Or a young girl sitting in complete shock at a dinner table as the entire rest of it, and whoever had been sitting with her had ceased to exist.
And that was from glimpses where there were still signs of people.
...
The vast, vast majority were rooms where there was NO ONE. Not a single shred of human beings left in the dining rooms, or bedrooms.
Her eyes lingered at a room where she saw the still-standing wooden lower half of a baby chair, the only remains of a family that had been eating dinner, thinking heroes would handle whatever trouble they heard in the distance outside.
It was the same kind of model as the one Mika had used when she was a baby. Mina's memories of those days were generally fuzzy and hard to recall usually, but somehow, that detail came to her mind now, unbidden and sharp as a knife, cutting through the fog of her earliest memories.
She was snapped out of it, when in one of the hundreds of holes in the buildings, the entire structure collapsed in on itself, the attack having destroyed something absolutely vital.
She snapped around, looking for the source of the beam, and realized it was one of the monsters.
During the battle, there had been one more, a final one that hadn't moved at all up until now.
During the entire battle, she had completely forgotten about him, busy as she was trying to remain alive.
She was about to attack him, when suddenly from above she heard the loud shout of "MINA! WE'LL TALK THROUGH THIS!"
The "This" in question, was a piece of blackish-blue that splattered against the ground, then began making it's way across Mina.
At the same time, a line of the same blackish-blue slammed into the monster that had fired the beams of Death and launched her into the sky.
Izuku would deal with her.
Good, he… He was able to remain calm and collected, just like he always did.
Even without seeing it out the corner of her eye, Mina knew what was coming in response to his move, and a wave of green, lethal acid poured forth into a wall, destroying the spine guy's attack before it could get off the ground and hit Izuku before he got away from the current battlefield.
"I'M your opponent!" She growled.
It was immediately undercut by the red one as a spike of red was launched through the air, and- It hit Izuku straight in the back.
As Izuku screamed, it was as if the world just… Stopped.
Like the passage of time froze down to a crawl, and everything moved at a snail's pace.
Like she was the only thing capable of still moving.
The illusion burst as her fist connected to the red one's jaw. Not an acid punch, a smash.
She didn't even realize she'd prepared it before it hit, but it was as perfect a blow as she had ever landed.
Her enemy's head BROKE.
Her fingers dug into the woman's torso preparing for her to reform and then-
It didn't reform.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement.
Move. Think later. Move.
She moved, and the massive arm slammed into where she'd just been.
She put distance between her and the monster. Not with her usual, crisp, smooth motions, but instead with the backsteps of a boxer, just at a much, much higher speed.
Instinct saved her when her brain had gone numb.
Had she… she had… She had just killed someone.
She felt an indescribable sense of nausea flow over her. She almost fell to her knees and wretched.
Almost.
The follow-up attack was ironically what saved her, as her instincts, drilled into her so, so many times by her mother's lessons, kept her moving to dodge the massive blows, even as her mind was completely numb and her body felt utterly sick on top of being sore all over.
The pain in her arms felt almost minuscule compared to that sense of Nausea and- Izuku!
Her head snapped around to look, and there, still crawling towards her rapidly shifting position was the piece of blackish-blue goo.
A burst of speed later, and she picked him up, the liquid ball quickly posited on her shoulder.
"Is-Is he-Is Izuku…"
God… Was that her voice?
It was… It was so filled with fear, and worry. Not a shred of her usual confidence was left.
"Yes, he's alive."
The words, though much, much weaker than usual, filled her with a sense of complete and total relief. It was so strong that it managed to overwhelm even her sense of nausea, at least in the moment.
You can ponder it later. Worry later, Mina. Put it all in a black box, and deal with it LATER.
She had to fight. She could not deal with this now. She had to deal with it later.
She had to win THIS fight before anything else.
Wait… The flying one way in the sky, the red one was… The spinal guy was in front of her, and Izuku was dealing with the one with the ringed guy. That left...
"Where... Where is the big black-" "He was vaporized by the beam".
It was disturbing. Mina had never, not once in her life even considered the idea that she would ever feel relief to hear that someone had died. But she did. She could not deal with having to kill yet another one. And so she felt a wave of relief at hearing about his passing.
The feeling made her feel sick to her very core. Well, sicker than she already felt.
Focus on the foe in front.
The foe in front, made another twin-pronged attack, trying to slam into her from both sides with a sideways sweep.
Two walls of acid blocked both arms.
"So, it hurts to use the green acid." The black quirk sounded calm like this was just a day of grocery shopping and not a battle of life and death.
"Yes. How is Izuku's fight-"
"Pretty well..." he paused for a bit before continuing. "He's wrapping it up right now in fact. We would not recommend you rely on him coming back though. He will not be in fighting shape for a while."
The thought hadn't even crossed her mind.
She didn't want him to come back to fight here, not with a hole in his back. The fear she felt at the idea of what could go wrong, far, far overweight her wish for him to help her right now.
"You're making a shit ton of holes." Venom noted as she moved to get close to attack her foe directly.
"You'll lose the advantage of clean footing if this goes on for much longer. What with all these potholes in the ground. How far down do they go anyway with this acid?"
She didn't know.
Did it matter?
Her foe did not make any signs that his healing factor was running out, regenerating just as ludicrously quickly as he'd had at the start.
Nor did he slow down as the two of them kept dancing across the pavement.
Mina felt both her hands begin to truly sting, as the feeling of conjuring Xeno-Acid again and again began to quickly stack up.
Don't think about that right now.
Push through the pain, Plus Ultra!
As she thought of the words, she felt a feeling of shame. Deep shame, at associating those words with… with her and what she had…
"So Mina, some new developments!"
Venom's voice, now sounding distinctly… Annoyed? Cut through her shaken mind.
"That treacherous, backstabbing, cunt Tenya has found himself in a fight not too far from here, and it seems he needs aid, or he shall surely PERISH. Izuku wants to know if you can handle the "Hoodie" here on your own?"
Mina didn't even consider it.
...
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