"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.
...
Surely Izuku would be far, far better off going to help Iida with… Who exactly? Some random regular foe, than he would be coming back to help her here. Not to mention Iida needed help.
"Sure. I can handle him."
She hoped.
Mina and "Hoodie" continued their dance of acid and flesh.
Neither got anywhere.
Mina, numb though she was, did not let down her guard, always blocking her enemy's power attacks, no matter what direction they came from. It actually helped her somewhat, despite the pain accumulating in her hands, as she was forced to focus on the fight, and only the fight.
Meanwhile, her foe seemed completely impenetrous to damage. Even when she sent a huge wave of green at him directly, to swallow him whole, he simply ripped off a limb and tossed it away in the span of a few seconds.
Then he just regrew completely from it.
And making it all worse, the entire street was now absolutely filled with deep, huge holes, making it harder and harder for her to maneuver.
More than once she almost tripped and was on the verge of falling down into one of the holes, only to save herself at the last moment.
Not to mention, she was getting more, and more tired, breathing heavily.
The fight, which had only gone on for… A few minutes? Maybe 5 tops. Felt like it had gone on for hours, but it hadn't even been half an hour since she and Izuku had jumped off from the skyscraper.
"Hmmm… Seems like we'll have to ask Izuku to come help you after all. He'll be done with the enemy soon."
"No... Problems for you guys?"
"Nah, the guy just has a sword, and his quirk isn't exactly relevant agai-"
The black goo fell apart.
Mina stopped in her tracks, glancing down as the black, bluish liquid, that usually seemed to be so cohesive, turned to nothing but dark water and poured down her arm and onto the floor.
Opposite her, her foe cooked his head as well.
"Venom?"
What the hell was he doing? She needed him to talk to Izuku.
"Venom... this… This isn't funny! What are you doing!?"
Venom did not respond, instead just pooling out over the floor like any other liquid.
"The strong guy died? How… Disappointing."
Mina felt… Cold. Not numb, numbness would imply she had trouble feeling at all.
She felt like she had been thrown out in winter naked, to be dunked in snow, and covered with ice.
She began breathing erratically. Rapidly exhaling and inhaling. Like an animal, cornered and fighting for it's life.
Venom was a quirk.
She remembered watching Izuku's fight with Uraraka. When Izuku had been knocked unconscious, Venom had taken over. He… He hadn't collapsed into a pool of black water.
She wrecked her brain for an alternative, any alternative.
Maybe if her brain had been firing on all cylinders, she might have considered other options, but as it was, her brain realized the most likely and simplest answer.
Venom was a quirk. He was bound to Izuku. His life would end with his progenitor.
An absolute frost began to set in over her brain as the full magnitude of that possibility, that reality began to set in. And her choices that made it happen.
"Hoodie" said something. But she didn't hear him. All she could think about was the horrid, awful conclusion.
It was too much.
The deaths, the blood, the battle shock, the suffering on a scale unlike any she had ever experienced, and now this… Now that Izuku… now that he...
As her foe raised his arm to attack once more, something SNAPPED inside of Mina.
She screamed as she barreled forward, and before he even managed to extend his arm she slammed into him foot first, with such force that she toppled her foe over… Right into one of the holes.
She growled a guttural, animalistic sound that would have shocked anyone who had ever known her for more than five minutes, as her hands closed around Hoodie's neck.
Green acid EXPLODED from every pore in her body. Her foe struggled, but here, there was no escape. Nowhere to run, nowhere to throw body parts to. Just 4 walls of stone all around.
He struggled. Truly struggled as the green enveloped her, and him.
Mina felt naught but PAIN.
Every single part of her became a mass of pain, as the green turned absolutely everything into nothingness.
Her skin SCREAMED, as everything she wore, the costume that had been made so diligently to handle her acid, the encasing of her glasses, her boots, her belt, and everything in it, from her cash, wallet, credit card, phone, everything began to disintegrate.
The only thing that did not go in that torrent of green was the glass of the lenses her mom had given her, though nothing else remained of them.
But still, Mina did not stop. She did not let go of the monster's throat.
She grit her teeth against the pain, and let the tears in her eyes disintegrate into the green, as she forced herself to take the PAIN coursing through every part of her skin, her eyes being the only part that did not hurt beyond ANYTHING she had ever experienced.
She did not let go. Her grip was as tight as steel, all the way until the very bones broke and dissolved into nothingness in her grip.
Only then, only when every single trace of her foe was gone, did she let go, and force her hand out to the side towards the wall, stopping the flow of green, instead replacing it with a less devastating gray.
It took a bit of time, but suddenly, she felt herself be pulled to a complete stop, as her acid-covered grip finally got a grip without everything completely disintegrating around her.
It hurt. EVERYTHING HURT!
She gasped as the green washed downwards, falling off of her.
Every sinew of muscle felt like she had pulled them. Every bit of flesh like she'd had knives dug into them.
She screamed.
She continued doing that for a while, just hollering her horrible, awful pain out to the heavens.
The sounds of her suffering echoed across the walls around her.
Eventually, she… Well, not calm down. It was impossible to calm down with that awful, horrid pain in every part of her body. But she did start to grow… used to it? Familiar?
It began dawning on her that she needed to get out of this hole.
If she didn't she would die here.
Climbing out, turned out to be hell. Even without pain digging every… single… movement… The ascent was anything but the smooth, clean trip the descent had been.
It was full of places where the concrete and bedrock jutted out, where her acid hadn't hit with enough force to make it smooth.
If she didn't have her acid, she'd never have been able to climb this journey.
Every time she held herself up with one hand, it felt like daggers were shoved into every single one of her fingers, as the weight of all her body was held on them.
Every pull was pure agony as her muscles screamed about being moved in the slightest, never mind something strenuous like rock climbing.
Her stomach and legs felt like she was forcibly jagged every single time they pressed against an outcropping of stone or concrete.
Then, finally, without warning, she came to the top and felt the fresh breath of air in her nose again.
As she forced herself up, and out of the hole on concrete, she vaguely heard noise all around. People talking, cars, and lots of other stuff.
She blinked.
Then, using the last bit of strength she had, she forced herself to raise her head to look.
Pro heroes were swarming the area, alongside policemen and police cars, and over at the end of the road, was an ambulance that was currently wheeling in the woman with a spike through her lung.
Maybe she should have felt happy about that, but at the moment, only one, single thought flowed through her head then, before the Darkness took her.
Where… Where was… was… was Izuku?
Mina fell from her knees and onto her side, as unconsciousness claimed her. Stress, shock, and pain finally taking their toll.
...
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