From the height of the landslide zone, the view of the central square was absolutely terrifying. Shoto Todoroki, Katsuki Bakugo and the others were scattered throughout the area, but the real hell was happening right by the fountain. Sensei Aizawa, the hero who had just moments before eliminated dozens of enemies with incredible ease, was at the end of his strength. His clothes were torn, blood was pouring from his arms, and his famous rescue scarves were hanging limply on the ground.
Directly above him loomed the giant, muscular creature with the bird's beak and the exposed pulsating brain. Nomu. He held Aizawa by the throat like a defenseless doll. I could hear the crunching of bones all the way here. Shigaraki Tomura stood nearby, scratching his neck until it bled, his mad, hoarse laughter echoing throughout the dome.
"Mephisto..." came the faint, trembling voice of the invisible Toru behind me. "It... it won't survive. We have to help it, but that thing...."
"Stay here, Toru," I ordered coldly. "Hide and don't move."
My back was instantly pierced by giant, lightning-fast wings, and with a loud gust of wind I was thrown off the cliff and plummeted headlong down towards the central plaza. The speed of my fall was so great that the air around my crystalline armor began to burn with purple friction.
Down in the square, Shigaraki was extending his five-fingered hand towards Midoriya and Asui Tsuyu, ready to turn them into dust with a single touch through his decomposition.
BOOOOOOM!
I landed right between Shigaraki and the terrified students. The shockwave of my impact was so massive that the concrete plaza shattered into a million pieces and the fountain behind us exploded in a geyser of water. The air pressure threw Shigaraki back several meters. He spun in midair and landed on all fours like a rabid cat, his red eyes burning through the hand he had clamped to his face.
"What is this...?" Shigaraki hissed, his fingers digging into the rubble angrily. "Another cheater? Where did this horned brat come from? Nomu, kill him."
Nomu dropped the half-dead Aizawa to the ground, limp, and turned his monstrous head in my direction. There was not a glimmer of intelligence in his empty, yellow eyes. Just a pure command to destroy.
"Midoriyo! Take Aizawa and Tsuya and get out of here!" I shouted over my shoulder, without taking my eyes off the creature. My amethyst armor glowed so fiercely that the red lightning around my arms burned the very air.
"Mephisto! No, that thing... it absorbed the shockwaves of all the attacks! You can't fight it alone!" Midoriya shouted as he lifted the bleeding teacher.
"Get out!" I repeated and rushed forward.
I spread all the energy I had into my body, my muscles tightened with force, and I landed a brutal right hook on Nomu directly into the exposed brain area. The shockwave of the blow had the force of a runaway train.
GROUP!
My fist slammed into the creature's skin. But instead of the blow throwing him back or crushing his skull, Nomu didn't move. My hand dug into his flesh as if it were made of rubber. The force of my blow simply... dissipated.
"What?!"It flashed through my mind. The canon said it had shock absorption, but feeling it firsthand was something else entirely.
Before I could react, Nomu threw out his giant arm in a flash. His fist hit me right in the chest. The pressure was so incredible that my armor cracked loudly for the first time. I flew through the air across the entire square, broke through two massive concrete barricades, and stopped right against the wall of the mountain zone.
I was spitting blood from my mouth. My core was pulsing wildly, trying to repair the damaged armor plates, but my body was screaming in pain. The creature was as fast as lightning and as strong as All Might himself in his prime.
Shigaraki laughed from afar, scratching his neck and slowly walking towards the others, whom Kurogiri began to surround with his purple mist. "Nomu was created as a weapon against the Symbol of Peace. Against it, you are nothing, you heroic shard."
I stood up from the rubble. My eyes were burning with pure anger. I realized that I couldn't handle this alone. My current level wasn't enough to defeat Nomu with brute force, and Shigaraki was about to attack the rest of the class.
"If you want an army..." I whispered, my voice echoing through the entire USJ like dark thunder. "...then I'll show you mine."
The space around me began to turn black in a flash. The temperature in the building dropped below freezing. Giant waves of darkness began to rise from the shadow of my cloak and the ground below me.
„RISE UP, KAISEL!"I shouted to the sky.
A massive, black dragon with red eyes shot out of my shadow. Kaisel. Its giant roar shook the entire dome so hard that pieces of glass began to fall off. The students at the fountain and the villains in the surrounding zones nearly had their eyes pop out of their sockets.
"Dra-dragon?! He has a dragon in his shadow?!" Mineta screamed in the distance.
"Kaisel! Protect the students! Block Kurogiri and don't let that bastard with his hands on his face get near them!" I ordered. Kaisel flapped his wings powerfully, creating a giant air vortex and swiftly swooping down between Shigaraki and the rest of Class 1-A, releasing a stream of dark, searing ethereal fire from his mouth.
I turned back to Nomu, who was about to fire another shot in my direction.
"And you, my general..." I looked into my main shadow. "It's time to go hunting."
„RISE UP, AGRON!"
From the black smoke to my right, the shadowy General Agron emerged in all his terrifying glory.
"I hear and obey, my lord,"Agrona spoke loudly, his voice like the creaking of tectonic plates. His eyes locked on Nomu."That monster will pay for touching your armor."
Nomu had charged at incredible speed the first time, but this time there were two of us on him. The battle that would decide the fate of all of USJ had just begun.