to erase the Quirk, but the Nomu slammed his face into the pavement again.
Tsuyu froze. Her frog instincts screamed Run, but her body refused to obey. She watched the pale, spindly fingers reaching for her eyes. She saw the cracks in the skin. She saw her own death approaching.
I'm going to die, her mind screamed.
But death didn't come.
POP.
The laws of physics were violated.
The air displaced violently, creating a vacuum that sucked the dust inward.
One moment, there was nothing between Shigaraki and Tsuyu but empty space.
The next moment, a towering wall of black fabric and muscle materialized from the void.
Kuma had moved. He hadn't run; he had repelled his own mass, closing the distance instantly, faster than the eye could process.
Shigaraki's hand didn't touch Tsuyu. It struck the center of Kuma's chest.
HISS-CRACKLE.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The thick, reinforced trench coat—designed to withstand blades and fire—turned gray. The molecular bonds shattered. The fabric disintegrated into dust, the decay spreading rapidly like a viral infection, eating through the outer layer, the inner lining, and racing toward Kuma's skin.
But before the decay could touch flesh, a massive hand clamped down on Shigaraki's wrist.
The villain froze. His red eyes widened behind the hand mask. He looked up—way up—at the giant who had just appeared out of thin air like a ghost.
"A new player?" Shigaraki hissed, tilting his head. "You weren't on the NPC list."
Kuma stared down at him. His face was a mask of stone, but his eyes behind the round glasses were as cold and deep as the abyss.
"Get away from my classmates," Kuma said.
He didn't squeeze. He opened his palm, placing the soft, pink paw pad directly against Shigaraki's chest.
"Push."
BANG!
A concentrated blast of air hit Shigaraki point-blank.
The villain was launched backward like a ragdoll caught in a hurricane. He flew across the plaza at incredible speed, heading straight for the collapsed fountain ruins. The impact was calculated to shatter ribs.
"Master!"
The black mist, Kurogiri, shouted in panic.
But it wasn't the mist that moved.
The Nomu, which had been crushing Aizawa, vanished.
It moved with speed that blurred the line between biology and mechanics. A streak of black and purple.
Just inches before Shigaraki smashed into the concrete debris, the Nomu appeared behind him. It caught Shigaraki in its massive arms with the gentleness of a mother catching a child.
The creature's body absorbed the entire kinetic momentum of Kuma's attack. Its rubbery skin rippled, but it didn't budge. It skidded backward a few meters, its claws carving deep grooves into the ground, but Shigaraki was completely unharmed.
Kuma narrowed his eyes.
That speed... Kuma noted, his analytical mind overriding his fear. He crossed the plaza in a microsecond to intercept the impact.
Silence fell over the USJ.
Kuma stood like a fortress in front of the trembling Tsuyu and Mineta. He slowly removed his coat, which was now half-destroyed, crumbling into gray dust with every movement. He let it slide off his shoulders, revealing his black sleeveless shirt and the white target pattern on his pants.
He dropped the ruined garment to the floor. It dissolved into a pile of ash.
"Are you hurt?" Kuma asked, his voice steady, without turning around.
"K-Kuma-chan..." Tsuyu whispered, tears finally spilling from her wide eyes as the reality of her near-death experience hit her. "Ribbit... thank you."
.
.