a/n: lots of violence in this one + graphic depiction of wounds/injuries. please be careful while reading, and take breaks whenever you need to.

===

Smoke rises from an area blocked by just a couple buildings. Though the fumes are dark enough to blend in the night sky, the flames themselves highlight it, outlining the tops of buildings. It's... oddly hypnotic, and Tenya can't seem to look away. Standing there, practically para—frozen, Tenya blinks once and he's standing in the USJ, his loose grasp on hero basics suddenly worthless in the face of tragedy.

"No, no—I can tell a villain appeared, I've got their location. See if you can record their Quir—ah? They're not... human?" Manual keeps talking to his radio in his headphones, lowering his voice near the last part. It rises again when he says, "Just keep watching, stay on the line, and relay everything you can to me! I'll be there in a moment!"

His head snaps over to Tenya, who get out of his trance of just... staring at the smoke and fire. He does so just in time to hear Manual order, "Tenya! We're going back to the agency right now! Stay with me—when people run, don't lose me in the crowd!"

Tenya runs. But he does not end up at the agency.

Because he does follow Manual, his legs revving up, prepared to truly run if needed. He weaves past a few people, some panicked, others still shocked, and then his eyes take the briefest glance down a dirty alley. It's dark, and Tenya would've been barely able to see anything... had it not been for the night vision he'd asked to be installed in his helm. And in that alley, he sees the briefest glint of metal, a hint of bloody red—

He's turning before he knows, it, dashing forward like this alley is the exit to the USJ. And in some ways, it is; both led to the end of something, after all. And today, Tenya will make sure that the "something" happens to be Stain.

So it's no surprise he doesn't hesitate to swing a leg at the Hero Killer when he sees him.

It's deflected with infuriating ease. Tenya's glasses fly off, cracking on the ground somewhere, lenses surely broken while the world turns into a smudge. But his rage, it courses through like an unstoppable force, and what does it matter that Tenya can't see too far? He can still see stain in all of his ugly, wretched glory, and that will be enough when Tenya gets him—

He staggers to his feet in no time, falling being a thing he's far too used to since the very first day he got his Quirk. Tenya aims another kick at Stain, and that, too, is deflected with the swing of a rough-edged blade, this time digging into his armor with a shrill cry. It'll leave a mark, definitely, but that doesn't matter because it hadn't exposed his actual leg at all. It wasn't severed, so he can still move, and if he can still move, then Tenya can—

"Idiot kid," Stain scoffs, making Tenya bristle. He kicks again, and is diverted again. A sword is aimed at his prone form, this time, the air whistling with the power in that one swing. "You're making me mad, but I'm a generous sort," the Hero Killer says like he's the judge and jury of life. "This is not a place for your kind. Leave. I won't say it twice."

Distantly, Tenya notices that someone else is here: a hero with a headband and a feather wedged in it. Their eyes look at him pleadingly, and—and why haven't they moved yet? This hero, they're being held against the wall by Stain, but wouldn't Tenya have heard a muffled shout, or seen them frantically trying to move away? Especially with that wound...

No, he's getting off-track. Though the hero's wound is serious, Tenya has to eliminate the threat first.

So he gets up, aims, moves—

—and is knocked down once more. Tenya's head rings as it bangs against the rough concrete floor, skin scraping painfully while he skids a little. When he forces himself up, the sword previously pointed just a foot away is now mere centimeters from his nose. Stain stands in front of him, eyes glinting dangerously.

"...You're here for vengeance, aren't you." Stain asks like it's a statement. "I am generous, yet not merciful—there are no exceptions to whom I target. Though I don't prefer it, I've killed children, too, and I..." He licks his lips with a tongue that makes Tenya want to writhe. "...do not ask twice."

In a roll that almost fails, Tenya avoids a sharp strike next to his head. When he pulls himself up, he can barely make out the blurred form of a jagged sword practically embedded in the ground. He barely has time to veer his head back when another blade attempts to cut across Tenya's face, stumbling to his feet with a twist and forcing space between them.

Tenya's jaw hurts from how hard he's gritting his teeth. "I am not a child," he seethes, spitting the last word out as if it could melt Stain into nothing. "I am the younger brother of the best older brother someone could ever have—someone you nearly murdered." Tenya feels the soft whir of his legs as they heat up, its burn as smoldering as his glare when he meets Stain's eyes. "His body won't be the same; his life won't be the same, and I—"

"Quiet."

In a flash, Stain lunges forward and swings. Miraculously, Tenya dodges the brunt of it, feeling a spot along his cheek burn. Was there a cut there? He doesn't have time to recover, not when Stain grabs another of his swords and attempts to slice somewhere along his jaw, nor when he aims for Tenya's neck, his eyes, his ear, his arms, his—

There! Tenya aims a kick where he's seen a weak spot in Stain's endless flurry of blades, only for it to clang discordantly, a sword sawing through his leg's armor's layers, nearly grazing his skin. "Damn it!" Tenya curses quietly, foot already drawing back for balance, his eyes scouting for any opening, anything, something that he can use to kill this bastard.

When a blade dives for a slice across his forehead, Tenya, distracted by looking around, raises a hand to catch it, his legs nearly collapsing from how hard they twitch because he should've kicked that blade away why did he catch it?! He barely stifles a cry when it pierces through his gloved hands, metal digging into the flesh of his palm. Tenya's eyes dart around the blurry alley because he can't lose here, not now, please, please not now—

In a single second, Tenya locks eyes with the hero still bleeding out against the wall.

The hero does not move.

Gliding through Tenya's palm, Stain's blade comes out glistening with blood. Inexplicably, with the blade gone, the pain that'd burst on his hand flares tenfold, blood gushing out of the gash like a tsunami falling to the beat of his heart. Doubling over it, Tenya hisses, his other hand grasping his wrist. Oh God, oh God—

"Stop praying, kid," Stain scowls, taking advantage of Tenya's vulnerability and knocking him over. His spiked shoes push his chest down, and Tenya can't breathe. "You asked for this. There is no God saving you, let alone any corrupt hero." He pauses, as if contemplating something. "Younger brother, eh? Let's make you twins."

Tenya does cry out, this time, because his legs are slashed next. His Quirk's engines, he remembers belatedly, are embedded into his calves, enhancing the strength of them, and when Stain's swords can't pierce them for a moment, he rejoices. But then Tenya watches the Hero Killer raise his blades high, pointed down, and, and—and they're slammed down, piercing through Tenya's calves, making deep, gouging things that could've hit bone, and Stain does something that turns them into slashes across his legs and no, he won't think about it anymore, can't think about it (and won't be able to think at all if he's de—no.)

Though it takes him effort to force his eyes open from when he'd unknowingly closed them, Tenya manages to blearily see what makes that sudden awful, nauseating squelching sound, and whoever makes that terrifying scream: Stain, driving his sword into the dying hero's wound further as if to emphasize his first point.

Rage whirls in his chest still, yet the pain makes him want to stand down, and so does the weight of oh God, instead of one person dying here, it might be two. This all ends up making him twitch on the ground, indecisive if he could push his Quirk to run, questioning if Stain would cut him down if he tried.

"How unheroic," Tenya hears Stain mutter, "going after what you want instead of saving others..." He silently screams when the Hero Killer plunges his sword somewhere in his thigh, rocking the blade back and forth in his flesh, and God, it hurts, it hurts, he's stuck here and it hurts and he's going to die and he's going to leave his brother alone and it hurts.

What can he do? What can he do? Tenya's helm is out-of-reach, so that makes an SOS impossible. If he screams, prone like this as he is now, would Stain rip his jaw off next? And his armor, it's nothing more than flimsy cardboard against Stain's blades. What else, what else—

The—the apples! The apple slices! Tommy wouldn't have given Tenya those if they were worthless, so if Tenya could just—

(Though his vision flickers, Tenya watches Stain lick one of his blades—)

—and then he cannot move.

===

Izuku watches Gran Torino slam the Nomu out of the train cart, frozen in place. When the passengers' screams at the train suddenly rocking from the break-out amplify, it's like something switches in his brain. Izuku can't hear anything but the screams as he leaps out of the train compartment, ignorant to anyone who tells him to stay put, Gran Torino's instructions becoming nothing more than a fuzzy memory. He charges ten percent into OFA and bolts across the train tracks, leaping up on headers and signs to get a higher view.

His breath hitches, steps faltering when he sees flames rising from afar. Izuku stumbles before tipping over, but even as his hand grabs a bar and swings himself back up, he can't help but keep his gaze locked onto the spreading smoke. Because it's—Izuku is still in Aldera High, walking towards—

"Kacchan," he whispers, voice broken, and that's all the incentive he needs to jump down to the ground of the city.

The people are in chaos. The screams Izuku heard from the train that still ring in his head mix in with the not-right ones of Nomus—Nomus, plural, a thought that makes his legs weak since one of them almost killed... killed All Might. Every black haired person he sees looks like their hair is as shaggy and long as Aizawa's, and he can't look at them if he doesn't want to see them bleeding from their heads.

Still, Izuku helps as much as he can. He dropkicks a Nomu into the ground to protect two girls like he's done for several others, ushering them away with a hand (and praying that they listen) as the Nomu skids, hard. It grabs at his legs, but Izuku slams his foot down on its neck, and it stops for just a moment. (He does not wince when its bones crack, shattering; he cannot hesitate in the face of death.) He doesn't have much time; Izuku has to figure out how to keep this going, how to keep this, this amalgamation down before it kills anyone, and—

"Move away!"

Izuku does without hesitation.

A wave of fire heads where Izuku once stood, and where the Nomu now screeches, burning alive. He covers his ears with a grimace, cringing away from its screams. It—it sounds like multiple people crying at once, as if they're all being torn apart, and... and Izuku can't look at it. He can't.

Looking over the fire, Izuku briefly locks eyes with Endeavor in the distance, his costume flaring wildly and stark against the darkness of the night. His blue eyes are as searing and dangerous as his flames, and Izuku barely recognizes the hesitant nod the hero gives him. But then, in seconds, he's gone, the number two hero having run off to save more people while the Nomu Izuku tackled still burns.

Before the scent of burning flesh becomes too much, Izuku turns away, too, going off on his own. He passes by buildings and people running, spotting other heroes in the chaos. They're not attacking, instead luring the Nomus to one area—maybe they plan for Endeavor to burn them all at once? Izuku hesitates, watching a few heroes push civilians away. When he uses OFA in large percents, his entire body thrums with its energy, hair-raising electricity crackling around him; perhaps, if he just channeled that throughout him but only used it to run, Izuku can—

"TENYA!"

Izuku's head whips over to an alley, shifting into a stance. He stands there, waiting, because this can't be a joke. If it is—

"TENYA!"

It's not. It's not, and Izuku's heart soars and sinks simultaneously. He doesn't hesitate to start running in, feet pounding on the ground. There's no time to be stealthy, not when that scream chills Izuku to his bones.

But then—

An explosion at his back nearly makes him cry out, his hidden scars flaring fiercely. Izuku stops his path and whirls around on instinct even as ash, wind, and smoke bombard his face, automatically looking for spiky blond hair. However, his eyes end up landing on a hero that lands right next to him on his back, scrapes littered across his form—their name has to do something with putty with how his arms are elongated, yet Izuku's hand clenches into a fist because now is not the time to think about names!

The creak of metal snaps him out of it. Another hero—Tauros, something easy to remember, based on Pokémon, stop that—tears a fire hydrant from its roots, spraying a fountain of water into the air. It bends, suddenly, and Izuku finds a third hero—Manual...? Yes, that's Iida's mentor!—twisting it to douse the flames the sudden explosion caused. Naturally, the direction of the water makes Izuku finally look up to see—

"Oh," he mutters, staring at the two Nomus bulldozing everything on the road they're on. "Oh no no no no no no—"

"Why did you run off now, Tenya...?!" Manual curses, and Izuku's heart sinks even further than he thought possible, because—because he—what can he do to help everyone? Who is the most important here? The people in the city, potentially dying to Nomus, or his friend that Izuku knows is in the alley just over there, his condition unknown?

Who does he choose? How does he save everyone?

"Get out of the way!" A hero with blond hair snaps, unintentional anger seeping into their tone. Izuku flinches, stepping back twice to see the back of a hero facing the Nomus. "We're holding him back here. Run like the others, follow the police evacuation instructions! We can handle this!"

Izuku feels a laugh bubbling in his chest. "We can handle this," they said. But all Izuku can think of is Aizawa's cracked head, of pouring ambrosia on his wounds, of All Might's wound bleeding with strain, of—this is all ridiculous. None of these heroes can compare to Aizawa nor All Might. None of them will make it out. Izuku is the only one with experience here, he's one of the few people who could defeat a Nomu, he can defeat Nomus with time, he—

"TENYA!" The scream loops in his head. "TENYA!"

("We can handle this!")

(Izuku has had little trust in most adults ever since he was four. Izuku's had less for heroes when—when All Might broke him and patched him up with tape.

But then, he remembers that heroes exist for a reason. They're supposed to be people that can be trusted. They're practically trained to handle most Quirks, especially those they're good against, and learn how to adapt and defeat others. They are strong for the people.

Every hero here can be pitted against one of a Nomu's Quirks. Tommy said Nedzu gave this place extra security of sorts, so if some heroes die, more can replace them, as practical as that thinking is.

Izuku... Izuku can go after Iida. It's fine.

[And, admittedly, Izuku can and will be very, very selfish for his friends.])

—surely, surely if Izuku just... just gives them the information they need, these heroes can handle the rest?

"Regeneration!" Izuku blurts out before he knows it, voice cracking when it tries to climb louder than all the chaos. Everything else spills out like a rush of water, his mind scrambling for more ideas or information to add. "The—The Nomu in U-USJ, I was there, it had regeneration, o-or healing! Enhanced strength! Physical resistance, not invincibility! It could regrow its limbs—probably its head, too! C-C—I don't know if it'll work, these Nomus are definitely different and the old Nomu was punched away, but if you try cauterizing the w-wounds before they can heal, the burnt skin will cover the—y-y-you might be able to get a sure-fire kill!"

The hero with blond hair alongside Tauros, Manual, and some others look at him with wide eyes. Then, Manual nods, picking up Izuku's words quickly. "Cauterize," he says after a heavy swallow, lifting a hand to a presumable radio over his ears. "You hear that, everyone?! Try to cauterize any wounds you make!" Manual's hand falls. "Okay. Okay, we can—Tauros, can you—?"

"On it! Thank you, boy!"

And they continue the foray, fighting for everyone's lives.

On the other hand, Izuku hesitates, looking at Manual. He—should Izuku tell him about—?

...No. Manual has to stay here to help others. (Izuku may trust these heroes here, but not with things like this.)

Izuku jerks his head away sharply, finally able to book it into the alley he heard Tenya's name in.

===

"I FUCKING TOLD YOU!" Tommy screams, pacing hurriedly across the fucking office Nedzu holds meetings or whatever in. Nedzu's called for an impromptu staff meeting that couldn't be ignored even though classes were over for the day and it's well into the night, but Tommy wouldn't have missed this shitshow even if it wasn't mandatory. "I KNEW IT, KNEW IT, KNEW THAT THIS SHIT WOULD HAPPEN, I SAID THAT HEROES WEREN'T ENOUGH, I FUCKING—"

"Tommy!" Aizawa snaps through gritted teeth, making the blond flinch violently. But with how he's staring at the news still playing on the TV, Tommy thinks that he's hiding the malice in his eyes, too. "Calm. Down."

Tommy laughs, its pitches varying as his chest struggles to breathe. "Calm down? Calm down?! There are fucking—" He points at the TV screen, of which still displays a breaking news broadcast, showing smoke wafting from Hosu. Tommy's hand shakes as that same smoke seems to fill his senses until his voice comes out choked because of it all. "Aizawa, there are NOMUS IN FUCKING HOSU, and IIDA AND IZUKU ARE IN HOSU, and you expect ME to—?!"

"Yes," Nedzu cuts in, voice dangerously happy. He's drunk several cups of tea in the last few minutes, and with every minute that passes, the amount of refills he gets only goes higher. "Though we will touch upon how exactly Midoriya is there as well, thinking wildly like this will not do anyone good. Sit down."