Chapter 22: The Shining Knight and the Falling Stars
The Beast's Forest was burning.
A suffocating, sickly-sweet purple gas drifted through the ancient pines, clinging to the forest floor like a toxic fog. Above it, roaring pillars of unnatural, blinding blue fire consumed the canopy. The UA Summer Training Camp had become a slaughterhouse in a matter of minutes. The League of Villains' Vanguard Action Squad had arrived.
Deep in the woods, Katsuki Bakugo and Shoto Todoroki were backed against a wall of jagged ice.
Todoroki was panting, frost coating his right side. He couldn't use his flames without risking an explosive chain reaction with the surrounding trees and gas. Bakugo was equally handicapped, his explosive palms twitching with frustrated rage.
Standing in front of them, illuminated by the eerie blue light of the forest fire, was a nightmare in a straitjacket. Moonfish. The villain's lips were peeled back in a horrific, permanent grin, held open by metal clamps. Razor-sharp blades of elongated, hardened teeth shot from his mouth, carving through the ancient trees like wet paper.
"Flesh... sweet, beautiful flesh..." Moonfish babbled, his eyes rolling back in his head. "More... I need to see more flesh!"
Six jagged blades of teeth whipped through the air simultaneously. Todoroki slammed his foot down, creating a thick glacier to intercept the strike, but the teeth shattered the ice with terrifying ease. One blade ricocheted off the frozen debris, darting directly toward Todoroki's blind spot, aimed straight for his heart.
ZAP!
A blinding, perfectly concentrated beam of golden-white light sliced through the darkness. It struck Moonfish's elongated tooth, completely vaporizing the hardened enamel into a cloud of burnt ash.
Moonfish shrieked, recoiling as the severed nerve endings in his tooth flared with agony.
Bakugo and Todoroki stared in shock at the dissipating smoke.
Stepping out from the thick bushes, entirely untouched by the purple gas or the blue flames, was Yuga Aoyama.
He was not holding his stomach. He was not trembling behind a rock, weeping in fear of the monsters that had haunted his nightmares. His hero belt gleamed in the firelight, but the energy wasn't leaking. It was circulating. His entire body was encased in a radiant, humming aura of golden laser energy.
"Aoyama?!" Todoroki gasped. "What are you doing? Get back! His Quirk has too much range!"
Aoyama didn't retreat. He offered a crisp, theatrical smile that lacked his usual nervous edge. It was a smile forged in the shadows of the Sovereign's pocket dimension.
"Do not fret, mes amis," Aoyama declared, his voice ringing with absolute, untouchable confidence. "A true knight never lets his comrades fall in the dark."
Aoyama pushed the Prismatic Flight energy down to his boots. With a resonant, high-pitched vrrrrr, he lifted three feet off the ground, hovering effortlessly over the toxic purple gas.
Moonfish recovered, his manic grin returning. "Shiny flesh... bright flesh! Give it to me!"
A dozen blades of teeth erupted from the villain's mouth, weaving through the trees like silver serpents, converging on Aoyama from every angle.
Aoyama simply raised his hands. He didn't fire from his navel. He channeled the golden energy into his palms and unleashed a blistering, omnidirectional volley of pinpoint laser blasts. He spun in mid-air, a dazzling tornado of golden light, cleanly severing every single one of Moonfish's teeth before they could come within ten feet of him.
"What the hell?!" Bakugo yelled, his jaw dropping. "Since when can the sparkly idiot fight like that?!"
Aoyama didn't stop. Hovering forward at incredible speed, he closed the distance between himself and the straitjacket-bound villain. Moonfish tried to retreat, but Aoyama gathered a massive charge of energy in his right hand.
"Navel Laser: Supernova Strike!" Aoyama shouted, renaming his Sovereign-granted power for the cameras he knew weren't there.
He thrust his palm forward. A concussive, blinding pillar of golden light slammed into Moonfish's chest. The sheer kinetic and thermal force of the blast lifted the serial killer entirely off his feet, hurling him through three massive pine trees before he crashed into a boulder, completely unconscious.
Aoyama landed softly on the dirt, the golden light fading to a gentle simmer around his skin. He turned back to his stunned classmates, brushing a speck of ash from his shoulder.
"The path is clear, Shoto, Katsuki," Aoyama chimed, offering a flamboyant wink. "Shall we proceed?"
Before either of them could respond, a deafening roar echoed through the forest. It wasn't a villain. It was the sound of space itself tearing apart.
High above the burning canopy, perfectly centered over the clearing where Dabi, Mr. Compress, and Twice had cornered Eraserhead and Vlad King, reality peeled backward.
A massive, swirling portal of iridescent, silvery-blue light erupted in the night sky. The sheer atmospheric pressure of Rin's Sanctuary Phasing blew the smoke and blue flames away from the center of the camp.
Eraserhead looked up, his blood running cold. He recognized that light.
"No way," Dabi muttered, lowering his hand, his blue flames dying down as he stared at the portal. "Is Kurogiri doing parlor tricks?"
"That's not Kurogiri," Eraserhead ground out, gripping his capture scarf.
From the starry void of the portal, a figure dropped like a meteor.
Kenji hit the dirt of the training camp clearing with the force of an artillery shell. The shockwave of his Knight's Vow cratered the ground, knocking Twice and several Dabi clones off their feet. Kenji slowly stood up, his silver armor burning with incandescent, unyielding density.
A second later, Giulio Gandini landed gracefully beside him. The butler's suit was immaculate, his cybernetic arm already whirring as the Crimson Arsenal flared to life, manifesting a crackling red broadsword in his grip.
Akio and Shinso dropped next. Akio immediately slammed his hands into the earth. A massive dome of golden-violet energy—the Aegis Pulse—snapped into existence over the wounded Pro Heroes and the terrified Class 1-B students cowering nearby, shielding them from the intense heat of the forest fire.
Shinso stood behind Kenji, his purple Synaptic Overclock lightning sparking as he scanned the League villains, searching for a weak mind to hijack.
High in the branches of an unburned pine tree, Lady Nagant materialized seamlessly. Her arm morphed into her signature sniper rifle, the crosshairs instantly locking onto the glass marble in Mr. Compress's hand.
And finally, descending slowly from the silver gateway, his long black cloak billowing in the updrafts of the fire, came the Winged Sovereign.
Rei Arata hovered above the clearing, the violet butterfly-wing patterns on his fabric pulsing with dark, terrifying authority. The silver moth-mask reflected the blue flames of the League below.
"Eraserhead! Who are these guys?!" Vlad King yelled, hammering his fists together.
"The Swarm," Aizawa cursed, his eyes darting between the silver-clad vanguard and the masked leader.
Dabi smirked, igniting a massive ball of blue fire in his palm. "I don't know what kind of circus act this is, but you're trespassing on the League's stage. Burn!"
Dabi threw a torrent of blinding, superheated blue flames directly at the descending Sovereign.
Nocturne didn't even raise a hand.
Giulio stepped forward. With a flick of his wrist, the crimson broadsword morphed into a massive, red energy shield. The blue flames washed over the Crimson Arsenal construct, parting perfectly around the butler and leaving the Swarm entirely untouched.
"Your flames are hot, villain," Giulio stated coldly, his golden eye narrowing. "But your conviction is remarkably fragile."
Nocturne glided down, his boots touching the scorched earth of the clearing. He stood between the League of Villains and the Pro Heroes, his presence demanding absolute silence.
Hidden in the trees nearby, Aoyama watched his Sovereign arrive. He felt a fierce, burning pride in his chest. The board was exactly where Nocturne wanted it.
"Tomura Shigaraki sent you here to steal a child and shatter a symbol," Nocturne's distorted, dual-toned voice echoed across the burning camp, easily cutting through the roar of the fire. "But you are burning a forest that does not belong to you."
Dabi's smirk faded. Mr. Compress took a cautious step backward.
"We are the Vanguard of the Winged Sovereign," Nocturne declared, raising his hand. The cosmic, violet energy pooled in his palm, a silent warning to the monsters in the woods. "And we are here to clip your strings."