Chapter 87: The Diagonal Wall and the Bleeding Frost.
[Tokyo - Shie Hassaikai Compound - The Underground Antechamber]
The concrete room was a bottleneck, completely suffocating the momentum of the raid.
Standing before the heavy steel door that led deeper into the labyrinth were three of the Eight Bullets. Setsuno Toya, his hand resting on the hilt of his katana; Hojo Yu, crystals already erupting from his cheekbones; and Tabe Soramitsu, his jaws snapping in a manic, hungry rhythm.
"Wipe them out," Setsuno ordered smoothly.
Shota Aizawa stepped to the front, his capture scarf unfurling like angry serpents. His eyes glowed a fierce, piercing crimson as he activated Erasure, intending to shut down all three of their quirks simultaneously to allow Midoriya and Mirio a clean sweep.
But the Yakuza elites were prepared for the underground hero.
Setsuno didn't draw his sword. He reached into his coat and hurled a spherical canister directly at the floor between them.
PSSSHHHHT!
It wasn't an explosion; it was a rapid-expansion smoke bomb laced with a heavy, acrid tear gas. The thick, grey cloud detonated outward in a fraction of a second, completely flooding the center of the room.
Aizawa coughed, his eyes burning as the chemical irritant forced him to blink. His Erasure broke.
Shink.
Inside the blinding smoke, Setsuno activated his quirk: Larceny.
Aizawa suddenly felt the familiar weight of his protective yellow goggles vanish from around his neck. At the exact same moment, Sir Nighteye, who was reaching into his coat for his hyper-density seals, felt his pockets suddenly become entirely empty.
"My weapons," Nighteye stated, his voice tight with frustration. "He stripped our gear."
"I can't see them!" Midoriya shouted, the green lightning of One For All illuminating the swirling grey smoke around him, casting eerie, shifting shadows on the concrete.
"HERE THEY COME!" Kirishima's voice echoed from down the hall, but it was too late.
From within the chemical fog, a massive, crystalline mace swung wildly. Hojo roared, his crystal-coated arms smashing into the concrete floor, sending deadly shards of rock flying like shrapnel. Midoriya barely dodged, flipping backward as the jagged crystals grazed his cheek.
Simultaneously, the terrifying sound of teeth snapping closed on thin air echoed through the smoke. Tabe lunged blindly, his quirk allowing his teeth to instantly consume whatever they touched, forcing the heroes into a chaotic, uncoordinated retreat to avoid losing limbs.
It was a brilliant, brutal stall tactic. They weren't trying to win; they were trying to bleed the clock.
Aokiji Kuzan stood near the back of the formation, the micro-vents on his collar sealed tightly to prevent the tear gas from entering his suit. His dark eyes analyzed the chaos with the cold, detached precision Hawks had beaten into him over the last week.
Aizawa is blinded. Nighteye is disarmed. Midoriya is wasting energy dodging wild attacks, Aokiji thought, the temperature dropping around his boots. Every second we spend in this room, Chisaki gets further away with the girl.
Aokiji didn't yell. He didn't announce his presence. He simply vanished into the smoke.
His boots glided silently over a microscopic layer of frictionless frost. He moved past Midoriya, past Nighteye, and stepped directly into the center of the chaotic melee.
"Push forward!" Aokiji's voice suddenly commanded, carrying a chilling authority that cut through the noise of the battle.
He planted his left boot firmly onto the concrete. He raised his right hand, pointing his palm toward the corner of the room where the three Yakuza elites were coordinating their blind assault.
Ice Style: Diagonal Partition.
He didn't freeze the entire room. He released a hyper-compressed, razor-thin wave of absolute zero that sliced through the smoke. The moment it hit the opposite walls, it expanded violently.
CRRRR-CRACK!
A massive, towering wall of dense, diamond-hard ice erupted diagonally across the antechamber. It slammed into the ceiling and the floor, effectively cutting the room entirely in half.
On one side of the ice wall was the heavy steel door, now completely unobstructed.
On the other side, trapped in the corner, were Setsuno, Hojo, Tabe... and Aokiji.
Midoriya skidded to a halt on the safe side of the wall. The smoke was already beginning to clear as the ice rapidly cooled the air, forcing the gas to sink. Midoriya looked at the massive, glowing blue barrier. Through the translucent ice, he could see Aokiji's silhouette standing alone against the three elites.
"Kuzan-kun!" Midoriya shouted, his voice laced with panic, stepping toward the wall. "You can't take them all alone!"
Aokiji turned his head slightly, looking at Midoriya through the thick, frosty barrier. His expression was completely devoid of fear. His dark eyes were narrowed into serious, unforgiving slits.
"Midoriya," Aokiji's voice carried through the ice, muffled but crystal clear. "Eri is waiting for you in the dark. Do not fail her twice."
Midoriya froze. The memory of the little girl's trembling hands gripping his shirt flashed violently in his mind. The hesitation evaporated, replaced by a fierce, burning emerald determination.
Midoriya grit his teeth, tears of sheer resolve stinging his eyes. "Right."
"Let's go, Problem Child," Aizawa ordered, his eyes still red and watering, as he and Nighteye sprinted past the ice wall and kicked the steel doors open, diving deeper into the labyrinth.
[The Isolated Corner - The Mismatch]
The smoke completely cleared in the isolated corner of the room.
The three Yakuza elites stood with their backs to the concrete corner, staring at the massive diagonal ice wall that had just cut them off from their primary targets.
They slowly turned their attention to the lone teenager standing in front of them.
Aokiji let out a slow, frosty breath. The micro-vents on his suit hissed, releasing a localized cloud of steam that curled around his jawline. His posture was lazy, his shoulders slouched, and his eyes were half-closed in an expression of absolute, profound boredom.
"You locked yourself in a cage with us," Setsuno laughed, tossing Aizawa's stolen yellow goggles onto the floor and crushing them beneath his boot. "The arrogance of U.A. first-years never ceases to amaze me. You think you're a hero? You're just a corpse waiting to happen."
CRUNCH.
Aokiji didn't reply. He watched lazily as Tabe, completely ignoring the conversation, unhinged his jaw and took a massive, terrifying bite right out of the solid ice wall. The sound was sickening. The villain's teeth chewed through the absolute zero frost as if it were cotton candy.
Aokiji analyzed the variables.
A spatial thief who can disarm me from a distance. A brawler covered in armor that deflects blunt force. And a maniac who can literally eat my primary element.
It was an incredibly bad matchup. If Aokiji tried to use Ice Age here, Tabe would just eat a hole through it, and Hojo would shatter the structural weak points.
He couldn't use a sledgehammer. He had to use the scalpel.
Aokiji lowered his center of gravity, preparing to initiate Hawks' high-speed frictionless mobility. He would have to take out Setsuno first before his weapons were stolen—
Swish.
Aokiji's finely tuned instincts, sharpened by days of dodging Hawks' supersonic feathers, screamed at him.
The threat wasn't in front of him.
It was above him.
From the dark, shadowed ventilation shaft directly over Aokiji's head, the metal grate silently gave way. A figure dropped from the ceiling.
It wasn't a heavy, predictable fall. It was erratic, terrifyingly fast, and completely silent, like a predatory cat dropping from a branch.
Aokiji didn't even have time to look up. He threw himself backward, his instincts taking completely over.
SHNK.
A silver combat knife flashed in the dim light, slashing violently through the air where Aokiji's throat had been a millisecond before. The tip of the blade caught his right cheek as he retreated.
Aokiji hit the ground, sliding backward on his boots, his eyes wide.
But there was no blood.
Where the knife had sliced his cheek, the skin didn't tear. Instead, an automatic, hyper-condensed layer of absolute zero frost reacted to the trauma. The "flesh" of his cheek parted to reveal a deep, solid fissure of pale blue ice. For a split second, his face looked like a cracked porcelain doll made of winter.
Then, just as quickly, the ice fused back together, the frost sublimating as his skin returned to normal, leaving not even a scratch. His body was slowly returning to its prime—his elemental defense acting on pure reflex.
The attacker landed softly on the concrete, crouching in a deeply unsettling, animalistic stance.
Aokiji looked at the combat knife in the attacker's hand. The blade was coated in a thin, visible layer of frost from where it had made contact with his cheek.
"Awww, man!"
The voice was high-pitched, bubbly, and completely out of place in a Yakuza death trap.
Himiko Toga stood up, dusting off her beige cardigan. Her messy blonde buns bounced slightly. A heavy, manic blush coated her cheeks, and her yellow, cat-like eyes were blown wide with an intoxicating mix of pure adoration and violent intent.
"You dodged it!" Toga giggled, gripping the frosted knife tightly. "You're so fast, Kuzan-kun!"
Aokiji's eyes narrowed into dangerous, icy slits. The Yakuza thugs looked equally confused by the sudden appearance of a teenage girl in a school uniform.
"We never really got a chance to chat at the Forest Training Camp," Toga pouted, swaying on her feet like a pendulum. "And then at Kamino, during that big, scary fight with All Might and the Boss... you were so busy freezing everything! We didn't get to talk at all!"
She took a step forward, her smile widening into something terrifying. "But finally... we can have a conversation all by ourselves!"
Aokiji analyzed the situation. The math in his head was spiraling into catastrophic numbers. Four against one. And the newest addition was a completely unpredictable wildcard working directly for the League of Villains.
"Is there really a conversation to be had between two people like us?" Aokiji drawled, his voice carrying a heavy, freezing chill, though he didn't drop his guard for a microsecond. "A negative temperature like me doesn't have anything to talk about with a chaotic positive like you."
Toga's eyes sparkled. She brought the combat knife up to her face. She extended her tongue, slowly and deliberately licking the layer of biting frost off the flat edge of the steel blade.
She shivered, her blush deepening at the cold.
"The grumpy Doctor told me to come here," Toga whispered, her voice dropping into a breathless, obsessive cadence. "He told me to bring back a sample of your blood. He said you were 'evolving' again."
She tilted her head, her yellow eyes locking onto Aokiji with a predatory, starving intensity.
"But tell me... tell me, Kuzan-kun," Toga giggled, taking another step forward, her grip tightening on the knife. "What should I do? I want your blood so, so badly. Should I keep it all for myself? Or should I be a good girl and give it to the Doctor?"
She pointed the tip of the knife directly at his chest.
"What should I choose?"
The lazy, bored expression completely vanished from Aokiji's face.
His dark pupils constricted. The micro-vents on his suit hissed violently, dumping a massive cloud of steam as his internal temperature plummeted to combat levels. He was trapped in a confined space with three elite Yakuza killers, and a psychotic, blood-drinking acrobat from the League.
The situation had just escalated from a tactical delay... to an absolute nightmare.
.
.